Bruce Lee’s daughter Shannon has said that she wants Quentin Tarantino to “shut up” about her father’s portrayal in his new film.
Lee has been a leading critic of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s depiction of her late father, after writing last month that the film portrays him as “an arrogant a**hole who was full of hot air”.
In response, Tarantino said this week that “Bruce Lee was kind of an arrogant guy”, and defended his depiction in the movie. “The way he was talking [in the film], I didn’t just make a lot of that up. 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 that.”
Now, in an interview with Variety, Shannon Lee suggested that Tarantino “could shut up about it”, adding: “That would be really nice. Or he could apologise or he could say, ‘I don’t really know what Bruce Lee was like. I just wrote it for my movie. But that shouldn’t be taken as how he really was.’”
She continued, “One of the things that’s troubling in his response is that, on the one hand, he wants to put this forward as fact and, on the other hand, he wants to stay in fiction. He can portray Bruce Lee however he wanted to, and he did. But it’s a little disingenuous for him to say, ‘Well, this is how he was, but this is a fictional movie, so don’t worry too much about it.’”
The film, which features actor Mike Moh as Lee, depicts the legendary actor and martial artist being mercilessly beaten up by a stuntman played by Brad Pitt.
