Interview: Bao Nguyen on "Be Water" and the cultural resonance of Bruce Lee

by Nathaniel R

Bao Nguyen's Be Water premiered on ESPN this past summer and has touched a lot of people since then. It's a lovely meditation on Bruce Lee's life, his relationships to both the East and the West, and the meaning of his legacy and activism. Be Water is one of 238 films eligible for the Oscar this year in Best Documentary Feature. We were thrilled to sit down with Bao Nguyen, over Zoom of course, to discuss his picture and the man and myth that is Bruce Lee.

Be Water was five years in the making, though things sped up considerably once ESPN signed on two years or so ago. Originally Be Water was supposed to come out around Bruce Lee's 80th birthday this past November but demand was so great for new movies during quarantine that the release was moved up to June. Nyugen, had a strange year (didn't we all!) but one recurring joy was hearing from and seeing photos of multigenerational families watching the film together. He describes the film as "connective tissue" and the parents and kids and grandparents could then discuss what Bruce Lee meant to them...

[This interview has been edited for clarity and length.]

Bruce Lee training Sharon Tate for a fight in "The Wrecking Crew"

NATHANIEL: Sundance is happening right now. You premiered there last year, It was one of the last physical film events! How was it for you? 

BAO NGUYEN: I'm really grateful that we had that Sundance premiere. We had been invited to, you know, 10 other festivals and only one happened. At Sundance we had eight screenings and they were all sold out. I couldn't have asked for anything more in terms of our world premiere.

I know one of the reasons you wanted to make the film was the cultural resonance of Bruce Lee as this mythic 20th century figure. But were you initially just wanting to illustrate that or were you hoping to learn more about him as a real person?

BAO NGUYEN: Those were the two main goals; They kind of come hand in hand. I wanted to do the film because Bruce Lee is a cultural icon, a global figure. But because he's those things, people don't really see him as a person, or as a human being. So I wanted to unpack the iconography and mythology and see him through the lens of a human being, especially as an immigrant and an Asian-American. He didn't necessarily hold on to those identities -- they were bestowed on him, but I think they were very formative to the Bruce Lee we know today. It's a story that I think has been told to at least two generations but not to the current generation. They know he's iconic but the story of Bruce Lee is not very well-known.

NATHANIEL: I think when people sit down for documentaries about famous people before their time they usually will have one key reference point. For me growing up, the 1993 biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story was where I got ALL my information before I saw any of his movies. What was your entry point? 

Enter the Dragon (1973)

BAO NGUYEN: Dragon was definitely a part of it. But even before that, I saw Enter the Dragon, on one of those Saturday matiness. I think seeing someone who looked like me, relatively speaking, was really empowering and inspiring. And that got me interested in who this person was. A few years later Dragon came out and I think I kind of took it as gospel of the Bruce Lee story. That's what happens with cinema. It's this myth making, especially movies based on true story. What those films [biopics] do very well is that they create a narrative arc and a Hollywood structure. But in terms of accuracy, I wouldn't watch it for that reason. 

I never wanted to make a definitive film about Bruce Lee with Be Water. You can never make a definitive film about one subject even if you're doing like a Ken Burns documentary.

Even if it's hours and hours and hours.

BAO NGUYEN: It's scratching the surface, really. When I make films, they're like a conversation starter.

One thing I loved about the movie -- and I'm showing my ignorance here -- is that I only really knew Bruce Lee as a movie star. I wasn't as familiar with his activism and especially his philosophical nature and how he became a mentor to so many people. I had not absorbed that somehow. There's so many ways you could have gone with this movie. So many possible versions...

BAO NGUYEN: In terms of conception, I wrote out a treatment that was very specific. If a film is about someone who's already lived, there's a certain amount of research and less discovery, right?  But at the same time, I tend to not want to enter a production filled with too many assumptions. I prepare as much as I can, but once I'm shooting, especially doing interviews, I want to allow myself to be open and discover new things about the person or subject that I didn't know. I want to have that sense of discovery, the same way the audience has it.

These interviews were like two or three hours long. People would just open up and tell stories about Bruce Lee hat they've probably never told or haven't told in decades. I wish I had a longer format to work with where I could include a lot of these stories. But, at the same time, when you're making a film that's about such a big figure, you need to kind of come in with a thesis. And for me, my thesis was Bruce Lee as an immigrant and an Asian-America.  I think my own experience, obviously as an Asian-American, lends itself to a sense of honesty and intimacy. Maybe another filmmaker might not have approached it the same way.

Yeah.

BAO NGUYEN: Having that thesis, it allowed me to ask certain questions and find what parts of the stories told would support that thesis. Because, you're right, you could go anywhere. You could go deeper into the philosophy or the martial arts practice. I decided to go with Bruce Lee as an identity activist. And the discrimination and the prejudice that he had to face, not necessarily in individual moments, but systematically, in Hollywood. What did it mean to be be sort of stuck between the East and the West, especially in the 1960s?

Bruce Lee as a child star

I loved seeing the film clips from before his global fame. That period of his life is not anywhere as well known in the West. How difficult was that to find the films or get the rights?

BAO NGUYEN: He was quite famous in Hong Kong. For lack of a better comparison he was like Macauley Culkin of Hong Kong at the time. Those films existed. We have a little bit of The Orphan. That film is very rare. You can only watch the full film if you go to the Hong Kong Film Archives and watch it under their supervision. I wish we could have brought more [from that time period] but at the same time there's not too many people from that era who are still alive and can talk about him as a child actor. For that sequence it's mostly his brother, Robert, who describes how he was at that time. I always want it to be primary source material and not have someone saying 'Oh, I heard this story from someone else'

Right.

BAO NGUYEN: Hong Kong has a great film archive. But there's a practical reason that they don't have great archives in terms of the news. When we went to see if there was any other footage of Bruce Lee doing interviews or a newscast or something, there was nothing! They had taped over everything.

Nooo.

BAO NGUYEN: You taped over a Bruce Lee interview? Of course they didn't know at the time and they literally don't have room to store these tapes and they record over them. 

Was it difficult to get permissions for clips and such? 

BAO NGUYEN: We're going into the weeds here of the production! It was difficult because a lot of the companies are not around anymore or have been sold and resold. So you're trying to pinpoint who owns the copyright. That was the difficult part. 'Oh, it's like the daughter of the DP' or something like that.  With footage today you go to the studio. You know it'll cost you an arm and a leg but at least you know who owns the rights. There's no ambiguity to it. 

Bruce in the 1960s

What has been the most surprising or heartening thing to you about the reactions to the movie?

BAO NGUYEN: In addition to the broadcast on ESPN, and virtual screenings, we've been fortunate to do drive-in screenings. I never thought I'd be watching drive-in movies in this his day and age, but I've seen more movies at the drive in this year, then in my entire life! Those have been really fun because I've seen multi-generation families watching the film together. And they'd all have different entry points into Bruce Lee, Be Water could be the connective tissue to talk about what Bruce Lee meant to them. I was sent a photo of one multi-generational family watching all huddled together. It was really adorable.  

I don't know much about the ecosystem of documentary filmmaking in terms of career paths. But actors and narrative directors tend to get offers to repeat themselves after a success. Do you know what your next project is? 

BAO NGUYEN: Right after Sundance, before the lockdown happened, I was lucky enough to be signed with CAA and Mosaic. It's funny because they sent me a lot of martial arts stuff at first. I was just like [Laughs] I don't mind being associated with Bruce Lee, obviously I made that choice, but I'm not necessarily a martial arts guy. I can do more than that. But I've been sent a lot of great projects and I have a couple that are in development that will make for a busy 2021. I'm looking forward to it. I'm also moving into the narrative, scripted spaced more.

Bruce's famous "Be Water" interview

Oh, great. You've done cinematography work before directing your documentaries. Was it always with the intention of moving into directing?

BAO NGUYEN: I've always thought of myself as visually driven. I was a photographer for a little bit after college and it's given me the opportunity to be on fiction and narrative sets. It's funny. My two documentary films have mostly been archival-based and not really driven by cinematography. I'm looking forward to getting back into film where I'm creating all the images rather than resourcing them. Which I also love! There's a texture to making a film that's all archival.

Like making collage art.

BAO NGUYEN: Yeah, using old materials and making it your own, right? But there's just something about creating something from nothing. 

Do you think that you'll continue to explore immigration as a theme? 

BAO NGUYEN: I'm open to all sorts of stories. Every story has meaning has value and it's your job as an artist to find that. I'm interested in the immigrant story, not because it's the immigrant story, but because it's relensing and reshaping the American story. That's what I'm interested in. How do we use those types of experiences to tell something that's familiar, but also unique? One thing that gets lost in the conversation about representation, is how empowering it is for someone to finally see themselves on screen, and what it means to feel like you're part of a society, that your story matters and has value. 

more interviews
more on Bruce Lee
more on the Best Documentary Feature Oscar race

Comments

[thevoid99]

That was one of the best 30 for 30 docs I had ever seen as it made love Bruce Lee even more.

[Dave in Hollywood]

I would really like to see this. I'll have to keep my eye out for it since I have no connection to ESPN, that's for sure.