7 Cultural Icon

Chapter 6 Cultural Icon On his trip to Hong Kong in 1970, the twenty-nine-year-old Bruce met adoring fans everywhere he went. When he walked down the street, people ran up to him to say hello. If he ate dinner in a restaurant, they stared and whispered to their friends. Talk show hosts wanted to interview him. Television variety shows wanted him to give kung fu demonstrations.

Bruce was a little surprised by all the attention. At the time, reruns of The Green Hornet were showing on television in Hong Kong. People there didn't call it The Green Hornet, though. Instead, Bruce was so popular that they called it The Kato Show. They were proud of Kato. Finally, an American television show featured a Chinese character in a strong and positive way. Bruce's reception in Hong Kong made him think that maybe China was where his film career could really take off. He thought that if he became a big star in Hong Kong then he could move into films in the United States. Plus, there

were a lot of good things about making movies in Hong Kong. He could have more influence there on how action films were made. He could make movies the way he wanted which meant that he could help change how the Chinese were perceived in America. In 1971, Bruce signed a deal with Raymond Chow to do a series of martial-arts action films for a company called Golden Harvest Productions in Hong Kong. Before Bruce's collaboration with Raymond Chow and Golden Harvest, most Chinese action films were not very good. They used wires to make it look like the actors and martial artists

were flying through the air. Bruce knew that those movie tricks only looked silly. He knew that he was better than other Chinese martial- arts actors. He didn't need any special effects. "Before I made my first Chinese film, Chinese flicks were considered kind of unrealistic," Bruce said. "There was a lot of overacting and a lot of jumping around. All in all, it didn't look real."

Bruce's first movie with Golden Harvest was called The Big Boss, released in 1971. (It was titled Fists of Fury when it was later released in the United States.) In The Big Boss, Bruce plays a young man named Cheng. He works in an ice factory with his cousins. Cheng promises his mom he will never fight. But when his cousins are killed, he needs to break that promise and

fight the criminals who are selling drugs out of the factory. The Big Boss marked the first time Bruce had a starring role in a film. When The Big Boss premiered in Hong Kong, the audience was quiet. Bruce wasn't sure what they thought of it. But after the final scene, when the lights came on in the theater everyone burst into wild applause! They were so quiet during the movie because they were mesmerized. They had never seen anything like it. Before The Big Boss, the movie that made the most money in Asia was The Sound of Music, which was an American musical. The Big Boss broke The Sound of Music's box-office record. But the new record didn't last long. That's because Bruce's second film for Golden Harvest, called Fist of Fury, was released in