Hall of the Unknown - The Game Of Death Appreciation Thread

[Cognoscente]

Perhaps Bruce got someone else. If he was so headstrong about wanting Taky then he wouldn't have gone out of his way to audition other people post-ETD.

[DragonClaws]

8 hours ago, Josh Baker said:

the pic of Bruce resting his head on the staircase is also the Ji Han Jae floor.

 

He never rests his head on the bannister, in the footage thats available at the moment. It might be an alternative take?.

[Josh Baker]

1 minute ago, DragonClaws said:

 

He never rests his head on the bannister, in the footage thats available at the moment. It might be an alternative take?.

I think it is. He has almost the same facial expression/body posture/slightly longer hair than the other two floors in the corresponding footage.

[Josh Baker]

6 minutes ago, Cognoscente said:

Perhaps Bruce got someone else. If he was so headstrong about wanting Taky then he wouldn't have gone out of his way to audition other people post-ETD.

Were those screen tests to replace Taky Kimura? If so that probably points to the floor not being filmed. 

I feel if he had shot the ground floor it wouldve appeared in a heavily edited form in GOD '78 despite Clouse not liking the footage

[Cognoscente]

He may have filmed it in June or July - the two months where supposedly not much stuff happened in his life.

[Josh Baker]

8 minutes ago, Cognoscente said:

He may have filmed it in June or July - the two months where supposedly not much stuff happened in his life.

Hmm, possible. He was photographed on the When Taekwondo Strikes set in June '73. 

[Josh Baker]

However it raises the problem that Bruce wouldve had to have cast the other two members of the team in addition to the replacement in June '73 and we have no idea whose these people are. There are also no set photos or crewmen recollections of a June '73 GOD shoot that I personally know of. 

Although it could explain why some people misremember the history of him working on GOD at the time of his death, but applying Occams Razor (the most plausible explanation) it makes more sense than people just misremembering rather than their being a so far undiscovered June '73 GOD shoot.

[Cognoscente]

Another question is whether he auditioned Chieh Yuan or James Tien back in '72. We don't see any of their test footage unless they were cast based on a combination of their experience and Bruce's intuition.

Edited May 30, 2021 by Cognoscente

[saltysam]

It's an old cliche but i'td be fantastic if someone with talent and industry clout got hold of all available footage and remade this movie with the storyline Bruce wanted. Technology has come on since 1978, i'm sure we'd get a far more convincing double.

[Cognoscente]

9 minutes ago, Josh Baker said:

However it raises the problem that Bruce would've had to have cast the other two members of the team in addition to the replacement in June '73 and we have no idea whose these people are. There are also no set photos or crewmen recollections of a June '73 GOD shoot that I personally know of. 

Although it could explain why some people misremember the history of him working on GOD at the time of his death, but applying Occam's Razor (the most plausible explanation) it makes more sense than people just misremembering rather than their being a so far undiscovered June '73 GOD shoot.

From what I remember from the Bruce Lee Lives forum, there was going to be a Western raider played by Bob Baker along with Carter Wong as the remaining Korean gangster. Tony Liu was going to play a student of Hai Tien's who went insane from a past raid.

Raymond Chow probably seized the photos from being leaked to the press in case anyone tried to steal ideas, although it was too late by the time that even ETD began filming because people in HK had already seen photos of the Inosanto and Kareem floors in Golden Movie News. Nondisclosure agreements could still have been signed by people, although that didn't entirely pan out well when you factor in what was said by Lam Ching-Ying and Wu Ngan (stuntmen didn't get interviewed by the press in the seventies).

Edited May 30, 2021 by Cognoscente

[Josh Baker]

15 minutes ago, saltysam said:

It's an old cliche but i'td be fantastic if someone with talent and industry clout got hold of all available footage and remade this movie with the storyline Bruce wanted. Technology has come on since 1978, i'm sure we'd get a far more convincing double.

Id rather they didnt do it with digital technology, except to re-create the likenesses of James Tien and Chieh Yuan. Id rather them write around Bruce's abscence than have a CGI Bruce walk around for 70% of the movie. 

Edited May 30, 2021 by Josh Baker

[Josh Baker]

11 minutes ago, Cognoscente said:

From what I remember from the Bruce Lee Lives forum, there was going to be a Western raider played by Bob Baker along with Carter Wong as the remaining Korean gangster. Tony Liu was going to play a student of Hai Tien's who went insane from a past raid.

Raymond Chow probably seized the photos from being leaked to the press in case anyone tried to steal ideas, although it was too late by the time that even ETD began filming because people in HK had already seen photos of the Inosanto and Kareem floors in Golden Movie News. Nondisclosure agreements could still have been signed by people, although that didn't entirely pan out well when you factor in what was said by Lam Ching-Ying and Wu Ngan (stuntmen didn't get interviewed by the press in the seventies).

Yeah thats an interesting proposition, but I cant see a relatively small HK movie studio from the 1970s, having more airtight security than a major Hollywood studio like Warner Bros who didnt manage to conceal from the public an entirely different version of Justice League existed in the vaults, in 2017.

I just feel logic dictates at least one photo from the ground floor fight would've been released by now. But I could be wrong, and Lam and Wu Ngan could be telling the truth about something that has been successfully hidden by the public for 50 years.

If the footage does exist, do you think it is in the Fortune Star vaults like the rest of the GOD footage?

[Cognoscente]

There weren't that many people who worked on the GOD set. It was almost a bare bones production. There weren't that many actors, and the crew list was sparse. There were probably more businessmen (investors?) who showed up on the set than actual workers.

The GOD situation is a lot like the Stoltz in BTTF situation. For so many years, people didn't know how much was filmed due to a lack of exposure and quotes. Chow was smart enough to keep the extra GOD footage to himself in case anyone tried to steal it. Having seen the Bruceploitation films which stole ideas from the footage that Chow intended to use, he made a wise choice.

Look at the Lazenby fiasco. Bruce was supposed to have been with him for a few days but not once did anyone take a photo of those two guys together. There have been no-name martial artists who have been photographed alongside Bruce, yet the artist formerly known as James Bond hasn't got one single snapshot to parade with. You would think that someone over at Golden Movie News may have wanted to commemorate the union...unless Bruce was looking too worse for wear due to his health.

[Josh Baker]

1 hour ago, Cognoscente said:

There weren't that many people who worked on the GOD set. It was almost a bare bones production. There weren't that many actors, and the crew list was sparse. There were probably more businessmen (investors?) who showed up on the set than actual workers.

The GOD situation is a lot like the Stoltz in BTTF situation. For so many years, people didn't know how much was filmed due to a lack of exposure and quotes. Chow was smart enough to keep the extra GOD footage to himself in case anyone tried to steal it. Having seen the Bruceploitation films which stole ideas from the footage that Chow intended to use, he made a wise choice.

Look at the Lazenby fiasco. Bruce was supposed to have been with him for a few days but not once did anyone take a photo of those two guys together. There have been no-name martial artists who have been photographed alongside Bruce, yet the artist formerly known as James Bond hasn't got one single snapshot to parade with. You would think that someone over at Golden Movie News may have wanted to commemorate the union...unless Bruce was looking too worse for wear due to his health.

The BTTF point is a very good analogy, but the only people I can think of casually mentioning more footage was shot 10 years ago in the same way Tom Wilson did on several podcasts about ten years ago, are the ones you just mentioned; I dont think GOD has the widespread hearsay that substantially more footage exists, but that could just be because its not a Hollywood movie, I think its likely more stuff is out there.

 and yeah I think the only picture of Lazenby from that July '73 period is a picture of him walking down the street with Raymond Chow of all people, not Bruce. As far as I know the last documented photo of Bruce is from his appearance on Enjoy Yourself Tonight on July 10th 1973, so maybe your theory of him looking fatigued in the Lazenby pictures could be true, because like you I find it implausable no photographers captured the two of them together.

[Cognoscente]

6 hours ago, Josh Baker said:

The BTTF point is a very good analogy, but the only people I can think of casually mentioning more footage was shot 10 years ago in the same way Tom Wilson did on several podcasts about ten years ago, are the ones you just mentioned.

Crispin Glover confirmed it in 2019 for the Anthem site. Joel Silver (one of the director's colleagues) confirmed it in 1993 for the December issue of Empire. It was even mentioned in the August '85 issue of Starlog; it's just that it was something that the studio wanted to play down because it was a colossal waste of money. If you think about it, how successful you are in the film marketplace depends on the ratio of budget to box office. It's difficult to entice investors if you've proven to waste money.

Back to GOD, Andre Morgan carefully alluded to the notion of there being more footage (i.e. without giving too much away) when he was interviewed for the Bruce Lee Conversations book. His main justification was that there wasn't enough footage to tie all those scenes together, so they had to totally revamp the film. The problem was that they changed the plot so much that the extra pagoda fights would add to the film's running time.

[DragonClaws]

On 5/30/2021 at 2:23 PM, Josh Baker said:

I think it is. He has almost the same facial expression/body posture/slightly longer hair than the other two floors in the corresponding footage.

 

He never rests his head on the stairwell, when he descends the stairs from Kareem's Abuls Jabbars floor. If you watch the released pogoda footage, you wont find the shot of him resting his head like he does in that still.

[DragonClaws]

On 5/30/2021 at 3:23 PM, Cognoscente said:

You would think that someone over at Golden Movie News may have wanted to commemorate the union...unless Bruce was looking too worse for wear due to his health.

 

There are very few pictures available to the public, from this time period. I've seen images of Bruce Lee with longer hair, and he looks really down in weight in these shots. These turn up in the old 1970's Hong Kong magazines, and some of them have been shared online over the years.

Here's one of the pictures  Im talking about, appearing on the cover of Martial Magazine. Anyone have any ideas as to when this image was taken?. Is it a promotional poster for one of his movies in the background?.

 

Edited May 31, 2021 by DragonClaws

[Josh Baker]

46 minutes ago, DragonClaws said:

 

There are very few pictures available to the public, from this time period. I've seen images of Bruce Lee with longer hair, and he looks really down in weight in these shots. These turn up in the old 1970's Hong Kong magazines, and some of them have been shared online over the years.

Here's one of the pictures  Im talking about, appearing on the cover of Martial Magazine. Anyone have any ideas as to when this image was taken?. Is it a promotional poster for one of his movies in the background?.

 

Looks like a promotional thing for Way of the Dragon to me. Bruce had long hair like that in December 1972 so it's possible this photo is from that month, plus I think he looks pretty good here which makes this more likely.

[Josh Baker]

11 hours ago, Cognoscente said:

Crispin Glover confirmed it in 2019 for the Anthem site. Joel Silver (one of the director's colleagues) confirmed it in 1993 for the December issue of Empire. It was even mentioned in the August '85 issue of Starlog; it's just that it was something that the studio wanted to play down because it was a colossal waste of money. If you think about it, how successful you are in the film marketplace depends on the ratio of budget to box office. It's difficult to entice investors if you've proven to waste money.

Back to GOD, Andre Morgan carefully alluded to the notion of there being more footage (i.e. without giving too much away) when he was interviewed for the Bruce Lee Conversations book. His main justification was that there wasn't enough footage to tie all those scenes together, so they had to totally revamp the film. The problem was that they changed the plot so much that the extra pagoda fights would add to the film's running time.

That's possible, but considering Clouse wouldve cut around the other raiders, I doubt the fight wouldve lasted more than two minutes in his version, so that's not much time added to the relatively short runtime of GOD '78 (100 minutes)

I've also never bought the idea by Morgan that their wasnt enough footage to complete the film. Things could've been re-written/re-jigged to complete Lee's original storyline, so I think this reason is just a scapegoat to justify Clouse/Chows complete re tooling of the film.

[DragonClaws]

 

9 hours ago, Josh Baker said:

Things could've been re-written/re-jigged to complete Lee's original storyline, so I think this reason is just a scapegoat to justify Clouse/Chows complete re tooling of the film.

 

Remember that the Bruceploitation genre had already used a lot of Bruce Lee's ideas from Game of Death. They wanted their version of the  film to stand out among those other movies.

[Cognoscente]

The continuity would have been awful, though. I suppose they could have used pan and scan like they did with the other fights, but that would have made for an experience more frustrating than ETD. Remember that each of the fights were going to be more complicated than the one before it. The Wing Chun floor was said to be so difficult that two raiders get knocked down for good.

[DragonClaws]

8 hours ago, Cognoscente said:

The Wing Chun floor was said to be so difficult that two raiders get knocked down for good.

 

Bob Baker and Carter Wong's characters?.

 

 

[Cognoscente]

Yep.

[Josh Baker]

21 minutes ago, DragonClaws said:

 

 

Remember that the Bruceploitation genre had already used a lot of Bruce Lee's ideas from Game of Death. They wanted their version of the  film to stand out among those other movies.

Yeah I never saw this reason as particularly credible because GH owned the genuine article, so it didn't really matter if it had a similar plotline to New Game of Death or Enter the Game of Death, because the real Game of Death has Bruce Lee in it and the others dont, and the average viewer would be able to surmise Bruce came up with this storyline before the rip-offs did.

Edited May 31, 2021 by Josh Baker

[Cognoscente]

Clouse's version of GOD was just an excuse to drop hints about Bruce's final months. Even Van Williams confirmed that Bruce was having problems with the Chinese mafia.