#1995 - Chad Stahelski
2023-06-07 02:05:07
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Yeah, Jack, just get, take...
Is that how I'm gonna start the show?
Take a hit of that, we'll start the show. Just get in there.
Aw, jeez!
And that's, that's not even a fresh one. Okay. When they're fresh, they're real.
I just wanna do it twice to make sure that was real.
Shout out to, uh, how do you say his name? Juju Mufu? Juju Mufu. He was, uh, smelling salts. He was fresh, he couldn't do that.
It's fresh. If it's fresh, you get, like, that close. And you're just like...
Yeah, no, I'm awake.
That was a good one, though.
I'm definitely awake.
I'm gonna bring these to the comedy mothership. I'm gonna see. I'm gonna see. I'm gonna take a big blast right before I go on stage. It's supposed to wake up your central nervous system or something.
I don't even know if there's any science to it.
No, it just sucks.
Might be just a bunch of psychos who are just, like, freaking their brain out with, uh, smelling salts.
I'm awake.
Anyway, man, congrats on the movie. Looks awesome.
It's very exciting. Very nice to be here. Big fan. Thank you.
My pleasure. It's, uh, boy, Jesus Christ, is it over the top.
Way over the top. This fucking dude is so crazy. Yeah.
It's so crazy. I saw a thing online of the amount of people that John Wick has killed compared to, like, Michael Myers. and, you know, Jason. Oh, yeah. By a long stride.
I think we beat Rambo, too.
Yeah, I think you beat everybody.
But I think we had more deaths than Keanu spoke words in the movie. Oh, for sure. A hundred percent. Everybody's bringing it up to me. I think he spoke 308 words in the movie or something.
Yeah.
Well, listen, it works. It's perfect.
Yeah, something fun. Something for the guys.
Yeah.
And the action fans and everybody out there.
Oh, yeah. It's murder porn.
Hopefully it's artistic murder porn.
It's artistic. It is. It's interesting how they're all so different, too. Like, the fourth one is, like, almost like a comic book movie. It's, like, it's so over the top and crazy.
Graphic anime. I think it's probably the best story that we've told. But it's definitely wrapped up in the hyper real world. You know, we get bored, so we want to go somewhere and do something. And it's always, like, how do we start these things?
What do we do? Like, we never start with a concept, right? It's usually we're done, we're done, we're never going to do one again. And then Japan gets released, like, six months after the rest of the world. So we're usually doing a press tour in Japan.
And we're sitting in the Imperial Hotel. They have an amazing scotch bar. And we start off with the first drink. And I'm, like, God, it's done. God, we survived.
And by, like, the fifth scotch, we're, like, hey, man, I got a great fucking idea. Let's have them fight ninjas.
And then that's how it starts. And it's been that way for the last three.
So you started off as a stuntman. Yeah. And how did you transition to becoming a director? Because that's, like, there's got to be a lot of barriers that are in the way.
I think, different time, for sure. You know, before cell phones, before all that stuff. We started as a stunt guy, before all the streamers.
You know, I was working for this guy, Ernie Orsatti, way back in the day. Brilliant stunt coordinator, second year director on television. And I was working on, I don't know if you remember, the old show, like, Pretender. With Michael T. Weiss.
Sure, yeah. He could be anything, that kind of thing. And I was doing a gig on that. I had just done a car hit. I think I was, like, 24..
I split my head open on the windshield. I was a mess. And then he comes to me as I'm holding the ice pack on my head. He's like, hey, they're having auditions for this sci-fi film in Burbank. You know, you're off.
If you hurry, you can make it. I'm in jeans and a t-shirt. I'm bleeding. And I'm like, all right. Yeah, sure, I'll go make it.
It's for that Keanu Reeves guy. You know, on Speed. Keanu Reeves, I'll go see him. Sure. So you go up there, and it was an audition for The Matrix.
And, you know, at the time, you remember, back in the day, there weren't a lot of martial art movies at a big budget level. It was like Steven Seagal or Van Damme, or, you know, Mark Dukaskis, all those guys at the time. And martial arts, you know, they didn't do them at big budget films. It was considered low budget, you know, action porn kind of thing. And we get there.
We get to this big warehouse in Burbank, and you saw this guy really scruffy, looking with a neck brace. It's Keanu. He had just come out from neck surgery. Oh, Jesus. And there's, like, 15 Hong Kong and Chinese stuntmen there, screaming and yelling.
I said, hey, I'm here for the audition. And I meet these two fellas that come over. It's the Wachowskis at the time, now Lana and Lily. And they introduced themselves, and were like, hey, you know, I'm Chad. Okay, great, this is Yung Wu-Ping.
And I was like, oh. No one told us. And Yung Wu-Ping, we knew, was the big choreographer that started. Jet Li and Jackie Chan. Did, like, Iron Monkey.
Oh, wow. Once Upon a Time in China and all that stuff. So it was Yung Wu-Ping and his guys. And they're like, okay, you just follow this guy and this little guy named Tiger Chen.
Fucking phenomenal. Guy could do triple flips, twist, could do anything. I wish you champion. I just follow that guy. I just do what he does.
And for the next hour, I tried being the tall white guy, trying to just keep up with him.
Can you do all that stuff?
God, no. I just do as much as I could until I fell down. But I was pretty flexible. I had a good gymnastic background. So I'd throw a backflip.
I'd do the kicks. I'd do all the spin hook kicks. And, you know, we'd train with a lot of taekwondo guys and stuff. So we were pretty good at all the kicking and punching and some of the acrobatics. But then it got to a level, he picks up a stick.
And now it's, you know, you've seen The Wish, You Guys. Yeah. You're going mental. And I'm like, oh, boy. You know, at the end of an hour.
You know, I'm in jeans and a t-shirt, still bleeding from a head wound.
Oh, Jesus. Did you have a concussion?
Probably. I think. so. Knowing now, looking back, like, yeah, it didn't seem too good. But I finished.
Drove home and thought, wow, I really screwed the pooch on that one. I never thought I'd hear from those guys again. And then, like, a month later, I got a call. Hey, can you come back? And exact same audition again.
Exact same. Wow. And then got the call saying, hey, would you like to double Keanu Reeves on this sci-fi movie in Australia? And I was like, ah, yeah. I got this other gig on TV.
I think I'm going to have to pass. And the producer at the time was Barry Osborn, who went on to do all the Lord of the Rings. And he was like, ah, he's kind of a little angry at me for saying no. And I thought, okay, I fucked that up. I'll never work again.
And then cut to two months later. It was in February. And he calls back. He's like, hey, we had to push the shoot. Are you available now?
I was like, yeah, actually, I am. So I literally flew to Australia, like, two weeks later. Got there. And within a day, you realized, oh, this wasn't – this isn't a normal show. You saw the rehearsals.
You saw some of the sets. You saw some of the footage. And it was the fucking Matrix. Oh, wow. So that's how we got in – how I got in with the Wachowskis.
And I spent the next eight and a half years with them through all the Matrix sequels and all their –, some of their other shows. And with James McTeague doing V for Vendetta. I just lived in the Wachowski world. And that's probably one of the most incredible film schools you'll ever have. And that's where I got to know Keanu and all that.
Cut two years later. after all that, Keanu and I had worked together for so long there. And he knew I'd been doing a lot of second unit directing, which, for people that don't know, it's the action. The fight scenes, the car chases, the sunsets, all the shit. first unit doesn't want to deal with.
Usually big action sequences. So they have these action directors or second unit guys. go out and do the units. Trying to do it more efficiently without the cast, with the stunt doubles and such. And Keanu got in this script they thought was something interesting about it.
It was called Scorn. And it was the original John Wick script.
How did it become called John Wick?
Derek Kolstad's grandfather's name is John Wick. Derek Kolstad being the writer of it. So he just gave tribute to his grandfather, calling him Wick. John Wick.
Oh, wow.
Pretty trippy, yeah.
And so how did that become the name of the movie?
Keanu, the original script Scorn, the guy was like 65.. He lived in a little brown. It was a very, very grounded script. I think only two people died in the original script.
That's hilarious.
It was very Cold War, old school. And that's where the gold coins came from, because you didn't want to leave a paper trail. It had very simple little ideas. Oh, wow. And he handed it to myself and was like, hey, would you like to take a look at this?
And I was like, sure, sure, sure. I read it and I was like, yeah, I don't know what to do with this. action-wise. He only kills two people. He was like, well, we're trying to change it and we're thinking of this.
I'm like, well. He's like, would you like to direct it? I was like, whoa. Yes. As a matter of fact.
So you had no experience directing and then you direct John Wick.
Yeah, just second unit. Dude. Me and my partner at the time, Dave Leach, I called Dave. That was on a Friday. I called Dave on a Saturday going, hey, we might have a shot.
We've got to put a pitch together in 24 hours. So I always had this idea about Greek mythology and how we could layer it and do this. I'm a big Tolkien fan. So how do you take a fantasy gig and make it modern day? So we're like, let's take it that way.
And we'll put gods and Greeks and Chiron and the River Styx. And we'll make this whole Zeus thing going on. And we kind of layered it. And Keanu just heard it on Monday and went, hmm, interesting.
And he said, sure, you want to do it? I'm like, yeah. Me and my partner, Dave. We'll co-direct. We'll do this.
the next day. And he goes, well, Keanu, why don't you? Sure. We had done a little tape on that Sunday about the, you know, the gun food stuff. We took Aikido, Aikijutsu, put all the close quarter tactical shit with some reloads.
And we did a quick little previz in our space 8711 back in L.A. And showed it to everybody. Oh, my God, this is going to be, you know, great. Can Keanu do it? We're like, yeah, I hope so.
Where did the magazine reload flip come from?
That funny thing that I'm going to give total cred to Keanu. Wow. 100%. He started doing that in the second one. I'm like, dude, what are you doing?
He's like, yeah, check it out. Fuck. He started doing it. I was like, that's awesome.
It is awesome. People do that now.
Yeah, it's a legit thing. Yeah.
They're doing a competition. You know how crazy that is? That an actor for a film decides to come up with a thing, and it's actually a quicker way to eject a magazine.
He can do it forehand and backhand.
Wow.
He does it with the AR, too. Like, you're watching the second one. He'll do a quick flip with the AR, and he'll put it on. You're like, where the fuck did he get that?
Well, he really, really trained for that movie.
That's him.
I mean, you can really tell. I mean, there's films where guys do tactical scenes, where you go like, okay, I can buy it. But in that movie-.
The typical military way of cutting through, you know, pieing the corners and all that stuff. The very tactical sense. I think you're right. I see that. It's like with martial arts.
You can do the quick finger jab in the eye, right? Right. Once in a while, that staccato beat is cool. But choreography, and for the visual of it, I think sometimes you have to add something. You have to show people something they kind of expect, subvert it, and give them something a little bit different.
You know, spice it up a little bit. So I think we went more with the competition sense. You know, I saw Taron online. You know, J.J. Perry, a buddy of mine, introduced me to Taron online, and I saw Taron, and I saw some of the quick- I was like, fuck.
That's what we're-. We got to put a little spice in this.
Yeah.
And then sent Keanu out there, and he-.
Taron is such a freak.
Oh, my God. Freak admit-. Let's be honest. No one should be that good.
He's crazy. It's crazy how good he is.
You should not be that good.
The speed that he has is so insane.
How many people have you seen that are good at what they do?
He's such a good guy, too. He's such a fun guy to be around. So easy going. And what a great instructor, too, because he's so calm and easy.
And he's got a naturalistic approach. It's just follow your body. Follow your body.
He's one of the only reasons I like to go back to L.A.
For real. He's the only reason I go to Simi Valley. Yeah.
Well, that's- I mean, whenever I'm in town, I always make a trip.
And you get better every time, right?
Oh, for sure. There's a little something. Yeah, for sure.
Just by watching him. You can see- And I was up there just yesterday, as a matter of fact, picking up something. And I had introduced him to an actor about, like, three, four weeks ago. And he had taken this cast member in just three sessions. And the cast member happened to be up there yesterday.
And to watch what he had done with him in three weeks- I mean, granted, there is a little natural ability there, I could tell. But, like, the progression and how fast he gets you from just pointing a firearm to drawing it, hip shooting, pressing, walking, and running through the course.
Yeah.
I mean, it's hard to explain, right? Until you actually- Yes. You can see it online. But when you're there and seeing how fast the pings are coming and actually watching Taron go through the obstacle course- Yeah. It's really, really impressive.
Now, he's a freak. He's weird. But, like- Something's going on in his brain.
Do you think, like-. There's something about the hand-eye coordination. We all have a little bit, especially through martial arts. But that's-.
Not like that.
No.
Well, obviously, he's been doing it forever. But there's some- He's got some God-given ability.
It's got to be some autism, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It has to be. A hundred percent.
Because he can just- I've seen him do things where he's looking one way and he's still lining up. Like, he just knows that- What would you call it? Like, that physical dissonance, that body memory. Yep. The motor muscle memory, to get in there and play.
And no red dot. He's doing it all through the-.
All iron sights. All old school. All old school. And that's how he teaches, which I love.
Yeah, I love it, too. Because he says, well, red dots fail. And I've had red dots fail.
All the time. All the time.
And you're like, what the fuck is that fucking-.
Ah, shit. And you're fucking with it. And you're fucking with it. And he's just like, okay. As you're fucking around with that- Exactly.
I'm just going to go shoot. Yeah. But he's been very good. Like, I'm naturally left-handed. But I always shoot with him right-handed.
But he's helped me, so I can- Try alternate hands. It'll mess with your-, But I think it'll help your sighting.
Oh, I'm sure. Everything you do with your left hand will help your right hand. I learned that from martial arts. Yeah, absolutely. Someone told me that a long time ago.
That if you practice your bad side, it actually improves the technique on your good side.
I think it helps you think in a different way, right?
Yeah. I think that's one of the reasons why left-handed people are so good at things.
What did they say? Like, you know, back in the day, you know, gladiatorial or whatever. Like, left-handed. Because it was hard. It wasn't so much that they were better.
They just- You weren't used to fighting with them.
Well, I think also- Well, there's definitely that. Like, when you spar with people, especially in boxing. Yeah, when they go southpaw. When you spar southpaws, it's so confusing.
Well, it fucks up your footwork because you don't want to keep stepping on their foot.
Exactly.
Kickboxing maybe is a little bit different.
Well, kickboxing- Well, MMA in particular, like the elite guys like Sanhagen, these guys, they switch stances constantly. Constantly. And so this is- You're getting overloaded with possibilities all the time. Which makes it so interesting. When you get to these high-level guys, you know, when you get to, like, an Israel Adesanya guy, they give you so many looks.
You don't know what the fuck is going on.
They're changing that stance all the time.
Yeah, and fainting all the time.
It's very interesting. I came up- I did a lot of box francais, like sauvat, which is very open stancy. Like, it's constant motion. If you watch those old sauvat guys, right? They're constantly moving.
So they would fall from a false lead. And you see so much of that now in MMA, right? It's false leads. They're switched, so you don't- it's hard to gauge or set them up. Yes.
It's fascinating to watch now. I think athletes today, especially in martial arts, are, like, just- right? A whole nother level.
A whole nother level.
You can't even compete with what-.
They're the best of the best. It's like no one's ever been better. It's like martial arts- I've always said this, that since 1993, in the last 30 years, martial arts have evolved more than they have over the last 30,000 years.
Completely agree.
No question. No ifs, ands, or buts.
Between the fitness, the training mentality, and just the combative alacrity that these guys have. Yes. The ability to- I mean, they're insane athletes, number one. But to kick, punch, shoot, and grapple, and not miss a beat, and get right back up. Like, you.
just watch them. It's almost choreography. That's how good they're being trained. I mean, they're zero range. You know, before it used to be, like, jab, jab, jab, so you can shoot it.
Now it's like they can change ranges on the fly. They're so good at it.
And they're switching levels on you. Like, they're doing one thing to set up a takedown. They're using takedowns to set up strikes. I mean, it's amazing. It's mental.
It's so mental.
It's scary how good it is.
It really is, because it's so much different than any other version of martial arts that existed before the UFC came along.
I think we had become so divided. You know, you were just the kicker. You were just the puncher. Right. It was almost a stylistic civil war going on.
Like, my. kung fu can beat your kung fu. My kicking will beat your punching. You're like, what?
What did you start training in?
I was originally judo first. I did a lot of judo back when I was 10 to, like, 16.. Then I started karate. It was like a Kyokushinkai, Koko Kondo, karate, and Japanese jiu-jitsu. Did that all the way until I went to school at USC from Massachusetts.
And I got here, and I bumped into this guy, Bert Richardson, who was a big student under Dan Inosano. And Bert was teaching, like, just a Kali class, Kali and Silat, over at USC. And I met him, and I was a big fan of Dan Inosano from all the black belt magazines.
Yeah.
So he hooked me up, and I got into the Inosano Academy. And that's where it went. mental. We studied with, like, Francis Fong and Paul Detois for Indonesian Silat. We had, like, every other Filipino instructor you could imagine from that.
We had Francis Inchinard and Selim Asali for Savat, Sir Chai Sirasu from Muay Thai. Wow. And then we'd get these, you know, guest appearances by, like, all these great martial art instructors.
Oh, that's awesome.
And that's where I met this guy, Jeff Amato, who at the time was a very big stunt coordinator. And he kind of recruited us into the stunt world from there.
Oh, that's great. Wow. And so then you get into the stunt world. You're doing that for years and years. And it's just so crazy that John Wick is your first breakthrough movie as a director.
And it's a fucking gigantic—.
We tried to look for something that was kind of bulletproof. We figure, very short story.
Oh, man.
And then we kind of layered it in with the subtext of grief and suffering. Everything. It's perfect. It was all about the puppies.
Who was the Russian gentleman, the guy who plays the father?
Yeah, Michael Nyquist.
Yeah, that guy was so good.
He was in the original Girl with Dragon Tattoo. And I think he did the third Mission Impossible. I think he was a bad guy.
He died recently, right?
Yeah, he died a couple years ago. I don't know if it was a heart attack or stroke, but he died. He still has a nice charity thing that they do every year for him. Fantastic guy. That fucking scene.
Swedish actor.
The scene where he's explaining to his son, who's also awesome. The guy who was in Game of Thrones. What is his name?
Alfie. Alfie Allen.
That guy's incredible.
So good. We cast a lot off Game of Thrones. Oh, my God. I used to love Game of Thrones.
He's so good. He plays such a good fuckhead.
Oh, my God. He's such a good prick. But in life, it's so funny. He is the shyest, quietest, super nice, like, hardest— just never left, set, always there, ready to do his thing. The sweetest kid ever.
Yeah, well, I can believe it.
And he's so good at that role.
Oh, my God. But that scene when he's at the bar, pouring the drink, explaining—.
Giving him the little fairy tale of the Baba Yaga.
Oh, it's such a good scene.
You know, we were kind of laughing at ourselves. We're like, how do we make a movie that people are going to want? How do we do something other than the gritty, you know, boring action stuff like this? Like, we've got to do a fairy tale. We've just got to do a fairy tale.
We're going to do a campsite fire. We're going to have this little fairy tale. So we started looking up all these Russian fairy tales. Like, we need a cool name. Okay, Baba Yaga.
It's a witch. Don't worry. No one will ever know. No one will ever see the movie. It'll be fine.
And we're like, oh, fuck. It's not the guy. It's the guy you sent to kill the boogeyman. Okay, we'll work this out. But it was like just building— Like, I'm fascinated by mythology.
So if you can build your own myth, that's what we were just trying to do. Like, we're trying to be a little ridiculous. That's why we used the color— Instead of just noir, black and white, we tried to do, like, neon noir. We had Jonathan Sella and then Dan Lauston, the cinematographers, on it. And to try and take it and give visual cues to the audience.
that, like, this, isn't real. It's a fairy tale. Try to get on board with it. That's why you see the color differentiation. Right when the cop knocks on the door and he goes, hey, you working again?
Yeah. We just switch colors, and we're like, okay, hopefully people will get that. we're now in a fantasy.
Well, it just seemed—it was realistic, but not.
Yeah.
And just—.
You need one anchor. You always need one anchor.
One of my buddies called me up, and he goes, have you seen John Wick? I go, no, is it good? He goes, dude.
Did you get the dude?
When you get that dude, you're going to fucking love it. And then I saw it. I'm pretty sure I saw it in the movie theater. And, I mean, right away, I was like, holy shit. This is my kind of movie.
I mean, this is so much fun.
It's—right? Everyone's kind of an Otison. Like, you know, we all—I'm probably the same generation. We grew up with, like, Steve McQueen and Bronson. Sure.
You know, a little bit where, like, not a lot of dialogue, but, like, bullet. He's in that car.
Oh, my God.
Fucking in it.
The fucking—we just played the bullet scene the other day. I mean, that car scene, no music.
No, just—it's all car. Just car.
All car. Just car.
And that's the real—that's, what, the 68 Mustang? Mm-hmm. Just all car.
68 Fastback, yeah.
All carrying that scene for the whole time. Yeah. And you're like, that's pretty cool.
Have you seen the Revology 68 Mustang? No. Revology makes—they make a replica of the bullet. Really? But it's with a sick suspension, with a 460-horsepower Coyote engine, and it's lightweight, so it's, like, 600 pounds less than a real Mustang GT from today.
Yeah, you'd be able to throw that around all day.
Oh, my God. It's an incredible car. Yeah, he makes—.
We have to check that out.
That sounds awesome. Pull it up. I'll show you. This is what he makes. Look at that.
That's beautiful.
That's his car. I mean, and it's, you know, fucking zero to 60 in four seconds. You know, you can get a six-speed or a manual, and the fucking car screams. It's such a fun car. This guy, Tom Scarpello, he used to work for Ford.
He used to be in the program to make the Ford GT, and so he built this car.
Assembly to get this—.
But he does it. What he does is incredible, because he's essentially done it like a production car, but it's a brand-new 1968, and it's done— But it's not just the bullet car. He does the 67 GT500, 67 GT350.. That's for sure. It's fucking awesome.
Well, that's what—I mean, again, for all your listeners, you're the one that told us to use the 71 Barracuda.
I'm so excited. When I saw it in the previews, I was like, yes, he listened!
No, with context, I bumped into you for the first time up at Taren's place, and, you know, we got the handshake. Hey, you know, how you doing?
Yeah, yeah.
And it was—Joe writes me going, love the movies. Where the fuck are the muscle cars? Number three, that was the problem. I was like, yeah, sorry. I'm like, okay, we'll put one in for the fourth one.
He's like, you better! So we go into production, and I'm literally sitting in Berlin going, I'm fucking looking for cars. We're over in Europe. I'm going to find a fucking muscle car. Joe Rogan's going to fucking hate me.
It's a bad review. I'm like, how do I do this? So I text. Joe. I'm like, what's the perfect car?
He's like, 71. Barracuda. Don't go with any of that pussy 69 stuff. You got to get the 71, the four headlights.
Yeah, you don't want to get the early Barracudas. You want 70 and 71.. Those are the years.
That's why you sent me that picture, and that's the exact car in the movie.
It's the exact one with the fins. That's it. That's it!
Yep, exact car in the movie.
I mean, come on.
That is fucking classic. We ripped that thing apart. We had Tanner Faust, one of the best drift guys.
I love that guy. Tanner's awesome. Yeah, he's awesome.
So he's helped us out on a lot of the John Wick. So we brought him into, my stunt coordinator, Scott Rogers, and Steve Dunleavy brought him in to teach Kano to do all the 240 and the 360 drifts and all that stuff. So he gets right in there. They just put the new suspension in, put the fucking insane engine in this thing, and they had Kano doing these fucking circular drifts, literally like in two weeks.
It hurts so bad watching you guys smash it up. I know. All of them. The 69 Mustang in John Wick 2. when he destroys it, I'm like, no!
We destroyed probably a few more than we should have on this one. Did you? Yeah, you gotta break a few eggs.
Well, it worked. I mean, how many people went out and bought 69 Mustangs and 70 Chevelles after that film?
I actually really enjoyed the Chevelle. I didn't think I'd like the Chevelle as much as I did.
I have one. Do you really? I have one just like that. Yeah, mine's not green, but yours didn't look green. It looked black.
I had that Matrix green that looked-.
Very dark. green. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but in dark, the way you film everything, so dark and moody, it looked black. It's got that kick to it.
Yeah. I know I'm supposed to say the Mustang, but I really like the Chevelle.
I'm a Chevelle guy.
Yeah, I like the Chevelle.
I love the Mustangs too. I mean, I'm a muscle car head. I love-.
Yeah, so it's fun. The guys in Europe, when you go shopping around, it's almost you'll find a... I know there's a lot of people here, but we thought we were going to have a big problem looking for all the different muscle cars in Europe. They're amazing collectors over there. Really?
They love their... Warehouse is full of them.
It makes sense because a lot of Americans collect European cars. Yeah, there's the 70 Chevelle in front of the Continental.
That was kind of on a goof too. We wanted something else, and we ended up getting this, and we're like, oh my God. Yeah. We just saw it when that's the car.
Yeah, that's the car. Yeah.
We were trying to make a choice, and Keanu just went, what? That one. Yeah. Okay.
Well, it's in the Mount Everest of the muscle car classics. Yeah. Especially the 70.. Chevelle's weird, because the old ones, the 68 and 69, are cool. They're really cool.
70's the motherfucker, though. And then 71, they go to this goofy single headlight thing. It doesn't look right. 72 looks like shit. Softened up.
They fucked with the rear taillights.
I think that's what we were really trying to... You kind of summed it up right there. We did it as a goof. We thought we'd never direct again. We're like, Keanu's, like, let's just do an action movie for us.
Whatever. Thinking, no one's ever going to see it. We'll just keep our second unit jobs, just in case. And we're like, we got this big whiteboard. We went in, we wrote down, okay, everybody, take a marker.
Write down the 10 things you fucking hate about action movies. And then go write the 10 things you love about action movies that you'd want to see. Like muscle cars, gun, fu, martial arts, suits. We want to bring a little class back. What do we love about Bond?
What do we love about Mission Impossible? What's Cruz doing? What's Daniel Craig doing? What's Matt doing in Born? Let's write down all the stuff we love.
And then we're just going to mix it up and throw all the stuff. I have a museum fetish. I have an art fetish, obviously. I have a color fetish. I have a dog fetish, obviously.
I'm making something about a dog. We had attack dogs on the first one, but they just didn't fit. So I moved that over to number three. when we have more money. Yeah.
And it's just like, okay, what's all the fun stuff that you want to see in action movies? And none of the structures we had in any of the scripts fit for it. So we're just like, okay, we'll go back to Odysseus in like the Iliad or the Odyssey. And we'll go, okay, this guy just wants to get home. He just wants to grieve.
And we're going to throw as many rocks at him as we can on the way. And see if we can make obstruction. And we'll just have Keanu do an endurance race. That's kind of how we did it. And just threw in everything else we love.
Well, it's got to be one of the most wild, pulse-pounding movies ever. Because, like, the scene – I did this thing with my friends. We do it every year. We do this Sober October thing. And one year we did a fitness challenge.
And my friends, Ari Shafir, Burt Kreischer, and Tom Segura and me. And Burt Kreischer talks so much shit. And the fitness challenge was we all had to wear these heart monitors. And it's this thing called MiZones. And you have to keep your heart rate at 80%.
It's like one point per minute. At 90%, it's like two points per minute. And so it's like it's the amount of points per day. And I watched John Wick 50 times in a row. And I did – I'm not bullshitting, man.
I watched the scene from the bathhouse scene 50 times in a row. I did seven hours of cardio. And I did it just to try to break Burt because he was talking so much shit. And so, like, a normal score for a day, a guy would get, like, 400 or 300.. I got 1,150 for the day.
Holy shit. And I put it up just because I'm like, I'm going to kill you. Because he kept talking shit. I go, dude, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to drag you to hell.
I'm like, you're not going to be able to keep up. I'm going to push myself to the point where I'm almost dead. And I'm going to kill you.
There's probably a study in that, visual stimuli to heart rate and adrenaline.
So I'm on an elliptical machine watching that scene with a remote control.
Just on loop.
Just rewinding it, going back, rewinding it. That fucking nobody. That's John Wick. And then you go through that, killing in the house, get to the Red Circle bar, assassinations, left and right. So that just carried me through the whole sober October month.
That's a psychosomatic study.
I probably watched that movie a hundred times. I'm not bullshitting.
That's crazy.
I watch it whenever I'm bored in the gym. I just throw it on.
That's cool. Yeah. That's cool that you can watch it over and over again.
It's a fucking great. get you pumped up movie.
It was fun to make. Honestly, we didn't know what we were doing.
Did you have any idea? it would be so huge, though? When it was done, though, you had to know you nailed it.
No, we got weird comments back. We got too many headshots, cut out all the headshots. You can't kill the kid, Alfion, and you can't kill the puppy. Somebody's got to live. We were independent, so everyone was scared that we weren't going to get picked up.
Because when we shopped it, we went to four or five studios, and we didn't even finish the pitch. They're like, no, we're cool. Thank you. Yeah, we didn't get bought. So we made the thing independently with Thunder Road, with Basil Ionic and Erica Lee.
And it wasn't until we came out here, actually, to Fantastic Fest. No one was buying the movie, so Basil was like, let's go. We'll show up to Fantastic Fest. See if anybody will clap. So me, Dave, and Keanu sneak in real low-key.
We're going to do a little surprise thing at that. And Keanu does a little wave to the crowd. And the crowd goes fucking mental. Like, mental. And the first family and friends we had, everyone was really quiet afterwards.
Like, no applause. It was just really quiet.
Really?
Why? What do you think that is? I just think, at the time, we were in the fast-cut shaky cam, and it was just so ludicrous that he's going to kill 68 or 86 people over a puppy. And no one got that. I mean, you've got to remember, this is how we pitch it.
Right. So we'll go to a studio and go, okay, so we've got Keanu Reeves. I know we're first-time stunt guys, but it's an action movie. And he's like, okay.
And he's going to shoot all this stuff. And so his wife dies of natural causes. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. The bad guys don't kill her. She's like, no, no, no, no.
But they kill his puppy. I'm like, yeah. And he kills all the people because of the puppy. But not the what. They're like, well, what happens next?
I'm like, no, that's it. The next 45 minutes are like just rampage. And yeah, no, we didn't sell it.
Well, they must be kicking themselves now.
Yeah, well, Lionsgate bought us internationally, and then they sold it to Domestic. And since then, we've gone through a couple of regime changes at Lionsgate. But now, like, the last one was, really cool. Like, everyone's on board. Like, Joe Drake, Nathan Cahane, Matt Leonetti,
you know, Adam Fogelson. Everybody that's part of the regime, they really pushed this last one. They knew John Wick was cool. They loved the third one, and they got on board. But for the first round, we had, once we sold it, the movie came out.
Before it even came out, there was like this lag. They bought it, and then there's like six months before we hit theaters. I think Dave went off and did Teenage Mutant, Ninja, Turtles 9 or whatever it was. I went off and did, like, the Brothers Grimsby, Sacha Baron Cohen movie, second unit, down in South Africa for, like, five months because I was broke. It was pretty funny.
Yeah, we thought we'd never direct again. So we were like, we better go find some stunt jobs.
And then it worked out, and then, like, not even a month after it had opened, Keanu had called up and go, hey, they called me about doing number two, but I'll only do it with you guys. You in? And I was like, are you kidding? Yes, we're in, whatever it is. Wow.
That's awesome. It was completely nutty, man.
Yeah, and number two just picks up right where number one left off.
Yeah, and we just were like, okay.
And right off the jump, like, opening scene.
Yeah, we had no idea what to do. I was, like, trying to figure out ideas. for that. We're like, ah. You know, it's like the sensory deprivation tank.
It would just go into a room and not leave until we came up with an idea.
So you decided just the hunt for his car.
Yeah. It destroys it. It was funny. With my now partner, Alex Young, we were doing a second unit gig. We were doing Agent 47..
The second one. Whatever that was called. I think it was Agent 47.. Right? In Berlin.
And we're sitting there, and we had got the call to, okay, we've got to come up with an idea. And my partner at the time, or my partner now, Alex Young, was sitting there. And he's like, you've got to get the car back, man. He lost his fucking car. I'm like, no one's going to care about the car.
I'm like, dude. He was like, he fucking total loves muscle cars. He's like, you've got to put the car. Every guy he kills, he's going to get a piece of the car back. He's getting his fucking car back.
I'm like, that's a great opening. He's going to get the car back.
Yeah. No, when he sits in the car, and he's like touching the steering wheel.
You can tell. He's like, ah. But that's Keanu. That's not just John. That's Keanu.
Keanu loves cars. He loves bikes. He loves the discipline of it. He loves, like. that's why he's got Arch Motorcycles, right?
If you ever get a chance, you should check that shop out. It's the most pristine engineering shop.
I'm sure. I can't fuck with motorcycles. I'm scared of them.
Yeah. But to build, just to watch how he, he's got all the water cutters there. It's very artistic.
Oh, the bikes he makes are incredible.
They're great. But he brings that to every, like he just, he's very, not compulsive. He's very, he loves the art of things. Yeah, he loves the art of it. He's fascinated by like, who makes this cup, Joe?
Like, how do you, like he, everything he'll, he just fascinate over. He wants a story on it. He's one of the most curious, most, I guess, curious artistically, like how things are done and who people are. He's just got a genuine curiosity and love for things.
He's a very unique guy. I think. so. I've never met him, but it just, every interview you see with him, every movie, he's a very unusual person. Yeah.
And he's got, you know what I think, I think anybody really artistic, or at least the really, I think, artistic people that I've met, they maintain that little bit of, and I mean this in the best of ways, a little bit of childness. wonder. There's still kids a little bit. Like. I could talk to you all day about, like archery.
I could talk to you all day about martial arts. I could talk to you all day about motorcycle. I could talk to you all day about movies. And I think that's, you've got to have that. You need that little inspiration.
I think you need that little bit of wonder, lust into certain things. And I think he's still got that. Like. he will still, he'll see a sequence. We'll come in with the nunchucks and do something, and he'll start giggling.
He's like, you want me to do that? He's like, okay, that's pretty cool. And he just goes from totally serious guy to okay, now, how do I learn how to do nunchucks? And he just, everything you need to know about nunchucks, he wants to know about nunchucks. He just throws himself into it.
So how much time did he have to train martial arts before John Wick won?
Oh, God, it wasn't that. He was coming out of a couple films, so he hadn't been, like. he wasn't in fight shape. So, you know, he can't just jump back in. So we gave him, like, I think, three to five weeks with some of the trainers we found to get into shape, to get into shape.
Cut weight, got himself back in, stretched, kind of, got back into where he was on the Matrix. And then we stuck him with the fight teams and the stunt guys. I think we had him within three months. That was probably the shortest one we did. That was about three months to get him into that shape and teach him all the, you know, the Aikido stuff and the Aikijutsu.
But you need, there's so much going on in those movies physically that you need to be proficient in. Yeah. The gun stuff, the throws, jiu-jitsu, striking, everything.
The jiu-jitsu was the new thing for him. Probably not the most physically demanding,
I mean, I'm sure you remember the first time he transitioned jiu-jitsu. It's like, it looks easy, but yeah, completely.
It's an eye opener.
Yeah, it really is. And only even recently for me, I'm starting to feel like, oh, I can move. It feels just as good to be on my back as my butt, you know. But I think we took a lot of inspiration from dance. I got, you know, most of what we do is dance.
They're based on dance drills. They're not based on martial art drills. They look like martial arts. We kick, punch, but we don't train the actors in Thai pads or focus mitts or heavy bag. We'll do maybe a little of that for impact stuff, but it's mostly about memory.
Because if a guy can punch and kick, that's great, but if he can't remember five moves, you're not much good to us. And it's more. martial arts is action, reaction, or causing the guy to be off balance. All our guys are trained to keep him on balance, to make it look crazy, but they've got to dance with him. So it's about that metronome, keeping the beat going.
So when we trained him, he hadn't been trained that way before. It was more like memorizing, you know, a few moves,
hitting some guy, moving on.
But we realized we had no money and we had no time, and every time you do punches and kicks, you see in most movies, right? Like they're on you, right, over my shoulder. Then, you know, you take the hit, and it goes over your shoulder. so I can sell the hit. So you're always doing these reverses.
So if I do a big, wide shot profile, you throw in a nice roundhouse kick, I got to cut somewhere to show the impact, unless you're really kicking me, which is not advisable most of the time. So every time, the more punching and kicking and striking you do, or if Keanu's not doing the motion, I got to cut more, and every time I cut, it's a setup. It's just time-consuming. Not that it's bad or good, it's just time-consuming. We knew we weren't going to have that, so we're like, fuck, what do we do?
Okay, well, we're just going to grab people. We're just going to make it all grappling. And like, is that going to look, you know, remember, it's all during the Bourne, so everything's going to look very slow, you know, compared to what it was. But we're going to do all grappling. We're going to do Aikido, Aikijutsu, or Jiu-Jitsu.
That's it. That's all you get. And if you get a punch, it'll be a contact hit. That's all we're going to do. No punches, no kicks, no, nothing.
And we'll do it all in one take. And we're all like, yeah, sounds good.
Yeah, we thought it was a complete disaster. after the first two days of shooting the fight scenes. We're like, this is going to suck. We're fucked.
Why did you think that, though?
I think it was everyone's mindset. Like, we did it out of necessity, and we thought it was cool. But like, you'd see people, they're like, where's the kick? Like, you know, sometimes people look at it and go, well, he's doing the same throw over. I mean, Ippon Seinagi looks the same, but for us, the different grips, the different throw, it all looks different.
to me. Like, I'm a throw, you know, I love judo porn. I could watch a million different throws. It's awesome. For some people, it all looks the same.
They want to see the cool jump, spin, hook, kick or something like that. But then we put in the close quarter stuff, and when you're seeing it, remember, we don't have the muzzle flashes on. We don't have the blood splatters. So you're just kind of seeing, you know, it looks like they're dancing. And then you put in the sound effects, and you put in the muzzle, and then you put in the fucking reload.
Like, now it's making sense.
So what do you, when he's shooting, in the actual filming, is he just pulling the trigger, and it's just going click?
Well, see, that's the thing.
You have dummy rounds?
When you, when you, most movies, you always see A to B cutting, right? I'm on you, you're the guy. Like, guns in the camera, you fire the blank. Most firearms, up until very recently, fire blanks. And for the people out there, a blank is a round without the actual bullet, the lead piece that hits.
But a blank still has a gunpowder charge in it. Say, maybe, you know, even if it's only 50 grams. Of black powder. But at a range of 10 to 15 feet, that'll still, that can kill you. Yeah.
With concussive force. That's when you hear about all the accidents that have happened with blanks over the years. Like, you can't put a blank under your head and pull the trigger, it'd kill you. Right? So, we wanted to do all this close-quarter shooting.
Like, we wanted to put the muzzle in and do all this stuff, close-quarter contact stuff. So, we, you know, we went to our VFX guys, and the trick is not so much the muzzle flash, it's the lighting interaction, especially, right? And it's cycling the automatic. Yeah. Getting it in and having the casing ejection.
All do, but it can add up with visual effects costs. So, we went and we found the armors, and, you know, through Taron and the other, the technologies that we found through the armors, we made a plug gun. A plug gun is a gun that has a, almost a steel rod inside the barrel. And it kicks the gas a different way. So, we still have an ejection, but nothing.
No energy, no flash, no padding or wadding comes out the barrel. Like, you know, you couldn't put a live round in it if you tried.
So, is it a lower level?
In England, they use some that are, like, almost air contained. They can do it. In us, it's a very, very small charge of black powder. So, it's a very, very, we call them plug guns. They're very, very limited in the drainage.
So, it's just enough to cycle the round.
Just enough to cycle it, yeah. And eject it. Yeah, ejecting, but nothing comes out the barrel.
So, all that stuff that you see, the blood splatter, that's all, CGI?
The blood is all CG. There's one or two instances where it's not, but most of the blood is, the blood's so good nowadays digitally that it saves so much time because we don't have to change the wardrobe to get it. I mean, like, you know, you see, like, in Tarantino, like, in Django, Tarantino still uses old school blood packs, which I, you know, I'm old school. I fucking love that. I think it's amazing.
But with just the time and, you know, you see a John Wick movie, it's like, you know, the reset on 20 stunt guys taking hits at one day, it'd be a three hour reset. to change the wardrobe. Right. And head shots, you'd have to put a special head pack on with a wig and all that stuff. So we do, we do the, the, the blood hits digitally.
The muzzle flashes, we actually shoot against a green screen and we'll call them elements. And then we'll plug actual muzzle flashes back into the movie later on. So they're not digital per se, but they are comped in or in a composition. And that's how we get the cool lighting effect and keep the cool muzzle flashes.
How long did it take you to film that red circle bar scene?
I think, less than four days. Really? Yeah, we went really fast. And Ken, always, he had the flu, he had like a 103 degree fever. He was going down.
It was a, it was a rough day. It was freezing cold, New York. He had the flu, super high temperature, and we were just flying through it. Like literally two, three takes, move on, two, three takes, move on.
Filming it with the flu. Wow.
Yeah, he's a trooper, man. He's hard to keep down.
That's incredible.
Yeah, he's a tough fucker.
A lot of actors have a fucking earache. they'll call it quits for the day. Yeah. Yeah.
No comment.
No comment.
But like most of the people we work with, they get it. And we try to be smart too. Look, if we, if there's another way, if we could have shut down and let them, we just, it was like one of those, we either got to stop or we don't, but we only get one shot. You couldn't afford, and Keanu's, that guy too. You can't, you can't make him.
Where did you film that?
It was on New York City.
But the red circle, where was that?
It was in this little, it was up in the theater district. I forget the name of it. It was a shut down little club that we just kind of opened back up and put our own, put our own lighting rig in there and just kind of lit it up. I mean, if you had seen it in the daytime, it was all like that shit, brown leather. It looked like you're walking into, like, you know, big boys or something.
It looked really bad. That gives credit to John Sella, the cinematographer on the first one. We went in, put our lighting grid up, flashed a lot of big screen neon lights, put the extras in funny colors. And, you know, we ran out of money. So we're like, we didn't, we didn't know how to put the bad guys in something.
So we're like, okay, what would Star Trek do? And Star Trek, we always called them the red shirts. You know, the guys in Star Trek that were always getting killed. You have to do, was right there. Kirk was transporting down to the planet with the red shirt guy.
That guy was gone. So we put all our bad guys in the red shirts. They were just going to kill them all. I think we had a deal. There's a local, like one of the garment district things.
I think we got all those red shirts for like 10 bucks. It was like a whole deal. So we just bought all the stunt guys red shirts. But yeah, we did it all in this shitty little club in like four days, maybe four and a half days.
And this has got to be very stressful for you to be first time, director, doing all this. And then so much pressure. And also it's not picked up by anybody.
You know, it's weird. I guess, when you're in it, you're just trying to, you just go into that mode of don't suck. Like you don't have to win. You just can't lose. Just finish, get the day, do your thing.
And my partner, Dave Leach at the time, like, you know, we both were, so, we just love being on set. So I think we just, it was kind of, you know, you come from the action. You say, oh, these guys can do action and you can do that. But when you're trying to put the storytelling in, you're trying to do that. I mean, you might get other guys you'll talk to, or guys that come from the stunt world and say, yeah, it's just like doing, it's, for me, it was nothing like second unit.
Completely different. It had that different kind of pressure, but like, I guess you see how things come together more. You know, you just do the action. You're worried about just making it look cool. You're trying to do something like, you have Keanu Reeves, you have Ian McShane, you have Willem Dafoe, Lance Reddick, and you're kind of going, oh, fuck this up.
Who was the badass Russian guy that Keanu gets in a fight with and the guy throws him off the balcony?
Oh, that's Daniel Bernhardt. That's a good, he was the star of Bloodsport 2 and Bloodsport 3.. Pull that one up.
No kidding.
Yeah, after Van Damme, Daniel was this, he's a Swiss actor. That's Daniel Bernhardt.
He's very good.
He's awesome. He's a good, good, good, close friend. But I had worked with him. He had hired me as a stunt guy when he was the lead actor in Bloodsport 2, Bloodsport 3, and Bloodsport 4 or 5.. I don't know.
They go on forever, right? But when it was time to do this, we called in every favor we had. And, you know, like that whole lower budget, that's how we got Scott Atkinson, Mark Dacostas, and Gary Daniels, and Daniel Bernhardt, all these, Marco Zaror, all these great, you know, up-and-coming action actors.
My friend Tate Fletcher was in it, too.
Tate, yeah, Tate was with the beard. We slammed Tate's awesome. Like, he had that beard, and we're like, what are we doing? Oh, we got a courtyard for the beard. We slammed down and shoot him in the head.
Tate's awesome, man.
Yeah, I've known Tate forever.
He's a great guy, right?
He's a really good actor. Yeah. He's got the eyes. Like, he can pop those eyes out. He's fantastic.
But you look for those guys, right? And you put them in the cool spots. Yeah.
But this fucking, there's Tate. This whole scene is just so fun. It's such a crazy scene.
Come on, that's a real beard there, by the way.
Yeah, that's his real beard.
He's awesome.
Yeah, no, super fun. I mean, that's always a trick. But, like, if you get the people you like around you, they kind of give you a hand. So we had a lot of, we called in a lot of favors and a lot of friends, and, you know, they all know it's your first time, like the crew and the cast. Like, Ian McShane, everybody kind of knew.
Keanu had gone out. Keanu had one day off on John Wick 1.. And, you know, New York City base camp is, like, blocks away from the set. So me and my partner, Dave Leitch, it's Ian McShane's first day on set. So it's, like, 4 in the morning.
We're going to walk over to his trailer, introduce ourselves, say, Hi, how you doing? I mean, it's kind of a big deal for us. Keanu's sitting outside his trailer at, like, 4.30 in the morning. It's one day off. I'm like, what are you doing here?
He's like, I just thought I'd come in early and talk to Ian. and, you know, warm up for you a little bit. And we're like, that's what kind of guy he is. So he kind of greased the wheels for us. He walks in and, you know, Ian's like, So I hear it's your first movie.
Don't worry, we'll get you through it. You know, everybody was so cool because we just kind of admitted we didn't know what we were doing, and we wanted to learn and get our thing going.
How difficult is it to take the dailies and then edit it down to a film? Like the editing process.
You know, to put the assembly together, to actually just put clips together, it's not that hard. I mean, good, bad, you know, you could take a couple shots at it. It's to, and you don't know this until you try it a couple times. It's like, where's the actual, like, how much can you take away? It's like chipping away at the statue, right?
It's not adding things. It's taking away things to really shine. what's good. You know, lose some of the good to get to the great. So you don't want to cut your action.
You don't want to cut any scenes, but then you watch the movie as a whole. And this is what I'd say to any other editor or directors out there that are just getting started. If you just edit a scene, or you just edit a sequence, or you just edit, like, an act, and then watch it and go, I got it, I got it, you still haven't got it. Because there's this thing, we've all felt it in movies about pacing, right? There's a way a three-hour movie can feel like two hours.
There's a way a one-hour movie can feel like three hours. It's all about the pacing, right? So what I learned from it is, you've got to sit, and every time you make, when you're in that place where you can just make these one-minute or two-minute changes, you've got to take the time to sit back and watch the whole thing. No pee breaks. No phone calls.
And that's what we did on Wick 4.. A lot of it was like, everyone kept telling me, it's too long, too long. I know, but let's just watch it. And my editorial would hate me, because, like, twice a week, we're like, everybody's watching it. You know, like, we're watching this.
And you'd have to sit and get through the two-and-a-half hours of it. And that's the only way, you know. And then you're like, still, we're not there. This is too fast.
But is it hard to, when you're in the middle of it, is it hard to see it?
Yeah.
Because you've seen it so many times, is it hard to see it the way another person's gonna see it?
It's like, it's like knowing you're lost, but also not being nervous by it. It's being lost in a good way. Because you can feel it, right? You can feel there's something cool there. And you can feel like, I just go back to being an audience member.
What do I wish I had seen in Star Wars?
Push that microphone up to your face. Sorry. That's okay.
You know, you're trying to figure it out, right? And that's the exciting part. You know there's something tingly there. You know there's something good, but what is it?
It's kind of, you can't be afraid to try. Because now, digitally, we can go back and forth and have 20 versions of the movie. Like. it's not like the old days where you cut film and glue it. So we would always make a new, we'd try, I've always had good editors.
I've always had young, hungry, great, great editors that wanted to experiment. And they swing big. So let's just, can we do this movie an hour and 20 minutes? And they'll do a version of it. Can we do this an hour and 45??
What's the version of it? And you'll start to see things that you obviously hate. But you'll also see choices that you could make to tighten things up. It's, and I'm sure everybody you talk to will have a different process. But, like, I think it's both terrifying and exciting.
And again, it's hard to explain. You can feel like you're on the right path, even though you don't know it. Does that make sense? And you just have to keep trying till you watch it in the room with the sound. And you're like, that's it.
That's the movie I want.
Did you bring in people that hadn't seen it before? Yeah.
I'm a big fan of friends and family stuff. And at first, your ego may not be ready. Because everybody likes something else. Everybody thinks something should be cut. Everybody thinks it's too much blood or not enough blood.
Literally, in the same day, I've had some of our female friends came in and wanted more action. And some of our guy friends were like, we want less action. You just couldn't tell what people wanted. But you listen to what they all love. And that was the cool thing.
They all loved Keanu. They all cried when the puppy died. They all felt it was something they hadn't really seen before. It was action in a different way. They liked the mythology part of it.
They liked the color. They liked the sound. They thought it was all very well made. Whether you like it or not, the crew was really good. That kind of thing.
And that's what sticks with you. Now, I'll show my movie. I love showing it. Because I love it. I get some of the most insane comments.
It's pretty funny. Even the reviews. Keanu and I have this little thing. I know I've talked to some director friends that don't read reviews. We read everyone.
We're masochistic about it. Everything on Rotten Tomatoes or Honest Trailers, or Everything Wrong With, or The Critical Drinker. All these great guys on YouTube are just fucking hammering us on little shit. And we're kind of laughing. Fair game.
You're right. We're a little over the top. But it's very interesting to see what grabs people. You're kind of like, what's working? You just can't let it direct you.
You don't want to chase the dragon of what other people want. You want to do the movie that you want and hopefully people like it. But it's very interesting to see what does touch. The only true north you have is what you like and what you're interested in. That's how you drive your show.
That's what makes the show unique, because it's from you. You start doing what you thought was popular. What everybody wanted to see. And it didn't work. How do you course correct?
You don't know, because it's not you anymore. Right? Yeah. And that's just kind of what we try to do.
Yeah, that becomes a real problem with people that pay too much attention to criticisms or comments. Why? You can get lost in the middle of it. I was actually just talking to a friend the other night. He said he thinks about negative comments while he's writing his jokes.
I was like, eww.
Yeah, I don't know if that's productive in the right way. I think it's okay to be aware of it. But I certainly wouldn't want to... I don't want to sit down and write a movie based... Well, hey.
How many sequels have you seen where they bring back the same cast over and over again? Or the same jokes, or the same gag or the same... Because they think it works. Eww, you better not fuck with it.
Right.
Okay, that's great in a lot of businesses. But in entertainment, I don't think that's going to push or move the needle the way we need to do it. I think we got to take chances, right? Otherwise, what are we doing?
Well, you created... One of the interesting things about the whole Wick franchise is that you've created this universe. This universe of the Continental. This universe of all these different rules that this group of assassins has. And now you have this opportunity with that to do so many other things.
Because you have like a... There's a whole world. We have tea for you there if you want it. Oh, thanks.
I guess that's... You know, we created the world based on stuff that we had done. You know, being a stunt guy, you travel around, you live in hotels all the time. Wouldn't it be cool if the concierge gave you a firearm? That'd be great.
Or if they had a gun range downstairs instead of a gym, that'd be fantastic.
But it's also like... I mean, again, if you made your list of the top 10 things you wanted to see in movies, you'd have dogs, ninjas, muscle cars, guns, archery, sword fight. And then you made a list of the top 10 people you'd want to see. I want to see Donnie Yen fight Steve McQueen, do Bruce Lee on Schwarzenegger. Yeah.
We just tried to create a franchise where we could put all that stuff in and no one would call us on it. Because there's. no... I mean, we've been called for the superhero movies and all the other stuff, which are all interesting. And I'm a big fan.
I just don't think that's what I'd be good at. You know, I think a little crazier mindset of what's not being done, how do we get that in? Like, you know, the old Shokusuji movies, you know, Enter the Ninja or something like that. Or Chuck Norris' Invasion USA. Like, you know, things that were kind of so nutty and wacky.
But like, you know, they hit a chord. So how do we bring that back in? just a... And I don't want to say a cool way, but like a more modern?
or technically more, I guess, more developed way. Yeah. That's why we spend so much time on the look of the John Wicks. Like, we want people to take the action. Like, look, we're trying to do a good job here.
We're not just trying to phone it in. But at the same time, we do want to be a little crazy. Like, I mean, how many dog bites to the crotch did? I do? Quite a few.
You know how long it takes a train built in Malawans to bite a crotch? Does it take a lot? No, actually about a day. You're pretty smart. It takes a stunt guy a lot longer to get used to being bitten in the crotch.
What do you do to pad their crotch? You give them like a...
We have these cool little Kevlar suits. It's funny, right?
Andrew, our dog trainer, when I first... He's the guy that trains all the wolves for Game of Thrones. That's how I met him.
Oh, wow.
So, I called him and said, like, I have dogs myself. And, you know, you know how you play with the dogs, that little ball, and again, you have the little tug-of-war fight with them. I was like, I want to do that. How do I do that? Because, like, I don't know if people have seen it.
When you normally, up until very recently, if you see a dog attack in a movie, that's a dog attacking a human. The dog doesn't know. it's a fucking movie. The dog is just attacking. The dog is literally trying to hurt that person on camera.
It's not good for the dog. It's not good for the person. Those professional animal trainers wearing a bite suit that, you know, all, fucking Kevlar pad. You've seen them. It's bulky.
It's like a suit of armor. And the dog just goes to kill them. We didn't think that was such a brilliant idea in the way we wanted to do things. So it's like, there's got to be another way to train dogs, because I can train my dogs just to wrestle with me.
So what we do is we take these long cylindrical pads, bite pads, that are painted green screen, green, right? And they're velcroed on one side with a ripcord, like the parachute ripcord. So they're laced onto either the forearm, the crotch, the leg, the calf, wherever we want the dog to bite. And the dog's been trained to attack green. So you can't wear green on set.
Holy shit.
So we've got the dog trained to attack these green bite pads.
And the dogs, that's why we go out, Andrew finds the Belgians that seem to have the most promise. And they're trained to wrestle. They're not trained to attack. They're not trained to kill or to bite. They're trained to wrestle.
They have fun. So the dogs think it's now fun. So we're training them. You know, usually when a dog wrestles with you, you know, down, boy, down. We've encouraged it.
So the dog is actually having fun. So it's not mentally traumatic on the animal. So it's fun. So the stunt guys go in. They go in for their martial art training and their physical training, and whoever else we're working with.
And for an hour and a half a day, each stunt guy that worked with the animal has to go in because the dog has to recognize you, has to smell, you, has to get used to you. And the camera guys, everybody that's around dogs has to go play, basically just an hour of play. So the stunt guys go in, put the gear on, they wrestle with the dog for the hour and a half. And then the dog gets used to them and we put the, wherever it's gotta go. And then we have these really cool sleeves that have a little bit of a bite-proof Ethafoam in it, covered with a really soft pad.
so the dog doesn't hurt his teeth. And the dog will go and bite. And Belgians, once they clamp, that's why they call them like, maligators, once they bite, they don't let go. So we had to figure out a way to get them off when we yell cut because they're so angst about getting the tag. So we have the ripcord going, so we yell cut, the stunt guy would pull the ripcord, the pad would release, the dog would hold the pad, walk away with it, and just hold onto it for the next five minutes until he got tired and just dropped the pad.
So we had five Belgians. And then we just wrote that every take was a new dog because the other one had to let the pad go.
And what did Halle Berry have to do? How much?
Well, we figured, since, just like we did with Shamir Anderson, this one, you can't have that because we're so, we shoot so wide, we couldn't have a trainer, you know, right behind the couch on the dog. So we just, Andrew and I, had talked about, well, let's just, we'll just raise the dogs for the next six months with the cast. So Halle, for like, I think it was almost eight and a half months. actually, Halle would come in and she'd learn to train them. She'd carry the little treats, and so they listened, the two Belgians that were her number three, there's actually four of them, but the two that were always on camera, like she, literally trained from scratch.
No kidding.
So they had bait, like they were like her dogs. Wow. And they listened to every word she said. Like she could just snap her finger and they'd be like boom. But it got crazy, to the point where, that's Andrew back there, but yeah, I mean if you came over to Halle, you know, and the dogs were there, they'd give you the eye like, what are you doing next to my master?
Yeah, they're intense dogs.
They're so brilliant, but they look at you, they sort things out.
Yeah, the team guys call them meat missiles. Yeah. They fly. Like. we've played so many videos of Belgian Malinois running up hills.
Oh, my God.
Just jumping over walls and like, they literally can fly through the air.
Well, that's really one of our Belgians that ran up the wall in that movie. That was like a 13 and a half foot thing.
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