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The first time Mike Moh met Quentin Tarantino, they were crammed into a small room inside a casting office in Los Angeles. Moh was in the second round of auditions for the role of Bruce Lee in Once upon a time . . . at Hollywood (released July 26). After seeing Moh deliver his lines, Tarantino leapt. "Let yourself go," he said.
Moh stood up and found himself facing the Oscar-winning director, not knowing what to expect. "So that's what I think for the fight," said Tarantino, who then spent the next five minutes explaining to Moh the martial arts movements in Hong Kong he had discovered throughout his life watching kung fu movies. Moh worked to follow. "At some point, he's on the ground," says Moh. "Then he's in the air. In the end, we both sweat. It was wild. "
Aged 35, he won the role in the film Tarantino, which aspires to familiarize a new generation with the impact of Bruce Lee on film and martial arts. Before the madness of the kung fu movie in the 1960s, it was a purely Hong Kong phenomenon. But all this changed in the spring of 1973, when Lee The big boss landed in American theaters. He relaunched the superstar of the Hong Kong film – which until then was better known in the United States for his work on ABC's one-and-done season. The green hornet– and sent kung-fu movies to our shores. At some point, says Matthew Polly, author of Bruce Lee: A life, "30 Hong Kong films were screened in New York. "
Columbia Pictures
then Enter the dragon was abandoned in the summer of 1973 – a month after Lee's untimely death at age 32 – and broke the mold. It was the first kung-fu movie to be produced expressly for an American audience and it became very trendy to appeal to true martial arts practitioners as actors. Many American stuntmen complained that Lee's fast and close combat style, dubbed Jeet Kune Do, was too fast. "They were all used to John Wayne's three-foot punch," Polly said. "Bruce wanted to get closer, do a lot of things and he's barely missing. The guys did not know how to react. " Dragon was a box office success that established the martial arts movies as a real sub-genre of action.
During the process, Lee became a household name and a well-worn fitness legend whose resemblance has become as prevalent in gyms as in the martial arts studios that thrive across the country. "If you think of men in terms of iconic physics, there is Arnold, then Bruce," says Moh, who first looked at Dragon Eight years. He communicated with Lee the status of braggart and outsider. "You have this automatic image of Bruce having just torn his shirt and his big airmen." It was all the motivation he needed to start pushing the basement of his home and perfect his impression of Lee in the mirror. Moh started taekwondo lessons at age 12. "Bruce is the GOAT. I'm not trying to be the next Bruce Lee, "he says. "I'm just trying to do it justice."
Like Lee, Moh, a fifth-degree taekwondo black belt, is a martial arts and slash instructor at his own school (in Waunakee, Wisconsin, where he resides). Like Lee, he struggles with a kind of hyperkinetic grace. Like Lee, he is married to children and prides himself on being a father. And like Lee, he had doors slammed in the face in Hollywood. "I did not get into acting because I thought the only way to make my mark was to be a martial artist," he says. "I happen to be attracted to kung-fu movies."
This testifies to Lee's influence on kung-fu movies, which had lost their box office popularity when Moh was growing up in the Twin Cities in the '80s and' 90s, mainly because no other actor Main could not tackle Lee's mix. competence, charisma and proficiency in English. It is also a testimony of the impact of the subgenus on action choreography. "The matrix in particular, achieved something powerful, which consisted in incorporating a kung fu film into a completely different genre, "says Polly. "Now, when you watch a Marvel fight scene, they throw knees and elbows and kicks. They are badbades of the martial arts. "
Mike Moh
The same goes for shows after school as Teenage Ninja Turtles and Powerful Morphin Rangers, who binge-observed Moh. It's almost normal that his first break came in a chance meeting with Mike Chat (aka the Blue Lightspeed Rescue Power Ranger), who recruited Moh for a stunt role in a Hong Kong action comedy starring Jackie Chan in 2005. "Jackie eat with stuntmen. He also helped direct. He also swept the ground, "recalls Moh. "It opened your eyes."
These lessons of humility helped Moh deal with casting directors who saw him as little more than a major martial arts talent with small theater skills. Even past attempts to play Lee have resulted in rejection. "Honestly, it seemed to me that I was cursed," says Moh. "As, Ok, maybe that's not supposed to happen."But then, after this training session with Tarantino, he scored his breakthrough.
Moh's resemblance to Lee begins with a frame of five feet eight inches. (Lee was five feet seven feet tall.) But he is heavier at 145 pounds – Lee was a 135 zero-body-fat. Lee had years to come with his approach to training, too: the fitness polymath lifted weights, made callisthenics, ran the skipped rope, as well as the martial arts mix long before the MMA was a thing. Moh admits he can not be a peabad like Lee, who could do one-arm, two-finger, and thumb-only pumping. Moh's training is focused on taekwondo, but for this role, he used more weight to firm up his muscles and cut carbohydrates to get this six pack. Moh also kicked and kicked for hours to imitate Lee's grace and flow. "Bruce wanted this animal spirit to manifest itself in his movements. You hear Bruce & # 39; WoooooAAAAHHHH & # 39; and you know. "
OOnce upon a time. . . at Hollywood arrives in theaters the same year as the final of AMC's martial arts drama In the badlands and the beginnings of the Cinemax kung fu detective series warrior (based on a concept that Lee proposed). If it's too early to tell if it's a rap or a trend, Once upon a time revived the fascination of the United States for Lee, an actor who was often imitated but not very well, even though Jason Scott Lee (no relation) set a valid standard in the 1993 biopic Dragon.
Taking Moh, which has become the unexpected highlight of the Once upon a time trailer, got even higher ratings. "When I watched it," Polly said, "I was as if, it was just, it gets the appearance of what Bruce Lee was as a character on the screen. He emphasizes Lee's accent, a mix of Hong Kong and American English, Moh did not expect to know if he would still play Lee. "What I really want to do is working on great projects with great people, "he says," and if it's anything to do with Bruce, it would be an honor for me to do it again. "In the meantime, he'll be content to challenge public expectations Just like Lee.
Andrew Lawrence is an independent writer. He has written for Sports Illustrated, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Athletic, The Dallas Morning News, Associated Press, Fortune, Southern Living, Austin Monthly, Complex, Cookie, BET.com, ESPN. com and the clbadic.
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