ABOUT THE BOOK

Bruce Lee, The Man Behind the Legend appears during the 30th anniversary of the death of the world’s biggest martial arts icon. A lot about Bruce has been written in English, Japanese or Chinese, but not in Spanish, and therefore this book attempts to make up for lost time and present to all his Spanish speaking fans a serious and quality account about a man ahead of his time who did extraordinary things while still remaining human. A man immersed in the study of everything that could help him to grow as a person, guided by his love and dedication to the martial arts, a revolutionary and innovator in the cinematography field, a lover of knowledge and philosophy, and overall a human being like any of us with virtues and faults, but who knew how to turn adversities in advantages, actualising himself and becoming the source of inspiration to millions worldwide, independent of creed, rage or nationality.

“Under the sky, under the heaven, there’s but one family”.

Writing this book hasn’t been an easy task, but it was greatly rewarding; and in a sincere and honest attempt to give the Bruce Lee fans the best of myself as a writer, I haven’t spared my efforts to bring you the most complete, deepest and truest account about his life and work. I’ve tried to verify each fact, date - absolutely everything - trying my best to not be carried away by personal feelings or opinions. It’s not my job to tell you how you must think or what you must believe about this or that, since it’s your task to form your own opinion. My intention has been to limit myself as much as possible, to give you all the information in the most objective way. Of course, nobody is infallible and if any of my details are in  error, it will never be because of having taken something for granted. In fact, some of the information in this book I’m sure will surprise more than one of you…

I tried from the beginning not to imitate anybody, because like Bruce used to say: “If you imitate you’re not bringing anything new to the world” and, since it has no merit nor sense to do something that’s already been done, I wanted to give the reader, regardless of language, something totally new that has never been published; and for what has been published, to bring it to you in a fresh new and original way. To my understanding, this book presents the first exhaustive chapter concerning Bruce’s childhood filmography, with notes from the critics of that time, commentaries of the directors, producers or scriptwriters of the respective films, in an in-depth study that I’m sure will earn the attention of the most experts in the subject.

Also, this is the first time that the film “Game of Death” has been separated into two different chapters, devoted to the version of Bruce Lee and the one by Robert Clouse, making a detailed and in-depth analysis of both.

In the same way, it’s the first time that in a book has been written about Bruce’s never filmed scripts: “Bamboo” and “Southern Fist / Northern Leg”, telling the plot of both and even showing a fragment of the script and ideas of Bruce. Also this is the first time that a Spanish book has devoted a full chapter to do a serious study of Bruce Lee’s philosophy.

The filmography is, to my understanding, the most complete ever, with 40 pages devoted exclusively to this subject. In it you’ll find for the first time (in a non Chinese publication) a complete record of all his childhood films along with their alternate titles and correct translations into Spanish titles, release dates, images from the films, as well as for the first time in a book (in any language) the plots to every single one of them along with other facts. Also, you’ll find a record of all the episodes of all the TV series, movies... where he appeared / worked on with original releasing dates, running time, technical details and plots. The same goes for his films and a special note devoted to the Spanish dubbing actors who lent their voices to Bruce in each one of his films and whose names are revealed here for the first time.