Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Kung Fu (1972 TV series)" in English language version.
Even in the recent example of 2019's Oscar-winning Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, Lee was disappointed by Quentin Tarantino's stereotyped portrayal of her father as an arrogant blowhard – compounded by the fact he was portrayed by Korean-American actor Mike Moh instead of a Chinese star. It was yet another reminder of a lingering cultural blindspot, in which Asians are interchangeable and Bruce Lee's martial arts school of thought is presented as superfluous, smug and, in this case, no match against Brad Pitt's all-American brawn.
In the week ending 6 May 1973, around the time Enter the Dragon was being wrapped up, the Kung Fu TV series starring David Carradine was the No. 1 show on US television, attracting a regular audience of 28 million viewers.
"Giving the audience what they want" was a common justification for this one-sided deal, which was a nice way of saying that audience members didn't want to have to look at Oriental actors for any extended period of time (this was the primary reason given for the now infamous casting of David Carradine in the 1970s television show Kung Fu, over original choice Bruce Lee).
Hawaii 5-0's replacement of Kim and Park's characters with Japanese American actor Ian Anthony Dale is oddly reminiscent of breakout Netflix rom-com To All The Boys I Loved Before, which, while praised for its Asian representation, stars a Vietnamese actress playing Korean teenager Lara-Jean. This pan-Asian model of Hollywood casting, fueled by the age-old assertion that all Asians look the same, begs the question: if Asian American representation in media isn't accurately portraying the people it purports to be, what purpose is it actually serving? What does this interchangeability of Asian actors say about the kind of visibility Hollywood grants us with the expectation that we will mindlessly accept it for the sake of visibility at all?
There's nothing really racist about the story of a half-Chinese, half-American Shaolin monk roaming the countryside in search of his half-brother. OK, there's the fact that the very Caucasian-looking David Carradine is presented as a paragon of martial arts. There's that, plus his character's penchant for spouting weird fortune-cookie-style aphorisms like "Become who you are." All that, and, lest we forget: The whole idea for the show was straight jacked from Bruce Lee. So, what were we saying? Yeah. RACIST.
Do you remember the original Kung Fu? We do. Starring David Carradine, it aired on ABC from 1972-75 and for many years after that in syndication. It was a very calm, zen show, despite the fact that Carradine's character, Kwai Chang Caine, kicked major butt, he was also known for the phrase "Patience, grasshopper." This new version of Kung Fu isn't anything like that. But does that matter?
Fox News: What caused "Kung Fu" to end?
Pera: We had Nielsen boxes on the backs of television sets throughout the Midwest, and they would determine who was watching what at any given time. This was before the internet. And back then, Nielsen ratings meant everything. David Carradine, who admitted this himself, said he always had a love/hate relationship with fame and success in general. He was a countercultural type of person but was also under contract with major corporations. That became a problem for him and he just got tired. He didn't want to do it anymore. So he sabotaged it.
It is widely believed that Bruce Lee was the progenitor of the initial concept for Kung Fu, but was ultimately cast aside for Carradine, demonstrating Hollywood's ingrained racism. According to his wife, Lee was rejected for the main role because he was "too small, too Chinese, that he wasn't a big enough name to sustain a weekly series, and that he was too inexperienced."
As already stated, the genesis of Kung Fu has a B-side, much less glamorous than the official one, and at the center of that scene is Bruce Lee. The version that the martial artist repeated until the day of his death was that Warner Bros., with the complicity of Ed Spielman, had stolen the idea of the show from him. That in fact, in the meeting he had held with the studios, he had told them many details that they later appropriated. Not trusting the American public to accept a Chinese-born hero, they decided to put him aside and kept it all. (Translated from Spanish)
According to Emil, they came in sets of 3, 5, and occasionally 7 or 9. He took the dharma bells and laid them out in rows so they could be played more easily; then once he had enough, he mounted them vertically.
Kung-Fu is first and foremost an idea of Bruce Lee, that lesser-known Bruce Lee. (...) Even though Bruce Lee wrote the series synopsis and offered the concept to ABC, the producers preferred a white actor over him, arguing that a Chinese headlining an American show was not a good sell. (Translated from French)
As technical adviser to Kung-Fu, Chow has to travel all over California to look for kung-fu practitioners whom he feels can adapt their styles to particular parts. Once the shooting starts, it is up to him to settle differences of opinion regarding the fight scenes. The basic problem is that most of the kung-fu practitioners have never been in films before and are not familiar with the technical aspects. Some insist on more realism in fight scenes, disregarding difficult camera angles; others demand more authentic sets, disregarding budget limitations. However, says Chow, once they realize that making a film involves a collective effort by all concerned, their attitudes change and they become very cooperative.
Chow not only works with the actors, but also helps introduce new scenes to, as well as eliminate some from, the scripts. "We have to make sure the fight scenes are believable," he said. "We do not want the public to think that kung fu is some kind of a Chinese magic or that the masters are super-human beings. We want the public to learn a little about the ancient art of kung-fu, its history, its philosophy and its applications."
(...) Veteran actors Philip Ahn and Richard Loo, who probably have acted in more Hollywood films than any other Oriental actors, are used to portraying bald men. In Kung-Fu, they portray Shaolin priests.
"I was very pleased when I read the pilot script," said Ahn. "It was written very honestly. For once, a film showed how badly the Orientals in this country were treated during the early days. It also gives Westerners a better insight of the great Oriental culture."
"It also gives the Westerners a better image of the Orientals," added Loo. "They (the Orientals) are not shown as the stereotyped houseboy, laundry man or cook. They get their just dues. They are portrayed as highly intelligent men with worldly knowledge."
In the following edited and augmented excerpt from Bruce Lee: A Life, authoritative Bruce Lee biographer Matthew Polly shares the true story of the creation of the Kung Fu program. The truth is more interesting than the myth, and readers who wish to learn even more about Bruce Lee are encouraged to read Polly's book, arriving in paperback format in June 2019.
Kung Fu ran for three seasons starting in 1972. It came to Australian TV not long after – in fact, I can dimly remember watching the first episode when it premiered (in black and white). I thought that after 30 years this series would look shoddy and dated, but most of the time it does not. It was made on a low budget, but the use of outdoor locations and being entirely shot on film gives it a more timeless look and hides the budgetary constraints. The art direction of Eugène Lourié, who worked on some of Jean Renoir's best films in the 1930s, makes the locations look authentic and realistic. You would believe that the Shaolin temple was created especially for this show, but in fact the sets were built for the film Camelot and have been cleverly altered to look like a Chinese temple.
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) calls on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to lead Hollywood's diversity efforts to promote Native Actors, Native stunt men and women, Native people in front and behind the camera and Native stories in film. NCAI calls on the Casting Society of America to cast Native Actors to represent Native people in film and television. NCAI calls on the Writers Guild of America to represent and promote Native Americans in screenwriting. NCAI urges producers, studios and directors to highlight stories that accurately and positively portray Native people and Tribal communities as they are the stories of America.
What happens when a TV superstar makes an understated, personal film with friends in rural Kansas in the early 1970s but doesn't get it finished until the blockbuster-prone '80s? David Carradine was about to find out. He had directed and starred in the drama Americana during the 1973 hiatus of his hit show, Kung Fu, because he wanted an escape plan from ever having to act in another TV series—or in film roles he didn't care about. Americana was a small-town story about a Vietnam vet, and it was one of a few personal films he began in the '70s (along with Mata Hari and You and Me). These films were part of David's master plan to make himself an actor-director auteur successful enough to pick his own projects. Ironically, the opposite happened, and David accepted tons of "mercenary" acting work, so he could keep tinkering with his hard-luck personal films. The projects were so important to him that he even sold his Kung Fu royalties back to Warner Bros at one point, in order to keep the dream alive. And even though directing had already proven to be a tough road for David to hoe, he couldn't have been prepared for the emotional rollercoaster that he (along with Skip Sherwood, his on-again, off-again producer) would experience in trying to get Americana seen by audiences circa 1981-1985.
By 1971, Lee, then 30, had become an international superstar following his success with The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, and Way of the Dragon. Although these were all Hong Kong movies, it pushed boundaries for Asian Americans in cinema and challenged stereotypes of how Asian men are typically portrayed in the mainstream.
Around this time, Lee wrote a few treatments for films he wanted to produce. Among them was a pitch for a TV series call The Warrior, which follows a martial artist in the Old West starring himself as the lead. Surely, after all his success in Hong Kong and the subsequent legion of global fans to follow, Hollywood was ready for its first Asian TV lead.
Unfortunately, it was rejected. Even with Bruce Lee's star power, the executives believed viewers were still not ready for an Asian lead on the big screen. Lee was forced to table the project.
In the year that followed, Hollywood released Kung Fu starring white actor David Carradine, who plays a half-Chinese monk fighting bad guys in the Old West. The show is identical to the show Lee pitched just a year before, so some couldn't help but speculate that Lee's idea was stolen and his character whitewashed.
[Note: The films were released in the USA in April 1973, June 1973, and August 1974, respectively.]
You take a lot of chances in movies. Look in these Kung Fu movies, I have broken or dislocated virtually every finger and every toe that I have. I've crushed my ribs. I've smashed my shoulder. I've destroyed a ligament in the knee. I could go on.
Acting is a dangerous profession. And when you consider I've made 68 features plus all the television and everything, you just got to expect that I'm going to hurt myself now and then. It's sort of like being a football player or something.
(And we can't talk about Kung Fu without addressing its controversy. After Bruce Lee's death in 1973, his wife, Linda, said that he had come up with the concept of the show and that Warner Bros. had stolen it from him. The network denied this. In an earlier interview with Pierre Berton — possibly Lee's only one — the star mentioned a Western-style show called The Warrior that incorporated kung fu. He said he was struggling to develop the show with Paramount and Warner Bros.)
min.0:25. 'What I knew, what had happened was, he [Bruce Lee] was supposed to do this series, the television series Kung Fu...'
'Uh-uh, right here-'
'aft, and it was written for him, but what happened was that ABC in their grand wisdom, said "what do we know, what are we doing? I mean, the American public doesn't want to watch a Chinese actor every week..." so they changed... Now, here, here's strange stuff. So you know who they came to second? Me.'
'Are you kidding me!'
'No, I'm not.'
'Wow!'
'I'm not. This is not spread around too often.'
'No, I'm honored to know this!' [laughter]
'The reason, the reason... '
'Cause I've read about it!'
'I couldn't do it, because I was under contract at Universal to do a medical series called The Bold Ones.'
'Right, I remember that.'
'So, my agent said, "Can you get him out of this? Because they want, uh, him to go to this show in, you know, about the, this and that [gestures martial arts] and all that kind of stuff," so they said, "No way! you know, he's with us," and so on so far...' [Interview transcription]
I was as enthusiastic as ever to put Bruce into the role of Kwai Chang Caine, but was still meeting with resistance from the powers that be. So I sent Bruce to Tom Kuhn's office to introduce himself. It was a meet and greet Tom is not likely to ever forget. Most actors show up to auditions with a résumé and an 8 x 10 glossy headshot. Bruce showed up with one extra item: his nunchucks. For the uninitiated, nunchucks are two wooden sticks, not unlike police billy clubs that are attached end to end by a short length of chain or rope. In the cramped confines of Tom's office, Bruce, a master of the weapon, gave Tom an in-your-face demonstration, flailing the lethal sticks with mind-boggling speed, grace, and dexterity. Bruce didn't need to punch Tom in the gut to take his breath away.
"What the fuck was that!" Tom asked me after the interview. "That was Bruce Lee," I said, "What do you think about him for Kung Fu?"
"He's amazing," Tom gushed. "I've never seen anything like that. But getting him the lead is still going to be a long shot. He might be too authentic."
To my continued frustration, Tom was right. The powers that be had a hundred different reasons why Bruce was wrong for the part: he was an unknown, he was short, his English wasn't good enough, he lacked the necessary serenity to play the role… But at the end of the day, there was really only one reason. In the history of Hollywood there had never been an Asian hero—unless you count Charlie Chan. But even that iconic Chinese-American character was never popular in films until he was played by Warner Oland, who was not only Caucasian, he was Swedish, for chrissake. From Oland on, only white guys played Charlie. And that dubious tradition was carried on into Kung Fu when David Carradine landed the role of Kwai Chang Caine. Bruce was crushed. Even his lightning reflexes were powerless to keep the opportunity of a lifetime from slipping through his fingers.
The political realities have made the cast and crew reflect on the show with new gravity. But they also acknowledge that a breakthrough in representation on television could not begin to address or solve the complicated nexus of conditions that has put the most vulnerable Asian Americans, such as the spa workers that were killed in a mass shooting in Atlanta last month, in danger.
"Certainly I'm not going to say our show is the solution to anti-Asian racism," Kim says. "But I do think that we can be part of the solution just by the nature of having a predominantly Asian American cast on network television every week, going into people's homes. We are visible, and being visible is a huge part of the solution."
(...) For Christina M. Kim, a television writer and producer whose credits include "Lost" and "NCIS: Los Angeles," the opportunity to reboot the iconic series was a responsibility that she did not take lightly. After selling her pitch to The CW in the fall of 2019, Kim began working on the pilot and immediately wanted the new iteration to stand on its own.
(...) The biggest difference between the two Kung Fu shows, Kim explained, is the emphasis on the Asian American experience. "I want this to be a multigenerational show. It's on The CW, but it's not just a show about the kids. We really get to know the parents. We have a gay character and deal with how the parents deal with him coming out. All these different issues through the lens of this family."
(...) "After we had shut down, I spent hours and hours watching the same footage over and over, finally getting this little three- or four-minute sizzle reel just the way I wanted it. My eight-year-old son turned to me once and he said, 'Mama, they're Korean.' I was like, 'They're not Korean, but I know what you're saying,'" she recalled. "The fact that he noticed that it's very rare to see a fully Asian show anywhere – that was such a special moment for me because I realized this could really make a difference. Kids will see this. Hopefully, this opens the door for many more shows like this. I hope there are 20 shows like this with an all-Asian cast."
Every second Wednesday my daughter and three of her pals come over to the house after school before their dance lesson, and they always ask for macaroni and Kung Fu. I tape it from the Jones Channel and one day I played them the famous opening sequence – "When you can take the pebble from my hand, it is time for you to leave." They loved it, and asked to watch the entire episode. They found the whole thing strange and captivating, a barefoot Shaolin priest very calmly kicking people unconscious.
As a Filipino-Canadian, I noticed there was no one who represented my ethnicity. That fact alone has deterred me from seeing the movie.
There are Filipino actors, but they don't portray Filipino characters. Nico Santos, a Filipino-American, plays Oliver T'sien, alongside Filipino actress Kris Aquino as the Malay princess, Intan. The film not only lacked a Filipino presence, but also an Indian, Tamil, Thai or Indonesian one – despite being set in Singapore.
What does this mean for Asian actors? Stylecaster.com writer Annie Lim points out the interchangeability of Asian actors. [Links to another article about the subject]
A superb follow-up to a strong premiere, Kung Fu gets Nicky to evolve in more ways than one.
She got her physical and mental state tested multiple times throughout the hour, and the results were lovely.
Nicky did a lot of training this time around, both mental and physical. I think this shows how she is trying to improve herself, especially her mental state.
Meditation was a big theme. Nicky meditated to deal with her grief, her new issues with her mom, and the fight she had with Althea.
Warner Bros. TV Distribution has sold "Kung Fu" to nine more stations, boosting the market total to 23 for the hourlong, 62-episode off-network property, which is skedded for a Sept. 1 start in syndication.
The new buyers include WTAF-TV Philadelphia, KHTV Houston, and WMAR-TV Baltimore.
"So much about representation and inclusion is not so much that we as Asians need to see ourselves represented on the screens, but we need to be invited into people's homes who don't see us in everyday lives, just to humanize us, normalize seeing us, remind them that we are just like they are and have a place in this world. And hopefully having our show in their homes will expand that worldview for them," said actor Olivia Liang during a virtual panel for the drama on Wednesday.
In another jam-packed hour of action and adventure, the members of the Shen family are all given their own moment in the spotlight, the mysterious identity of Zhilan is unearthed by an unwitting professor turned prisoner, and the recovery of a second magical weapon kicks a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse between the show's two nemeses into high gear.
In the week ending 6 May 1973, around the time Enter the Dragon was being wrapped up, the Kung Fu TV series starring David Carradine was the No. 1 show on US television, attracting a regular audience of 28 million viewers.
What happens when a TV superstar makes an understated, personal film with friends in rural Kansas in the early 1970s but doesn't get it finished until the blockbuster-prone '80s? David Carradine was about to find out. He had directed and starred in the drama Americana during the 1973 hiatus of his hit show, Kung Fu, because he wanted an escape plan from ever having to act in another TV series—or in film roles he didn't care about. Americana was a small-town story about a Vietnam vet, and it was one of a few personal films he began in the '70s (along with Mata Hari and You and Me). These films were part of David's master plan to make himself an actor-director auteur successful enough to pick his own projects. Ironically, the opposite happened, and David accepted tons of "mercenary" acting work, so he could keep tinkering with his hard-luck personal films. The projects were so important to him that he even sold his Kung Fu royalties back to Warner Bros at one point, in order to keep the dream alive. And even though directing had already proven to be a tough road for David to hoe, he couldn't have been prepared for the emotional rollercoaster that he (along with Skip Sherwood, his on-again, off-again producer) would experience in trying to get Americana seen by audiences circa 1981-1985.
According to Emil, they came in sets of 3, 5, and occasionally 7 or 9. He took the dharma bells and laid them out in rows so they could be played more easily; then once he had enough, he mounted them vertically.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)It is widely believed that Bruce Lee was the progenitor of the initial concept for Kung Fu, but was ultimately cast aside for Carradine, demonstrating Hollywood's ingrained racism. According to his wife, Lee was rejected for the main role because he was "too small, too Chinese, that he wasn't a big enough name to sustain a weekly series, and that he was too inexperienced."