Lifelong Lee fan gets to help tell his story
Asian American composer with Bay Area roots scores ESPN doc
Goh Nakamura’s love of Bruce Lee goes back to when the South Bay native would be glued to the TV screen as a child to watch the martial arts legend’s films.
“Our family used to live in Sunnyvale in the ’80s, and a local TV station would play his movies right before I had to go to bed when I was 7 or 8 years old. I’d watch part of it and get all fired up wanting to fight,” Nakamura recalls, with a chuckle. “And then my parents would put me to bed. I was just so angry because it was such an exciting thing to watch, and I wanted to see how it ended.”
He also wanted to revel in the fact that Lee, who was born in San Francisco, was always the leading man at a time when there was little Asian representation in Hollywood.
“The only Asian faces on TV were
Arnold from ‘Happy Days,’ Jack Soo from ‘Barney Miller,’ Sulu from ‘Star Trek’ … but they were all side characters,” he tells The Chronicle, by phone while sheltered in place at home in downtown Los Angeles. “Bruce was the focus of his movies.”
Now, coming up on the 47th anniversary of Lee’s death, the singersongwriter and composer has transformed his admiration of the pop culture icon into music that can be heard when ESPN premieres “Be Water” on Sunday, June 7. The documentary about Lee, directed by Bao Nguyen as part of the cable sports network’s “30 for 30” series, features Nakamura’s original score.
Its premiere was moved up after the success of “The Last Dance,” the “30 by 30” docuseries about basketball great Michael Jordan and the 199798 Chicago Bulls that began airing in April. With the accelerated deadline, Nakamura admits
“30 for 30: Be Water” premieres at 9 p.m. Sunday, June 7, on ESPN.
that he probably would have had to selfquarantine regardless of the pandemic to finish writing and recording the new cues and pieces for the ESPN cut of the documentary.
“There are a bunch of themes that Bao, the director, wanted. One was a Hong Kong theme for any time Bruce goes back to Hong Kong. Another one was a Hollywood theme for all his experiences in Hollywood,” he explains. “Then there’s also a theme for his dad, a theme for his wife, a theme for his son and a theme about racism.”
It’s been an eventful spring for Nakamura, who also scored the feature film “I Will Make You Mine.” Released digitally on May 25, Lynn Chen’s directorial debut also showcases Nakamura’s acting and songs. It was the opening night selection for CAAMFest Online: Heritage at Home in early May, with Nakamura and costar YeaMing Chen performing some of the songs that appeared in the film live at the screening’s virtual afterparty. But “I Will Make You Mine” had only a few instrumental cues, as opposed to the more than an hour of music for the 97minute version of “Be Water.”
“Goh has a really delicate touch when it comes to his music,” Nguyen says of Nakamura’s style. “He’s sensitive in the best way, and you feel that really with his music.”
Bouncing between Lexington, Mass., and Sunnyvale early in his life, Nakamura’s family ended up back in the Bay Area partway through his freshman year of high school. Before graduating from Saratoga High School and earning a professional music degree from the famed Berklee College of Music in Boston, he was in bands with classmates Zach Gill (ALO vocalist/keyboardist/cofounder) and Patrick Stone, a former vocalist in exGuns N’ Roses’ drummer Steven Adler’s band.
“Goh has a deep knowledge of a lot of different styles that allows him to (be) flexible, musically, in his scores,” Nguyen says. For instance, though Nakamura started as a guitar major at Berklee — and to this day is an impressive sixstring slinger — Nguyen asked him to focus on a different instrumentation.
“I wanted to push Goh outside his comfort zone a bit more and have him carry that same sensitivity and delicateness that makes him a great songwriter but translate that into orchestral instruments that are more commonplace in film scores,” Nguyen says. “We did use a lot of his guitar compositions because it does bring a level of intimacy to the music, but I also wanted to make sure we had a very epic quality to some of the score because hey, we’re talking about Bruce Lee here.”
Another friend from Saratoga High, Marc Streitenfeld, would provide Nakamura with an introduction to Hollywood. The German exchange student took guitar lessons from Nakamura in high school and later visited him in Boston, wanting to check out Berklee for himself. “And then one day he shows up at my doorstep in Saratoga, years later, and he’s, like, ‘Hey, man, I’m working with Hans Zimmer,’ ” Nakamura recounts.
Streitenfeld had moved to Los Angeles and, after working with Zimmer, became the goto composer for director and producer Ridley Scott. He invited Nakamura to contribute guitar and vocals to Scott’s 2006 movie “A Good Year,” and bass and guitar to 2007’s “American Gangster.”
Nakamura brought on jazz pianist and San Jose native Art Hirahara and violinist (and downstairs neighbor) Paul Dateh in similar roles for the expansive score of “Be Water.”
Without a glitzy premiere to attend, how will Nakamura celebrate the broadcast debut of “Be Water”?
“I’m going to sign up for a trial subscription to ESPN,” he says, “and probably watch it on the computer I scored it on.”