Classic Bruce Lee Film Enter The Dragon Had A Multitude Of Challenges
"Enter The Dragon" may be one of the best martial arts films of all time, but the Bruce Lee-led project didn't exactly come together easily. Over 50 years after its release, the lore surrounding the movie's fraught creation is by now stacked higher than a pile of guys taken down by super-skilled fighter Lee (played by the late actor with the same last name). Among the anecdotes surrounding its production? Behind-the-scenes fights, recasts, a minuscule budget, script problems, and more.
"The whole budget was $450,000," associate producer Andre Morgan told the BBC last year, paring down the already shockingly small $850,000 number that's commonly cited. Morgan was confident in his number, saying, "Remember, you heard it from somebody that was there. I prepared the budget; I signed the budget." The shoestring budget didn't get in the way of the movie's success; in theaters, it earned over $100 million worldwide according to the BBC piece, with multiple sources putting that number at closer to $400 million –- and that's before calculating for inflation.
The film also has a major cultural footprint: the U.S. Library of Congress gave it a spot in the National Film Registry, and its style, choreography, and philosophy have drastically shaped the entire action genre (along with several subgenres) in pretty much every way imaginable. Lee passed away before the film's release at age 32, and his tragic passing turned an already great movie into a vital time capsule capturing the raw talent of a rising star. That raw talent apparently spilled over behind the scenes, too, as Lee reportedly fought at least one extra who challenged his fighting bona fides on set.
The making of Enter the Dragon included fights, rewrites, and a plan to recast Lee
Actor and martial artist Bob Wall, who played the bodyguard O'Hara in the film, told Black Belt Magazine (via Far Out) that an extra on the movie once talked smack about Lee in Cantonese during a filming break. "I reckon you only act out your fighting. You're not for real!" Wall recalled the man saying, noting that Lee was challenged often but typically "kept his cool." This time around, though, Wall said Lee decided to take on the extra, and during the fight, Lee "slapped him around until the guy was all bloody and messed up." Co-star Bolo Yeung also described the fight in an interview shared on YouTube (via ScreenRant). Yeung said the extra wanted to test Lee's Jeet Kune Do, with Lee clinching the face-off with a high kick.
A fight like this one ended up in Quentin Tarantino's 2019 movie "Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood," prompting Lee's family to note that Tarantino's version wasn't especially accurate. Less well-known are Lee's calmer behind-the-scenes contributions to "Enter the Dragon," like when, according to his daughter Shannon, he "rewrote the majority of the screenplay." In her book "Be Water, My Friend," Shannon Lee writes that the original script was "terrible," with "none of the iconic scenes that exist today."
Bruce Lee rewrote it and asked that the original scriptwriter be fired (a move that wouldn't have been out of line, given that his production company helped fund the movie). According to Shannon Lee, the studio lied to her father, saying the writer had been fired while keeping him on. According to Matthew Polly's biography "Bruce Lee: A Life," Warner Bros. even debated recasting Bruce Lee rather than allowing him the level of creative control he asked for. Bruce Lee very nearly didn't sign his contract, but the studio ultimately agreed to his terms.
The director started a rumor that Lee wanted to kill his co-star
In "Be Water, My Friend," Lee's daughter notes that he also had to write Warner Bros. multiple letters requesting that the movie's title — which had previously been both "Han's Island" and "Blood and Steel" — be changed to "Enter the Dragon." The actor obviously faced racism and the underestimation of white studio executives on his path to Hollywood stardom.
In an interview Wall gave City on Fire in 2011, he pointed to director Robert Clouse as the source of several of the problems with the film. "Robert Clouse is one of the worst directors and the reality is that Bruce didn't like him," Wall said frankly, noting that the two were in a "constant battle." He added, "Clouse had no respect for action people, only respect for actors [...] [He] was only nice to stars of movies but he wasn't nice to the star of that movie, Bruce." Wall said that Clouse wanted Lee fired, and when he couldn't make that happen, he made up a rumor about his and Lee's working relationship.
"Bruce got cut during one of the fight scenes," Wall said, describing a scene in which an actual glass bottle was shattered, "so Clouse spread the rumor that Bruce was going to kill me." Producer Fred Weintraub apparently told Wall to "get out of town," but the actor wasn't intimidated. "I said, 'First of all Bruce and I are good friends. Second, I am afraid of nobody,'" he recalled when speaking to City on Fire. According to Wall, he went over to Lee's house and squashed the rumor man to man, and he was later able to confirm that the film's director was behind the manufactured beef.
Last minute casting changes threatened to derail Enter the Dragon
Fights and rewrites are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the production of "Enter the Dragon." According to an archived obituary by Wing Chun News, Australian actor Rod Taylor was recast in the film because he was too tall. John Saxon took on the role instead, with the outlet claiming that during contract negotiations he asked that his character — rather than the one played by Jim Kelly — would survive until the film's end. Meanwhile, the actor playing the role that would ultimately go to Kelly, Rockne Tarkington, apparently dropped out of the shoot right before production was set to start. "Two or three days before we left to shoot in Hong Kong [...] [S]uddenly I was stuck without an actor," Weintraub said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. He found future blaxploitation star Kelly working at his Hollywood dojo, hired him to fill the role meant for Tarkington, and the rest is history.
It's wild to think that if one of dozens of behind-the-scenes factors had been different, "Enter the Dragon" wouldn't be the movie it is today. If the wrong actors had been cast, or the film had been given a lackluster title, or if Clouse or Lee's on-set frustrations had boiled over to a degree that was untenable, the movie may well have been a flop. Instead, we got what's widely considered a masterpiece: a movie that's as loved today as it was upon release, and one whose influence on film history all these decades later simply can't be measured.