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From Wikipedia:

Bruce Lee

Bruce Jun Fan Lee (李振藩, 李小龍)

27 November 1940 – 20 July 1973) was an American-born Chinese Hong Kong martial artist, philosopher, instructor, martial arts actor, film director, screenwriter, and the founder of the Jeet Kune Do combat form. He is widely regarded as the most influential martial artist ever and a cultural icon.[1] He was also the father of actor Brandon Lee and of actress Shannon Lee. His baby brother Robert was a musician and member of a popular Hong Kong beat band called The Thunderbirds and was something of a heart throb in Hong Kong in the 1960s .

 

Lee was born in San Francisco, California, and raised in Hong Kong until his late teens. His Hong Kong and Hollywood-produced films elevated the traditional Hong Kong martial arts film to a new level of popularity and acclaim, and sparked the first major surge of interest in Chinese martial arts in the West. The direction and tone of his films changed and influenced martial arts and martial arts films in Hong Kong and the rest of the world as well.

 

Lee became a very iconic figure particularly to the Chinese, as he portrayed Chinese national pride and Chinese nationalism in his movies. He primarily practiced Chinese martial arts (Kung fu), particularly Wing Chun.

 

Challengers on the set

Urban legend says that Lee's celebrity and martial arts prowess often put him on a collision course with a number of street thugs, stunt men and martial arts extras, all hoping to make a name for themselves. Lee typically defused such challenges without fighting, but felt forced to respond to several persistent individuals. Oddly enough, even though most of these challenges came on movie sets with plenty of cameras around, no films seem to exist of these alleged fights. The following is a story that one of Bruce's longtime friends is reputed to have told:

 

Bob Wall, USPK karate champion and co-star in Enter the Dragon, recalled a particularly serious encounter that transpired after a film extra kept taunting Lee. The extra yelled that Lee was "a movie star, not a martial artist," that he "wasn't much of a fighter." Lee answered his taunts by asking him to jump down from the wall he was sitting on. Bob Wall described Lee's opponent as "a gang-banger type of guy from Hong Kong," a "damned good martial artist," and observed that he was fast, strong, and bigger than Bruce.

 

Wall supposedly recalled the confrontation in detail:

 

"This kid was good. He was strong and fast, and he was really trying to punch Bruce's brains in. But Bruce just methodically took him apart." "Bruce kept moving so well, this kid couldn't touch him...Then all of a sudden, Bruce got him and rammed his ass with the wall and swept him up, proceeding to drop him and plant his knee into his opponent's chest, locked his arm out straight, and nailed him in the face repeatedly."

 

After his victory, Lee gave his opponent lessons on how to improve his fighting skills. His opponent, now impressed, would later say to Lee, "You really are a master of the martial arts."

 

It should also be noted that during the fight scene between Bruce Lee and Bob Wall, the glass bottles broke during their fight scene accidentally injured Bruce, and for a while after that, Bob Wall feared Bruce would retaliate for the misdeed, however accidental.

 

Homie

Homie (much less frequently, homey), is a contraction of the American slang words "homeboy" or "homebuddies" which became prevalent among some of the youth in Latino and African American communities starting in the late 1960s and continuing up to the present, particularly in the hip hop subculture. Etymologists generally source[citation needed] its origins to the Spanish word hombre or the French homme, both meaning man. Latino and African vernaculars are strongly derived from Mexican and Cajun/"Creole" words.

 

In 1992, A Lighter Shade of Brown, a Latino rap hip hop group, released the recording "Homies" on their Hip Hop Locos album, which describes what a homie is in the Latino community. The status of "homie" is similar to "my best friend" or "someone I can trust", as in, "This is my homie Alex, we've known each other since grade school," or "I won't be around this afternoon, but you can give the money to my homie James. He'll give it to me later when I see him."

 

In an early use of the term Ella Mae Morse (a caucasian woman), in the original 1946 version of the song "House of Blue Lights" says, "What's that homie?" to Freddie Slack, the writer of the song.

 

In the hip-hop subculture the homeboy image is important for artists and audiences. The need to appear "hip" and "fresh" with their attitudes, clothing, and jewelry is an important aspect. The inspiration for this homeboy image can be traced to Malcolm X, who also rebelled against a tradition of being perceived as ineffectual. It has been argued that hip-hop has redefined the homeboy by providing him with functions that contradict society's view of him. Manthia Diawara, author of "Homeboy Cosmopolitan", writes, "Hip-hop culture gives aesthetic pleasure through ironic and parodic play with mainstream images of black people". Diawara argues that hip-hop permits the creation of a new image of black cultures, because it sharply turns against preconceived notions of African-American society and allows for the creation of a new image of black Americans. This image of staying hip is always evolving with new dress styles and sayings. The referenced website gives ten ways to stay hip every week, they change drastically week to week.

 

A Mexican/Mexican-American slang word created in Southern California with the cholo style generation coming out in the early 1900s can also be traced back to fact based films like 1975-1978 based Boulevard Nights or 1972-1984 based film Blood In Blood Out/Bound By Honor or 1940s-1959 based film American Me.

 

Pablo Francisco utilized the similarity between "homie" and "homo" in one of his stand-up routines, enacting a trailer for a fictional film about gay gangsters: "They were homies... they were homie-sexuals."

 

Modern Jeet Kune Do philosophy

JKD as it survives today — if one wants to view it "refined" as a product, not a process — is what was left at the time of Bruce Lee's death. It is the result of the life-long martial arts development process Lee went through. Bruce Lee stated that his concept is not an "adding to" of more and more things on top of each other to form a system, but rather, a winnowing out. The metaphor Lee borrowed from Chan Buddhism was of constantly filling a cup with water, and then emptying it, used for describing Lee's philosophy of "casting off what is useless". He also used the sculptor's mentality of beginning with a lump of clay and hacking away at the "unessentials"; the end result was what he considered to be the bare combat essentials, or JKD.

 

The core concepts of JKD are derived from Wing Chun. This includes such ideas as centerline control, vertical punching, trapping, and forward pressure). Through his personal research and readings, Lee also incorporated ideas from boxing and fencing. Later during the development of Jeet Kune Do, he would expand to include the art for personal development, not just to become a better fighter. To illustrate Lee's views, in a 1971 Black Belt Magazine article, Lee said "Let it be understood once and for all that I have NOT invented a new style, composite or modification. I have in no way set Jeet Kune Do within a distinct form governed by laws that distinguish it from 'this' style or 'that' method. On the contrary, I hope to free my comrades from bondage to styles, patterns and doctrines."

 

One of the theories of JKD is that a fighter should do whatever is necessary to defend himself, regardless of where the techniques come from. One of Lee's goals in Jeet Kune Do was to break down what he claimed were limiting factors in traditional martial arts training, and seek a fighting thesis which he believed could only be found within the reality of a fight. Jeet Kune Do is currently seen as the genesis of the modern state of hybrid martial arts.

 

Jeet Kune Do not only advocates the combination of aspects of different styles, it also can change many of those aspects that it adopts to suit the abilities of the practitioner. Additionally, JKD advocates that any practitioner be allowed to interpret techniques for themselves, and change them for their own purposes. For example, Lee almost always chose to put his power hand in the "lead," with his weaker hand back, within this stance he used elements of Boxing, Fencing and Wing Chun. Just like fencing, he labeled this position the "On Guard" position. Lee incorporated this position into his JKD as he felt it provided the best overall mobility. He felt that the dominant or strongest hand should be in the lead because it would perform a greater percentage of the work. Lee minimized the use of other stances except when circumstances warranted such actions. Although the On-Guard position is a good overall stance, it is by no means the only one. He acknowledged that there were times when other positions should be utilized.

 

Lee felt the dynamic property of JKD was what enabled its practitioners to adapt to the constant changes and fluctuations of live combat. He believed that these decisions should be done within the context of "real combat" and/or "all out sparring" and that it was only in this environment that a person could actually deem a technique worthy of adoption.

 

Bruce Lee did not stress the memorization of solo training forms or "Kata", as most traditional styles do in their beginning-level training. He often compared doing forms without an opponent to attempting to learn to swim on dry land. Lee believed that real combat was alive and dynamic. Circumstances in a fight change from millisecond to millisecond, and thus pre-arranged patterns and techniques are not adequate in dealing with such a changing situation. As an anecdote to this thinking, Lee once wrote an epitaph which read: 'In memory of a once fluid man, crammed and distorted by the classical mess.' The "classical mess" in this instance was what Lee thought of classical martial arts.

 

Bruce Lee's comments and methods were seen as controversial by many in his time, and still are today. Many teachers from traditional schools disagreed with his opinions on these issues.

 

The notion of cross-training in Jeet Kune Do is similar to the practice of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) in modern times — Bruce Lee has been considered by UFC president Dana White as the "father of mixed martial arts". Many consider Jeet Kune Do to be the precursor of MMA because of its syncretic nature. This is particularly the case with respect to the JKD "Combat Ranges". A JKD student is expected to learn various combat systems within each combat range, and thus to be effective in all of them, just as in MMA.