The portrayal of Bruce Lee in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood continues to be a sore spot for some Bruce Lee fans, including his own daughter. Quentin Tarantino defended his characterization of the martial-arts superstar at a Moscow press junket earlier this week, saying, “The way he was talking, I didn’t just make a lot of that up. I heard him say things like that, to that effect.â€
Variety asked Bruce’s daughter, Shannon, who is an actress and producer in her own right, what Tarantino should to squash the beef between them. “He could shut up about it,†she said. Lee told Variety that she disliked Tarantino’s having-it-both-ways approach to truth and fiction: “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.â€
At the same Moscow junket, Tarantino cited Lee’s widow’s memoir in his defense, saying, “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.†But the passage in Linda Lee Cadwell’s book actually quotes a critic who said that Lee could “render [Ali] senseless.â€