Bruce Lee had 'nothing but disrespect for stuntmen', claims director Quentin Tarantino

It's been almost two years since Quentin Tarantino was in the news over his portrayal of martial arts legend Bruce Lee in his film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and he's still standing by his creative vision despite the backlash.

When the film was released in 2019, the portrayal of Bruce drew criticism, especially from his daughter Shannon Lee who said the late actor came across as an "arrogant a****** who was full of hot air" in an interview with The Wrap.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlUuNg6PEXA[/embed]

In one scene, Cliff Booth (a fictional stuntman played by Brad Pitt) trades barbs with Bruce (played by Mike Moh) who eggs Cliff to have a three-round fight.

"Here, he's the one with all the puffery and he's the one challenging Brad Pitt. Which is not how he was," the younger Lee explained then.

But Quentin isn't backing down. He claimed that Bruce disrespected stuntmen in a recent interview while promoting the novelisation of the film that was recently released.

On The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, the 58-year-old responded to the younger Lee's comments and explained his portrayal of Bruce.

He shared: "I can understand his daughter having a problem with it, it's her f****** father, all right, I get that, but anybody else, go suck a d***."

Quentin also claimed that according to Matthew Polly's book Bruce Lee: A Life, the stuntmen who worked with the late actor on The Green Hornet hated him.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmvOEj00LB8[/embed]

"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," he said.

"And he was always tagging them with his feet, he was always tagging them with his fist, and it got to be the point where 'I refuse to work with him'. And he had nothing but disrespect for American stuntmen."

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However, Polly — whose biography of the film legend is highly regarded — told Esquire in 2019 that the fight scene was inaccurate in many ways and it made Bruce look like "a disrespectful blowhard and jerk".

Bruce did have fights with stuntmen on sets, but once he returned to Hong Kong, he "never started fights, they always came up to him and challenged him".

Polly also shared that Bruce was known to be kind to the cast and crew.

He said: "Bruce was very famous for being very considerate of the people below him on film sets, particularly the stuntmen. He would often like buy them meals, or once he got famous, take them out to eat, or hand them a little extra cash, or look after their careers.

"So in this scene, Bruce Lee is essentially calling out a stuntman and getting him fired because he's the big star. And that's just not who Bruce Lee was as a person."

bryanlim@asiaone.com