In 1971, a man stood on a bridge between two worlds, and the water beneath him was churning.
Bruce Lee sat in a television studio in Hong Kong, facing the legendary Canadian broadcaster Pierre Berton. To the Western audience, Bruce was the sidekick from The Green Hornet, the man who taught Steve McQueen and James Coburn how to move. But in Hong Kong, he was an explosion. His film The Big Boss had just shattered every record, skyrocketing him to a level of superstardom that made walking the streets an impossibility.
The Linguistic Masquerade
The interview began with a startling revelation: the “Mandarin Superstar” didn’t even speak Mandarin. Bruce laughed, explaining the surreal experience of watching himself on screen in Hong Kong with someone else’s voice dubbed over his Cantonese.
“My lips never quite make the right words,” he admitted. To bridge the gap, he didn’t just memorize lines; he found the “feeling” behind the Mandarin syllables, treating the dialogue like a silent film where the body did the talking. For Bruce, motion was the essence of the medium.
The Philosophy of “Unnatural Naturalness”
As Berton pressed him on his success, the conversation shifted from the silver screen to the soul. Bruce didn’t see martial arts as a way to “do someone in.” To him, it was the ultimate tool for self-knowledge. He spoke of teaching Hollywood’s elite not just how to punch, but how to express human emotions—anger, determination, fear—through movement.
He described a delicate balance he called “natural unnaturalness” or “unnatural naturalness.” > “It is a successful combination of both,” Bruce explained. “If you have one to the extreme, you become unscientific. If you have the other, you become a mechanical man, no longer a human being.”
Breaking the “Crystallization” of Styles
Perhaps the most revolutionary moment of the interview was Bruce’s rejection of the word “style.” He argued that styles—whether Chinese, Japanese, or otherwise—tend to separate men rather than unite them.
“Unless a human being has three arms and four legs, we will not have a different form of fighting,” he quipped. He saw traditional doctrines as a “crystallization” that stopped a person’s growth. To Bruce, being a martial artist meant being a process of continuing growth, formless and shapeless.
“Be Water, My Friend”
The climax of their dialogue came when Bruce recounted his famous lines from the TV series Long Street. It was a mantra that would eventually define his legacy:
“Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
The Struggle for Identity
Despite his brilliance, Bruce was honest about the friction of being a pioneer. He spoke candidly about the “Warrior” project (which would later become Kung Fu), noting that Hollywood executives were hesitant to cast a non-American lead, fearing the audience wouldn’t accept him.
He was caught in a cultural tug-of-war. In the East, he was criticized for being too “Americanized.” In the West, he was often seen as too “exotic.” When Berton asked if he considered himself Chinese or North American, Bruce’s answer bypassed the trap of nationalism entirely.
“I want to think of myself as a human being,” he said firmly. “Because under the sky, under the heaven, there is but one family.”
Legacy of the Human Being
Bruce Lee left that interview as a man poised to conquer the world. He didn’t live to see the full impact of his global revolution, but that 30-minute conversation remains a testament to his intellect. He wasn’t just a “violence man” or a “Superstar”—he was an actor, a philosopher, and a human being who refused to be contained by a label.
