Ladies First

Well, for me, Bruce Lee was Uncle Bruce. And that came about because my father and him were very close friends. And my father was one of his leading students back in the 60s. And so, when I was born, my father decided to honor his best friend and teacher by naming me Diana Lee Inosanto. And from that point on, he became a godfather figure for me. So he was Uncle Bruce.

And I grew up around him all the way up until the time he died. Seeing him on and off when he was in town. And he would come over the home, or sometimes we would go over to his home, and I would see him and my father train.

And it was kind of amazing for me to, when I look back now as an adult, and I see the impact that he's made on, you know, in our world in so many different facets.

And so for me, I think when I first discovered that he was actually even well-known or famous was when he came over by the house and my neighbors were looking over the fence and they were saying, "Hey, that's Kato, that's Kato."

And I didn't know who Kato was because we didn't really have a TV and my father, my mother and my father had to explain to me that was the name of his character when he was doing Green Hornet. So that's when I got a first taste that, you know, Uncle Bruce is actually something even more than what I had understood as a child.

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He loved the cha-cha. He loved music. He was not afraid to explore other things outside of martial arts.

If you talk to Shannon, I mean, he had a library in his garage and in his office. And they were double, sometimes triple stacked. I mean, he was constantly just absorbing information. He loved to read.

So, I don't know, I remember my father saying when he was taking him for a walk in Los Angeles, and it was at the time of the whole soul train movement, and he would, you know, study people's clothes, everything, you know. He was constantly trying to, you know, I guess you could say evolve culturally what was going on. You can see that in all the African wear. I guess, again, it was another form of diversity.

Well, obviously, Enter the Dragon had a profound impact in the Hollywood community because it was the first time they actually had seen somebody who was a Chinese man, you know, actually breaking boundaries and people of all cultures connecting with him.

And that was the really cool thing. Enter the Dragon was really amazing because you had the casting of Jim Kelly, you had the casting of John Saxon, and so you had that kind of multiculturalism that was going on in that film.

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What I really love is that my uncle proved that you could be a Chinese-American, you could be something outside the norm and make it in this industry.

Because if you remember, he had helped develop Kung Fu, and they wouldn't give it to him because they said that, you know, a Chinese man could never be, you know, a reasonable commodity worldwide. And so Enter the Dragon was really truly the mark that really, you know, made him. And from there, you know, I mean, you can see that people like Brett Ratner and all these other directors say that, you know, they were just absolutely — Ang Lee will even say, John Woo — that Enter the Dragon was just this amazing film that really showed how far you can go as far as using the fighting arts.

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Well, number one, Bruce Lee gave me courage. It gave me courage, number one, as a woman that, you know, to kind of take the obstacle of being a female director in Hollywood and really just go — just go for it.

And I remember I was, you know, I came home, I was extremely frustrated with my career and where it was going, and my mother was there to remind me of what my godfather, you know, went through and how he had went back to Hong Kong to make his own pathway. And so she reminded me that this is something that I could possibly do.

And so the fact that I actually knew this man and saw him, I realized, you know what, if he can do this, so could I. And so what I did was I really focused on what my strengths were. Because at that time, I was a stunt actress in Hollywood.

And I just put together all my resources and my contacts. And I decided to have the courage to write my own material because that's what Uncle Bruce did. He wrote, he directed, he was a choreographer. He did all these things. He multi-tasked. And so I understood that if he could have the courage, if I could just focus, that this is something that could be real for me.

That is probably the most important thing that I was ever taught from him. And I mean we see what happened in Bosnia and with the Serbs, how they built this statue to bring their people together, because he symbolized something much greater and can almost be, something greater that cannot really even be defined by words.

And so for me, that's the most important thing, is that we are all a part of this much bigger family. And that's a huge thing. We live in a world right now that's filled with a lot of chaos at times, but if we can sit back and remember our connection to each other, that can be a very healing thing.