One difference between Lee and Manson was, Bruce had what it took to be a phenomenon. Not at the time he was acting on The Green Hornet. But a few years later, first in his Hong Kong movies with Lo Wei, then in his big Warner Bros. martial-arts extravaganza, Enter the Dragon.
But back in 1966, when he was still playing the Green Hornet’s sidekick, Kato, Bruce Lee had a reputation amongst the American stuntmen who worked on his show.
A bad one.
Bruce Lee didn’t have much regard or respect for American stuntmen. And the actor went out of his way to make that disrespect obvious. One of those ways was tagging them with his flying fist and feet during fight scenes. He was warned about this time and time again, and like Robert Conrad, he always had an excuse that made it their fault. To such a degree, a whole host of stunt players refused to work with him.
Now, truth be told, Cliff didn’t like Lee from the first moment he laid eyes on him. Which was before Rick started shooting his guest-villain gig on the show. The first time Cliff witnessed Lee’s screen-fighting technique was when the stuntman drove Rick to the Twentieth Century Fox lot for his wardrobe fitting for the following week’s episode. The two men stood back away from everybody and watched Bruce and his co-star, Van Williams, shoot an outdoor fight scene, where Lee performed a lot of dazzling quicksilver kicks and Nureyev-like leaps. When Lee was finished, the crew broke into applause. Rick was definitely impressed and turned to Cliff and said, “That guy’s really somethin’, huh?”
Uncharacteristically, Cliff snorted dismissively, “That guy ain’t fuckin’ shit! It might as well be Russ Tamblyn out there. The guy’s just a fuckin’ dancer. Send Twinkle Toes back to West Side Story.”
Rick countered, “That guy’s fast as fuck. Those kicks are great.”
“They look great—in a movie,” Cliff schooled. “There ain’t no power in that shit. Yeah, he’s fast, I’ll give you that. But fast patty-cake is still patty-cake. None of these karate faggots are worth a shit in a real fight. Judo’s a little different. With judo, you deal with a guy who don’t know what he’s doing, you can toss him around a little bit. But none of these karate faggots have any power in their kicks, and not a single one of them can take a punch to save their life.” Then Cliff points at Kato for emphasis. “Least of all that midget there.”
Cliff rarely went on a tear, so when he did, Rick let him rant himself out.
“Hand-to-hand combat, man. That’s where it’s at. A fucking Green Beret would scramble his eggs. Everything he does is for show.
“Everything Ali or Jerry Quarry does is to inflict punishment. Everything a Green Beret does is to kill. I’d like to see that faggot in the jungle, fightin’ a Jap who outweighs him by thirty pounds with a knife in his hand and murder on his mind.” Cliff snorted, “That happens, the Green Hornet’s lookin’ for a new chauffeur.”
“Okay, look,” Rick offered, “maybe in a kill-or-be-killed situation you might be right—”
“I am right,” Cliff interrupted.
“Nevertheless,” Rick continued, “those fast kicks are impressive.”
“Stretching,” Cliff said dismissively. “It’s all stretching. I come over to your house and stretch you out for three hours a day, Monday through Friday. In three months you can do every fuckin’ thing he can do.”
Rick gave him a skeptical look, and Cliff backtracked a bit.
“Okay, maybe not everything. But close enough.”
The fight between Cliff and Bruce occurred when Cliff was on the set of The Green Hornet, doubling for Rick. Bruce, as usual, was holding court with the crew about his prowess. And then somebody asked him the single question that people asked Bruce all the time: Who would win in a fight between him and Ali? Bruce was constantly asked this question. And depending on the time and his mood, his answer was different. Later, on the set of Enter the Dragon, when John Saxon asked him the question, Bruce supposedly said, “His fists are bigger than my head.” But Bruce admired Ali’s ability and made it a point to study 16mm films of Ali’s fights. And in examining those films, he had made a discovery: Ali dropped his left.
In a boxing ring, he knew, Ali would murder him.
But frankly, Bruce felt there was nobody he couldn’t defeat in a fight. The trick would be to fight Ali without boxing gloves and to allow Bruce kicking privileges.
So when asked on the set of The Green Hornet that day, he said, “If put in a room and told anything goes? I’d beat him senseless.”
And Cliff—this day-player stuntman—laughed.
Bruce asked him, “What was so funny?”
For one small moment Cliff tried to deflect the confrontation. “Hey, man, I’m just here to do a job.”
But that wasn’t good enough for Bruce. “But you’re laughing at what I’m saying, but I didn’t say anything funny.”
“Yeah, ya kinda did.” Cliff smirked.
A pissed-off Bruce asked the stuntman, “What do you think is so funny?”
Okay, here it goes, Cliff thought.
“I think you ought to be embarrassed to suggest you’d be anything but a stain on the seat of Muhammad Ali’s trunks.”
All eyes on the set shifted to Bruce.
But Cliff, who knew from this point on his job was kaput, felt he might as well get his money’s worth, so he continued, “A little squirt like you is gonna beat the heavyweight champion of the world senseless? A fucking actor is going to beat Ali senseless? Fuck Ali—Jerry Quarry would pound you like a nail! Let me ask you something, Kato: Have you ever taken a serious punch?”
An angry Bruce answered back, “No, I haven’t, stuntman. Because people can’t hit me!”
“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Cliff said.
Cliff looked to the wide-eyed crew members watching all this. “I can’t believe you buy the horseshit this squirt’s dishing out.”
Turning back to Bruce, “Get real, man. You’re a fucking actor! You get a black eye, the fight’s over. You get a loose tooth, the fight’s over. Jerry Quarry will fight five rounds with fucking Muhammad Ali with a broken jaw! You know why? Because he’s got somethin’ you don’t know shit about—heart!”
Bruce, in his chauffeur’s outfit, took a cool-guy pose, looked at the ground, shook his head, then looked at the stuntman and smiled, saying, “You got a big mouth, stuntman. And I’d really love closing it, especially in front of all my friends. But, you see, my hands are registered as lethal weapons. That means, we get into a fight and I accidentally kill you, I go to jail.”
Cliff came back with, “Anybody accidentally kills anybody in a fight they go to jail. It’s called manslaughter. And I think all that ‘lethal weapon’ horseshit is just an excuse so you dancers never hafta get into a real fight.”
Okay, now that was an actual challenge, made in front of a handful of Bruce’s colleagues. So Bruce offered Cliff a “friendly contest.” Two out of three falls. Nobody tries to hurt anybody. Who just ends up on their butt.
“You’ve got it, Kato,” was Cliff’s reply.
Under the excited eyes of the crew, the two men prepared to face off against each other. What Bruce didn’t know was, Cliff loved two-out-of-three challenges. Though they usually took place in the parking lots of bars at one in the morning. Whenever Cliff engaged in this style of contest, especially with somebody who had some fight training, he deployed a sneaky technique that was so obvious he’s surprised it always works.
The technique is simple.
He gives them the first fall.
He offers very little resistance and prepares himself to withstand whatever they give. He offers so little resistance that the opponent, especially if they’re a skilled fighter, assumes Cliff is just some barroom tough guy in way over his head.
Cliff also knows in this type of contest his opponent will use whatever moves, or combination of moves, he’s the most confident with. So after the first fall, Cliff’s opponent has usually shown him his big move.
And if Cliff appears untrained and th
e guy’s confident about putting Cliff away, nineteen times outta twenty the other guy will use the exact same move again. And now that Cliff knows what it is, he waits for it, counters it, and drops the fucker on his ass.
From Bruce’s perspective, he had no intention of hurting this loudmouth honky. He just wanted to shut his big mouth and make him look a little foolish in front of the crew. For one, it would mean big trouble for Bruce if he hurt this guy. The stuntmen were already complaining about Bruce hitting them and were informing Randy Lloyd, the stunt gaffer, that they didn’t want to work with him. Plus, from showing off on the set, Bruce had accidentally dislocated a set designer’s jaw with a mistimed kick. If Bruce broke anybody else’s jaw on the set, his ass would be grass.
So the Little Dragon decided the best plan of action was something that would look good but ultimately wouldn’t hurt the guy. Just knock him off-balance. But at the same time show this asshole a demonstration of who he was dealing with.
A spinning roundhouse kick to the ear would take this fucker’s head off, and maybe make it hard for him to do arithmetic from that point on. A straight-leg power kick would knock him clean over that car behind him, and God knows what would get broken? But, along with Rudolf Nureyev, Bruce Lee had the ability to hang in the air unlike few who had ever lived. Nureyev and Lee seemed to sail through the air, accomplish their task, and, when they wanted to, land softly on the ground.
So Bruce decided a sail-through-the-air leap that contained a lot of height but little forward thrust was the safest move. He could catch air, look damn cool, then stop his flight by tapping his foot on this asshole’s chest area, knocking him backward, dropping him on his butt, and teaching this motherfucker a lesson.
And that’s exactly what he did. Knocking Cliff right on his butt, to the applause of the crew. The blond stuntman looked up from the ground with a goofy smile on his face and said, “Nice leap, Twinkle Toes.” Then as he got off the ground he said, “Do it again.”
Okay, now I’m gonna put my foot through this fucker’s chest, Bruce thought. I just gotta make sure this asshole doesn’t break his tailbone when he hits the ground.
So, with less height and more forward thrust, he took his second leap at the stuntman, who pivoted his body at the last minute. And the master martial artist practically fell into his waiting arms. Then Cliff, holding on to his leg and belt, swung the martial artist like a cat, hard, into a parked car on the set.
Bruce heard a crunch sound emit from his lower spine when he smashed into the automobile and his shoulder blade caught the passenger-door handle. He was really hurt. Looking up from the cement pavement, Bruce saw the honky stuntman smiling down at him.
Bruce really didn’t want to hurt Cliff. He just wanted to show him up. But Cliff wanted to hurt Bruce. If by slamming him into that car he had fucked up Bruce’s back and neck for the rest of his life, Cliff would have been fine with that.
As Bruce picked himself off the ground, he watched Cliff take his fighting stance for the third round. And he recognized it as a military hand-to-hand-combat stance.
Bruce was mad as hell at this fucker for hurting him. But also, for the first time, he saw his opponent for what he was. He wasn’t just some cowboy stuntman redneck. Bruce knew Cliff knew what he was doing. Bruce realized Cliff had suckered him into taking him lightly and into doing the same move twice. Bruce could have gone at Cliff in fourteen different ways that the stuntman never could have blocked. But by pretending to be an untrained lunkhead, Cliff caused Bruce to go the lazy way and play right into the stuntman’s hands. If Cliff’s response hadn’t’ve been so vicious, Bruce could have almost admired it.
Bruce also quickly recognized that, while Cliff wasn’t anywhere near as skilled as the opponents he fought in any of his martial-arts tournaments, he was something they weren’t.
He was a killer.
Bruce could see Cliff had killed men before with his bare hands.
He could see Cliff wasn’t fighting Bruce Lee.
Cliff was fighting his instinct to kill Bruce Lee.
The martial artist often wondered, if the day came that he found himself in a kill-or-be-killed situation with a skilled fighter, how would he respond? Well, it looked like that day was today.
Fortunately, the third round was broken up by the stunt gaffer’s wife, just as it got started. And, as he knew he would be, Cliff was quickly fired. The problem with all this was when Cliff was brought on the set of The Green Hornet, it wasn’t as a day-player ringer meant to give Kato a public spanking. He was just meant to double Rick during the actor’s guest-star gig. The stunt gaffer, Randy Lloyd, didn’t want to hire Cliff in the first place—because Randy believed Cliff was guilty of killing his wife. And Randy worked with his wife, Janet, who very much believed Cliff was guilty of killing his wife. And, frankly, they’d rather hire somebody for a job who they didn’t think was guilty of killing his wife. There were a lot of transgressions people could forgive, especially in the sixties. But a stuntman who killed his wife and tried to break the back of the TV-show lead in front of the crew wasn’t one of them. After the Bruce Lee Incident, for all intents and purposes, Cliff stopped being Rick’s stunt double and started being his gofer.
Rick was so mad about that whole Bruce Lee Incident that Cliff thought he was going to fire him too. But then who would drive Rick to work? Sure, he could find somebody to do it. But at the end of the day, it was just easier to forgive Cliff. Rick paid Cliff a nominal salary to drive him places, do odd jobs, and be available when he needed him. A salary that was supposed to be augmented by getting stunt gigs. But after the Bruce Lee Incident, the already meager stunt work he got, due to the speculation in town that he was a murderer, dried up even more. The Hollywood stunt community didn’t need another reason not to hire Cliff, but now they had one, and it was Cliff who gave it to them. Rick’s little story that morning about the prick AD on Battle of the Coral Sea was actually quite apropos.
However, Cliff knew that one of the most interesting things about Hollywood was, ultimately, it was a small fucking town. One of these days, on the street, in a parking lot, in a restaurant, or at a red light, he was going to see that little prick Bruce Lee again. And on that day, ain’t nobody except the police gonna be breaking it up!
Having finished putting back Rick’s TV antenna, and with nothing better to do until around seven-thirty, when he’ll pick his boss up from the set, Cliff is driving Rick’s Cadillac down Sunset Boulevard, on his way to the movies.
As Cliff sits parked at a red light, visualizing knocking Bruce Lee’s block off, he glances to his right at the Aquarius Theater with its huge colorful painted mural of the hit stage show Hair. And he spots two of the same hippie girls he saw this morning, including the saucy tall brunette number with the pickles who locked eyes with him and flashed the peace sign. Both girls stand in front of the Aquarius with their thumbs stuck out, trying to hitch a ride. The brunette is still dressed the same way she was this morning—cutoff Levi’s, crochet halter top, bare feet, and a coat of filthy grime.
The brunette hippie pickle girl spots Cliff, in a different car from this morning, across the street, going in the opposite direction.
She smiles, waves, points at him, and squawks, “Hey, you!”
He smiles at her and waves back.
She yells across traffic at him, “What happened to your Volkswagen?”
He yells across traffic back at her, “This is my boss’s car!”
She holds out her thumb. “How about a lift?” Tugging her thumb.
Cliff points his finger in the opposite direction. “Not goin’ my way.”
She shakes her head sadly and yells, “Big mistake!”
He yells back, “Probably!”
“You’re gonna think about me all day!” she warns.
He yells back, “Probably!”
The light on Sunset Boulevard turns green, and traffic starts moving again.
He gives her a little salute, and she gives him a sad
-little-girl bye-bye wave as the cream-yellow Cadillac drives off.
When he gets to Sunset and La Brea, he makes a left and drives down La Brea Boulevard. Sam Riddle, the lunchtime disc jockey on KHJ radio, reads the copy for a commercial for Tanya Tanning Butter. Not tanning lotion, which protects you from the sun’s harmful rays, but tanning butter, which accelerates burning. Cliff drives past Pink’s Hot Dogs, on the corner of La Brea and Melrose. There are so many people outside crowded around the hot-dog stand, you’d think they were giving away free pussy, not selling overpriced chili dogs. Cliff moves the Cadillac into the right-hand lane and makes a right when he gets to Beverly Boulevard. He drives a short distance down Beverly and pulls up in front of a little movie theater and parks the car.
In the thirties, the cinema was a vaudeville house called Slapsy Maxie’s.
In the fifties, it was where Martin and Lewis first performed in Los Angeles.
Later, in 1978, it will become a revival house called the New Beverly Cinema, showing repertory films. But in 1969 it’s called the Eros Cinema, and it is one of the erotic cinemas of Hollywood (the Vista, located where Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard meet, is another).
Not pornographic films, which would later be labeled “Triple XXX.”
But just sexy movies, usually from Europe or Scandinavia.
The Eros marquee reads:
CARROLL BAKER DOUBLE FEATURE
THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH RATED R
PLUS
PARANOIA RATED X
Cliff climbs out of the Cadillac and buys a ticket for the show at the box office. He makes his way down the darkened aisle and finds a seat in the middle of the fourth row. On the Eros’s silver screen, Carroll Baker is doing a sexy dance to tom-tom drums, dressed in a skintight emerald catsuit. Cliff throws his moccasin-covered feet over the back of the chair in front of him. As he settles down in his seat, he looks up at Carroll Baker sashaying her big green hips from side to side.
My god, he thinks, she’s as big as a horse! Then he smiles. Just the way I like ’em.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Page 18
