Quentin Tarantino has had a bit of backlash come his away after after family and friends of Bruce Lee blasted the director for the portrayal of the late iconic star in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
.Friends and family of the actual Lee (who died in 1973 at the age of 32) complimented Moh on his overall performance, but said the person they knew did not act like that and, what’s more, never would have lost a fight to Brad Pitt.
After a few weeks of silence Tarantino has finally spoken on the issue. While doing press for the film in Russia, Tarantino stated, Lee was actually “kind of an arrogant guy.”
“The way he was talking, I didn’t just make a lot of that up,” Tarantino said in the video below. “I heard him say things like that, to that effect. If people are saying, ‘Well he never said he could beat up Muhammad Ali,’ well yeah, he did. Not only did he say that, but his wife, Linda Lee, said that in her first biography I ever read…. She absolutely said it.”
“Could Cliff beat up Bruce Lee? Brad would not be able to beat up Bruce Lee, but Cliff maybe could,” the Oscar winner said. “If you ask me the question, ‘Who would win in a fight: Bruce Lee or Dracula?’ It’s the same question. It’s a fictional character. If I say Cliff can beat Bruce Lee up, he’s a fictional character so he could beat Bruce Lee up.”
“The reality of the situation is this: Cliff is a Green Beret,”
“He has killed many men in WWII in hand-to-hand combat. What Bruce Lee is talking about in the whole thing is that he admires warriors. He admires combat, and boxing is a closer approximation of combat as a sport. Cliff is not part of the sport that is like combat, he is a warrior. He is a combat person.”
“If Cliff were fighting Bruce Lee in a martial arts tournament in Madison Square Garden, Bruce would kill him. But if Cliff and Bruce were fighting in the jungles of the Philippines in a hand-to-hand combat fight, Cliff would kill him.”
