Alternate Title Confusion
When The Big Boss was being prepared for American distribution, it was going to be retitled as The Chinese Connection, as a play on the popular The French Connection, seeing as how both films dealt with drug trafficking. Meanwhile, Bruce Lee's second film, Fist of Fury, was going to be virtually identical in terms of its title, with the only difference being that it would be Fists of Fury rather than Fist of Fury. However, somewhere between being exported from Golden Harvest studios to being imported to US independent film company National General Pictures, the titles ended up being switched. As a result, The Big Boss became Fists of Fury and Fist of Fury became The Chinese Connection. To this day, there is still confusion among the titles, yet film purists refer to the two films under their original titles. Recent American TV showings and the recent official US DVD release, originally available in The Bruce Lee Ultimate Collection box set, from Twentieth Century-Fox have restored the original titles of all the Bruce Lee films that were renamed; as of 2004 this film is now officially called The Big Boss in the United States. The current DVD version also has a subtitle that says "A.K.A. Fists of Fury" when The Big Boss title appears on screen, as the source material is the Fortune Star digital remasters.
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Famous quotes containing the words alternate, title and/or confusion:
“Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Behind her was confusion in the room,
Of chairs turned upside down to sit like people
In other chairs, and something, come to look,
For every room a house has parlor, bedroom,
And dining room thrown pell-mell in the kitchen.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)