LOS ANGELES - Bruce Lee's daughter Shannon Lee has once again called out director Quentin Tarantino for his criticism of her late father in his movie, Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood.
The same criticisms were repeated in his recent novel of the same name (but without the ellipsis), which depicted the martial arts star as arrogant and dismissive of Hollywood stuntman Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt in the 2019 movie.
In a guest column in The Hollywood Reporter last Friday, Shannon Lee, 52, urged Tarantino to "take a pass on commenting further about Bruce Lee" and expressed frustration with "white men in Hollywood trying to tell me who Bruce Lee was".
"I'm tired of hearing from white men in Hollywood that he was arrogant and an a**hole, when they have no idea and cannot fathom what it might have taken to get work in 1960s and 1970s Hollywood as a Chinese man with (God forbid) an accent, or to try to express an opinion on a set as a perceived foreigner and person of colour," the only child of Bruce Lee wrote.
"I'm tired of white men in Hollywood mistaking his confidence, passion and skill for hubris and therefore finding it necessary to marginalise him and his contributions. I'm tired of white men in Hollywood finding it too challenging to believe that Bruce Lee might have really been good at what he did and maybe even knew how to do it better than them."
Earlier in the week, Tarantino had appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast and unleashed expletives while doubling down on his claim that Bruce Lee, who died in 1973 at the age of 32, was arrogant.
"I can understand his daughter having a problem with it. It's her f***ing father. Everybody else: go suck a d***," he said.
In Shannon Lee's column, the actress and martial artist addressed the fact that Tarantino had never even met her father.
"Why does Quentin Tarantino speak like he knew Bruce Lee and hated him? It seems weird given he never met Bruce Lee, right?"
She added: "You can imagine by now that I am used to people only seeing one facet of my father and blowing that up into a caricature. That has been happening since shortly after he passed. But usually, somewhere in that caricature is some sort of nugget of love for the man and his work. Not so with Mr Tarantino.
"At a time when Asian Americans are being physically attacked, told to 'go home' because they are seen as not American and demonised for something that has nothing to do with them, I feel moved to suggest that Mr Tarantino's continued attacks, mischaracterisations and misrepresentations of a trailblazing and innovative member of our Asian American community, right now, are not welcome."
