Bruce Lee Update Project - Bruce's main page

by **J.J.Hayden** » Wed Feb 19, 2025 5:04 pm

https://hkmdb.com/db/people/view.mhtml?id=1919&display_set=eng

I'm pretty excited to finally be finishing this project. It's one that's been on my mind for over a year now

but kept getting put off for a variety of reasons, mostly because I knew how time consuming it would be. It was a mammoth task, one that I doubt I'll repeat again as it became a bit of a love/hate affair. But I hope it was worth it in the end.

It really started in earnest when I was considering doing one of my very first Koreans Update Projects, Kim Tae-jeong. An obvious choice, as: he was one of the more well know Koreans to fans; It'd be simple KUP as he's only in four HKMDB films; and the "Bruce Lee" films were a very important part of my own history, being my very 1st taste of martial arts beyond Power Rangers and Street Fighter

My favourite for most of my childhood was The Big Boss, but at 1st it was the Game Of Death (because, as most little boys I loved motorbikes). And when it came to GOD, I'd noted that there were no pics of him, not a single pic of him from arguably his biggest film!

I had also noticed that he wasn't the only one; the portraits of the cast in GOD seemed a bit sparse in general. But not just GOD, several of the Bruce Lee films seemed to be a similar way and even the ones that did have plenty of pics (Enter The Dragon has a few hundred bts pics

), many of the portraits seemed to have been taken from older releases such as DVD or even VHS, whereas now I had much higher quality prints that even put my precious HKL DVDs to shame, it seemed like it would be the ideal opportunity to give the entire "Bruce Lee Collection" (TBB to Tower Of Death) an update. In fact, I was a bit surprised no-one else had the idea already, then again maybe the did, but decided against it because they knew better than me how much time it'd take.

I thought it'd be great project to undertake as both a tribute to my hero Bruce Lee and to the HKMDB and it's contributors, as it's been such an invaluable tool to me and so many other fans who share a love for these films. I can think of no higher honour than contributing to the continual spread and preservation of Lee's legacy. It did fill me with excitement, but also trepidation, as I knew what a monumental task this would be.

I'd need to take time to ready myself for the hard work and to organise / make preparations to make things run more smoothly than just ploughing into it. 1st decision was to put Kim Tae-jeong's KUP on hold, I might as well do that at the same time as GOD, as it would require me to go through the film trying to disguise the outfits for both Kim and the other Bruce stand-in Chen Yao-po.

But the more other projects I did, it became more clear how time consuming the project was going to be. Even with smaller film I'd noticed (and often declared

) how much of a slog it can be to do ID's for a whole film, and this would be 6 films, some of which had big cast lists. With this revelation and so many other thing to do, I kept putting it off again and again, kind of dreading it.

But then I got the opportunity to take some time off over Xmas2024 and most of January, and I knew it was now or never, there was probably never going to be a better time. So I was resolved and in December I finally made a start. Even with all the other issues going on, I got the initial stages done during December. This involved going through each film and grabbing screenshots (with time stamps) of all the known actors and their outfit changes, so I could find the best pics easier when it came to grabbing the proper things. Even just this section seemed to take forever, so much so that I had to take a break for about a week.

Then came the big part: grabbing the actual pics that would be cut down into the portraits for all the actors I could ID (I think I got most) in their various outfits; rearranged the cast lists to make room for those that were missing (new actors+multi roles) and to make things neater and better reflect the prominence of the actors in the film, so we don't have any more situations like Nora Miao's guest appearance as the Ice drinks hawker getting billing over Han Ying-chieh's title character

; adding as much info as I could find on all the cast members and adding it to their main pages (there's even some info I've not added yet, because there's too much

).

For Bruce Lee's main page, Bob had already added a nice bio for Bruce so there wasn't a huge amount to add. I didn't change anything (except one duplicate), however I did add some hyperlinks into Bob's bio for some of the people (Brandon, Shannon etc.) and added a few notes of my own further down the page:

I added hyperlinks connecting the pages (and added some info on) of all of his relatives and students that had connections to each other and their students etc.. it started out as just his son and daughter, but I couldn't help myself

https://hkmdb.com/db/people/view.mhtml?id=130203&display_set=eng

Donnie Williams
https://hkmdb.com/db/people/view.mhtml?id=15797&display_set=eng

Byong Yu
https://hkmdb.com/db/people/view.mhtml?id=4097&display_set=eng

I added that Bruce also gave private martial arts instruction to some of Hollywood's biggest stars, including: Steve McQueen; James Coburn; James Garner and Sharon Tate.

I added that he trained with and traded techniques with several Korean stylists, notably Jhoon Rhee (Taekwondo) and Chuck Norris (Tang Soo Do), which helped him hone his kicking skills.

Bob had already said that Bruce Lee trained in Wing Chun under Ip Man, William Cheung Cheuk-hing and Wong Shun-leung. I made hyperlinks between Wong's students and added some more info here and there: Bruce Lee Siu-lung; Stephen Chow Sing-chi; Philip Ng Wan-lung (DOB 16Sep1977 born HK); Attilio Reale (DOB 1960); Cliff Au Yeung (aka Cliff Au-Yeung Kin-Man); Wan Kam-leung; and his own son Wong Hong-chung.

I've already written a ton here, so the new info that's more connected to specific films will be added on the update posts for those films over the next week or so.

This entire Bruce Lee Update Project has taken a lot of work on my own part, but without help from all the other HKMDB contributors who spotted all the uncredited cast members over the years I'd probably have gone insane (maybe I did anyway

). In fact, I've not been able to add that many new actors to the cast lists, a lot of the work was getting portraits of those who were already credited but not ID'd yet, and in a surprising amount of cases (particularly ETD), people playing multiple roles that might have just been merged into one character e.g. Guard.

So thanks so much to all the HKMDB members and fans who have contributed to this site and to the fandom all these years. This is my tribute to you and of course, my man Bruce Lee.

Cheers

by **bkasten** » Sun Feb 23, 2025 3:58 pm

Overwhelmingly outstanding! Thanks J.J.

(Indeed the spirit of Bruce is a very strong personal inspiration to me and the continued existence of this site as a cultural bridge between east and west.)

by **J.J.Hayden** » Sun Feb 23, 2025 5:35 pm

Thanks for the kind words Bob, high praise indeed. I'm happy we have similar thoughts about Bruce, his legacy and this site's contribution to furthering it.

Cheers

Bruce Lee Update Project - Bruce's main page

Bruce Lee Update Project - Bruce's main page

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