Bruce Lees Silent Flute Movie Explained (What Changed After His Death)

Bruce Lee’s Silent Flute Movie Explained (What Changed After His Death?)

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In the 1960s, Bruce Lee was working on a movie called The Silent Flute. Here’s what it was, and why it ultimately went forward without him.

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Bruce Lees Silent Flute Movie Explained (What Changed After His Death)

In the 1960s, Bruce Lee was working on a movie called The Silent Flute, but the project was never finished in his lifetime. Though he abandoned the movie, it was ultimately made anyway, albeit a few years after his death.

As a martial arts actor, Bruce Lee only completed four kung fu films: The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon, and Enter the Dragon. There were other projects that he was involved in that he wasn’t able to finish. Easily the biggest of these was Game of Death, a movie which would have seen Lee’s hero advancing through a tower, beating up numerous martial artists of different styles on the way to the top. When Lee died before filming wrapped, production was shut down, only for it to be restarted and completed without him. Only a portion of Game of Death was actually made from footage Lee shot for the film.

Fans will never have a chance to see what Bruce Lee’s full vision of Game of Death really was, but they did at least get to witness some of the fights that were choreographed, such as the one he had with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. That’s more than what can be said for a few other Bruce Lee projects that never even got off the ground. In the 1960s, Lee came up with a treatment for a kung fu western TV series, but it was rejected by Warner Bros. Around the same time, he had a plan to make a movie called The Silent Flute. Here’s what he had planned for it, why he didn’t make it, and what changed after his death.

Bruce Lee’s The Silent Flute Plan & Story Details

Bruce Lees Silent Flute Movie Explained (What Changed After His Death)

During the late 1960s, Bruce Lee was on track for his film career to take off. He had already co-starred in ABC’s The Green Hornet TV series as Kato, but had yet to become a big movie star. However, he did have a lot of relationships with several major figures in Hollywood. Many were actors he had become acquainted with through his reputation in martial arts. Lee taught kung fu to several celebrities during these years. Two of these were screenwriter Stirling Silliphant and A-list Hollywood actor James Coburn. Together with Coburn and Silliphant, Lee came up with an idea for a martial arts movie. The three co-wrote a script titled The Silent Flute, and managed to get Warner Bros. involved. According to a forward included in the script by Lee, the point of The Silent Flute was to demonstrate “the great difference between Oriental and Western thinking.” Lee’s intention was to tell a deeply philosophical story that explored the mental aspect of martial arts and the idea of self-mastery.

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Their script centered on a young martial artist named Cord, whose main objective was to find a book that would supposedly unlock the path to true enlightenment. Of course, getting to the book was to be filled with challenges. Lee, Coburn, and Silliphant packed Cord’s journey with trials and obstacles that would stand in his way. The movie was supposed to end with Cord finding nothing in the book but mirrors, and the purpose of this was to send the message that a person can only find real enlightenment from within.

The Silent Flute Cast

Bruce Lees Silent Flute Movie Explained (What Changed After His Death)

Bruce Lee expected to have a starring role in The Silent Flute, but he had no intention of playing the main protagonist, who was supposed to be a white character. Instead, Lee was to play various martial artists who would encounter Cord and teach him kung fu and other valuable lessons along the way. As for the role of Cord, Lee originally hoped that he could get Steve McQueen on board. Like Coburn, McQueen was a close friend of Lee’s who at one time had trained with him on a regular basis. Given that the actor had recently starred in critically-acclaimed box office hits like The Sand Pebbles and Bullitt, he would have been a great hire. However, Steve McQueen refused to take the part, claiming that he wasn’t going to help Lee launch a movie career for himself. Lee was angry that McQueen turned him down, but he remained undeterred. He turned his attention to James Coburn, who had already been actively involved in making The Silent Flute happen. It was agreed that the two would star in it together, with Coburn playing Cord and Lee playing his kung fu mentors.

Why Bruce Lee Didn’t Make The Silent Flute

Bruce Lees Silent Flute Movie Explained (What Changed After His Death)

Once they had a script ready, scouting out locations for filming was unfortunately the furthest Lee, Coburn, and Silliphant were able to get in making the movie. They traveled to India and began looking for ideal locations. It was during this time that their plan for The Silent Flute fell apart. Though Lee and Coburn were good friends, the two struggled to get along. One biographer said that part of the problem was that Lee felt like Coburn — and not him — was being treated as the movie’s star [Martial Development]. In the end, the two weren’t able to work things out and both actors abandoned the project. Shortly afterward, Lee was cast in The Big Boss, and thus began his days as a martial arts film star in Hong Kong.

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Some time passed before Coburn and Silliphant decided to revisit The Silent Flute, but by this time, Lee had already moved on to other things. Coburn said in an interview that when he tried to convince Lee to rejoin the project, the actor was no longer interested in the movie. He told Coburn, “you can’t afford me now” [Bruce Lee Lives].

The Silent Flute Became Circle of Iron

Lee gave up on The Silent Flute, but Stirling Silliphant never did. He reworked the script with Stanley Mann and transformed it into Circle of Iron in 1978. Coburn was replaced with Jeff Cooper, and David Carradine took the role that Lee had intended for himself. Interestingly, Carradine is the same actor that played the lead in the Kung Fu TV show, a role which Lee had auditioned for. Well-known actors like Christopher Lee, Eli Wallach, and Roddy McDowall were all cast in the film as well.

Circle of Iron, which gave Bruce Lee a writing credit, kept the premise of his Silent Flute script, but also made some big changes. Graphic violent and sexual content were taken out, and some comedic scenes were added that weren’t in the original. Plus, its lead was an actor who wasn’t a real martial artist, which was contrary to what Lee and Coburn were going for with the film. Coburn previously expressed dissatisfaction with Cooper’s lack of martial arts training, and the final product in general, as he didn’t feel that it lived up to the vision that the two actors had. That being said, since then there have been other attempts to make a proper Silent Flute. It took decades, but Bruce Lee’s unmade The Warrior pitch was finally brought to life, so it could be that The Silent Flute could get the same treatment at some point in the future.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/bruce-lee-silent-flute-circle-iron-movie-explained/

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