Remembering Former Love, Brandon Lee, 2. Years After His Death on the Movie Set of “The Crow”Twenty years ago this month a young man’s trajectory to stardom was cut tragically short.

Legendary martial artist and actor Bruce Lee’s charismatic son, Brandon Lee, was carving a name of his own in film when he died tragically on the set of the gothic, comic film The Crow.  I spent a year with Brandon before his rocket took off and this is the small part of his story that is mine as well. I remember you, beautiful boy. Brandon and I circa 1. The following is excerpted from my book Smash, Crash and Burn: Tales From the Edge of Celebrity. A rough, unedited video of Brandon’s and my take on David Mamet’s Edmund is Here. April 1. 99. 0. It’s one a. I’m wiped out after a long waitressing shift for the Ahmanson Theater crowd in downtown L.

A. I’m about to turn out the light over the clock radio when my phone rings. I figure it’s my old college roommate calling after anchoring the eleven o’clock news at KSBW Monterey. Too tired to talk about her latest military romance, I let the answering machine pick up.

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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 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 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 his father’s ceremonial funeral in Hong Kong sixteen years earlier. In the grainy footage Bruce Lee’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 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. Watch She Came On The Bus Online Metacritic. She keeps a welcoming, humble ranch home in the Pacific Palisades and is a low- key mom with her feet planted firmly 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.

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Brandon doesn’t try to stop me or argue with me.“Will you stay with me?” he asks.“Of course I will.”I climb back in bed. Kiss his face. Hold him.“Don’t leave,” he says in a way that makes the hair stand up on my neck.“I’m not going anywhere,” I murmur like a vow, “I love you.”“I love you, too.”It’s quiet for a while. Brandon’s breathing evens.

His body relaxes. I think he’s fallen asleep. Then he says like a mantra, like a prayer, “I’m going to die young. Younger than my dad did.”“Don’t say that!” I scold. You’re going to live to be a very, very old man.”But I’m wrong. Bruce Lee died in Hong Kong on July 2. The coroner’s report said, “Death by misadventure.”He was thirty- two years old.

Brandon will die twenty years later on March 3. Wilmington, North Carolina when a dummy bullet penetrates his abdomen and lodges in his spine while shooting a scene from the gothic- comic film The Crow. He will only be twenty- eight years old.*****Hollywood, June 1. I’m an aspiring actress (and, as night must follow day, also a waitress) hanging out at The Cat and Fiddle pub on Sunset Boulevard with the cast of an Equity- waiver play called Fullfed Beast, written and directed by John Lee Hancock. Later Hancock would go on to write and direct films like The Rookie and The Blind Side, but at the moment is struggling for work like the rest of us. My friend Robin, who is the makeup artist for the play, invited me to the after- party. I watch the actor named Brandon shoot pool.

Robin told me earlier that he’s Bruce Lee’s son, which I thought was kind of cool. But it wasn’t until he walked onstage, chock- full of charisma, that my heart throbbed like a teeny- bopper at a David Cassidy concert circa 1. He played Flea, a hard- edged incarcerated criminal, and I sat in the front row of the audience so close to him I could’ve plucked the cigarette he inexpertly sucked right out of his mouth. But whenever I approach Brandon at the pub he keeps leading me over to his best friend, Bill, then dashing off. I’m not interested in Bill, who looks a lot like me, blonde, blue- eyed, familiar. It’s Brandon I find dreamy.

To me he’s exotic, fine- boned, hazel- eyed, with dark brows and hair. He moves like a sinuous cat. As the night winds down I’ve given up my Brandon quest. I sit at a table despondently finishing my beer when I feel two hands placed on either of my shoulders.

I lean my head back and look up to find Brandon’s face looking down into mine.“Are you flirting with me?” I demand.“Am I flirting with you?” He seems to consider the idea for the first time, teasing me a bit. I guess I am.”“Good,” I say with a confidence I wish I had when it came to auditions.

I’m always very confident with men, right up until the moment I fall in love with them, after which I become a nervous wreck. Having recently broken up with my college sweetheart I hope I’m done with Love and will remain as simultaneously aloof and amorous as a female Errol Flynn.

Two minutes later I’m on the back of Brandon’s fast- flying motorcycle grabbing on to this leather- jacketed wild- child for dear life. *****The first thing I notice when his motorcycle rolls up the long, cracked- cement driveway to his bungalow house is the 1. Cadillac hearse.“You own a hearse?”Brandon shoots me a mega- watt, chipped- tooth smile, “It’s great for camping.”“You’re not doing the whole James Dean thing are you?

The leather jacket, the boots, the motorcycle, a hearse?”“Baby, I’m a lot more original than James Dean.” Opening his front door with a flourish he says, “Welcome to my humble abode.”Entering his chicly ramshackle, tiny craftsman Silver Lake home is like entering a seductive, Oriental universe. Asian scarves are casually draped over thrift- store lampshades. Japanese folding screens dissect the rooms.

Chopsticks rest in a bamboo kitchen drying rack. Brandon sashays about the room lighting a studiously haphazard array of candles. Watch Good Online Etonline more.

I’ve never seen a boy move with such grace and flare.