The File
Bob Wall interview
Bob Wall: ......for ten years until he died in 1973 and I found Bruce to be the real deal. Bruce wasn't afraid of challenges. He was a very bright exciting guy you know , and its funny, because he got into a little group of Joe Lewis and Chuck Norris, Mike Stone, a lot of us that were world champions. There were four of us and we lived in L.A. and we got together all the time, and there were a lot of other guys that were at our level and a lot of them had black belts. We had a lot of guys that worked out with us; boxers, wrestlers, street fighters, Thai fighters, juijitsu guys, you know and we were sharing out knowledge. Two time judo national champion, Gene LeBell, a real tough old man, later on, Gene was one of the few guy that Bruce would take lessons from.
JB: Whoa!
Bob Wall: Gene LeBell is former world heavyweight wresting champion, a two-time champion, I mean he' a phenomenal man. Never lost a fight in his life.....
Bob Wall: People would ask 'How did you wound up being in 3 out of his 5 films?' and i say well i didn't have any say so in the first two , but in the third, fourth, and fifth film which i did, he said 'you know I really like to make contact, i want to make the fights scense real, he wanted to hit me, really hard, and I said 'Go for it, I'm a professional' and so he did, like that side kick in ETD, we did several times, about the sixth or seventh time,he hit me so hard the thrust broke one of the guy's arms behind me ....
JB: Yeah I read about that
Bob Wall: So the bottom line was he hit real hard, he liked to hit and I liked to get hit ....
JB: Did Bruce want you to be in the original game of death?
Bob Wall: I was in the original film.
JB: Really? In '73?
Bob Wall: In '73.
JB: Really??!!!
Bob Wall: Sure, the bottom line is that when we were doing the original story, it was like Hercules and the 7 doors but here, there was a 7 floor building, each floor had a bigger, meaner, monster and I was on level 5, Kareem Abdul Jabbar was on level 7 ....
JB: Oh Gosh!
Bob Wall: Part of the fight scene in the locker room is Bruce lee and I from that fifth floor and part of it is real Kareem Abdul Jabbar and part of it is a stand in because they changed the script. Thats why when you see the great KAA fight scene, Bruce is so heavily out of wind, there is no explanation for it because in the original he had come up 7 flights and fought 6 monsters. And in this one (GOD'78) they didn't have it that way.
JB: Are you serious?
Bob Wall: And so they used Danny Inosanto was in the real one, and they came back in '77 and shot more scenes with me, all the scenes with the doctor are all new scenes but that's without Bruce. In the locker scene, part of it is with the real bruce and part of it is not.
JB: Really??!!
Bob Wall: Yep.
JB: Geez, I didn't know that.
Bob Wall: As matter of fact they had 3 guys to play Bruce, one Chinese guy gave the English dialogue and he didn't do any martial arts so he did the dialogue scenes , another guy did all the stunts except the martial arts he did all the motorcycles and all those crashes but he didn't speak English and then they had a Korean guy who did the fight scenes and he could not hold his leg up and remember that scene where I get kicked five times...
JB: Yeah yeah...
Bob Wall: ...it was me kicking me!
JB: Oh really?!
Bob Wall: Yeah because he couldn't hold his leg up . What we did was shot across my hip to my leg and I went whap, whap whap whap whap ! And then I turned around and went "Uh uh uh uh uh uh!" So it's me kicking me in the locker.
JB: Oh man.
Bob Wall: And we just cut it together.
JB: That's crazy!
Bob Wall: Sammo Hung who's now starring in 'Martial Law' , he's the guy i beat up in GOD.
JB: Yeah.
Bob Wall: So he's the guy that set up the fight scene together when i got back. What i told him in the beginning when they called me about GOD was 'Oh no , not Bob Clouse!' he's the worst director in the world. I told Sammo 'He'll ruin all your fight scenes' and sure enough they were all lousy so they called me back , i left there in october of '77, and they called me back in december saying you have to reshoot the fight scenes and i said the only way i'm coming back is if in the contract which i have it says 'Bob Clouse is not allowed in the country! And then i'll do the fight scenes, get me Sammo and all these guys and i'll direct them . So i went back and shot all the locker room stuff and all the stuff of me beating up Sammo in the ring. I directed all that.
JB: Wow, really.
Bob Wall: Sammo and I. The reality is that Bob Clouse is an idiot and fortunately for the world he can't make anymore movies.
JB: Did you realize they were going to do a lot of awful things to do this movie like the cardboard cut in and all that lousy stuff?
Bob Wall: Well again the problem is Bob Clouse. Isnt' it amazing that everbody knows all this stupid stuff that was done but this is the 'brilliant' director of ETD . So how come he was 'brilliant' with ETD and then do this ****.
JB: Because Bruce directed ETD.
Bob Wall: The bottom line is Bruce at that point was dead and I was no longer doing it for Bruce and they were stuck with me because i was already in the original. Why do you think they had me back? They couldn't replace me. They replaced Bruce but if we would have had a good director, there was plenty of footage to make a good film. The bottom line is its a good film , its not a horrible film, there's a lot of stupid thing in it but how do you argue with critics who come out saying its horrible and it goes on to make $200 million. The fact is Bruce was in it.
JB: I heard they are going to release all the footage Bruce filmed.
Bob Wall: Well Raymond Chow has sold everything now so I don't know what will happen.
JB: Kinda sucks. Geez. What about Way of the Dragon? What was it like on the set?
Bob Wall: Well that was the film we did, you know Chuck Norris and I with bruce and it was great fun, we had a ball . It was the first HK film filmed in a foreign location , We spent 3 weeks in Rome and when we got the Colesium was closed . My wife Lilian knew a few connections and got him in there.
JB: Right on!
Bob Wall: Nobody had filmed in there for years and nobody has filmed in there since.
JB: I fell in love with her on the screen. Wow this is interesting. Okay, how about all these rumors about people on the bruce lee sets challenging him you know like on ETD did you ever witness any of this, is there anything on film?
Bob Wall: Well yeah yeah i saw bruce beat up a couple of people . There weren't a lot of challenges . There's a lot of people who 'talk' like Steven Seagal....
JB: Oooh i have to ask you about him.
Bob Wall: The main incident was a guy on the wall speaking in cantonese who was basically saying 'you're not a martial artist you're just an actor and bruce said 'oh really. Come on down and show me what you got' and the guy goes down there and bruce was just playing around with him and the guy was trying to take his head off and bruce realized, i know bruce real well , i saw his whole face change cause this guy was really trying to hurt him and bruce just then kick the **** out of him , rammed him to the wall, armlocked him smacked him 3 or 4 times on the face and the guy just started going 'I quit I quit I quit' Bruce smacked him a few more times . The guy couldn't move at all . And then Bruce told him 'Not bad for an actor'. and the guy then bowed to him.
JB: (laughs hard)
Bob Wall: That's teh difference between Seagal and Bruce . Seagal would 've fired him but bruce just let him fly back on the wall. But he let him know on no uncertain terms that they were totally mismatched you see Bruce was a world class martial artist and there are a lot of Black Belts walking around think there's no difference between a world class and a black belt . But there is a big difference . Bruce was the real deal. I remember one time when chuck and I came to HK from Rome there were headlines when we got there in all the papers basically saying the whan bang what's his name was challenging Chuck Norris . Bruce said awww forget it , i get these all the time, you knock down 2 , 4 more come up, you knock 4 down, 8 more come up just ignore it but Chuck was very upset about it and chuck doesn't back down from anybody, talk about an authentic world champion and he doesn't take that kind of stuff. But they didn't mention anything about me so I told chuck dont' worry about it and so I said "I'm Chuck' student i accept the challenge but a couple of little things Were going to be on Enjoy yourself tonight , (a show in HK that was kind've like johnny carson,) Lets have a death match with no rules . I'm going to kill all the challengers on live tv . Come on over to Enjoy yourself, i'm going to let you hit me first and then i'm going to kill you . And anybody that doesn't show up is a chicken! So all challenges, anywhere, come on over, no tricks no hogwash , it'll be just you and me, we're going to get out there and we're gonna go for it!" So we got there and there's thousands and thousands of people around and we go on and all of the sudden there is just silence. All these 'mouths' didn't want to step up.
JB: (Laughs)
Bob Wall: So then it was embarrassing because we thought we would have at least 3 or 4 dead bodies with us and all of the sudden all the 'talkers' didn't want to walk! So they just asked Chuck and I to do a demonstration but Chuck was still steamed up and he just whacked the **** out of me all over the stage. In fact, we didn't realize we were on a platform , with black curtains all around it, when in the end of the demo, he did a jump spinning back kick to me, and all of the sudden, I realize I'm flying off the stage! I'm looking down and there's nothing for thirteen feet but steel frames . I'm starting to fall and all of the sudden Chuck snatches me! How he did it, I still don't know. I was able to hang on and he pulled me back up. As he did, the cameras zoomed up and showed the welts all over my chest and everybody went 'oooooohhhhh!'. So after that my name in Chinese after that was "Oooohh Robertt", Chuck's was Lo Li Sing, and of course Bruce's was Lee Siu Loong. So everywhere we went, everbody went 'Lo Li Sing, Lo Li Sing' and 'Ooooh Robert. Tough man, tough man (said with a fake Chinese accent).
JB: Gosh, is this all on film?
Bob Wall: Oh sure. Somebody's got it.
JB: You don't have a copy yourself?
Bob Wall: Noooo.
JB: You don't have a copy yourself?
Bob Wall: Noooo.
JB: Why not?!
Bob Wall: You know at the time, to us, we didn't understand these young fighters, you don't think when you're a young world champion that, everything is years out there, so sure, now we're smart, and now I'd love to have a copy of it. Somebody's got it out there.
JB: Yeah somebody's going to make money of it one of these days!
Bob Wall: The only film I know of that was shot of Bruce Lee was shot by Ahna Capri, on the set of ETD. In it we sparred for about 10 minutes.
JB: Oh really? This hasn't been released to the public, I take it?
Bob Wall: Well she's got a problem. I had offered her a pretty good chunk of money so that Freddy Weintraub could put it in "Curse of the Dragon" and she turned him down. But she can't sell because she has to have releases. She can sell it to a private collector but she want 65 grand for it. Its not worth 65 grand. Its about 12 minutes of film and about 5 minutes of Bruce , us sparring....
JB: So you have to put it into some kind of documentary...
Bob Wall: Well, I'm in the film, I have to sign a release. Am I going to sign one for free? Is Warner Bros going to sign one for free? It was shot on a Warner Bros. set. Is Bruce Lee's widow going to sign one for free?Is Freddy Weintraub going to sign one for free? And all the people in it? You can't just go out and sell stuff. So she's got a private film that she can only view privately.
JB: That sucks!
Bob Wall: I tried to get it and I had her appeal. They would have given her a nice chunk of change and she wouldn't go for it.
JB: Aww man!!!
Bob Wall: She filmed it in '73 and still hasn't been able to sell it. If she ever does sell it and whoever buys it will be sued. So it's unfortunate. The same thing applies to all the other stuff we did. Nobody can sell the films of Chuck and I doing the demo and my doing the challenge, without my release. I'm not going to let someone earn money off me for free! So the odds are it will never get sold. A collector might wind up with it and they can show it privately. But if he's ever charges a dime .....
JB: Hmmm....while on ETD did Bruce ever talk about his next projects , you know, with you?
Bob Wall: As matter of fact, the last time I saw him , you know he died on July 20, 1973, and in May of '73, he passed out , almost died, so he was concerned about it. Hong Kong doctors couldn't tell him what was wrong and so he came to Beverly Hills from June 1st til June 8th for a physical. I used to fly him all his protein so I saw him on June 1st , I had lunch with him , and then I saw him the day before he left, and Bruce was excited saying "They say I got a body of an 18-year old " But at that time, they didn't know about MRIs for brain tissue, because when Bruce died, he had the brain tissue of a 90-year old! Obviously he died at least its clear to me, of an anuerysm , caused by taking , he had hurt his back in 1970, these tablets of equagesic, which is a painkiller common to aspirin, so [folks at points, things were extremely difficult to hear] he was taking this every six months, without any reaction, but as...(????) Bruce kept taking more and more , it caused the swelling in his brain, but he didn't realize that and his doctors didn't know that.
JB: Geez.
Bob Wall: But in any event, I saw him three times that week , and its a shame he didn't see how the film did, but one of the things he talked about , to answer your question, his fifth film was going to be with Carlo Ponti , who's still alive and married to Sophia Loren, and Bruce said "Hey Bob you get to be a good guy in the next one! " The script was to have Bruce play a CIA type of guy and international drug terrorist and dealers and I was going to be a CIA agent coming to help him out.
JB: Sidekick.
Bob Wall: Yep.
JB: Wow!
Bob Wall: I would've been a good guy in that one. We were just about a month away from signing a contract. It was going to be shot in Rome.
JB: Oh gosh. Was there a title for this?
Bob Wall: No. There was a working title and it was, uh , 'Drug Terror'.
JB: Ha ha. How about Mike Stone, do you still keep in touch with him?
Bob Wall: No I haven't seen Mike for years. He got married to a Filipina girl.
JB: Oh really, I'm Filipino. Okay I want to ask you some really , I mean you don't have to answer them, these are for the fans, they really want to know. I don't know if you're familiar with a book called 'Unsettled Matters'.
Bob Wall: No.
JB: It was written by Tom Bleecker who is Linda Lee's ex-husband , they got a divorce....
Bob Wall: Oh yeah, can you send me a copy of it?
JB: