Quentin Tarantino on the Bruce Lee "Hollywood" Controversy

Another thing in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that got controversial was the Bruce Lee scenes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a lot of people felt like you made Bruce Lee into an asshole. Yeah, well, okay. I'm a little hesitant to talk about this because I don't want this to be the only thing, all right, the people pull from this show. But I figured you were going to bring it up especially because I've heard you guys go back and forth on it in a little bit. I mean, where I'm coming from is I can understand his daughter having a problem with it. It's her fucking father, all right? I get that. But anybody else, go, suck a dick. And the thing about it though is even if you just look at it, it's obvious Cliff tricked him. That's how he was able to do it. He tricked him. It's explained more in the book, but the thing is they do a two falls out of three contest. So Cliff loves shit like that. He has a method, and his method is to give the guy the first fall. Okay, do your fucking move, dude. Let me see your move. All right, and he gives them no resistance whatsoever. The guy does the move. He knocks them on his ass. And Cliff ... There's like four different ways Bruce could have come at him the second time that Cliff would have had very little defense against. But most of the time, if a guy has a particular move and it looks like the guy's a lunkhead, just a big mouth who can't really defend himself, they do the second move again. They do the first move again, second time. Well, now Cliff knows what it is. So he prepares for it. He pivots. He catches him. He throws his ass into the car. And now the third time will be the charm and he gets broken up. But he just tricked him. And Bruce realized he got tricked. If Cliff hadn't been so vicious, he could have even appreciated it. Do you know about the history of Bruce Dean and Gene LaBelle? Oh yeah, Gene LaBelle. Yeah, of course. Did you research that before? Yeah, well, I've always known it and everything. Well, the stuntman hated Bruce. Really? On Green Hornet. No, it's in Matthew Polly's book. And before that, it's always been known. That's why Gene LaBelle was brought on to teach Bruce respect for American stuntmen. Bruce had nothing but disrespect for stuntmen. And he was always hitting them. He was always hitting them with his feet. He was always tagging. It's called tagging when you hit a stuntman for real. And he was always tagging him with his feet. And he was always tagging him with his fist. And they got to be the point where like, no, I refuse to work with him. And he had nothing but disrespect for American stuntmen. Huh. That's interesting. I wonder what that was about. I wonder what his perspective would have been if somebody asked him to explain it. It's like, oh, they're just not good enough. They're pussies. I want to make it look real. Okay. So he was hitting them to make it look real. Yeah. Yeah. But they don't like that. No. That's unprofessional. Well, that is unprofessional. And he was just looking for it in a bunch of movies by people that say are assholes. Yeah. And actually, somebody else who had a reputation pretty similar to Bruce Lee's in that regards was like Robert Conrad during that time. Yeah. And he did a lot of his own stunts. And he did some really, really gnarly shit. And I've always been a big fan of Robert Conrad. But in the stunt community, he was known as Robert never met a stuntman he couldn't blame, Conrad. Hmm. The stunt world is a fucking crazy world because they're the people that occasionally die making movies. Yeah. Absolutely. Which is just nuts. And look, the thing about it is also Cliff is a hand-to-hand combat killer. He fought in World War II. He fought with the Filipino-resistant fighters in the Philippines against the Japanese. If Cliff fought Bruce Lee at one of Aaron Banks' Madison Square Garden tournaments, Cliff wouldn't stand a chance against Bruce Lee at a Madison Square Garden martial arts tournament. But as a killer who has killed men before in a jungle, he'd kill Bruce Lee. He'd fucking kill him. Bruce Lee's not a killer. Bruce Lee's never really let loose on anybody. He's always had to keep it together in a martial arts tournament kind of way. If he's actually facing a guy who could actually kill him, it's a different story. It's in the book. Bruce Lee realizes when Cliff takes a military hand-to-hand combat stance, he realizes, oh shit, this guy's a killer. This guy's not fighting me. He's fighting his instinct to kill me. Watch new episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips, easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience. 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