In 1974 William Lee got a glimpse of a cinematic giant. After experiencing Bruce Lee, he chased his idol, studied kung fu, and later created his own independent martial arts cinema; ultimately defining his purpose. His journey to become a professional filmmaker has been filled with drama. This is how William Lee got on his Black Bruce Lee, overcame trauma, a Hollywood Shuffle, trials of life, and on top of this, put an X in his name, so he could create films by any means necessary. 

by Clarke Illmatical

Before Bruce Leroy in Harlem, there was Black Bruce Lee in Dayton

“I Use To Get It In Ohio”

William Lee was born in NYC, but he was forged and molded in Dayton, Ohio. A Black household with a mother and father, Huxtable shit and all. His moms worked for New York Bell, his pops, an aircraft engineer, WW2 veteran, and former negro league player who also had an interest in photography. His household was the necessary foundation and sanctuary from a community and classmates who didn’t understand him.

“We got to Dayton, and I was subject to a lot of physical and mental abuse from the Black kids because they simply did not understand me. I came from a very different family background, a very different mindset. 

Dayton was very urban, almost a ghetto situation. My mindset was going to school, doing what I have to do, and I was intent on doing something with myself. I was seen as White. I was seen as trying to be like a White person” explained William. 

William, aka Whitey, was about the books, and the kids in elementary to high school thought that he was a square jive-ass nigga. The kids in Dayton thought that William only listened to honky music. William knew better, he had soul, all kinds of swag, and it was an Asian giant who helped him find it. 

“In 1974, my late sister would always take us to the drive-in. On this particular night, there was a triple play of Bruce Lee. ENTER THE DRAGON, CHINESE CONNECTION, and FIST OF FURY. The night we went to see Bruce, it blew my mind. Till this day, it is hard for me to explain the effect of Bruce Lee walking on the screen. 

You go, ‘This is a bad motherfucker right here!’

It’s not just the martial arts; Bruce was a complete human being. I think he explained the art of expressing oneself. That’s how I live my life. I do martial arts, but there is something behind that. There’s a spirit, there’s an energy. With Bruce, it was magnetic; it was instant. We sat there and watched all three of those films back to back. When I got home, I was punching and kicking in the living room. 

That was what I would do with the rest of my life! I’m doing me, as Bruce Lee,” said William. 

Dayton’s Black Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee was a bad motherfucker, and William was determined to have a wallet that said the same. He sought out Dayton’s kung fu master, a brother with the Blackest name ever.

“I started studying martial arts intently. I got an instructor. A Black man named Mustafa Kenyatta, who actually trained with  Fred Wu, who was the original [American] Shaolin Kung Fu teacher.”

 In addition to Fred Wu, Kenyatta studied karate under the legendary martial artist  Jimmy Jones of Chicago and won several Judo championships under Sensei Ernest Curry. Kenyatta was a badass sensei who helped William develop confidence and much needed don’t-fuck-with-me swag. 

“When I watch 36 chambers, I say ‘That’s me!’ 

The kind of training we had, we did shit that was unlike the modern commercial martial arts schools. You didn’t pay money and get a belt; you, you paid to get your ass kicked, four hours a day. Weekdays, weekends, no heat in the building, cement floors. We even trained on beaches.”

Dayton Shaolin transformed insecure William and he started walking upright, with master killer vision. Dayton streets began talking, and soon, people wanted to test Black Bruce Lee. 

“It was a complete 180. Prior to that time, I was Billy, a punk ass. By the sophomore year in high school, the training got to a point where there was an aura I gave off, like ‘Don’t fuck with me!’

I can remember walking down the hallways and getting challenged. I can remember in high school, sometime in 1978, I’m walking down the hall with my friends. 

This dude jumps out from behind the locker. ‘I hear you know kung fu!’

He stands there, and a friend says, ‘You don’t want to mess with William, better back off!’ 

He says, ‘I’ll try it!’ 

He came at me and said ‘Raaaaarw!’ [Bruce Lee Voice]

He jumped back and said, ‘I’ll let you know!’ [Scared Sucka Voice]

William had established himself, bad motherfucker wallet and all. Like his idol, he desired to see himself on the big screen. 

Movietown

William became further interested in filmmaking while in high school. While in art class, he saw projected images come together to create a movie. It sparked him to do the same. 

William reminisced on his first film, called “HAND OF THE KUNG FU DRAGON.”

“Me and four or five kids went to a place called Princeton Park, and my brother came down from Brooklyn, and he filmed us doing these fight scenes. The funny thing about it, I had no actual knowledge of choreographing a fight. For some reason, there was something in me that said 

‘This is how you do this!’

So when I look back at this film now, everything was staged, and the blocking was right, the punches look like they are hitting, people are falling, I think it was meant to be.”

It was meant to be, and others noticed William’s passion.  One former classmate from a high school photography class named Denise made this observation “William was a die-hard fan of Bruce Lee.  He loved Bruce Lee and the action shots in the movies. We had an assignment, and Bill did a home kung fu movie featuring his brother and other guys. It had a plot, action, and everything.  If he talked to you about Bruce Lee, he would transform into this totally different guy.  He would become excited and could talk to you forever about his idol and action movies. His passion for filmmaking was evident then!”

William’s passion for filmmaking encouraged him to focus on full-length features. Unlike many filmmakers who have gone to film school and graduate with a film short [10 – 15 minutes], William has always been focused on shooting feature films and somewhat of a visionary. The movement to shoot features instead of shorts has been a recent trend in independent filmmaking.

William was ahead of the pack, and this made him an outcast — again. 

“From the very start, my filmmaking experience was martial arts film. With that, I always tell people, I never wanted to do short movies, and this is back in 1974. That’s what bugs me about the current generation of filmmakers. They are given this notion that because you shoot a short film, you’re a filmmaker. I don’t buy that at all. 

I got black-listed in Columbus, Ohio, because the local film association got tired of me saying this, and the leader banned me from coming to meetings because he didn’t want me telling filmmakers, ‘They are not filmmakers!’ They could not deal with that. 

My first films were running, 35, 40, or 50 minutes. This was me as a teenager shooting features and editing, myself in the basement of my parent’s home.”

William notes that he probably made at least 15 films before he attended film school. All of those hours of shooting, editing, and movie-making enabled him to sharpen his storytelling skills. 

William’s enthusiasm encouraged many of his friends to chase Bruce Lee as well. He and his crew recreated several of Bruce Lee’s films and gave them an indy Dayton twist. 

“We started out with silent film. Then we moved to sound film; then we moved into doing kung fu movies, dubbing the voices after the film was done. A lot of my films are real Chinese style. We actually dubbed the voices. Which is part of the appeal. 

In those days as kids, a lot of it was fantasizing, but again, for my small group of friends that was doing this, I think we understood, we were doing something relevant and something that was playing around with a camera. We had story structure, we had character, we had a storyline, we had kung fu outfits. There were highly choreographed martial arts scenes. We had had a professional bent to everything we did. There was never any amateur in anything we did ever,” said William.

All of his friends had seen Bruce Lee’s movies several times, so it was easy to recreate the scenes and characters. “I’m playing Bruce Lee’s character, and I have all the characters that were around him, in the original Chinese Connection, and they said ‘Oh yeah, I remember that!’ 

We built it out from there. It was always a synergy-driven thing, where you have your idea, explain it, but they were on the same wavelength as you,” said William.  

Surviving The Wonder Years

Back in the days, no one took William’s independent films seriously except for himself and his close circle of friends. The Black guy, who acted “White” had grandiose ideas about making films when there were very few Black filmmakers, and like any other visionary, haters tried to stop his empire of dreams. 

“It was sort of a scarlet letter for me because I became a target. Any chance they could have to put me down or make me feel bad or point me out, they did it. In my new film [BLACK WOLF], I selected incidents from my life, fictionalized obviously, but many of the characters in this film are based on characters who gave me hell during my school years,” explained William.

His classmates gave him hell, but William remained on the straight and narrow, avoiding any fake ass ninjas.  James Garrett, a childhood friend who appeared in TREASURE OF THE NINJA recalls hanging with William and how his conduct was influential to the success he’s had in life, saying 

“I was hanging around friends who were always drinking and smoking. When I met Bill, one of the first things he said when I got into the car ‘If you drink or smoke dope, don’t get in my car!’ 

I got to know his family. All we did in the summer was make films and go out dancing, and practice martial arts. 

If he [William] hadn’t come along, if I hadn’t met him, I probably would have gone in a different direction with the other friends. My neighborhood was not that bad, but you had your elements close by. If you were looking for trouble, you could find it if you went a couple of blocks. When I met him [William], I said, ‘Oh, there’s other things to do other than criminal activity.’ He was a good influence on me. He was like the big brother I didn’t have, and his father was like that too.”

While Dayton hated, William channeled the ridicule into creativity, fueling his success in the film industry.

“That kind of hate and bitterness helped me mold who I am. I don’t believe you can achieve anything in life unless you have that adversity. It doesn’t make it right, but that pushed me to do more and more. Every time I think about those days, getting chased home with rocks inside of snowballs, my teammates cheering against me in a baseball game… 

In 1966, it wasn’t like White people were your best friends. What I was looking for was some kind of refuge from dealing with the racism. In 66 Black people knew their area. There was a place called Kettering or Trotwood, you couldn’t go there. You figure, I’m safe, I’m around my people. I was trapped in a reverse concentration camp. It was like I was the target. I had no safe space,” said William.

William admits that those years in Dayton took a toll on his self-esteem. His idol, Bruce Lee, gave him a goal to work towards, a master that he could become.  

“Martial arts was a development of a philosophy and a physical ability to combat what I was going through during those years. That’s really what saved my life. I could have easily committed suicide. Bruce Lee and martial arts is what saved me. That’s why I am here today doing what I do” explained William.  

William’s Hollywood Shuffle

One of William’s most well-known films, which has helped him develop an underground following is TREASURE OF THE NINJA. William funded the film by working several jobs and paying for some expenses with a credit card. During an interview with a local news station, he was compared to Robert Townsend, a Black filmmaker, who independently raised funds to make the film HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE. The film touched on the difficulties that Black actors had in the industry, such as limited, stereotypical roles.

Despite William’s shuffle, TREASURE OF THE NINJA was the film that made people take note — outside of Dayton. 

“One of the first films to be edited on video. That was a time in the film industry when people were shooting motion picture films. We shot on super 8 film. I got all the film processed, edited, got it back from the lab, went to a local video studio. We transferred the film to what was called three-quarter-inch tape which is no more.  I had an editor working with me to cut the film on video. 

Up until that time, this was not heard of with independent filming production. People usually had it developed, put it on a flatbed or a moviola, and hand-crank the film through find the action scenes. I had to cut it. The amazing thing, that people don’t understand, with film, there was no second chance. I had a film that went through the camera the day I shot it, recorded my images. If I fucked up, it was over. People that had money could do a safety print. Meaning that it is a copy of the original film. 

There was a local public access channel and they had facilities and I went there and did a lot of cutting myself. A film distributor asked me to improve the quality of my film. I was just a college student. It was one of my first attempts at getting some major distribution. 

Finally, the film got out, I sold it out of the trunk of my car. I would drive around to Blockbuster video stores and say, ‘Hey, I got a kung fu film, what do you think?’

This was something about the genius of being an independent filmmaker. I got a phone book from the Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island areas. I started calling video stores ‘Hey My name is William Lee, I got this film TREASURE OF THE NINJA, you interested?’

They would order directly from me. I would send the VHS tapes in the mail to them. The artwork was done by a lady I worked with at a local radio station. I went to a Kinkos and made copies of the artwork she did and slid it in the sleeves of all these VHS tapes. 

All of the TREASURE OF THE NINJAS that are out there, that people have — I did those by myself! 

Most recently, AGFA / AMERICAN GENRE FILM ARCHIVE reached out to William regarding distribution. This distribution deal includes DRAGON VS NINJA, THE NEW CHINESE CONNECTION, and TREASURE OF THE NINJA.

Joe Ziemba, the director of AGFA spoke on his fondness for William’s films saying “I’m a fan of TREASURE OF THE NINJA. I have a VHS copy and feel that it’s one of the most impressive and joyous do-it-yourself action films of the 1980s. When I contacted William, I discovered that he had a treasure trove of unseen work that was made around the same time as TREASURE [OF THE NINJA]. AGFA felt that it was important to help William preserve these films and share them with a wider audience. We’re in the process of restoring the films now. We’ll be releasing them on Blu-ray and in theaters in 2021. We can’t wait!”

After TREASURE’s local success, William was focused on a larger film with a bigger budget. Just as Bruce Lee faced difficulties in Hollywood, William would encounter some of the filmmaking business’s negative realities.

Industry Rule #4081: Movie Company People Are Shady

With an impressive independent film resume, William still went to film school and obtained his bachelor’s and master’s. Soon after, he sought out financing from investors without knowing the rules of the game. 

“I put a pause on the filmmaking because we were contacted by a film investment group, and they turned out to be fraudulent. We got milked out of about $7000 dollars. We wasted like two to three years for a promise, and in those days there wasn’t a lot of internet and you couldn’t check them. We got suckered into that. There were three years where we did nothing. 

I had a film called EDGE OF TOLERANCE shot in 1991, and a distributor decided that they wanted to distribute it. Back in those days, they would form partnership agreements. Lawyers would sign off on it, and you were paying all of the legal fees. You were paying processing and notarizing and that stuff. As young filmmakers, we didn’t know we shouldn’t have been paying a dime. When this apple is put out here and says, this is your big break, you’re doing anything you can to make this work. 

That’s how these scam artists were working back in the days. They knew that independent filmmakers had no avenues and no outlet to get money. So they figured they would put a company together, tell people they are making films. They came up with a roster of fake investors. What tipped me off in the end, the voices — it was the same guy just changing the inflection in his voice. 

I contacted the FBI, and there was a show on ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT that investigated Hollywood scams. There were a number of people milked by PLATINUM FILM INVESTMENTS… These dudes probably made millions of dollars scamming filmmakers.” 

William stayed focused and didn’t let the investment scammers stop him. Soon, a trial of life came to test his inner dragon. 

Black Bruce Lee’s Greatest Battle

In 1997, after a car accident, William became very ill. The martial arts guy who always worked out, and ate well, was diagnosed with lupus. 

“All my joints were swelled up; I lost all my hair. I could not taste food anymore. I had numbness in my fingers, I was put into a wheelchair, they figured I was gone.  I was visiting my brother, and they took me to this hospital. They roll me in; I’ve lost 45 pounds. My mother is pushing me around in a wheelchair. They stuck 15 needles in me to take blood because they had to get to the foundation of why I was dying. 

My skin tissue started to peel off the body, I had this green flesh coming off of me. I can remember being on every drug known to man. I am sitting there with a pair of scissors cutting the green flesh off of my body. It’s disgusting. I was so zoned out; I wanted to get it off of me. The pain was constant. I was at a point because I was going to die. 

We went to Philadelphia, and a dermatologist said, ‘You have lupus!’

I was like, ‘What the fuck is that?’ 

They did two liver surgeries, they put me on chemo, off and on for a year and a half and they put me on medication… Then I started to stabilize. 

My doctors did not want me to go back to martial arts. They said the stress would kill me. 

I can remember a cold day in 1999, I was sitting on the couch feeling sorry for myself, and I looked up, and said ‘Fuck it, I’m going back!’ I bandaged myself up and went to the local gym, ‘I think I scared 95 percent of the people, I am screaming in pain as I am lifting weights. It was two years of this lupus battle and another year of training to get back where I am now.’

Lupus had Black Bruce Lee on the canvas, and there was a point in time when he almost tapped out. After several years of recovery, William became a licensed personal trainer and had given up on filmmaking. 

In 2000, somewhat beaten down by the trials of life, he was encouraged to return to his calling. 

“One day, my current wife walks in with some kind of horrible ninja film that was shot in Atlanta, it was awful. She says, ‘If these motherfuckers can do this film, your ass needs to be back in filmmaking!’”

William took his ass off the couch and got back to doing what he does best, badass motherfucker wallet and all. A few years later, he would make his first digital feature ROOM 13. 

Although Willam had returned to filmmaking, it would take him another decade before returning to martial arts cinema. However, this decade of filmmaking was significant. Unlike the passion projects of his youth, making independent films for specific genres helped him develop a greater understanding of the filmmaking business. 

Willam X — Filmmaking By Any Means Necessary

One of William’s most impressive and fun martial arts films is 7 BOLD DRAGONS. During the movie, a distorted version of THE GAME OF DEATH theme song is played repeatedly.

William explained how he obtained the audio saying, “This is back in 73, 74, you could not bootleg movies then. What we did, we took an actual tape recorder to the drive-in, and we would record the entire movie. Then you’d go home and replay the whole film, in our heads, what we saw on the screen. 

I would go by myself and make a clean recording of the film. Then I’d come home. In those days, we’d use projectors, I’d plug in the microphone in and put the microphone next to the tape recorder when the action scene started, there was the music for the movie. That’s how we did it back in those days.” 

As he got older and experienced as an independent filmmaker, he realized that he would often have to steal shots, like many filmmakers do — shooting at a location without permission.

“My film instructor once said, it is better to ask for forgiveness than it is permission because, once you start asking people, they want to know why. If you just show up and act like you know what you’re doing, nine times out of ten, no one will say a word to you. If they do, just say, ‘We have to get this last shot!’ So then you get everything you need. 

My whole career has been about finding places to shoot because people are not cooperative. One of the best examples is we were shooting a film called ARCHITECT OF CHAOS, back in 2008, somebody had promised the use of their warehouse. We show up in downtown Cincinnati. 

I have all of my actors, my crew. We’re standing outside the warehouse. My producer called the guy, and he decided he doesn’t want to drive down to open up. So here we are, 15 people standing in the middle of the street. I turn around; there’s a vacant house. I look at my DP. 

I said, ‘What do you think?’ 

We go into the vacant house, and for the next three hours, we were shooting in this house. In fact, if you see the trailer for ARCHITECT OF CHAOS, that is someone’s vacant home. We had no permission to be in there. We could have been arrested for trespassing. 

The trailer looks amazing and people were like, ‘How’d you get that set?’ 

‘Oh, we got it!’” explained William. 

Higher Learning

William is also an adjunct instructor at the University of Louisville and The Columbus College of Art and Design. He doesn’t pull punches while educating. He corrects students who have a distorted view of the industry and creating a career in film. There are levels to this. 

“Filmmaking is a process. I tell people, business is where you start. Film is fine, but you have to be a business person first. You have to figure out the budget, where it will go, and who will watch it. More important, you are constantly looking for places to shoot and people to work with you. That is a whole different skill set. Anyone can pick up the camera. Anyone can have a great idea, but to practically use business sense and take all these disparate elements and put them together and make a movie, that’s a whole other level. 

The course I’m teaching now is all about being a business person first, so you understand what you’re getting into. A lot of filmmakers get broken because they think it’s just art. There is a whole other level to how film works.”

The first day in class, I tell people, if you’re here to be an artist, go home. If you’re here to be famous, go home. If you want to know how to construct a business that will create some income, and not saying you will be a millionaire, but you’ll be able to do your thing without people looking over your head, and you want to be an indie filmmaker, you’re in the right course. 

We don’t first talk about fundraising and getting your script. I talk about your market. 

You have to have an understanding of ‘Can your shit sell?’ 

I understand you have a vision, and you’re an artist. Does anyone want to see it? 

Each one of you is a commodity, and you have to learn that lesson and deal with it now. Once you get out in the world and you don’t have this knowledge, you’ll quit because you don’t want to be a business person, but that’s what makes a successful filmmaker, is being a business person. Now it’s business, contracts. Everything becomes a product. 

The big myth about this is that anyone can pick up a camera and become a filmmaker; that’s simply not the truth. Being a filmmaker embodies taking your idea in your skull, getting it streaming or on a disc, and furthermore signing, an agreement that provides you some type of compensation for producing what you did. 

Otherwise, it’s a useless cycle. You have to have an end game before you start. 

And more importantly, who do you trust? There are a lot of lousy distribution companies. Always look out for scams.”

The independent sector of the film industry was devastated by a company called DISTRIBBER that ostensibly went bankrupt. The company promised to help independent filmmakers get on high-profile platforms like Netflix, in actuality, they were more like a modern day version of Platinum Film Investments, industry rule #4081 and all. They took money from thousands of independent filmmakers and shut down. 

“I always teach these kids, always look out for that scam coming. DISTRIBBER used to be the thing. They made millions.” 

Aside from early distribution scams, William has also had his ups and downs with piracy. Some of his films have been translated into different languages and streamed or sold in other countries. As a result, he had to get on his legal dragon and fight against individuals stealing from him. 

On Film School

Although he has always advocated shooting full-length features, he supports film school and values the overall education. 

William reminisced, “Back in the days when I went, Ohio studio was the third-rated film school in the country. We had an in-house facility. We had a sound lab in one room, the processing, the greatest instructors in the world. I can’t tell you the kind of mind-opening stories lessons I learned from these guys who grew up in the 30s and 40s and learned from the original masters.

That’s the use of film school, to have a historical grounding in what you’re doing, where it came from, and why it happened. As far as the practical aspects of doing film, film school is useless because they give you a camera, they talk about aperture, film rate, how to edit, but they don’t actually say ‘Before you buy your 4k Red Camera, do you actually know who is going to buy your shit?”

Film schools are not interested in teaching you about your audience, your market. 

Why are you here? All they want you to do is the artistic shit. I just don’t want people assuming that because you have your bachelors and masters in filmmaking that you’re equipped to go out and deal with distributors, and shady sales people. 

When people talk to me about film school, there’s parts that you can take from it that you need, but it is not a complete preparation for being a filmmaker. If someone wants to be a filmmaker and not go to film school, god bless them.”

Black Filmmaker Blues 

William doesn’t pull punches when discussing the industry’s treatment of him and Black talent. He doesn’t like to play the race card but admits that it is an important factor for Black filmmakers to consider. 

“The whole film industry is systemic racism that exists in every aspect of life. Filmmaking, the film industry is one of the biggest exponents of it. When Black people make films in the United States, distribution is very difficult. These distributors basically deal with European film markets. They don’t deal with African film markets. They don’t deal with people of color. 

That’s how the golden age of Hollywood was; there was a boys club. It’s like anything else; you work with people you know. That caste system exists now, because when they take Black films overseas, they change the cover art of the poster to take Black people off the poster so the white Europeans won’t be offended by seeing black persons on a dvd. 

Hollywood uses Black people to get what they need, but once they are done with them, they’re gone. In the 80s, we had Spike Lee, and everyone was like it’s a new Black film renaissance. I said, ‘Bullshit, it will be five years before we go back to the same shit, and they did! 

There are these moments in film when Black people are given a crumb. They are not allowed access to the distribution process. That is the critical issue, and white folks still run that. White folks control every aspect of that. 

William’s lament was reverberated by a number of talented Black filmmakers who thought they would be part of the 90s Black filmmaker renaissance, and they wound up experiencing their own Hollywood shuffle. 

The Final Level 

William enjoys almost all of his films but lists BLACK WOLF, DRAGON vs NINJA, and THE NEW CHINESE CONNECTION as his favorites. 

However, it’s BLACK WOLF that completes the journey. 

Years later, after the haters in Dayton, after industry scams, after a disease tried to tax his bad motherfucker wallet, he kept on, carving out a place for himself in an industry that doesn’t want Black filmmakers, turning into the wise kung fu master, teaching his style to younger film students, with 37th chamber vision.

He’s back creating a feature that includes martial arts entertainment. It’s William, and he’s doing him — doing Bruce Lee, and he’s happy with the career he’s made. There aren’t many filmmakers who can say that. 

That’s a bad motherfucker right there.

Clarke Illmatical is a writer from Queens,  New York. His writing has been featured in The Amsterdam News, The Norwood News, The Brooklyn Eagle, Harlem Community News, Queens Community Politics, The Final Call, Baltimore African American Newspaper, South China Morning Post, China Global Daily, TimeOut Hong Kong, The Phnom Penh Post, and E-China Cities.

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