Brandon Lee, the son of Bruce Lee was a Chinese American / European American actor of Chinese, German, and Swedish descent.
On March 31, 1993, the 52nd day of a 60-day shooting schedule for The Crow, the scene being filmed was when Lee's character was to walk into his apartment and see his girlfriend being raped by thugs. This would subsequently lead to Eric being brutally killed, along with his girlfriend, by the thugs. Actor Michael Massee, who played one of the villains in the movie, was supposed to fire a gun at Lee, as he walked into his apartment with groceries.
Because the movie's second unit team were running behind schedule, it was decided that dummy cartridges — bullets that outwardly appear to be functional, but contain no gunpowder — would be made from real cartridges, which had been brought to the set, earlier in production. Bruce Merlin, an effects technician, dismantled the live cartridges by removing the bullets, emptying out the gunpowder, detonating the primer, and reinserting the bullets. This rendered the cartridges inoperative, but realistic in appearance. Merlin and his propmaster, Daniel Kuttner, took initiative to create some blanks by removing live cartridges, and replacing the gunpowder with firework powder; the bullets were not reinserted.
Later, a cartridge with only a primer and a bullet, was fired in a pistol; this caused the bullet to lodge in the forcing cone of the revolver. When the first unit used this gun to shoot the death scene, the chamber was loaded with blanks which had no bullets. However, there was still the bullet in the barrel, which was propelled out by the blank cartridge's explosion. Consequently, Lee was shot and severely wounded, as cameras were rolling at the Carolco Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina. Seconds later, director Alex Proyas stopped the scene, but Lee remained on the floor. Stuntman (and Lee's friend) Jeff Imada ran over to him with a paramedic, and discovered a thin slit, an inch below to the right of his navel; by this time, Lee had slipped into unconciousness, and was rushed to the hospital where doctors discovered that a bullet was the cause of the damage. They fought for five hours in an attempt to save him, but at 1:04 PM he was pronounced dead.
His funeral was held several days later; he was buried next to his father in Lake View Cemetery, Capitol Hill, Seattle, Washington. The following day, a memorial service was held in Los Angeles, California, at the home of actress Polly Bergen; over 200 people attended, including David Carradine, David Hasselhoff and Kiefer Sutherland. Jeff Imada, Lee's closest friend, and Eliza ('Lisa') Hutton, Lee's intended bride, were so shocked they couldn't speak, while his mother, Linda Emery, reminded everyone, "Brandon would want this to be a happy occasion; we are here to celebrate his life."
The footage of the incident was soon destroyed, without ever being developed.
The shooting was ruled as an accident, although many fans suspected foul play. (Bruce Lee's own death in 1973, at the age of 32, apparently from a reaction to an analgesic he had taken, was also considered suspicious.) Bruce Lee's character in Game of Death is shot in a similar fashion. His character, like that of his son in The Crow, returns ('from the dead', although the character did not actually die), to get revenge on his adversaries.
Some fans also suspected that Lee's death was all part of a curse on the Lee family, because Lee had died nearly 20 years after his father; both deaths were very mysterious; and Brandon would also die before the release of a film that would catapult him to stardom. After his death, his mother and fiancée Eliza Hutton supported director Alex Proyas' decision to complete the movie. At the time of Lee's death, only eight days were left before completion of the movie. A majority of the film had already been completed with Lee, and only a few scenes had to be done.
To complete the film, a stunt double (Chad Stahelski), who was a friend of Lee's at the famed Inosanto Academy, and special effects were used to add Lee's face onto the stunt double.
The Crow was finally released in May 1994, and became a box office smash. The film is dedicated to Lee and his fiancée Eliza Hutton. They were to have been married on April 17, 1993, in Mexico. Lee is survived by his mother and sister.
In an interview just prior to his death, Brandon quoted a passage from Paul Bowles' book The Sheltering Sky that he had chosen for his wedding invitations; it is now inscribed on his tombstone:
"Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you cannot conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless..."
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