Which Bruce Lee film did director, Wayne Wang work on as a translator in Hong Kong?

[Yihetuan]

Famed Chinese-American director, Wayne Wang (Joy Luck Club, Smoke, Chan is Missing) mentioned in an interview that while as a grad student at UC Berkeley, he returned to HK one summer and worked on the set of a Bruce Lee movie mostly as a translator since he was fluent in Cantonese & English. Anyone know which film it was?

[DragonClaws]

 

Enter the Dragon?.

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

I would think it was that one as he was at Berkeley and in California, though just so you know Los Angeles is a good 4 hours away if you floor it, so it's not like he would be a hope , skip and a jump away. Who knows? I would think that they must have had very little interaction or he would have spoke up by now.

[Yihetuan]

I was thinking ETD was the obvious answer but I believe Wang was back in the bay area during that time and teaching English to Chinese immigrants. So then I thought perhaps FoF?

[DragonClaws]

On 7/13/2022 at 6:35 PM, Yihetuan said:

I was thinking ETD was the obvious answer but I believe Wang was back in the bay area during that time and teaching English to Chinese immigrants. So then I thought perhaps FoF?

 

Would they need an English to Catnonese translator, on a set consisiting only of Asian crew members?. The Japnese actors where the only foriegn crew memebrs on this movie right?. Way of The Dragon was filmed in Rome, but then you'd need an Italain translator and not an English/Cantonese translator. Big Boss was in Thailand, so that seems like a no go.

[Yihetuan]

50 minutes ago, DragonClaws said:

 

Would they need an English to Catnonese translator, on a set consisiting only of Asian crew members?. The Japnese actors where the only foriegn crew memebrs on this movie right?. Way of The Dragon was filmed in Rome, but then you'd need an Italain translator and not an English/Cantonese translator. Big Boss was in Thailand, so that seems like a no go.

Are you forgetting Robert Baker? I was thinking of WoD and that perhaps they used English first then translated to Italian. I'm sure more Italians were familiar with English than Cantonese and it was hard to find a native Italian who spoke fluent Canto. So Wayne would talk to the Italian translator in English who then translated it into Italian for the crew. Same thing in Thailand, perhaps they used a more universal language in English than translated it into Thai? No idea, just throwing it out there.

Edited July 17, 2022 by Yihetuan