Bruce Lee: His Last Days, His Last Nights

Did you know that to really understand the death of movie star, martial artist extraordinaire, and philosopher Bruce Lee, you have to know all the dreary details of wannabe actress, gambling addict, and pathological whiner Betty Ting Pei's life? Lee died in Betty's apartment in 1973, and she took a lot of flak for it, apparently, so three years later she decided to set the record straight in the terrible Lei Siu Lung yi ngo, or Bruce Lee and I—with the emphasis really on the "I." Betty tells her story to a sympathetic bartender while a gang of toughs wait for her outside the bar. In her flashbacks Lee is played by Danny Lee, who doesn't really look like Lee and totally lacks his charm and athletic prowess and catlike grace. The fight scenes are incompetently staged, and dim mak isn't even mentioned!

Here are some things Athens and I learned about Bruce Lee from His Last Days:

1. Betty Ting Pei loved movies when she was a girl and always wanted to be an actress.
2. Betty Ting Pei's gambling problem was the only thing that stood in the way of her success.
3. Betty Ting Pei only ever posed in the nude because she was drugged.
4. Bruce Lee regularly made it a point in contract negotiations to get Betty Ting Pei movie roles. (Though wouldn't you know it? She's about to get her big break when he dies on her!)

Somehow I don't imagine His Last Days really did much to rehabilitate Betty's image in Hong Kong, but I could be wrong.