Pre-production A major source for the film's screenplay, which was written by director Rob Cohen in cooperation with Edward Khmara and John Raffo, was Linda Lee Cadwell's biography
Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew. Cadwell provided resources for the film's production. Scenes showing hand-written notes and drawings from Bruce's book
Tao of Jeet Kune Do are his original works. She also provided access to Bruce's clothing so replicas could be created for the film. Cohen stated his first problem when writing the screenplay was to condense Bruce's life into under two hours of film. He decided to avoid making a standard biographical film and instead incorporate "mystical and legendary aspects" to dramatise Bruce's life, While Brandon was the right age and had appropriate martial arts training to portray his father, and was perceived by some as a likely choice for the role, producer
Raffaella De Laurentiis said he did not look Chinese enough and that she would have refused to work on the project if they had to resort to making Brandon appear more Asian.
Jason Scott Lee, who had auditioned for a role in
The Last of the Mohicans but was rejected because he did not appear Native American, was recommended for the role of Bruce early in pre-production. Jason said at first he felt intimidated by his role portraying Bruce but he overcame his fear after speaking to Brandon. To prepare for their roles, Jason and
Lauren Holly trained in Bruce's martial-arts style of
Jeet Kune Do for months under Bruce's former student
Jerry Poteet. Cohen cast
Nancy Kwan as Gussie Yang, a restaurant owner and Bruce's employer. Like Bruce, Kwan played a pivotal role in the acceptance of actors of Asian ancestry in major Hollywood film roles and Cohen wanted audiences to be reminded of her achievement and the struggle of
Asian American actors. He cast
Michael Learned as Vivian Emery because he loved her portrayal of Olivia in
The Waltons and wished to see Bruce's confrontation with the person recognisable as that character. Bruce's daughter, Shannon, has a cameo as a singer in the party scene, at which Linda tells Bruce she is pregnant with Shannon.
Sven-Ole Thorsen was cast as the Demon due to his height and physique. Cohen states he did a "remarkable job" during the fight scenes considering he was unable to see out of the costume's headpiece. Cohen gave himself a cameo as the director of
Enter the Dragon.
Filming was used for the film's opening scene. The ceramic figures at the top drew Cohen's attention when he was scouting locations. The setbacks used up the entirety of the film's $1.3million
contingency budget. and some of the scenes that take place in Hong Kong were filmed in California. The outdoor scene in which Bruce teaches martial arts to a football team was filmed at a college in Los Angeles using exact replicas of the columns at the University of Washington, where Bruce used to teach. The crowd scenes during the premiere of
The Big Boss were shot in
Macao, China, because the crew could not obtain permission to close roads and film scenes involving hundreds of
extras in Hong Kong, where the scene is set. Cohen inserted several references to Bruce's films; the extended warm-up routine by Bruce and Johnny before their fight is a reference to the one performed by Bruce and
Chuck Norris before their fight in
The Way of the Dragon. Despite exhausting the contingency budget, Universal agreed to spend a further $1million on fight-scene sound effects and the soundtrack after viewing the film's
rough cut, bringing the final cost to $16million. Cohen decided to expand the theme of Bruce's father's belief that a demon was stalking his son, by showing the Demon chasing Brandon. Filming was completed and
Dragon was less than two months away from opening when Brandon died in a shooting accident while filming
The Crow in March 1993. Following Brandon's death, Cohen asked Cadwell whether she wanted to postpone the release or modify the film; she declined and asked for it to be dedicated to his memory with an appropriate quotation. With Cadwell's approval, Cohen chose a quotation by
Saint Augustine he originally had on the front of the script: "The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering", which he felt applied to both Bruce and Brandon.
Soundtrack The soundtrack for
Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story was composed by
Randy Edelman, who used a 90-piece orchestra and traditional Chinese instruments. Cohen praised the soundtrack for acting as a kind of "emotional
through line" for his film. Ray Apello from
Entertainment Weekly lauded its romantic tracks, Edelman's soundtrack has been licensed for use in trailers for several other films. ==Release==