GOD Complete 3rd-5th Floor including Lost Log Footage Found By HK Stephen Au Kam Tong

[newgen2005]

Found this on another forum;

According to Die-Hard Fan of BL and HK director of "Dragon 1973" - Stephen Au Kam Tong's (not Stephen Chow) Facebook on 27th Nov. 2014, the complete GOD 3rd to 5th floor including the long lost log footage has been found recently.

This is the link to his facebook: https://zh-tw.facebook.com/StephenAuKamTong (more than 200 threads on the discussion over this topic)

As it is written in Chinese, I'll translate some important details into English.

Stephen Au said he was invited by the company who owns BL movies copyright to discuss about making and marketing of BL DVDs way back in 2006. He raised his views and concerns about the missing footage in John Little and Japan Artport versions of GOD. That is, on the opening fight of the 3rd floor of the pagoda, before BL joined in the fight with Tien Jun and Jie Yuan against Inosanto, there were supposed to be 2-3 scenes of bare hand fights (dance of death) and log fight of Tien and Jie with Inosanto. He remembered seeing many photos of these scenes in the magazines during his childhood days. If these exist, then the footages should have definitely been shot. Thus, based on this and plus and minus two months before and after the date which BL shot GOD, he requested his associates to go in search of the lost footages in the above company's movie vault thoroughly.

Then two weeks later, he received a call from the BL copyright company telling him that they had discovered two cans of "excavated" films (already developed into film negative). However, the words "Enter The Dragon" appeared on the two cans not "GOD". He immediately got them to transfer the two cans of negative into watchable DVD format. Two days later, the courier delivered a packet of 3 DVDs to his doorstep. The first DVD being the original Mandarin version of "Enter The Dragon"(different from the 1973 ETD version), then on the second DVD, he saw the complete GOD footage not in sequence, including NGs, unseen takes etc.(did not mention the time-length of the footage, guess should be around two hours), the last DVD is the complete 3rd to 5th floor footage arranged in sequence including the complete fight of Tien and Jie against Inosanto with the log scene too. Stephen Au was so delighted and overwhelmed that finally the complete GOD footage shot by BL has re-surfaced after more than 30 years. He hopes he will help to bring BL's original GOD concept into re-making of a new complete version of GOD soon (needs to get the consent and cooperation of BL's estate, hope Shannon Lee will grant the fans the wish).

Let's hope all this stuff sees the light of day!

[Reel Power Stunts]

Interesting. I remember the old French vhs of "Bruce Lee: The Legend" had a few seconds of the log and 'dance of death' in the G.O.D montage.

[Secret Executioner]

Interesting. I thought all of the existing footage from GOD was widely available (on various DVDs or even on Youtube), but it seems like there's much more stuff out there.

I have various Bruce Lee-related containing footage from GOD, guess I should check them out and see if I have any rare on one of them.

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

Correct me if I am wrong, I heard that Bruce Lee was going to drop the whole project when the big offers started coming in. My understanding is that he had offers to be in international productions that would be on the level of a James Bond, etc, and had he lived, he would have moved on to that. It would have been great if they filmed the Whang In Sik fight and the fight with Taky Kimura, but he had bigger fish to fry.

[Secret Executioner]

Correct me if I am wrong, I heard that Bruce Lee was going to drop the whole project when the big offers started coming in. My understanding is that he had offers to be in international productions that would be on the level of a James Bond, etc, and had he lived, he would have moved on to that. It would have been great if they filmed the Whang In Sik fight and the fight with Taky Kimura, but he had bigger fish to fry.

Had heard the project was put on a hiatus while Bruce would film ETD - always assumed he had planned to finish GOD later on.

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

I guess I haven't kept up on the Bruce Lee lore, I had always heard that Silent Flute was his pet project. Steve McQueen and James Coburn at that time were huge international stars, the martial arts guys In GOD were not famous at the time. Who else was to be in GOD?

[DragonClaws]

I did read in Impact magazine that the log sequence appeared some rare Asian versions of Bruce Lee The Man The Legend. Hard to say if he would have finished G.O.D in HK or taken up Warner Brothers offer to help produce the film. Had he lived I'm sure he would have gone onto much better things. He never intended his Asian films to appear in western cinemas. After he passed away there was a big demand for more Bruce Lee films, so Chow and Co cashed in by selling these films to the west. If they do release this I'm it will be milked for all its worth.

I'm more intrigued by this Mandarin version of Enter The Dragon they mention?. I was under the impression that version was only different due to the addition of the Monk scene?.

[Secret Executioner]

I guess I haven't kept up on the Bruce Lee lore, I had always heard that Silent Flute was his pet project.

What is/was Silent Flute ?

I did read in Impact magazine that the log sequence appeared some rare Asian versions of Bruce Lee The Man The Legend. Hard to say if he would have finished G.O.D in HK or taken up Warner Brothers offer to help produce the film. Had he lived I'm sure he would have gone onto much better things. He never intended his Asian films to appear in western cinemas. After he passed away there was a big demand for more Bruce Lee films, so Chow and Co cashed in by selling these films to the west. If they do release this I'm it will me milked for all its worth.

I'm more intrigued by this Mandarin version of Enter The Dragon they mention?. I was under the impression that version was only different due to the addition of the Monk scene?.

Yeah, heard he didn't want BB and FOF to be exported - a shame really.

The Monk scene is in all the versions, ain't it ? I remember seeing a scene with a Monk in ETD when I first saw it, and it was a French version.

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

George Lazenby, what a dud that guy turned out to be! Why do I say that? Well, from what I can tell, if Bruce had not have died Lazenby might have killed his career, LOL! Honestly, he had plenty of time to prove he was marketable, but he just went down in flames. Still, he sounds like an ok guy that just go a little too full of himself for a time-

"One guy in Australia dropped friggin' spaghetti on my head, and I said 'What did ya do that for?' He said 'oh my girlfriend said to'. So, anyway I figured he'd have a whole plate in front of him, so I could push it in his lap. I said, I didn't think I be gin to do that. And he jumped up and swung at me and I broke his jaw. That was after Bond, I think I had done three Kung Fu movies so I was pretty accurate, you know. If you miss those bloody Chinese buggers they'll belt you for good."

[HyperDrive]

Great news. Wonder what else is in that vault though.

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

Movie script developed by Bruce Lee, James Coburn, and Stirling Silliphant in 1969. Lee later removed his involvement from the script & it was extensively rewritten released as Circle of Iron in 1978. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_Iron#Bruce_Lee.27s_inspiration

Have not seen it but it does not have a good reputation.

It's basically fucking unwatchable. It's so bad it makes me angry. Just awful, and not in a so bad it's good way. There's probably an amusing scene or two- the one with Eli Wallach sticks out, but the rest of the movie is white washed hippie trash trying to emulate "Eastern" culture. David Caradine dances around like Mick Jagger and that's supposed to be "martial arts". I understand Joe Lewis helped with a few stunts.

I really hated Caradine, and thought that the fact that he got the role in Kill Bill was an abomination. He went out like a loser as well. Just a hammy hack actor, and even in his autobiography he barely mentions the kung fu series- as if he had all kinds of highlights to his career! And then to have him attached to Bruce Lee's project, again! Yuch!

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

Here's the end-

-Gkoy8mRtD4

And the only funny scene in the movie, some guy that is trying to get rid of his penis, as it distracts him from becoming one with the universe.

Z9wD29z-DKc

[DragonClaws]

Compare Circle Of Iron to any of the various original Silent Flute scripts and it you will see its been heavily diluted. The scene with Eli Wallach did not appear in the original story and that was added for the movie. They cast Carradine in the parts Bruce Lee would have played.

The project never got off the ground really apart from a trip to India scouting for locations. Twentieth Century Fox took on the film under the condition it would be filmed in India. This was a cheap place to film being one of the main reasons. Coburn said he lost interest and felt India was not the right choice of location. Lee however felt they could use it. His relationship with Bruce Lee also began to sour during this time. They did remain friends in the years after the failed SF project. There are a few pictures Coburn took of BL out in the Indian desert performing various Martial Arts moves.

[The Dragon]

GOD was to resume shooting in Sept. '73. Lee had given his cameraman the go-ahead to begin shooting exterior shots in Korea, outside the pagoda.

He also left a fall schedule of '73 open for Shaws, to film a project Nin Kan Yau , directed by his good friend, Chor Yuan. However, Shaw wanted Chang Cheh...

Amidst all these plans were Lee's intent to bring his group of stuntman to Hollywood with him, that same year. The likes of Sammo, Ko Fei, Yuen Wah, Si Fu Jai, Jackie, Mars, and a few others, were to accompany him to the U.S. and bring the HK style of action to Western audiences in a presentation nicely bundled in a package brought by Bruce Lee...

It was not meant to be...

[Killer Meteor]

What is/was Silent Flute ?

Yeah, heard he didn't want BB and FOF to be exported - a shame really.

I read somewhere that he was annoyed that Chow has sold them to a low-rent distributor rather than waiting for a better deal. Perhaps if Chow had held off, Warners would have got them and perhaps tided them up a bit?

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

What I had heard was that he had no intentions of exporting way of the Dragon. He meant that movie only for Chinese audiences. I would imagine he probably was actually a pretty thoughtful guy in terms of racism and down deep felt that some of the nationalistic aspects of the story were really actually kind of offensive. He was a pretty eclectic guy and had lots of students from different nationalities one of his highest ranking being a Japanese American. It's actually kind of sad to see some of the cultural revisionism articles are written that claim Bruce Lee had put a bunch of anti Japanese references in the settings of fists of fury. That would have been up to lo way and the set designers

[DragonClaws]

I'm not sure how much truth there is in the rumor about him doing a re-make of Way Of The Dragon filmed in the states?. Or that he had plans to play the character of Tang Lung again in other films. I wonder if he would have developed his Bamboo Hero script further had he lived?. Bey Logan wrote an interesting article about this in an issue of Impact magazine.

[Killer Meteor]

What I had heard was that he had no intentions of exporting way of the Dragon. He meant that movie only for Chinese audiences. I would imagine he probably was actually a pretty thoughtful guy in terms of racism and down deep felt that some of the nationalistic aspects of the story were really actually kind of offensive. He was a pretty eclectic guy and had lots of students from different nationalities one of his highest ranking being a Japanese American. It's actually kind of sad to see some of the cultural revisionism articles are written that claim Bruce Lee had put a bunch of anti Japanese references in the settings of fists of fury. That would have been up to lo way and the set designers

I don't really think of Way being nationalistic. I can imagine he thought the Tati-esque comedy wouldn't travel, not to mention the gay stereotype (though Mr Ho is less awkward than Witt and Kidd from Diamonds Are Forever) and the fact the camera is out of focus for most of the location scenes. Interesting that the US distributor would cut some of these scenes.

I think the problem with a lot of writing on Bruce is that it is done by people who have little or no experience of HK films from that time period. As anti-Japanese as Fist of Fury gets, it's nothing compared to the Jimmy Wang Yu films and King Boxer. The Chinese Boxer paved the way for Fist of Fury, and in that film the Japanese are made up to look like vampires!

It is also worth noting that Fist of Fury was released in a HK that still likely felt the scars of WW2, which had lead to the mainland taken over by Mao's Communists. Lo Wei was a Shanghai native, and may well have felt like Ernest Lubitsch and Bela Lugosi in that he could never really go home. It could well be that many of the audience felt the same too, and therefore Bruce fighting Imperial Japan was seen as culturally relevant - note the Mainland bashing that started to turn up in the late 80s.

In America, the Japanese in the audiences could well have been scarred by the memories of interment and Yellow Peril racism, so Bruce could perhaps have worried about causing problems there - Taky Kimura was interred. I wonder if FOF had been released by Warners or another major, it could have attracted criticism from Japanese lobbies. In the 1970s, MGM made cuts to its negative of the 1932 Mask of Fu Manchu (which is very racist, trust me) in the face of criticism from Japanese groups - yes, it's villain is Chinese, but the film is very much Yellow Peril, and has slurs against Asians in general.

I do find it interesting that the most Yellow Peril/Evil Japanese stereotype in Fist of Fury (and Part II for that matter) is reserved for the quislings Mr Wu (Wei Ping-ao) and Mr. Wang (Chan Wai-Lau). In the English dubs, it isn't too clear at first that these characters are Chinese, not Japanese. New Fist of Fury is more lazily anti-Japanese, but does seem to reserve its comptempt for the traitors played by Lu Ping and Sun Laam.

In Japan, I believe the Bruce films were always popular. Perhaps confidence in the Japanese economy helped to ease old wounds, or was it due to the youth of Japan enjoying seeing their imperial past getting the stuffing kicked out of it?

All this is just theory, mind you!

[DragonClaws]

On 12/8/2014 at 7:31 AM, newgen2005 said:

Let's hope all this stuff sees the light of day!

 

Have there been up-dates regarding this?, it been nearly four year's and nothing has surfaced from it, not even a fuzzy screen capture.

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

There is nothing left. At a certain point, anyone who has anything of interest needs to cash in, as they would be in their 70's or 80's by now. I realize Run Run Shaw lived to 110, but he would have cashed out on film of Bruce much sooner. Beyond probably film of them walking around pointing and shaking hands, etc, there isn't any more of Bruce left. Thank god for Donnie Yen, who really is the Bruce Lee of my son's generation. Sure, Jackie is a bigger star, but he is considered funny. You don't mess with Donnie, though.

[Gaijin84]

So the big discovery was just a bunch of BS? Or no one offered enough money to make it worth releasing?

[DragonClaws]

29 minutes ago, Gaijin84 said:

So the big discovery was just a bunch of BS? Or no one offered enough money to make it worth releasing?

 

Most likley money issues, Andrew Stanton asked TVB if they could use some clips back in 1993. For the Martial Arts Master film he worked on, I forget the name of the guy who made it with?. He used to run the BBLA, before it was shut in the late nineties. Anyway, they wanted such lage sums for only a matter of seconds, they simply couldnt afford to use it. There's stil unseen footage that wont see the light of day, legal/oney reasons. Such as the McQueen/Lee training film that Bob Wall owns.

@NoKUNGFUforYU is pretty much right, there are no real major discovery's really left, I'd love to be proven wrong through.  Though Media Asia didnt release all of the GOD footage they have, they simpy released what was going to be the most profitable for selling. Which is the three fights Lee filmed, featuring himself. Sure there was more footage that featured him behind the camera, rather than infront of it. Look how long it took him to crank out his first three films, then look how long it took him, to put together 35-Mins of fight footage, that's still not entirely complete.

[Gaijin84]

It's a damn shame that almost 45 years past his death, money is the issue keeping everything hidden. Not surprising, but disappointing.

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

1 minute ago, Gaijin84 said:

It's a damn shame that almost 45 years past his death, money is the issue keeping everything hidden. Not surprising, but disappointing.

Nothing is left, bones have been picked. The guy died too early. There simply was not enough time to produce any more film of him. It's tough, as he was such an icon, but on the flip side, imagine if he made a bunch of bad movies?

[DragonClaws]

7 minutes ago, Gaijin84 said:

It's a damn shame that almost 45 years past his death, money is the issue keeping everything hidden. Not surprising, but disappointing.

 

Sadly its true, which is why we might never see the many hours and hours of TVB appearences he made.