PRODUCTION JOURNAL: Monday Morning Mixer - 8.19.13

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He just had your lunch... dinner is next.
Captain's Log.
Star date: 8.19.13

 Forty years ago today, on..
19 August 1973 - The Dragon Released
The opening night of the kung-fu action film Enter The Dragon was a bittersweet celebration. It was the first martial arts film to be made by a Hollywood studio. Unfortunately Bruce Lee, the brains and brawn behind the project, had died less than a month before the film’s release. Lee, who’d carved out a career as both kung fu master and movie star, turned to Hong Kong after Hollywood shut the door on him in the late 60s. Although he’d had moderate fame playing Kato in the TV series The Green Hornet, Lee felt he was brushed aside for the lead in the Warner Brothers show Kung Fu. In China, Lee’s career exploded with a series of wildly popular kung-fu films that culminated in Enter The Dragon, a co-production between Warner Brothers and the Hong Kong-based production company Golden Harvest. For Lee, this film would not only restart his American career, but definitively prove that a Chinese-American could star in a Hollywood film. Lee would never see that he was right on both parts. The film made him an international legend, with many books, one biopic—Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story—(and others in the wings), and many documentaries about him. The film succeeded beyond everyone’s wildest imagination. Its $850,000 budget returned $25 million in America and about $90m worldwide, making it at that time one of the most profitable films ever made. And it helped launch a kung-fu fad that continues to this day. ~~ Focus Features
Bruce Lee is an idol of mine; not only in film but in martial arts. His confidence, supported equally by his talent and work ethic, shattered doors that were intentionally closed on his face.  And yet, he would not be denied.  His legacy is a testament of not only what you can do if you believe in your vision but how you need to use setbacks to improve yourself and your ideas and persist.  What project are you working on that you can improve? What vision are you trying to impress upon the world? They will be part of your legacy one day.

 And now without further ado, some questions to start your morning:  

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