FROM THE MAN BEHIND A HALF-CENTURY OF MUSIC, MOVIES AND MARTIAL ARTS
A Memoir by Fred Weintraub
with David Fields
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Excerpt From Chapter 1
How to Build a Dragon I hadn’t even heard of Bruce Lee around the time I was getting my first taste of Chinese cinema. Little did I know that our association would play a major part in a cultural revolution. Before I met Bruce, every town in America had a church and a beauty parlor. Within a few short years of our meeting, every town in America would boast a church, a beauty parlor, and a martial arts studio displaying a poster of Bruce Lee. Maybe my contribution got less press than Mao Zedong did for his Cultural Revolution, but for a nice Jewish boy from the Bronx, it was fairly significant. Who would have thought that the hyperactive son of a baby carriage salesman would ever muster the focus to accomplish anything, let alone turn an obscure martial arts instructor into an international star?" |
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"I had to face challenges that were not only daunting, but sometimes dangerous, absurd, even surreal. Like having the star of the picture greet me each morning by tossing a live cobra in my face."
—Fred Weintraub On the Making of Enter the Dragon |
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.“Fred Weintraub has had a profound but under-recognized influence on American popular entertainment. His entertaining memoir shows him to be more than just a cultural pathfinder — he is also a teller of truth. His stories... are told with insight, context, color, passion and words that always deliver the unvarnished truth. As the author of "The Legend of Bruce Lee," I know a good deal about the first Asian movie super star but in Fred’s book I gained a deeper understanding of Lee’s life, career, death and legacy. I have long known Weintraub as a consummate showman and now also see that he is a great storyteller.” |
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Copyright 2016 Fred Weintraub Productions