Bruce Lee as director and the star as author

Abstract

This article examines Bruce Lee’s films as a director as well as his influence on films in which he starred. Using Richard Dyer’s “star studies” framework in conjunction with Patrick McGilligan’s notion of the “actor as auteur,” this article analyzes Bruce Lee’s star persona and his authorial power and contends that a case can be made for Lee’s authorship even in films for which he did not serve as the director. Against the backdrop of Golden Harvest and the New Hollywood–modeled Hong Kong production context in which Lee worked, Lee’s fight scenes as a director are juxtaposed with his fight scenes as a star in the interest of identifying similarities and differences toward the goal of identifying greater similarities than critics and scholars have hitherto realized. Ultimately, this article proposes that so overpowering was Lee’s stardom that, whether as “merely” a star or as a “true” auteur, every Bruce Lee film bears his irrepressible signature.