THE NUNCHUCK

ANG LEE on FIST OF FURY

I grew up in Taiwan. Usually, audiences are pretty quiet. They’re nice people, but quiet. I remember when I was 17, this was the first time we saw any Bruce Lee movie. His first movie was banned in Taiwan, and his second movie, which is more mature, is called Fist Of Fury. The first fighting scene, we’d never seen anything like that. The movie’s not too sophisticated. It’s a lot of cheesy stuff. The Japanese bad guy keeps humiliating the Chinese. They just get angrier and angrier for ten to 15 minutes, and then Bruce Lee goes to the dojo and singlehandedly flattens a score of people. At the climax, it was the first time we saw the nunchuck. He rolled down on the tatami floor, and hit everybody on the ankle, and as he was standing up he made a smarmy face. You saw the wide shot of everyone lying on the floor and — excuse my expression — that’s the “Fuck, yeah!” moment. People would shout, “FUCK, YEAH!” People would roar and clap and scream. It was a packed theatre, and that brought down the house.