- The Pierre Burton Show features Bruce Lee, a Mandarin superstar facing a dilemma of choosing between stardom in the US or in Hong Kong.
- Bruce Lee speaks Cantonese, not Mandarin, in Mandarin movies and his voice is dubbed.
- He believes that motion pictures should focus on motion rather than dialogue.
- Bruce Lee learned martial arts and taught it to actors like James Garner and Steve McQueen.
- He believes martial arts is a form of self-expression and self-knowledge.
- Bruce Lee does not believe in styles or doctrines in fighting, but rather in expressing oneself as a human being.
- Chinese boxing involves using various body parts as weapons.
- Tai Chi Quan is a slow form of exercise, more suitable for the elderly.

- Bruce Lee discusses the importance of constantly moving and flowing in martial arts
- He talks about famous students like James Garner, Steve McQueen, and James Coburn and how they adapted to martial arts
- Bruce Lee emphasizes the importance of honestly expressing oneself in martial arts
- He talks about the combination of philosophy, art, and sport in oriental martial arts
- Bruce Lee discusses his role in the TV series Longstreet and how it had a positive impact on his career
- He talks about the philosophy behind his famous line "be formless, shapeless, like water"
- Bruce Lee discusses his future plans in Hollywood and his desire to show a more authentic portrayal of oriental culture
- He mentions his early role as Charlie Chan's number 1 son, which was never made into a movie.

- Bruce Lee discusses the challenges he faces as a Chinese hero in an American series
- Some people in the industry are unsure if the audience will accept a non-American hero
- Bruce Lee acknowledges that there are risks and understands the concerns
- He has faced criticism for being too Westernized in Chinese films and too exotic in American films
- He believes that the changing attitude towards China may help his chances in American TV series
- Bruce Lee sees himself as a human being and believes in unity despite cultural differences

- Bruce Lee, a Mandarin superstar, is facing a dilemma of choosing between stardom in the US or in Hong Kong.
- He speaks Cantonese in Mandarin movies and his voice is dubbed.
- Bruce Lee believes in focusing on motion rather than dialogue in motion pictures.
- He learned martial arts and taught it to actors like James Garner and Steve McQueen.
- Martial arts is a form of self-expression and self-knowledge for Bruce Lee.
- He does not believe in fighting styles or doctrines, but in expressing oneself as a human being.
- Chinese boxing involves using various body parts as weapons.
- Tai Chi Quan is a slow exercise more suitable for the elderly.
- Bruce Lee emphasizes the importance of constantly moving and flowing in martial arts.
- He talks about famous students like James Garner, Steve McQueen, and James Coburn.
- Bruce Lee discusses the combination of philosophy, art, and sport in oriental martial arts.
- He discusses his role in the TV series Longstreet and its positive impact on his career.
- Bruce Lee talks about the philosophy behind his famous line "be formless, shapeless, like water."
- He discusses his future plans in Hollywood and desire to show a more authentic portrayal of oriental culture.
- Bruce Lee mentions his early role as Charlie Chan's number 1 son, which was never made into a movie.
- He discusses the challenges he faces as a Chinese hero in an American series.
- Some people in the industry are unsure if the audience will accept a non-American hero.
- Bruce Lee acknowledges the risks and understands the concerns.
- He has faced criticism for being too Westernized in Chinese films and too exotic in American films.
- Bruce Lee believes the changing attitude towards China may help his chances in American TV series.
- He sees himself as a human being and believes in unity despite cultural differences.

Bruce Lee's Lost Interview in the Pierre Berton Show 1971. 
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In this channel I share the martial art knowledge, skills and experience acquired throughout my journey. Having studied martial arts for more than two decades, I realise how strongly martial arts have shaped my life and I believe martial arts if trained correctly would help us achieving a healthy and successful lifestyle. My martial art journey so far has given me many valuable friendships, travelling and cultural exchange opportunities. I’d love to share with you what I’ve learnt, seen and experienced. Continuing with my journey, I’m going to document and share with you where my martial art journey is further leading me to.

Topics include and not limited to:
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Bruce Lee, Mandarin Superstar, production 1892, recording December 9th, 1971, in Hong Kong.

He's on the verge of stardom in the United States with a projected TV series on the horizon, but he's just achieved superstardom as a film actor here in Hong Kong.

It's the kind of problem most budding movie actors would welcome.

It's the Pierre Burton Show, the program that comes to you from the major capitals of the world.

This edition comes to you from Hong Kong.

And Pierre's guest is the man who taught karate, judo, and Chinese boxing to James Garner, Steve McQueen, Lee Marvin, and James Coburn.

The newest Mandarin superstar, known in the West for his appearances in Batman, The Green Hornet, Ironside and Longstreet.

His name is Bruce Lee and he doesn't even speak Mandarin.

Well how can you play in Mandarin movies if you don't even speak Mandarin?

Well, first of all, I speak only Cantonese.

So, I mean, there is quite a difference as far as pronunciation and things like that go.

Doesn't that sound strange when you go to the movies, especially in Hong Kong, in your own town, and you see yourself with somebody else's voice?

Well, not really, you see, because most of the Mandarin pictures done here are dubbed anyway.

I mean they shoot without sound So it doesn't you know make any difference

Yeah, well, that's where the difficulty lies You see I mean in order to because the Cantonese have a different way of saying things, you know I mean different from the Mandarin Yeah So I have to find like something similar to that and keep a kind of a feeling going behind that.

Something that matching the Mandarin deal.

But I gather in the movies made here the dialogue is pretty stilted anyway.

I mean, see, to me, a motion picture is motion.

I mean, you gotta keep the dialogue down to the minimum.

Did you look at many Mandarin movies before you started playing in the first place?

What did you think of them when you saw them?

Quality-wise, I mean, I have to admit that it's not quite up to the standard.

However, it is growing, and it is getting higher and higher and going to toward that standard that what I would term quality.

They say the secret of your success in that movie, The Big Boss, which

was such a success, you're in rocketed you to start in Asia, was that you did your own fighting.

As an expert in the various martial arts in China, what did you think of the fighting that you saw in the movies that you studied before you became a star?

Well, I mean, definitely in the beginning I had no intention whatsoever that what I was practicing and what I'm still practicing now would lead to this.

Martial art has a very, very deep meaning as far as my life is concerned because as an actor, as a martial artist, as a human being, all these I have learned from martial art.

Maybe for our audience who doesn't know what it means, you might explain exactly what you mean by martial art.

Martial art include all the combative arts, like karate, judo, Chinese kung fu, or Chinese boxing, whatever you call it, all those, you see, like Aikido, Korean, I can go on and on and on.

I mean, it's not, some of them became sport, but some of them are still not.

I mean, they use, for instance, kicking to the groin, jacking fingers at the eyes and things like that.

No wonder you're successful in the Chinese movies.

They're full of this kind of action anyway.

So you didn't have to use a double when you moved in the motion picture world here you did all yourself.

Can you break 5 or 6 pieces of wood with your hand or

But tell me a little bit, You set up a school in Hollywood, didn't you, for people like James Garner and Steve McQueen and the others?

Why would they want to learn Chinese martial arts?

Most of them, you see, to me, at least the way that I teach it, all type of knowledge ultimately means self-knowledge.

So therefore, they are coming in to, I mean, and ask me to teach them not so much of how to defend themselves or how to do somebody in.

Rather, they want to learn to express themselves through some movement, be it anger, be it determination, or whatsoever.

So in other words, what I'm saying therefore is that he is paying me to show him in combative form the art of expressing the human body.

Or it would be useful too for an actor to have.

It might sound too philosophical, but it's an acting acting or acting unacting.

So what I'm saying actually, you see, I mean, it's a combination of both.

I mean, here it is the natural instinct and here is control.

Not if you have 1 to the extreme, you will be very unscientific.

If you have another to the extreme, you become all of a sudden a mechanical man, no longer a human being.

So it is a successful combination of both.

So therefore it is not only, I mean, so therefore it's not pure naturalness or unnaturalness.

The ideal is unnatural naturalness or natural unnaturalness.

Yeah, 1 of your students, James Coburn, played in a movie called Iron Man and Flint, in which he used karate.

Oh, he went, after he played in Iron Man and Flint.

You see, actually, I do not teach, you know, karate, because I do not believe in styles anymore.

I mean, I do not believe that there is such thing as like Chinese way of fighting or the Japanese way of fighting or whatever way of fighting because unless human being have 3 arms and 4 legs we will have a different form of fighting but basically we have only 2 hands and 2 feet so styles tends to not only separate man you know because they have their own doctrines and then the doctrine became the gospel truth, you know, that you cannot change, you know, and but if you do not have style, if you just say, well, here I am, you know, as a human being, how can I express myself?

Now, that way, you won't create a style, because style is a crystallization, you know?

I mean, that way, it's a process of continuing growth.

You talk about Chinese boxing, how does it differ from say our kind

Well first we use the feet, and then we use the elbow, and

You have to you see, because I mean that is the expression of the human body.

I mean the everything I mean you know not just a hand and when you're talking about combat well I mean if it is a sport now now you're talking about something else you have regulations you have rules but when you're talking about fighting as it is with no real fighting well then baby you better train every part of your body and when you do punch now I'm leaning forward a little bit hoping not to hurt any camera angle I mean you got the whole hip into it and snap it and get all your energy in there and make this into a weapon.

I don't want to tangle you in any darker.

What is the difference between Chinese boxing and what we see these young men doing at 08:00 every morning on the rooftops

parks called shadow boxing, which they're always...

Well, actually, you see, that is part of Chinese boxing.

Everybody here seems to be you know going like this all the time

I mean, I mean, I'm very glad I'm very glad to see that because at least somebody is Caring for their own body, right?

mean, that's a good sign Well, it's a kind of a slow form of exercise which is called Tai Chi Quan.

I'm speaking Mandarin just now Cantonese Tai Chi Quan, okay, and it's more of an exercise for the elderly, not so much for the young.

But all the time, you are keeping the continuity going.

I mean, to them, you see, the idea is running water never grows stale, so you got to just keep on flowing.

your students famous, James Garner, Steve McQueen, Lee Marvin, James Coburn, Roman Polanski, which was the best, who adapted best to this oriental form of exercise and defense?

Now as a fighter, Steve, Steve McQueen, now he is good in that department because that son of a gun got the toughness in him.

I mean he would say, alright baby, here I am, man.

Now, James Colburn is a peace-loving man.

You know, I mean, now he appreciates the philosophical part of it.

Therefore, his understanding of it is deeper than Steve.

We don't, in our world, and haven't since the days of the Greeks who did, combine philosophy and art with sport.

But quite clearly, the oriental attitudes of the 3 are facets of the same things.

Man, listen, you see, really, to me, okay, to me, ultimately martial art means honestly expressing yourself.

I mean it is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky and be flooded with a cocky feeling and then feel like pretty cool and all that.

Or I can make all kinds of phony thing you see what I mean blinded by it or I can show you some really fancy movement but to express oneself honestly not lying to oneself and to express myself honestly not that my friend is very hard to do and you have to train you have to keep your reflexes so that when you want it, it's there.

And when you move, you are determined to move.

Not taking 1 inch, not anything less than that.

If I want to punch, I'm gonna do it, man, and I'm gonna do it, you see.

So, I mean, so that is the type of thing you have to train yourself into it to become 1 with the You think

yeah, this is very unwestern this attitude I won't ask you about your movie and TV career, but first we'll take a break, and I'll be back with Bruce Lee.

I've been talking to Bruce Lee mainly about the Chinese martial arts, which include things like Chinese boxing, karate, and judo, which is what he taught when he was in Hollywood.

After he left the University of Washington, where he studied, of all things, philosophy, if you can believe that.

He did, but that perhaps you understand why the 2 go together from the first half of this program.

And you can perhaps understand how he got in the films, he knew a lot of actors, but I'm told that you got the job on the Green Hornet where you played Cato the chauffeur, mainly because you're the only Chinese looking guy who could pronounce the name of the leading character, Brit Reid.

I mean, every time I said it at that time, I was super conscious.

I mean, really, now, that's another interesting thing, huh?

It's very, I mean, it's not difficult to learn and speak the word.

The hard thing, the difficult thing, it's behind what is the meaning, what brought on the expression and feelings behind those words.

Like when I first arrived in the United States and I look at a Caucasian and I really would not know whether he was putting me on or is he really angry because we have different way of reacting to it.

It's almost as if you came upon a strange race, where a smile didn't mean what it does to us.

In fact, a smile doesn't always mean the same, does it?

Tell me about the big break when you played in Longstreet.

I must tell the audience that Bruce Lee had a bit part or a supporting role in the Longstreet series, and this had an enormous effect on

Well, you see, the title of that particular episode of Longstreet is called The Way of the Intercepting Fist.

Now, I think the successful ingredient in it was because I was being Bruce Lee.

And did that part, just express myself, like I say, honestly express myself at that time.

And I, because of that I brought, you know, favorable mentioning in like New York Times, which says like the Chinaman, who incidentally came off quite convincingly enough to earn himself a television series and so on and so on and so forth.

Can you remember the lines by Sterling Sillifan, the key lines?

But you read, there were some lines that expressed your philosophy.

I don't know if you remember them or not.

You're talking to Longstreet, played by James Francesca.

Now, you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.

You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle.

You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot.

First, there's a pretty good chance that you'll get a TV series in the States called The Warriors in which you use what the martial arts?

Now Paramount, you know I did Longstreet for Paramount And Paramount wants me to be in a television series.

On the other hand, Warner Brothers wants me to be in another 1.

But both of them, I think, They want me to be in a modernized type of a thing.

I want- because you see, I mean, how else can you justify all these punching and kicking and violence except in the period of the West.

I mean in nowadays I mean you don't go around on the street kicking people or punching people because if you do yeah I mean I don't care how good you are, you know.

But this is true also of the Chinese dramas, which are mainly costume dramas.

They're all full of blood and gore over here.

Well, unfortunately, you see, I hope that the picture I am in would either explain why the violence was done, whether right or wrong or what not, but unfortunately, pictures, most of them here, are done mainly just for the sake of violence.

Like, you know, fighting for 30 minutes, get stabbed 50 times.

You came back to Hong Kong on the verge of success in Hollywood and full of it, and suddenly on the strength of 1 picture, you become a superstar.

You have to take, you have to change your phone number.

Are you going to be able to live in both worlds?

Are you going to be a superstar here or 1 of the

First of all, the word superstar really turned me off and I'll tell you why.

Because the word star, man, it's an illusion.

It's something what the public calls you.

You should look upon oneself as an actor, man.

I mean, you would be very pleased if somebody say, hey man, you are a super actor.

It is much better than, you know, superstar.

Therefore, I- You've got to admit that you are a superstar you know if you're going to give me the truth

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Bruce Lee's Lost Interview in the Pierre Berton Show 1971