On March 31, 1993, while making The Crow, the crew filmed a scene in which Lee’s character walked into his apartment and discovered his girlfriend being raped by thugs. Actor Michael Massee, who played one of the film’s villains, was supposed to fire a gun at Lee as he walked into his apartment with groceries.
Because the movie’s second unit team was running behind schedule, it was decided that dummy cartridges (cartridges that outwardly appear to be functional, but contain no gunpowder) would be made from real cartridges. A cartridge with only a primer and a bullet was fired in the pistol prior to the scene. It caused a squib load, in which the primer provided enough force to push the bullet out of the cartridge and into the barrel of the revolver, where it became stuck.
The malfunction went unnoticed by the crew, and the same gun was used again later to shoot the death scene, having been re-loaded with blanks. However, the squib load was still lodged in the barrel, and was propelled by the blank cartridge’s explosion out of the barrel and into Lee’s body. Although the bullet was traveling much more slowly than a normally fired bullet would be, the bullet’s large size and the extremely short firing distance made it powerful enough to fatally wound Lee.
When the blank was fired, the bullet shot out and hit Lee in the abdomen and lodged in his spine. He fell down instantly and the director shouted “Cut!”, but Lee did not respond. The cast and crew filming rushed to him and noticed he was wounded. He was immediately rushed to the hospital. Lee’s heart stopped once on the set and once in the ambulance. Following a six hour operation to remove the bullet and despite being given 60 pints (28 Liters) of blood, Lee was pronounced dead at 1:30pm on March 31, 1993.
His funeral was held several days later; he was buried next to his father in Lake View Cemetery, Seattle. The following day, a memorial service was held in Los Angeles.
The gravestone, designed by North Snohomish County sculptor Kirk McLean, is a tribute to Brandon and Eliza’s young love. Its two twisting rectangles of charcoal granite join at the bottom and pull apart at the top. “It represents Eliza and Brandon, the two of them, and how the tragedy of his death separated their mortal life together,” said his mother, Linda Lee Cadwell, who described son, like father, as a poetic and romantic person.
The shooting was ruled an accident. The theory of the Lee “family curse” was also carried over from Bruce Lee’s death to Brandon’s, as he had died almost 20 years after his father and before the release of the film which could have been his breakthrough to stardom.
Legacy
After Lee’s death, his fiancée Eliza Hutton and his mother supported director Alex Proyas’ decision to complete The Crow. At the time of Lee’s death, only eight days were left before completion of the movie. A majority of the film had already been completed with Lee and only a few scenes remained to be done.
To complete the film, stunt double Chad Stahelski, who was a friend of Lee’s at the famed Inosanto Academy, was used as a stand-in; special effects were used to add Lee’s face on to the stunt double. Another stunt double named Jeff Cadiente was also used to complete the movie. These scenes were filmed after Lee’s death:
- Eric Draven’s death in flashbacks.
- A scene with Eric walking into his apartment after returning from the dead was digitally composited from a scene of Lee walking into an alleyway with raindrops added (the rest of the scenes in the apartment were all done with the double);
- Lee’s face was digitally imposed onto the stunt double when Eric puts on make-up in front of a mirror and walks towards the broken down window of his apartment;
- When Sarah (Rochelle Davis) visits Eric, his face is not seen as it is actually the stunt double.
- When Eric plays his guitar on the rooftop, it is one of Lee’s body doubles.
- In the scene in which Eric Draven kills secondary villain T-Bird (David Patrick Kelly), he does not speak, nor is his face shown; the close-up of Draven’s face was from a deleted shot.
- A scene in which Eric Draven is running on the rooftops from the police after a shootout was filmed with a double, as was his escape in a police car.
The Crow was released in May 1994 and became a box office hit grossing over $50 million dollars at the U.S box office and gaining a loyal cult following many years after its release. The film is dedicated to Lee and Hutton. They were to have been married on April 17, 1993, in Mexico. Lee is survived by his mother and sister.
The grave site of Brandon Lee and his father, Bruce Lee
- In an interview just prior to his death, Lee quoted a passage from Paul Bowles’ book The Sheltering Sky that he had chosen for his wedding invitations; it is now inscribed on his tombstone:
“Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you cannot conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless…”
The quotation is not attributed to Bowles in either Lee’s final interview or on his tombstone, leading some fans to the mistaken impression that Lee composed the passage himself. The interview can be seen on VHS, DVD and Blu-Ray releases of the The Crow.
Seven years after Lee’s death, a direct-to-video Swedish film titled Sex, Lögner and Videovåld (Sex, Lies and Video Violence) was released in which Lee had a very brief cameo appearance. Lee had filmed his cameo appearance in 1992 at the time he was promoting Rapid Fire in
Sweden, but the film was delayed for seven years finally releasing in 2000. It was dedicated to Lee during the end credits.
At the time of his death, his father’s biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story was ready for release. The film was released two months after Lee’s death, with a dedication to his memory in the end credits. In the film, Lee was portrayed by child actor Iain M. Parker.
