Beautiful Boy: Brandon Bruce Lee

This is an excerpt from my book "Smash, Crash & Burn: Tales From the Edge of Celebrity."

@copyright 2013 - All rights reserved

April 1990

It's one a.m. and I'm wiped out after a long waitressing shift for the Ahmanson Theater crowd downtown. I'm about to turn out the light over the clock radio when my phone rings. It's probably my old college roommate calling after anchoring the eleven o'clock news at KSBW Monterey. I'm too tired to talk about her latest military flame so I let the answering machine pick up. My chirpy outgoing message grates on my nerves, then the long beep.

"Shan? Shannon, are you there?"

It's Brandon. He doesn't sound like himself. His voice is weighted by sadness, urgent with some indecipherable fear. Adrenaline courses through me. I quickly pick up.

"Hello?"

"You're there." He sounds relieved.

"Yes. Are you okay?"

"I don't know. I was listening to John Lennon, you know, I was listening to Beautiful Boy ... the song about his son ..."

Brandon's crying, which he's never done in front of me. He's always larger than life, given to grand gestures and grandstanding. He's confident, cocky and romantic, but rarely vulnerable.

"I miss my dad," he says brokenly. "Can you come over?"

"I'll be right there."

Banging the phone down, I yank on my sweats and grab the glasses I wear when I'm not wearing contact lenses. I jump in my shoe-skate Honda hatchback and pull out of my garage in sixty seconds flat. Rescuing people is my religion.

When I arrive I find Brandon in his bedroom huddled under his heavy duvet. He looks like a small boy, with dark smudges under his eyes.

"Hey, sweetheart," I say.

"Come here," he holds his arms out to me. I climb into bed next to him, put my arms around him. I notice the TV is on.

"What are you watching?"

"My dad's funeral."

On screen is newsreel footage on a VHS tape of legendary martial artist Bruce Lee's ceremonial funeral in Hong Kong sixteen years earlier. Bruce Lee is Brandon's father. In the grainy footage Bruce's corpse rests in an open casket displayed to all in a throng-filled square that's a paparazzi/media circus.

His body is shrouded in white silk revealing only his waxen, expressionless face.

Photographers shove to get pictures. Security holds back the rabid fans. Brandon's mom, Linda, wearing short brown hair, maintains a stoic expression behind dark sunglasses until she's led to the casket and sees her husband. There she breaks down.

It's strange to see this iteration of Linda. The Linda I know is cheerful, bubbly and blonde. She keeps a welcoming, humble ranch home in the Pacific Palisades and is a low-key mom with her feet firmly planted on the ground. Not the tragic, public widow in this newsreel.

Next there are shots of Brandon, aged eight, and his little sister Shannon, then four, hoisted up by handlers so they can look down at their father in his coffin. They seem bewildered. Incapable of processing the madness of the situation, let alone the fact of their dad's death.

"You can't watch this anymore," I say. "You're just torturing yourself."

I get out of bed and turn off the TV. Brandon doesn't try to stop me or argue with me.