Brandon Lee Bruce Lee Podcast

This is a special episode of the Bruce Lee Podcast honoring Brandon Bruce Lee. We just celebrated Brandon’s birthday February 1st and coming up on March 31st is the 25th anniversary of his passing, so Shannon wanted to share some stories of growing up with Brandon as her big brother and share some excerpts from Brandon’s journals. 
Shannon and Brandon had a very special relationship and Brandon viewed himself as her protector. Brandon was also the typical older brother in that he loved to mess with Shannon playing pranks and picking fights, but there were instances where he would come to Shannon’s rescue. If he thought Shannon was in trouble, or had really hurt herself, or if someone was picking on her, he would come to save her.
Brandon was a larger than life soul. He was a voracious reader and would have a dictionary with him so that when he encountered a word he didn’t know he would look it up. Brandon knew the definition of everything and he got a perfect score on the English portion of the SATs. His favorite book was “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."
Brandon was super sharp, smart, and theatrical. He loved to tell stories and capture the attention of the room and was able to sell any story he told.
Brandon always knew that he wanted to be an actor. Even though it could have been daunting to go into acting like his larger than life father Bruce Lee, Brandon saw himself as different from his father because Bruce Lee’s passion was martial arts and Brandon’s passion was acting. Brandon was an artist through and through.
He only went to one semester of college at Emerson before dropping out to pursue acting. Since he was Bruce Lee’s son, Brandon was expected to do martial arts and be in action films. So while being Bruce Lee’s son opened some doors for him, he was pigeonholed as an action star. However, neither Brandon nor Shannon studied martial arts after their father died.
Brandon eventually started to study martial arts around the age of 19, and because he was naturally coordinated he was able to pick it up quickly. He studied at the Inosanto Academy with Dan Inosanto and picked up proficiency in muay thai and JKD, but while he enjoyed martial arts it was not his life’s passion. Brandon studied martial arts because he kept being asked to do action films, but ultimately wanted to be a real actor and not be stuck in action roles.
Brandon was romantic, bohemian, and literary. He kept journals and wrote letters written in a way that reminds Shannon of an old timey “days of yore” style of writing.
Fun epitomized Brandon. He loved to play jokes, and had a big boisterous laugh and a huge smile. He was a daredevil and used to skateboard and ski, he was constantly breaking bones, getting stitches, and knocked himself unconscious a few times. He was always building rickety skate ramps in the backyard. 
Brandon loved nature. From when they were young, their mom would take them on camping trips and he continued to love nature and camping as a teen and adult. When he was an adult he would take his motorcycle and go on solo camping trips.
On one such camping trip, when he was around 19 or 20, Brandon rode up with some friends and then he went off on his own into the wilderness. He ended up in a meadow when a rainstorm hit. He pitched his tent, but it was old and had holes so it was waterlogged and leaking, barely keeping him protected. Here he wrote some journal entries.
“Day 5: I am depressed again. This trip, which was supposed to save me, is failing. I am having extremely fatalistic feelings. I’m in the woods now – alone. Right now, I wish I had some other people around. This small blue tent has become a prison of sorts. Outside, it’s raining, and if it rains much harder, I am going to die. Literally. I am far from help and it is cold and wet. Never have I been alone for this long. The tent is sagging around me, and a flood of water is rushing into the meadow…I want to go h