kartooner

Bran­don Lee, son of mar­tial arts expert and actor Bruce Lee, was grad­u­ally fol­low­ing in his father’s foot­steps in mar­tial arts and in Hol­ly­wood. From his ear­li­est begin­nings train­ing under his father’s guid­ance to the tragic end­ing to his life, Lee was devel­op­ing into an action star much like his father was back in the late 60s and early 70s.

The tragic end­ing to Brandon’s life occured dur­ing the film­ing of a scene in Alex Proyas’ film ver­sion of the Crow.

Accord­ing to the Bran­don Lee Library;

“At about 12:30 in the morn­ing on March 31, cam­eras began to roll on a scene in which Lee’s char­ac­ter, Eric, car­ry­ing a gro­cery bag, comes through a door and is shot sev­eral times. Alex Proyas, an Aus­tralian music-video direc­tor mak­ing his first Amer­i­can fea­ture, had cam­eras cap­tur­ing two dif­fer­ent angles on the scene, as well as a video cam­era record­ing the action for quick play­back. Actor Michael Massee, who played Fun­boy, was sup­posed to fire his .44-caliber revolver at Lee from a dis­tance of about 15 feet, at which point Lee would det­o­nate a “squib” (a small explo­sive charge) planted in the gro­cery bag to sim­u­late the rip-and-shred effect of the bul­let. As risky as that may sound, it was noth­ing com­pared with a scene that had been filmed just a week ear­lier in which Lee had been shot — and “squibbed” — about 50 times per take. The Crow’s special-effects man, J.B. Jones, had years of expe­ri­ence deal­ing with weapons on the TV series Miami Vice, and stunt coör­di­na­tor Jeff Imada was also on the sound­stage and had attended rehearsals of the scene, offer­ing advice. How­ever, since all the work involv­ing semi-automatic weapons on The Crow had been fin­ished days ear­lier, the film’s weapons spe­cial­ist had already left the set.

As a crew of between 75 and 100 peo­ple looked on, Massee fired the gun, the squib in the gro­cery bag det­o­nated on cue, and Lee fell to the ground. Not until the scene ended and Lee failed to get up did any­one real­ize he had been shot. “It didn’t really appear to the peo­ple on the set like any­thing was wrong,” said one eyewitness.”

? Read more about this tragedy at Bran­don Lee Library: The Brief Life and Unecce­sary Death of Bran­don Lee.