Joe Rogan | Was Tarantino's Bruce Lee Scene Based on Real Life??

No, yeah. The worst possible scenario, like, did you see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? I did. So those flower kids, right? Yeah. The murderous flower, the Manson kids. The Manson kids, yeah. That's like worst case scenario. Yeah. Sometimes we think about people just on, you know, just because that's a possibility. It's such a glaring one. But it gets a disproportionate amount of energy and interest. Because for the most part, most people. Yeah. Are super fine. Yeah. Most people just want to have a good time in this life. Yeah. Not assholes. Right, exactly. And even the Manson kids, there's probably a couple of them that were fun. I bet there was. The girl who took off, the girl who was like, hey, I'll be right back. Oh, yeah. That girl who didn't take off. You know who she is? No, who is it? In real life? Who? Do you watch Stranger Things? Yes. She's Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman's daughter. What? Yes. Wow. Yes. She was the one in the, the two worked in the ice cream shop. Oh, that's crazy. Yeah. That's her. Okay. I thought you were going to say the actual Manson kid that did take off. Oh. Because there wasn't. What's that? I meant the one in real life. Oh, in real life? Yeah. You confuse the shit out of everybody. I'm so sorry. You said the story going around. When we were talking about it the other day, that story with Bruce Lee that was loosely based in reality. Yeah. It had to do with Gene LaBelle. Oh, Jesus Christ. He was a stuntman on like the Green Hornet or something. Okay. He said it wasn't real though. Let me tell you this thing. Because talking from Gene, Gene was always, I've known Gene for years. He's always super respectful about Bruce Lee. But he's also, he's, okay, let me put it this way. If that actually did happen that way, if Bruce Lee fought Gene LaBelle, Gene LaBelle would grab a hold of him and obliterate his brain on the concrete 100 out of 100 times. Oh, really? Because let me just say that. So I'm not talking about the movie. There was a thing in the movie where I felt like they made Bruce Lee seem like a buffoon. And I'm like, oh, I don't think he was ever really like that. This is like kind of an important historical figure for martial arts. And I get it. It's just a crazy Quentin Tarantino movie. And I get it. The end of the movie did not, I mean, spoiler alert. I don't want to say what happened. But he takes liberties for entertainment's sake with a lot of different things. Yeah. But with that one, I was like, oh, I'm just going to have some random dude that is a stuntman and Bruce Lee's a buffoon to him and he kicks his ass on the set. But with that said, if that was a real life event with Gene LaBelle and Bruce Lee, Gene LaBelle would crush him. So Gene LaBelle could have- He's a gorilla. That would have been him in that scene. Oh, yeah. But it would have been quick. Right. It would have been a different thing, man. He's a gorilla. Right. I mean, he's like a judo champion with a severe arsenal of neck cranks and joint locks. And he is strong like a fucking bear. I mean, dude, in his prime, he was a tank of a man. Really? Far bigger than Bruce Lee. Oh, wait. And- Bruce Lee was small, right? He was a small guy. Look, Bruce Lee was an innovator in martial arts and one of my personal heroes. He's like the most important early innovator because he was the first guy to think that you should combine the best elements of all these different styles. When I was coming up, man, I was doing Taekwondo and you were brainwashed to think that Taekwondo was the best martial art. Everything else was bullshit and you shouldn't even practice it. So if I was practicing other stuff, like I was doing some boxing, I was just like, I'd get some frowns from some people. It was like a thing. And if you were in some schools that were less open minded than mine, you know, my school was a little more practical than some of them, but some of them, they would say kung fu or death. Like all they wanted to do is fucking kung fu. They're doing the shit in the park. Right. And you couldn't say, hey, man, a wrestler is going to grab a hold of you and he's going to just pound you into a fucking tree. And it's not a goddamn thing you can do about it. There's Jean Lebel. There's Jean Lebel who was, he was in a bunch of different movies as a stuntman. Oh yeah. That looks like Green Hornet. Yeah, they make same friends. So that's, they were very good friends and he had nothing but good things to say about Bruce Lee. But he said he taught Bruce Lee a lot. Like some of the moves that Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee used an arm bar and one of the early scenes in Game of Death. That was from Jean Lebel. Jean Lebel, I guarantee you helped him here. But look at this, like if Jean Lebel really wanted to grab a hold of Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee would be unconscious, as would I, as would many, many, many other trained martial artists. Not Jamie. Bruce Lee was a, I mean, Bruce Lee was a fantastic martial artist. And like I said, one of the most innovative guys ever. We don't even realize how much his style had a gigantic effect on making untold millions of people sign up for martial arts classes, including me. Right. It was because he was a movie star, right? He had the looks and the charisma that allowed him to bring it onto film and show everybody. He had everything. He had philosophy. He had a deep understanding of all these different martial arts. And he had the courage to try to combine them, which was unheard of at the time. He got him exercise from a lot of these kung fu circles. Where did he learn it? He learned it from a bunch of different places. I mean, he learned it from books. He learned it in China. He learned different things from different people. I know he did. He worked with a lot of different martial artists, including Gene Lebel, of course, was Gene Lebel's judo credentials. I guarantee he was a national champion. I think he was a world champion, but he was whatever he was, he's a fucking gorilla. I feel like kung fu was more popular earlier. Well, the UFC changed all that shit. Yeah. Nice, Dan. What is his- Additional judo. But what is his competition accomplishments? Blue belt? No. Blue belt? But if that makes sense, that they kind of base it on him, because he really was a legendary stunt man as well. Wouldn't that be cool though, if Tarantino had the inside scoop on that story? Yeah, but Bruce Lee and him were friends. I guarantee you that didn't go down like that. They didn't have a fight. Right, right, right. And if they did have a fight, Jesus Christ, I'm telling you, it would have been horrific. That guy's a fucking gorilla. Judo people are different, man. They're core. Judo? Yeah, their core is so goddamn strong. There's only a few judo guys that I've ever rolled with that are like of consequence. Cairo Parisian was one of them. I think when I was a blue belt, I rolled with him, and he was like, rolling with a chimpanzee. It just threw me around. Jesus Christ, it's so disheartening when you grapple with a really good wrestler or a really good judo person. They just have this insane ability to manipulate bodies. It's crazy. It says he won the national heavyweight judo championship and the USA overall judo championship title. So he won the national heavyweight title, and he went on to win both the heavyweight and overall champion in 1955 as well. So that's AA, national amateur athletics union, I think. That's AAU. I think that stands for. So that's a big time judo title, especially for back then in 1954. There probably wasn't that many judo championships. It was probably a fairly recent thing. Where'd judo come from? Japan. Japan? Yeah, Japan. Oh, jake it. Even Brazilian jiu-jitsu really came from Japan because Count Maeda, who was this traveling judo master, he taught people in Brazil. He taught the Gracies. So the Gracie family in Brazil, they took that jiu-jitsu and they refined it and made it much more, much more emphasis on submissions because of Carlos Gracie and Elio Gracie and Carlson Gracie and the early masters. Really amazing, amazing story of really one family that kind of revolutionized the way people fight on the ground. And they just all focused on it, right? I remember. Yeah, they just were badasses. They would just fight each other all the time. They were trying to figure out what works best and they just got it down to a fucking science. Here's the story from Gene LaBelle. Make us a little bigger? Can I read them? Because LaBelle said that when he got on the set, Dobbins told to put Lee in a headlock or something. So as LaBelle went up and grabbed Lee, he started making all those noises that he became famous for, LaBelle said, but he didn't try to counter me. So I think he was more surprised than anything else. So he probably just grabbed him, got him in a headlock. Then LaBelle lifted Lee onto his back, what's called a fireman's carry, and ran around the set with him. He said, put me down or I'll kill you. Lee screamed. He said, I can't put you down or you'll kill me, LaBelle said, holding Lee there as long as he dared before putting him down saying, hey, Bruce, don't kill me. Just kidding, champ. Back on his feet again, Lee didn't kill LaBelle. Dead Lee recognized his lack of grappling was a deficiency in G Kune Do style of martial arts that he was developing. See, so it wasn't really a fight, but this is what I'm telling you. LaBelle was so fucking powerful and such an amazing judo guy that if it was a fight, it would have been really quick. So if that's who he was supposed to be portraying in the movie, like if they showed that the Brad Pitt character was some judo champion that became a martial artist later, okay, maybe. Like a roofer. Yeah, well, he was a beast. I was a fun part of the movie. It was great. Fucking liked that movie, man. I figured it out a lot. I love that movie. And it's like split camps on it, like just in my circle of friends that I run into whatever. People either loved it and feel like they could have hung with it for two more hours or people were like, what's the point? What was the story? I don't get it. Those I don't get it guys keep a real close eye on them. Treat them like they're Jeffrey Epstein. You're trying to keep them alive. Those people, I don't understand their thinking. I don't either. It was so great. How could you not have enjoyed that? It was a wild ass movie. Like, were you not entertained? Like, there was a lot of times in that movie I was like, fuck. Whoa. Great movie. I could have just hung with it forever. And especially being out here in LA, it was just like that cool Musso and Franks. Yes. They didn't even have to do anything to make it look different. I know. That place looks like it's from 1969. Are we supposed to go? Yeah, we're supposed to go. Yeah. You and me and Joey, we've been talking about it forever. We got to do it.