Documentaries

"When Bruce closed the schools, he felt he was unburdening himself of having to prove through his students that his system had merit. He didn't want to get into that. He wanted them to evolve and teach, but It was not a thing where you have to teach what I taught. You have to teach what you learned and that's going to be more than what he taught, hopefully for those students that understood what he was doing."

"Then It's just two people who are being aware of their own movements who are observing the other person's movements and being able to fit in with that person's movements, so that there's no set pattern of movements. No well, when be does this, then I do this. It's just a total freedom to react to what the other person does. In fact, Bruce inscribes It perfectly on the back of this medallion where he wrote his motto, It says, Using no way as way having no limitations as limitations. Over the years this phrase has been somewhat misinterpreted. People think of using no way as way to mean anything I do is okay and anything I do is my way. I don't think Bruce really intended It to mean that way. He just meant not to be boxed in by a certain way, so that you never get into a situation where there's only one response. You adapt to what the situation calls for. I think Bruce had that down pretty well."

"In the battle of the third floor, Lee's character makes use of a green bamboo whip. The whip represents flexibility, an attribute which Lee felt a martial artist must possess if he was to be successful in combat. Since combat, like Life, Is not predictable, Lee held that one must possess a pliable adaptability in order to change with change. Lee has his character dressed in a one-piece yellow track suit to symbolize no affiliation with any known martial arts style."

"Five years after his passing, excerpts from the film Lee had worked so feverishly on during the final months and hours of his Life, are edited into a film featuring Lee's title, The Game of Death. But the film bears no comparison to Lee's original multi-level vision. Without Lee's choreography notes, script-outline and motif the producers are uncertain what to do with the 100 minutes of footage they have in their possession. Moreover, they discovery that Lee was such a perfectionist that of the 100 minutes of footage they have in hand, two-thirds turn out to be outtakes and retakes, shot that Lee himself had discarded for sequences in the film that he felt were beneath his standard of quality. They deem only 11 minutes and 7 seconds of the footage ti be worthy of inclusion in their film. The rest, approximately 21 minutes worth, they discard. Intercutting actual footage of Lee into fight sequences involving lookalikes and even using cardboard cutouts of Lee's head, the end result Is viewed by many as an exploitive and grotesque joke played on the great artist's legacy. By now, even Lee's most zealous fans are beginning to believe that the original footage Is gone. And that It will never be possible to see the footage Lee shot in its entirety nor to ever learn what his original storyline for the film was. In the fall of 1994, during research conducted for a multi-volume book series based on Lee's surviving writings, Lee's original script and choreograghy writings for The Game of Death are recovered. The writings confirm what had long been suspected that Lee had shot considerably more footage for The Game of Death than had been seen to date. Another unexpected surprise Is discovered among his choreography writings. His hand-written storyline, 12 pages in length and containing all scene breakdowns and select dialogue passages the original storyline stands in sharp contrast to the one presented in the film released under the same name. After the discovery of Lee's script notes a search to find the missing footage Is launched. It will last some six years, but then the miraculous happens. The original 35mm film footage Is located. After having been separated for over a quarter of a century Bruce Lee's original footage and script notes are finally reunited. Over the course of this film, you'll see this footage as Bruce Lee had intended for It to be shown, and you'll also come to understand the struggle he had to undergo in order to bring It to the big screen. And perhaps along the way, you'll come to know the real Bruce Lee the man behind the legend, a little better as well."

"To sing blues, you've got to be able to, ... be willing to, feel things."

"Soul is truth, … no matter where it comes from, no matter how it is presented."

"Manhood is what we profess, and what we try to get across."

"Respect is something Otis achieved for himself in a way few people do. Otis sang "Respect when I come home." And Otis has come home."

"The softer you sing, the louder you're heard."

"Ringo [Starr] … is always underrated. … He's probably … the finest rock drummer in the world today. … Ringo is the one."

"Here, I'm going to make you a big star … and you don't have to pay any dues. … For that, you're going to get no respect from your contemporaries. … To me, that was the cruelest thing."

"What we call a hook hits you, ... then you're almost not writing, lyrics come to you, a sort of magic takes over, and it's not like work at all."

"Some fella said to me, "Have you had LSD, Paul?" And I said "Yes." And it was only 'cuz I was going to just be honest with him. There's no other reason. I didn't want to spread it or anything, you know. I'm not trying to do anything except answer his question. But he happened to be a reporter, and I happened to be a Beatle."

"Very rich."

"I like them all. … They're all pictures of me when I wrote them. … I have no favorite songs."

"In the largest sense, every work of art is protest. … A lullaby is a propaganda song and any three-year-old knows it. … A hymn is a controversial song--sing one in the wrong church: you'll find out. …"

"What I wanted to do with Bobby was just to get him to sound in the studio as natural, just as he was in person, and have that extraordinary personality come thru. … After all, he's not a great harmonica player, and he's not a great guitar player, and he's not a great singer. He just happens to be an original. And I just wanted to have that originality come thru."

"There's not many Americans, certainly not many of the teenagers I met when I first went to America, knew anything about [blues artists] at all. … They do now, which is very groovy."

"I used to get mad about people recording my things; now I got a new thing going. … I don't get mad about them recording my material because they keep me alive."

"We knew that America would make us or break us as world stars. In fact, she made us."

"If you'd have asked me that question, 9 months ago, well, I would have been able to say, to come to America, to have a number one hit in America, and to play Carnegie Hall, to play the Palladium, to play in front of the Queen, and all that. ... The things we've done, they were our ambitions, say 9 months ago."

"I was looking for a name like the Crickets that meant two things, and from crickets I got to beetles. And I changed [to] B E A because … B E E T L E S didn't mean two things, so I changed … the E to an A. And it meant two things then. … When you said it, people thought of crawly things; and when you read it, it was beat music."

"The day you open your mind to music, you're halfway to opening your mind to life."

"If I had as many love affairs as you've given me credit for, I would now be speaking to you from a jar at the Harvard Medical School."

"I enjoyed all the records very much. I made them all from the heart. I made them all with art in mind, and all to reveal a picture of where I was when I made them."

"I went to jail for 11 days for disturbing the peace; I was trying to disturb the war."

"God would be a very selfish god if he gave all the soul to one race. … When one sings from the heart and it reaches another heart, that's soul."

"But now if I can wrap myself up in that song, and when that song gets to be a part of me, and affects me emotionally, then the emotions that I go through, chances are I’ll be able to communicate to you. Make the people out there become a part of the life of this song that you’re singing about. That’s soul when you can do that."

"The things that were happening in 1955 were cosmic … in terms of music history."

"Now my attitude is very simple: I must do what artistically pleases me."

"You can't make a hit record out of nothing. … It's baseless to think you can make any recording a hit, just by playing it over and over and over again."

"Elvis changed the country music scene quite a bit; he almost put country music out of business."

"American country music … was and is … the soul music of white people."

"Rock and roll is a music, and why should a music contribute to … juvenile delinquency? If people are going to be juvenile delinquents, they're going to be delinquents if they hear … Mother Goose rhymes."

"It just happened. I like to sing, and well, I just started singing and folks just started listening. I can't tell folks that I worked and learned and studied, and overcame disappointments, because I didn't."

"I call my music the healing music… It makes the blind feel that they can see, the lame feel that they can walk, the deaf and dumb that they can hear and talk."

"I learned more from Chuck Berry about America than I could have from the U.S. Information Service in London."

"... And this is the origin of pop music: it's a professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music as well."

"A singer … is no more than an actor set to music."

"A veritable schoolroom of the airwaves … significant records … leaving the story-telling … to the interview subjects."

"For the serious aficionado of pop music and the casual listener alike, it's been a nearly unqualified success."

"I think it's a great program. ... I made my wife go get me one of these radio recorders so that I could record the Pop Chronicles and have them for my own."

"I … started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that's just the way it came out."

"A song would come out … a singer's song, right? Elmo [Tanner] would whistle it. Whatever he didn't want to whistle, I would sing. Now you can imagine what I used to sing. It was frightening. Elmo was the whole band, you know?""

"So many proposals happened on the dance floor to the pretty music where the guy'Il say, 'Honey, I love you. Will you marry me?' I've often wondered how a young man gets through to his lady friend today when she'd be doing her own little thing 15 feet away. He tries to get her attention, waves his arms and somebody walks in between and he says, "I love you," and the little girl in the middle … a stranger . . . says "who me?""

"[My] publicity agent … went to hear Father Divine and he had a sermon and his subject was 'you got to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.' And I said 'Wow, that's a colorful phrase!'"

"I took song writing seriously when I discovered girls."

"Rhythm and blues used to be called race music; … this music was going on for years, but nobody paid any attention to it."

"... I just know that, right now, … the biggest record selling business there is is rock and roll."