Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 329: How to Direct Nail-Biting Action Films with Con Air's Simon West

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BPS 329: How to Direct Nail-Biting Action Films with Con Air's Simon West · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
• 0:13
  Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three twenty nine. Why couldn't you just put the
• 0:18
  bunny back in the box? Nicholas Cage Khan air broadcasting from a dark,
• 0:24
  windowless room in Hollywood when we really should be working on that next draft.
• 0:28
  It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while
• 0:33
  teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host, Alex
• 0:38
  Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I
• 0:43
  am your humble host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof
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  Script Coverage. Now. Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually
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  focuses on the kind of project you are in the goals of the project are,
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  so we actually break it down by three categories micro budget, indie film,
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  market and studio film. There's no reason to get coverage from a reader
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  that's used to reading tempole movies when your movie is going to be done for
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  one hundred thousand dollars and we wanted to focus on that At Bulletproof script coverage,
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  our readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, WM E, NBC,
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  many many more. So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered by
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  professional readers, head on over to cover my screenplay dot com. And I
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  was able to get a legendary filmmaker on the show. He is arguably one
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  of the best action directors of his generation. We have on the show today,
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  director and producer Simon West. Some of his films are The legendary Khan
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  Air, The General's Daughter with John Travolta, Laura Croft, tomb Rate,
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  Expendables to The Mechanic Wild Card with Jason Statham, and many many more.
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  Simon is an absolute master at creating amazing action sequences and really fun and entertaining
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  action films. And Simon I have a fantastic conversation about his origins, how
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  he was trained so so young in so many different disciplines before he ever really
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  set foot on a major film set, and how he was able to deal
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  on his first big budget film with Jerry Bruckheimer and kN Air, how he
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  dealt with all the testosterone on that set, how he was able to create
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  all of those amazing acts and sequences with no CG or very very minimal CG,
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  and so so much more. This is such a fun conversation, guys,
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  so sit back and enjoy my conversation with Simon West. I'd like to
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  welcome to the show, Simon West. How you do a Simon very well?
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  How are you? I'm doing great, my friend. Thank you so
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  much for coming on the show. As I was telling you earlier, I've
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  been a huge fan of your work from the beginning of your feature world,
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  and I actually seen some of your music videos and commercials as well growing up.
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  But you know, there's very few action directors to do action like you
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  do, so I'm excited to get into the weeds of your journey and of
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  your process. So first question, my friend, I have to ask you,
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  is why in God screen Earth did you want to get into this insanity
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  that is called the film industry. Well, I never really had any other
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  idea of anything else I wanted to do, and you know, from about
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  twelve years old, it was quite serious. But I have to say I
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  was really fascinated by film from like three or four years old because my dad
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  had an old Super eight camera and projector, and it's one of my earliest
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  memories of him putting the screen up in our kitchen and projecting you know,
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  home movies and just the fascination of seeing the moving image on this screen in
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  a dark room, you know, with the dust melting on the bulb,
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  and the smell of it and the smell of the screen. And I still
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  have that screen, and every time I open it, it's the same old
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  smell takes me back to like being you know, four years old and seeing
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  the home movies, and so it stuck with me. So when I hit
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  twelve and I was sort of you know, could do something about it,
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  I got you know, a paper round and saved up my money and bought
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  a little Super eight film camera, and then it was all about saving up
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  money for the film stock because in those days, in a one role of
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  film that was two and a half minutes long cost about the same as two
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  music albums, so it's really expensive. So I never had a music collection
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  growing up, because all my friends, you know, would have albums and
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  collect vinyl and I never did because every penny I say went on movie film,
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  you know, to make my little films. And so I still don't
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  really have a music collection. I mean, I've just about started to do,
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  you know, Spotify playlists and everything, but I've never owned physically a
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  music collection, and I guess nobody does now everything is this virtual. So
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  but yeah, so it was. It was one of my earliest memories.
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  It's the only thing I ever wanted to do. I sort of started earnestly
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  making stuff at twelve, and then when I got to sixteen, I joined
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  a I heard about a film club in the next city to me, which
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  was Oxford, and they had sixteen millimeter film equipment and they were mostly you
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  know, graduates or postgraduates, and you know, I went along as this
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  sort of gorky sixteen year old kid, and they taught me to use the
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  sixteen mill equipment and so I started just shooting that myself, and I went
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  out on the streets of London and into the you know, the subway and
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  shot things down there. And I started shooting musicians who just played on the
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  street, you know, busking for money. And I sort of combined music
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  and film quite early on in that way, and then I was sort of
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  interested in the musicians, but I was also interested in the way music played
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  with film and it was always very you know, evocative to me. So
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  even though I never had a music collection, I always associated you know,
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  music and film the imagery together. And I managed at eighteen to talk my
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  way into the BBC and their film department. And at that time there weren't
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  really there was one film school in England, the National Film School, and
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  it was really hard to get into. You had to be a graduate or
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  postgraduate, or you had to have been a journalist, or you had to
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  have gone on a expedition through the jungle. You had to offer them something
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  quite exceptional to get in, and the only took twenty five people a year,
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  you know, which was a tiny amount. So I didn't think there
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  was any ants of getting into that. But luckily the BBC took a you
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  know, there was one guy there I think that sort of saw a bit
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  of himself in me. That was this sort of precocious film bratt who knew
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  everything about or thought they knew everything about film. And I certainly knew a
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  lot technically about how how it worked, and you know, I could talk
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  endlessly about film. And you know, I've been watching Trufau films on you
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  know, my little black and white portable in my bedroom from you know,
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  twelve years old. So I knew about, you know, different sorts of
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  cinema out there in American cinema, French cinema, English cinema, and but
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  I also do technically how to do it. So they kind of, you
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  know, one of the questions was like, well, we don't usually take
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  people of your age. You know, you have to usually be in your
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  twenties at least to get in mid twenties, and they said, well,
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  what are you going to do if you don't get in. I said,
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  well, I'll just apply again. I'll just keep applying until you let me
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  in. So they just obviously didn't want to be stalked or you know,
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  for the next ten years. So they let me in and they trained me.
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  So I got was training by the BBC in every department that was great
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  at that time. They taught you film, editing, photography, and everything
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  about the lenses, everything about the lighting, how the sounder has recorded,
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  how the sounds mixed, everything technically, and then they send you to every
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  department. So I started in documentaries. Then I went to drama, and
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  then arts documentaries and news and current affairs, and they just rotate you around
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  and then when you find an area that you like, you can you know,
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  apply to stay there. And I ended up in drama obviously because that's
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  what I wanted to do, and I work with some you know, great
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  directors under them. When I was there, was like Mike Lee was there
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  at the time, a film who does very improvised drama. So I kind
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  of, you know, tapped into that and realized how you can work with
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  actors to get so much out of an actor rather than just sitting in your
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  room, you know, bashing out the script yourself, if you actually get
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  a group of actors together, you're going to come up with something really cool.
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  So he taught me a lot of that. And then also there was
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  the traditional BBC dramas which you know, Sherlock Holmes or Bride and Prejudice or
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  you know, anything to do with Dickens or you know, Emily Bronte all
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  that sort of costume drama which are very traditional, and then on the other
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  hand, this sort of improvised drama from Mike Lee. And but also I
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  learned a lot from working in documentaries and New and Current affairs, because documentaries
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  taught me to make a story out of what you actually ended up with,
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  not what you hope to get. We'll be right back after a word from
• 9:52
  our sponsor, and now back to the show. Often you plan a movie
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  or filming and you it's going to be perfect, and then you're going to
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  get all these great sequences, but what you actually end up with is sort
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  of if you're lucky, it's, you know, fifty percent of what you
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  set up out to get, and then you've got to make the best story
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  you can add of what you actually ended up with. And documentaries is like
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  that. You turn up, you shoot, whatever happens, and then you
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  look at this pile of stuff and you go, okay, how can we
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  make a story out of this material? So I used that a lot in
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  my filmmaking, you know, that that sense of don't don't stress too much
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  about what you were hoping to get, just try and make the best of
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  what you did actually get, and some of it's better than you planned,
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  you know. And then the other thing that was in current affairs. I
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  mean I worked on a news program called Newsnight, which is still running that
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  went out at eleven o'clock at night, and you'd sit around all morning waiting
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  for stories to come in, and then the afternoon the story would come in
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  and you'd be editing all afternoon, and then you know, you'd still be
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  mixing the sound and everything as the show started. So quite often, you
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  know, you were running down the corridor with the film under your arm as
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  the anchor was announcing the film and they were throwing on the machine and pressing
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  go, and it just made it. And that taught me not to panic,
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  because again, when you're shooting, things go wrong, you know,
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  and sometimes you're under a huge stress. I've been in situations with gigantic stunts,
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  you know, some pretty famous ones on you know, in films like
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  conn Air and everything, where I've had two hundred stuntmen, a full sized
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  airplane, a full sized building that's supposed to collapse, and it's all supposed
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  to happen in one go. I've had seventeen cameras running and it's something has
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  gone wrong and you just can't panic, and you can't you know, crumble.
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  And that sort of broadcast news as it were that I worked on taught
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  me how to you know how to keep a steady head in the situation like
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  that happens. So it's so it's fascinating hearing your story is that it looks
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  like you went through almost a boot camp early on, very early on,
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  and covered almost every aspect of the tool sets. You picked up so many
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  tools that you put in your toolbox that your director's toolbox. By the time
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  you started to actually direct, you'd have been doing it in a sense for
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  a long time. These skills like the broadcast news which which doesn't specifically,
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  you know, translate the cinema, but yes, it does translate the cinema.
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  So it kind of you were kind of being groomed, you know,
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  by the universe if you will, to do the kind of films that you
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  are doing have been doing throughout your career. Yeah, you know, I
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  was very lucky in that sense that I did end up and it wasn't just
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  then. It was later when I went through music videos for a little bit,
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  and then commercials particularly, which then give me another set of skill sets
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  and experience. And it's flying hours. You know, there's that old adage,
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  you know, be an expert, you have to do something for ten
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  thousand hours, and so if you can arrive on set, you know,
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  with ten twenty thirty fifty thousand hours of flying time, you're going to be
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  in a much better position. I mean, I started in editing, which
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  is particularly lucky because that is definitely a great learning for directors how to construct
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  the story and how what do you actually need, and how you can cheat
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  and how you can you know, give yourself some slack and not have to
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  shoot every single thing you think you need because you know in editing you can
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  you can help. And so editing was definitely a great start. And then
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  you know when I went as I said, those there's various you know BBC
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  situations. Was that one set of experience. But then when I went into
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  commercials, you know, that's working at a very high level all over the
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  world. So I would be up a mountain, you know one day,
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  then I'll be underwater. Then x I'd be you know, hanging out of
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  a helicopter or racing cars or and then I sort of moved towards I guess
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  what it was. I particularly look, how do I get into feature films?
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  It was like, so I looked for role models and so in in
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  England, all the big directors went through commercials. So it's Ridley Scott,
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  Tony Scott, Hu Hudson, Adrian Line, Alan Parker, all these guys
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  who ended up making films in England and then Hollywood had gone through commercials,
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  and so I deliberately targeted commercials because it was a very high end kind of
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  training and in especially in England, they're very kind of big budget, glossy,
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  very well made, often better made than the shows in between them.
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  You know, at that stage. You know, TV was very cheap and
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  cheerful in those days in the UK, but the commercials were very high end.
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  You know, it's caught up now of course, you know, TV
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  is as as good as movies, if not better and sometimes. But so
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  I targeted those type of people and that thing. So I ended up making
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  a test commercial I shot. I deliberately shot a music video for a band
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  and I put in I put in a little story in it. So I
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  had to do the typical playing the instruments, and I was never, you
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  know, a big music video director. It was really you know, a
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  way of paying the bills while I got into commercials and then into movies.
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  But so I deliberately made this little story in the in the music video,
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  and then after I'd done that, I took it out and I cut it
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  down into a test commercial and I had this you know, test commercial that
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  which I sort of took with me when I got on the plane to the
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  States. And the company I was working with in London had an LA office
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  and they said, do you want to try and work out through the LA
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  office because there was no work in the UK at the time, was absolutely
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  dead. So I went over with sort of four hundred dollars in my pocket
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  and this fake commercial and started you know, touting it around and it sort
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  of started to get interest, and by sheer coincidence, it was sort of
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  comedic. It was a funny. It was a fake comedy beer commercial.
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  And so then I started just getting off for comedy, which was very comm
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  venient in a way because it was it was the commercials that had actors dialogue.
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  It wasn't just cars driving through pretty forest and mount into models on the
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  beach. It was you know, it was a little story in itself,
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  so I could practice my my art. And so I just started doing comedy
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  commercials and they got you know, bigger and bigger, and then ended up
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  sort of doing super Bowl commercials for you know, the Budweisers so like bud
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  Wiser frogs, and then the Pepsi commercials, and they started to get a
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  lot more attention. And you know, these were you know, the big
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  budget. You know, they're spending as much as you know, an independent,
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  little independent film on these thirty second commercials. So again, you know,
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  I got used to having the big toys as it were, but it
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  still wasn't a movie. You know, it's still only thirty seconds. It's
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  still not a movie. So I'm still desper and hungry to get into the
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  you know, legitimate filmmaking. And and of course with the with the high
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  profile Super Bowl commercials, I started getting calls from the studios. And so
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  I got a call from Columbia offering me a romantic comedy because they obviously thought,
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  oh, well he does comedy, so we'll do that. And then
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  I got a spy thriller from a UK company. And then I got the
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  call from Jerry Bruckheimer, you know who said, you know, I've seen
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  your commercials, are really impressed and coming in for a meeting and let's you
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  know, talk about possibly making a film together. And circles, I you
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  know, rushed into that and had the big meeting with Jerry, you know,
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  on the giant desk, you know, and that you know, in
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  some ways the rest is history, but it was, it was, you
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  know, it was an awesome meeting, and I had to He basically had
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  a wall of scripts behind him. It was in the days when scripts were
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  printed on paper and every producer would have a stack of them in their office
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  with the titles of them. But Jerry didn't have just a pile. He
• 18:29
  had a wall of them. You know, there's probably a couple of thousand
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  scripts. And he turned around and he pulled three off, which it looked
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  like it was random, but I'm sure he knew exactly which was pulling off,
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  and he threw them across the desk and said, look read those this
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  weekend and tell me which one of the one you want to make as a
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  movie. And two of them were so well, they were all action films
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  basically, because that's what Jerry did, you know, he did. He
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  did those type of films. Two of them are pretty straightforward, you know,
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  I felt, you know, a bit cliched kind of action moves.
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  But the third one was was a film called conn Air, and I read
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  this and it was quite a small film. It was like a character driven
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  film. But the characters were so good, and even the names of the
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  characters were cool, like Sally Grunt Dance and Cyrus the Virus, and you
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  know that it just hooked me right just for reading that. I would have
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  done it just for the name of the characters, basically. And so I
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  went back and I, you know, I turned down the romantic comedy,
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  I turned down the spy thriller. And I said to Jerry Lot, I'm
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  out of these three. I want to make conn Air. And he said,
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  well, it's a you know, it's very small film, and we
• 19:38
  need a summer blockbuster. So you've got to go away and turn this small
• 19:42
  character film because it was written by Scott Rosenberg, who did you know,
• 19:47
  Things to Do in Denver when You're Dead and Beautiful Girls, which were fantastic
• 19:51
  but very small, you know, beautifully you know character. We'll be right
• 19:57
  back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show based
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  films. And this was the same thing, and Jerry wanted a summer blockbuster,
• 20:11
  so I had to go away and sort of invent all these big events
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  and sort of blow them up and make them, you know, larger than
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  life. And just every couple of weeks i'd go in, he said,
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  you know, you've got to make it bigger, make it bigger. And
• 20:22
  so I just you know, I had a field day just going in and
• 20:26
  such thing. Okay, how can we make this thing even bigger and more
• 20:30
  ridiculous than it was before? And and that's that's what you ended up with.
• 20:33
  That's why looks like that. No, it's fascinating. Kinder is one
• 20:37
  of those films that it's just one of those movies that sticks. It sticks
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  with you for I mean, especially with that generation. When I came out,
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  I saw it in the theater and and it's it's you know, it's
• 20:48
  built a life up up on its own over the years, and you know,
• 20:52
  there's there's so many legendary stories I hear. I heard. I heard
• 20:55
  Danny Trejo. I was watching a recent documentary with him, and there was
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  a story of him being on set with kN Air and there was obviously a
• 21:04
  lot of testosterone on that set, a lot of testosterone, and all the
• 21:08
  actors are trying to you know, like, oh, I'm super tough,
• 21:12
  and I'm super tough and I'm super tough, and Danny was quiet in the
• 21:15
  corner, and Nicolas Cage came up to the group. Because it was all
• 21:19
  of them sitting around trying to one up each other and how tough they are
• 21:22
  and how scary they were in real life, and Nicolas Cage came up.
• 21:26
  It was the only one I'm scared of is Danny. And Danny hadn't said
• 21:30
  a word. And then he's like, what I do? What I do
• 21:33
  because it was that look that he had, things like good, I'll say
• 21:38
  here, ironically, Danny was like the sweetest guy of the whole group to
• 21:45
  deal with. You know. It was like an inverse proportion the tough you
• 21:48
  were the nice you were, you know, and it was it was it
• 21:51
  was all the guys that never been near a prison were the ones that were
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  or fight or even a fight for that matter. Yeah, I mean anything.
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  But you know, but you can imagine this. There were four hundred
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  men in the desert for like three months, and I think there were like
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  at that time, there was only two women on the crew, and it
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  you know, so it did go a bit crazy because you know, you
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  get four hundred guys in the desert and nothing to do in the sun beating
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  down on you. Everyone did go a little bit apocalypse. Now, now,
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  how did you how and how do you? You know, on a
• 22:22
  film like that, you know, it's your first big Hollingwood production, You're
• 22:26
  working with Jerry Bruckheimer, this is your dream shot. So I'm assuming there's
• 22:30
  some pressure on you. Yeah, you've got You've got fifty thousand hours.
• 22:33
  You've got fifty thousand hours of airtime, there's no question. But you're at
• 22:37
  the show. This is the show at this point in your career, and
• 22:40
  if this fails, it's over. It's over. Absolutely well. I mean
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  I had done fifty thousand hours, but short hops, you know, between
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  you know, local local flights. There were you know, the longest shoot
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  I've been doing was you know, two days, three days. This was
• 22:56
  one hundred days shoot, and so by day thirty I was, you know,
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  down and out. I'd hit the wall. I was like thirty days
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  because it was a giant production, and you know, I was naive.
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  I went in thinking, oh, this is this is completely doable. And
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  it was around day thirty that I just went I'm not sure if I can
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  make it to the end. But you know, after a while, you
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  sort of buckled down and it becomes a day job, and you start to
• 23:22
  think this is this will never end anyway. I'm just going to do this
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  every day for the rest of my life. It's so long, there's so
• 23:27
  much work with you that it's a very odd when it finishes because you suddenly
• 23:32
  takes you by surprise. But yeah, there was a lot of pressure.
• 23:34
  I didn't realize that because I was naive to you know, move. You
• 23:40
  know Hollywood and films that they have the studio has a list of your replacements
• 23:45
  already drawn up before you when you start filming. So if in the first
• 23:48
  two weeks you completely screw it up, they already know who they're going to
• 23:52
  go to replace you with. Really, yeah, afterwards, but you know
• 23:59
  I would be I would have felt even more pressure other than that. But
• 24:03
  I mean, you know, they protect you from that, so they don't
• 24:04
  want to, you know, completely crush you. So you know, but
• 24:08
  it was tough getting people to take you seriously with the first film of that
• 24:11
  size because some crew members I had worked with in commercials, you know,
• 24:17
  so they knew that I sort of knew what I was doing, but a
• 24:19
  lot of them, you know, it was like, who is this guy.
• 24:22
  They've given this massive film too on the first thing. So a lot
• 24:26
  of people I did have to, you know, come up against and go,
• 24:29
  you know, well, this is it is what's happening, and you
• 24:32
  know, you know, this is my first film, but you have you
• 24:34
  basically have to follow the orders because they've given me this responsibility and we are
• 24:40
  doing this. And so I'd say, you know, fifty percent of people
• 24:42
  were very supportive, and then fifty percent were a little tougher. Really yeah,
• 24:48
  And that's and that's something that a lot of directors directors don't understand when
• 24:53
  they first get on set, is that when you know, I remember being
• 24:56
  the youngest guy on set as a director, and and and you know,
• 25:00
  the dps twenty years older than me, or the grips are twenty years older
• 25:04
  than me, or the productor and then and they all have this experience and
• 25:08
  they test you, and they and a lot of them they just feel like,
• 25:11
  oh, this kid doesn't deserve this shot. Things like that. So
• 25:15
  I can only imagine at your level the kind of I mean, this was
• 25:19
  a lottery ticket. Someone literally handed you. Jerry handed you a lottery ticket,
• 25:23
  and I'm sure you had to deal with it. How do you overcome
• 25:29
  those egos on set, those that kind of those kind of barriers when you're
• 25:33
  working with crew members, maybe even keys, you know, like your DP
• 25:36
  or like your productions that are or you know, keys who are fighting against
• 25:38
  your vision as a director, how do you handle that? Well? Luckily,
• 25:42
  I mean I didn't have that situation because I you know, I brought
• 25:45
  my own DP, my own production designer, and so my core crew were
• 25:52
  people I knew and trusted and supported me. And it was it was more
• 25:56
  the peripherals that were, you know, you you'd come up against. But
• 26:02
  all I could do was do a professional job. And also, don't don't
• 26:07
  have any ego, because you know, I think that's what gets people's backup
• 26:11
  is if they sense that what you're doing or what your decisions are based on
• 26:15
  ego rather than what's best for the film. Basically, everybody there is a
• 26:19
  passionate filmmaker and wants the best film possible. And you know, that's why
• 26:26
  people go into the film business is because they're really interested in it. And
• 26:30
  I was, you know, I love the idea when I did a big,
• 26:32
  complicated crane shot, you know, and it took a while to get
• 26:36
  that I'd run over to the monitor to see how it went, and I'd
• 26:38
  look around and there'd be twenty people looking over my shoulder, because you know,
• 26:41
  the grips wanted to see if they did a good job, the camera
• 26:45
  focus wanted to see if he did a good job. And and everybody,
• 26:48
  you know, actors came in to see what they've done. So everybody basically
• 26:52
  wants to do a really good job. So it's look, if they sense
• 26:55
  that you're the same and you're just there to make the best film, then
• 26:57
  they get whether you've done five films or no films. And and it's only
• 27:03
  if it's if a director brings this ego on set and and it's trying to
• 27:07
  demand respect through you know, position or you know, and and it's just
• 27:15
  flexing muscles, and usually you know, it's a it's a cover insecurity.
• 27:19
  I think, you know, when they're panicking and they don't know what they're
• 27:22
  doing, and it comes out as ego. And it's the same with difficult
• 27:26
  actors. Usually I found the actors that are really talented, and luckily,
• 27:30
  you know, I came in at a very high level, so I'm I'm
• 27:33
  dealing with, you know, people that have won Oscars and who have got
• 27:36
  thirty years of experience and have done and these people are very talenting and operating
• 27:41
  at a very high level in their field. And when people are good at
• 27:45
  something, they're usually very secure in it and and so they're they're not you
• 27:52
  know, they don't they're not difficult. It's it's usually when someone's very insecure
• 27:55
  in what they're doing and think they're faking it or they think they're not very
• 27:59
  good, that they end up being a problem because they're sort of diverting attention
• 28:03
  from what they think is they're failing. So I haven't you had a problem
• 28:07
  like that with all those big guys you know where there's Nick Cage or John
• 28:11
  Malkovich or John Qusep, all those guys. I didn't have a problem at
• 28:14
  all because they were very good at what they did and so they were very
• 28:18
  comfortable in playing in that world. And also we created a really you know,
• 28:22
  it was a fun It was a fun film to make because you know,
• 28:26
  you get to say those great lines and all these actors, which basically
• 28:30
  independent film they're you know, they were used to doing costume dramas or little
• 28:33
  indies in motel rooms and suddenly they're on this giant film set and Malkovich has
• 28:38
  got a pump action shotgun in his hand and his shouting you know, crazy
• 28:42
  lines, and they're having the time of their life, so why would you
• 28:47
  be? And also they're being paid four times more than they've ever been paid
• 28:49
  because you know, Jerry's got the massive checkbook. So that's how I ended
• 28:55
  up with such a great cast is because Jerry just said, just pick all
• 28:57
  your favorite actors. And when you've got that huge you know, big brother
• 29:03
  of him and the studio behind you, you can no one can say no
• 29:07
  really because it's a really fun, you know enterprise, it's great script,
• 29:12
  and they're being paid handsomely that everybody is there, you know, for a
• 29:18
  very good reason. They're having a really good time. So it wasn't as
• 29:21
  bad as people think, like suddenly you've got twenty big actors. They're all
• 29:25
  going to be complete pain in the ass. You know, occasionally one person
• 29:27
  has a bad day or something like we all do. But generally speaking,
• 29:33
  you know that everyone was enjoying it, and you know, I mean it's
• 29:37
  still waiting around. To be honest, the work is never the problem.
• 29:44
  That's when people get, oh do I have to wait another you know,
• 29:45
  for this lighting or this set or the stunt to be set up. The
• 29:49
  actual acting they love to do. So as long as you can, you
• 29:52
  know, give them an acting to do, they're they're happy. We'll be
• 29:57
  right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show.
• 30:07
  So I have to ask you that there's one scene in Sun and Connor that
• 30:10
  I there's many, but there's one that I really have to ask you.
• 30:12
  There's a stunt and I think I know it's practical, but I have to
• 30:18
  ask how the hell you did it, which is the plane dragging the corvette
• 30:22
  in the air and smashing into the tower. Yeah, well that does practical,
• 30:26
  right, Yes, mostly because the thing is that you know, can
• 30:32
  remember when it was made, there was cg around, but it was very
• 30:36
  expensive and it was like, you know, it was only Jurassic Park and
• 30:40
  people like that could afford it and or to make it look good. And
• 30:42
  I was always a you know, devity of doing it for real and in
• 30:47
  front of the camera and seeing it. And so there's almost no CGI in
• 30:52
  the cone. It's all done in front of the camera, either full scale
• 30:56
  or we did do quite old school miniatures. Actually a lot, a lot
• 31:00
  of fun. So you know, we did we flew a real plane over
• 31:04
  Vegas with smoke pouring out the back of it, and there were endless phone
• 31:08
  calls to you know, the police of people saying there's a plane crashing over
• 31:12
  Vegas and it's and it's you know, smoke pouring out of it. So
• 31:18
  you know, we did things like that for real. And then we actually
• 31:22
  did for the you know, hitting the hard Rock that was a massive model.
• 31:26
  So this beautiful scale model that was probably thirty feet across of this plane
• 31:33
  into a you know, a thirty fifty foot version of the hard Rock guitar.
• 31:37
  And we built the whole Vegas Strip in miniature on Vaney's Airport, So
• 31:44
  you know, we had all the buildings with miniature neons and they're all about,
• 31:48
  you know, twelve feet high, and we had radio control cars going
• 31:52
  up and down the strip. And then oh, I mean it's absolute,
• 31:56
  you know, right for a kid in the sandbox kind of field. And
• 32:00
  then a lot of us real We had a plane that actually drove down Vegas
• 32:05
  Strip. It had a bus in it. They gut it out a real
• 32:07
  plane, put a bus in it, and they could actually drive it.
• 32:09
  Down, you know, Vegas Strip without any wings on it and hit cars
• 32:15
  and things like that. And then the final one, the final one was
• 32:17
  another player. We had about three real planes, and the final one was
• 32:22
  the one that crashed into the Sands Hotel, which you know, it's kind
• 32:25
  of a well known story, but Sands was going to be blown up,
• 32:30
  and you know, I originally was going to. I wanted to hit the
• 32:36
  casino opposite the one with the volcano, and because I wanted because it had
• 32:43
  a big lake, and I wanted to crash the plane into the lake I
• 32:45
  had, and then it go underwater. I had a whole underwater sequence worked
• 32:50
  out, and then it would hit the volcano and the volcano would explode,
• 32:53
  and it was all going to happen. And then Steve Wynn, who ran
• 32:59
  that at that hotel, showed me round and I saw how the volcano worked,
• 33:02
  and I sure how the water pumps work. I saw every aspect that
• 33:07
  we planned it all that, and then he said, just send me the
• 33:08
  script, you know, and for the final sign off. So I sent
• 33:12
  him the script and then we get a callback and said, oh, you
• 33:15
  can't crash into our you know, I think this script is too you know,
• 33:20
  we're a family organization, because at that time, Vegas was trying to
• 33:23
  portray itself as you know, as a family resort, and so they didn't
• 33:29
  you know, the bunch of criminals crashing into the thing was not what their
• 33:34
  image wanted to be at that time. So he said, sorry, but
• 33:37
  you know, we can't do it's bad for our image. So suddenly had
• 33:39
  no location. But then I was reading the La Times on a Sunday and
• 33:45
  I saw that they were blowing up the Sam's Hotel in a few weeks.
• 33:49
  So pulled him up at the last minute, said, look, can you
• 33:52
  delay blowing up the hotel for a couple of weeks while we build a whole
• 33:57
  set in front of it and put a huge plane on a ram and send
• 34:00
  it into you into your casino. And they agreed. So, you know,
• 34:04
  there was a mad rush to build this rig where a full sized plane
• 34:08
  was rushed down a ramp into the Sands Hotel, and as we were building
• 34:14
  it, they were slowly nibbling away at the back of the casino, knocking
• 34:17
  more and more of it down until it was just you know, the front
• 34:21
  part left. And we finally got it done in time, and it was
• 34:23
  a one shot. Yeah, that was one of those classic Hollywood you know.
• 34:28
  I couldn't shoot it in parts like you would normally do with an action
• 34:30
  film because there was one plane and there was one casino. Once that plane
• 34:35
  was moving, there was nothing going to stop it. So that's when I
• 34:38
  had the seventeen cameras all hidden in bushes and inside the plane and inside the
• 34:45
  casino, and you know, we and you know, the night came and
• 34:51
  they closed off the strip and five thousand people lined up to watch it,
• 34:54
  and they pressed the button, you know, as the sun was coming up,
• 34:59
  and this thing went down. The fifty ton plane went down the ramp
• 35:02
  and the cable that was pulling it snapped at the last minute, and it
• 35:07
  just stopped on the edge of the ramp, on the ramp, and it
• 35:12
  was teetering, and if it went over, it would smash itself to bits.
• 35:15
  And we couldn't even those they'd buy another airplane, certainly not in that
• 35:20
  time or anything. But luckily, it just sort of stopped and teetered on
• 35:22
  the edge and didn't go over. So we had to sort of de rig
• 35:27
  de rig all the cameras and come back the next minute and set it all
• 35:30
  up again, and but you know, most of those things we're done in
• 35:35
  camera. That the corvette hitting the town, everything in that sequence is real,
• 35:38
  apart from the act the wide shot of it being dragged through the air,
• 35:44
  because that was kind of aerodynamically impossible. It would have just hung down
• 35:50
  and that probably crashed the plane or something. So that's the only CG shot
• 35:55
  in the whole thing. Everything else is either really in a full size reel
• 36:00
  or miniatures. That's that's absolutely insane. So I have to ask you.
• 36:05
  I mean, as directors, you know, we always there's always that one
• 36:07
  day on set that the entire world is coming crashing down around us and we
• 36:10
  feel like we're never gonna make it. It sounds like every day was like
• 36:15
  that for you on Connair or in many of your the movies. Is there
• 36:17
  any any days that stood out at situation where you're like, oh my god,
• 36:22
  I don't think we're gonna make it through this day and what was that
• 36:25
  thing and how did you get over? And it could be on Connair or
• 36:29
  any of your films. Yeah, well, I mean the Path and that
• 36:30
  one thing there that was was but I guess there was, I mean,
• 36:36
  it did happen a lot, you know, because we were doing complicated,
• 36:39
  fiddlyly stuff that was in camera. We couldn't fix it with CGI or painting
• 36:44
  out and things. It had to work. And I think there was another
• 36:49
  incident on corner I guess which was the fire truck sequence at the end.
• 36:52
  There was supposed to be in Vegas, but I think Vegas was so sick
• 36:54
  of us by that time because we were moving from street to street and blowing
• 36:59
  stuff up and rashing, and they said, look, you know, they
• 37:02
  sort of stopped us giving us permits basically, and so we had to sort
• 37:07
  of scuttle back to La and and I had to sort of they do this
• 37:14
  sequence, this fire truck scenes where you had to hide that it wasn't Vegas
• 37:19
  I and I couldn't, as I said, now, you would just paint
• 37:21
  a CGI city behind it. So I thought, well, how can I
• 37:23
  hide that I'm in La? So I think, well, we'll do it
• 37:25
  in the tunnel. So I went to the like the third or fourth Street
• 37:29
  tunnel, which number is, but in downtown La. Of course, there's
• 37:32
  a no tunnel in Vegas at that time. But you know, we've we've
• 37:36
  fudged that. We said, okay, this is this is a tunnel,
• 37:38
  and and I said, we'll have the fire truck, you know, race
• 37:42
  through this, and and in the city said, okay, you can have
• 37:46
  from ten pm two midnight, because in fact, no I think it was
• 37:53
  it was five p m Till ten pm because of the noise and all that
• 37:58
  something. And so it's basically had five hours to shoot this one big stunt,
• 38:01
  which was basically Diamond Dog on the motorbike getting dragged into the standing on
• 38:07
  the back of the fire truck and Nick Cage's on a police motorbike and he
• 38:15
  right into the back of the fire truck, jumps on the fire truck and
• 38:19
  the motorbike explodes on the back of the fire truck, taking out Ving Rams
• 38:25
  as Diamond Dog. And it was all set up. And the idea was
• 38:30
  that by this time we were sort of down from the usual seventeen cameras.
• 38:34
  I only had seven cameras for this because we get to the end of the
• 38:37
  shoot and you're starting to run out of money, and and it's it's slightly
• 38:40
  smaller stunt, but it still was a one off thing, and it was
• 38:45
  the fire truck going in the tunnel, the motorbike being dragged into the back
• 38:51
  of it on a rig, and then the explosion happening. And I had
• 38:53
  seven cameras set up, and of course the cameras get set up, you
• 38:57
  know, nice and quickly, they're all in position, but they rig the
• 39:00
  complicated rig to do this. We can't start ringing until five o'clock so and
• 39:04
  we have to be off the street by ten. So the special if X
• 39:07
  guys are building the rig. They're putting the cables in there, putting the
• 39:09
  explosions, the explosives in there. They're you know, rigging the bike,
• 39:15
  they're rigging the fire truck. The stuntmen are practicing, and it's going.
• 39:19
  It's going five o'clock, six o'clock, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, nine
• 39:22
  o'clock, and we've got to be off by ten. Every hour, I'm
• 39:24
  going to the special exs are you ready? Are you ready? And they
• 39:29
  said nearly, nearly really and and I swear on no kidding, five to
• 39:34
  ten and we're supposed to be off at ten. He said, okay,
• 39:37
  we're ready, and and so then all hell breaks loose. So the camera
• 39:45
  guys are all over by the coffee truck because they've been standing there, you
• 39:49
  know, for you know, four and a half hours doing nothing. So
• 39:52
  they're all eating you know, donuts and coffee. They're not next to their
• 39:54
  cameras. And the guy, the guy, the stunt in the fire truck
• 40:00
  has fallen asleep. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 40:08
  And now back to the shelf, because you know, he's been sitting in
• 40:15
  that truck waiting to go for five hours. And so the ad, the
• 40:19
  first assistant don't, picks up the radio and says down the radio because we've
• 40:23
  got five minutes to do this. The radio to the guy the stung.
• 40:28
  He shouts down the radio, are you ready to go? And the stung
• 40:31
  all he hears his go. He waited up, pushed his foot on the
• 40:36
  accelerator and heads off down. And this thing is is all automatic. So
• 40:40
  once that fire truck's rolling, it's also dragging the motorbike that is rigged to
• 40:46
  explode when it hits that. There's no stopping it once it's going. So
• 40:51
  the so I rush over to the monitors and shout the camera guys, you
• 40:55
  know it's rolling, it's rolling, you know, go go go. So
• 40:59
  they all start running from dropping their coffee cups everywhere, running to the cameras,
• 41:04
  and out of the seven camp out of the seven cameras, some of
• 41:09
  the like one gets an operator gets there but no focus buller. Another one
• 41:14
  gets the operator and a focus buller. Then there's three cameras that are rigged
• 41:17
  on the actual truck and the motorbike that are all rigged to one button,
• 41:22
  and an assistant runs over, presses that button, and those three cameras go.
• 41:28
  So I go, okay, I've got three automatic cameras. I can
• 41:31
  see those running on my monitor. I've got one camera on a crane that's
• 41:36
  that slightly out of focus because there's no camera, there's no focus pulling on
• 41:39
  that one. And I've got another guy that has an operator and a focus.
• 41:44
  So I've got I've got as four good angles. This is going to
• 41:46
  be all right, you know. I'm supposed to have seven, but I'll
• 41:49
  settle for four. And this thing is racing down the road and at that
• 41:53
  moment, the first assistant runs down the road trying to stop the fire truck
• 41:59
  going stop stops stop. So there's the assistant camera on the three cameras that
• 42:04
  were on one button, here's the words stop and presses the stop button on
• 42:07
  the three cameras, so I went from four and a half cameras, so
• 42:14
  now I'm down to one and a half cameras running. And just as he
• 42:17
  does that, it happens that the motorbike hits the fire truck. It explodes,
• 42:22
  boom, I've got I've got one shot and one slightly out of focus
• 42:28
  shot. And that's what's in the movie, you know, And that's what
• 42:30
  you have to do. You have to go. You gotta roll, you
• 42:32
  gotta roll in it. So it's and I'd love hearing stories like this because
• 42:37
  so many, you know, so many young filmmakers coming up, they just
• 42:42
  like think, oh, you know, Harleywood is a big budget movie.
• 42:44
  Everything's running like a well oil machine. Shit happens at every level all the
• 42:50
  time, because filmmaking is one of the most complicated situations, and everything you
• 42:55
  do is the first time it's been done in that particular figuration. Yeah,
• 43:00
  we've all done stunts and shots a bit like that, but it's never been
• 43:04
  done on that street with that amount of equipment and that right, and so
• 43:07
  it's a sort of handmade. Everything's handmade each time, you know, and
• 43:12
  and you know, you know, and it's it's difficult. So it goes
• 43:15
  wrong, you know. So let me ask you. You've I mean,
• 43:19
  you've directed so many amazing action movies and action sequences throughout your career. What
• 43:25
  makes a good action sequence? Like, when you're conceiving the construction of an
• 43:31
  action sequence, what is what are some key things that you constantly are looking
• 43:36
  for when you're building it? Well, yeah, I get asked that a
• 43:37
  lot by you know, young filmmakers coming up. We want to know because
• 43:42
  they watch a lot of action films and it's hard to die, you know,
• 43:45
  discern what is better about some of than others in some ways, or
• 43:49
  you know, is it a bigger explosion, is it the you know,
• 43:52
  the you know, the more hits in the fight. But to me,
• 43:55
  I was telling them that basically, with an actions it is you've got to
• 43:59
  tell a story that's within it's the works within itself. So you have a
• 44:04
  whole film that you're telling your story. You're beginning, your million, middle,
• 44:07
  and your end. But you should do that with every action sequence as
• 44:09
  well. So and make sure the audience understands what's supposed to happen in the
• 44:14
  action sequence, because I think sometimes people thinks just like if we shake the
• 44:17
  camera a lot. If we have a lot of chaos and it just goes
• 44:22
  on and on and it's really loud, then that will be satisfying. And
• 44:24
  that, to me, is not a satisfying action sequence. You know,
• 44:28
  you want to have a lot of cause and effect because you've got to understand,
• 44:30
  like your hero needs to get from here to there, and these are
• 44:35
  the obstacles in the way. And you know, this is the first obstacle
• 44:39
  that hits and you know, have you shot this in the way that the
• 44:42
  audience understands what that obstacle is and then he is clever or physically you know,
• 44:46
  has enough prowess to get past that obstacle. But there's another one coming
• 44:52
  another, and you you know, do you have three five depending? You
• 44:54
  know what kind of sequence is. But to me, the cleverer, you
• 45:00
  know, the clever of those obstacles, and the cleverer the way that he
• 45:02
  overcomes them, the more satisfying it is. But you've got to understand it.
• 45:07
  That's the thing you've got. The audience has to understand. Oh,
• 45:09
  he he was victorious in that moment. Oh but okay, but he's not
• 45:14
  going to be in this because I can see why this is difficult and you
• 45:16
  know, I think one of the good ones I think I would say for
• 45:20
  students to watch is is Terminator two. There's some great, great constructor because
• 45:29
  you know, James Cameron is like me, it's a bit nerdy on the
• 45:32
  technical stuff and likes, you know, it likes how the physics works of
• 45:37
  an action sequence and how the practical side, like what would happen if if
• 45:42
  a truck flipped on its side like this? How far would it slide?
• 45:45
  If it's slid and then it at one end of it hits something, how
• 45:49
  would it spin? And how would you know what's a cool way to get
• 45:52
  out of the way of that thing spinning? And so you can use if
• 45:55
  you're a bit nerdy about physics. Action sequences are great because they're all about
• 46:00
  cause and effect and you have the sort of emotional journey of how does the
• 46:05
  hero overcome it? But you can also have the For me, it's more
• 46:07
  like you know the mechanics as well as the mcgiver of it. You know,
• 46:12
  it's they set up a problem, how do you fix it? But
• 46:15
  I think you know, if you watch something like you know the sequences in
• 46:19
  Terminator too, that's a really good lesson you understand every single thing that happens
• 46:23
  in it. Nothing's too you know, obscure, or too fast, or
• 46:30
  you don't understand what happened, or it happens for no reason. Just like
• 46:32
  there's an arbitrary something arbitrary explodes for no reason. There's something only explodes if
• 46:37
  it explains how that thing you know, you know, fired into it and
• 46:42
  how why did it catch fire? And then when it caught fire, what
• 46:45
  did it then do? So to me, if you took out an action
• 46:47
  sequence of an action film, you should be able to understand everything that goes
• 46:52
  on in it. And it could it could play as a short film.
• 46:53
  You know, you should be able to take the action sequat and go,
• 46:57
  here's here's my two minutes short film. And you know, what do you
• 47:00
  think of the story? And you should understand it now. You know,
• 47:04
  you also worked on another another film called Expendables two, which, man,
• 47:10
  when I heard you were on board for the sequels, like this makes this
• 47:14
  makes sense? This makes sense because I know Slide did the first one,
• 47:16
  and you know, and and I mean social slone's a legend and you know
• 47:20
  as a writer, as a director, I mean, he's he's a walking
• 47:23
  legend. How was it? I went to This is the thought that went
• 47:28
  through my head when I heard you were on it. I'm like, okay,
• 47:30
  this makes sense. They need someone like Simon to deal with the testosterone
• 47:36
  that's on that set. I mean, you're talking about Van Dam and lung
• 47:39
  Grin and Sartzenegger and Willis and and and stay them and all these guys.
• 47:45
  How did you approach directing that kind of I mean, some of those guys
• 47:51
  are absolutely legends and some of them are just just really big action heroes.
• 47:54
  How did you approach because it seems like so massive an undertaking, just dealing
• 48:00
  with that and then also trying to tell the story and also trying to one
• 48:04
  up the action of the first one and so on a software Yeah, yeah,
• 48:07
  well, I mean the first thing was sort of, you know,
• 48:08
  getting past the Sly of it all, because because I you know, I
• 48:14
  met Sly you know, and had you know, had lunch with him,
• 48:15
  and I said, look, you know, are you okay with me taking
• 48:19
  over this because obviously you know what you're doing, you know, and but
• 48:23
  I think the first one nearly killed it. So you know, when you
• 48:27
  said, you know, if you're writing it, directing it, starring in
• 48:30
  it and you know, it's just a lot to do, and you know,
• 48:35
  and he's throwing himself at it full. I think he just didn't want
• 48:37
  to go through that again. And he said, no, no, you
• 48:40
  know, it's your film. You do what you want. And he you
• 48:44
  know, so he said, I'm just an actor on this, and so
• 48:46
  you know, and I said, look, I don't want to screw up
• 48:49
  your franchise. You know, I don't want to. You know, you
• 48:51
  set it up the first one and I come in and you know, put
• 48:53
  it, you know, in the trash can. So you know, it's
• 48:58
  probably more pressure than you know, a normal studio higher because you know,
• 49:02
  the guy that started it is on the on set every day. But he
• 49:07
  was really supportive, you know, and he would come on set and go,
• 49:08
  wow, this is great, this is a bit set, this is
• 49:10
  better than the first one. This is great. And I think he was
• 49:14
  so relieved not to have to solve all the problems and not have to you
• 49:17
  know, do the hours. And he enjoyed being an actor on it,
• 49:22
  you know, And so he gave a very relax of the funny performance because
• 49:24
  he was enjoying it. And and I think we know, in terms of
• 49:29
  all the others. You know, there's definitely a pyramid on set with Sly
• 49:32
  at the top of it, so you know, I used that kind of
• 49:37
  the Sly you know power to you know. So it was never a problem
• 49:42
  because if Sly was happy, everyone was happy because you know, they all
• 49:45
  look up to him. He is the godfather, you know, of that
• 49:49
  world, and so he got he gets a lot of respect for them.
• 49:53
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to
• 50:00
  the show. And so they were as good as gold, you know,
• 50:07
  they were. They were like very well behaved and because because Sly, you
• 50:13
  know, he did never had to, but you know, the inference was
• 50:15
  there that you know, if anybody stepped out of line, they were going
• 50:19
  to get the Sly slap. But you know, and then you're gonna have
• 50:22
  you know, Rambo, you know, screaming in your face, and you
• 50:27
  know all these other characters Rocky Rocky, Yeah you do you want Rocky and
• 50:30
  Rambo shouting at you in your face. So, no, they were,
• 50:34
  they were good. And also they were you know, like a lot of
• 50:37
  like like music bands that you know, bands that were big in the eighties
• 50:40
  and nineties who were coming back touring now, they're happy to be back because
• 50:45
  they probably didn't enjoy it as much as they should have the first time around
• 50:49
  because they're so busy trying to be successful and trying to deal with and knew,
• 50:52
  what's it like being a movie star and all that stuff. That they
• 50:55
  get a second chance to come back and they're going to really enjoy it and
• 51:00
  appreciate it because they went through all that once. But the fact to be
• 51:04
  able to do it again, you know, not many people get to do
• 51:07
  that in their you know, later years. The thing that was they did
• 51:09
  in their youth, that was there, you know, defined them. So
• 51:14
  they I think, you know, they were having you know, a really
• 51:15
  good time just to be doing it again, and so it was, you
• 51:20
  know, it was fun for them. So yeah, so you've never had
• 51:22
  an issue because I mean I've heard of other directors who work on sets with
• 51:27
  directors who they're directing and just as alone, let alone the person created everything
• 51:34
  around it and also a legend and also all this other stuff. So you
• 51:37
  it sounds like you never had any slide. Slide was just like I don't
• 51:40
  want to deal with it, just I just want to do what I do.
• 51:43
  When you have fun and it's long time, and hopefully hopefully it was
• 51:46
  I was doing a good job and that was maybe hopefully it was he was
• 51:51
  you know why he was you know, kind and respectful was because he could
• 51:55
  see that it was going well. I mean, I think if I'd been
• 51:59
  like, you know, up, I would have heard about it very quickly.
• 52:02
  But yeah, and and also I have found I've directed a few yeah
• 52:09
  directors and producers in the past, and I found actually they're actually very easy
• 52:15
  because they know the pain you're going through. They go like, you know,
• 52:22
  I'm not going to give this guy a hard time because I know what
• 52:23
  it's like when an actor gives you a hard time. And I know he's
• 52:27
  got fifty other things on his brain this morning, and he's got you know,
• 52:30
  budget problems, and he's got he hasn't slept for two months. And
• 52:34
  so I've found people that have been behind the camera actually treat you much better
• 52:38
  than people who have no idea. And I've done it the same myself when
• 52:40
  I've gone in front of the camera for like little cameos or something for other
• 52:45
  people's films mine, and I've looked at the camera, and I've looked at
• 52:49
  the lights, and I go, oh, my god, how did these
• 52:52
  actors do it? This is really hard, you know, and you get
• 52:54
  and you get, you know, suddenly you you cut them a lot more
• 52:57
  slack because you realize how confused using it is to be on the other side
• 53:00
  of the camera staring at two hundred people and lights and you know, and
• 53:05
  you have no idea who's standing behind you or next to you, or it's
• 53:08
  very confusing. So I think it goes both ways to it. But I
• 53:13
  actually I directed In The General's Daughter. I directed John Frankenheimer, and you
• 53:20
  know who was a hero of mine, and it was by sheer chance that
• 53:24
  he When I was shooting that film on the Paramount Lot, we were doing
• 53:30
  a night We built a giant tank that the Paramount lot. Their whole parking
• 53:35
  lot is a tank. So what they do is they tell everyone to not
• 53:37
  park there anymore, and they have a sky drop behind it and you can
• 53:40
  actually flood the whole parking lot. And we were a night shoot, so
• 53:44
  we built a giant tent over the parking lot and put our you know,
• 53:49
  Savannah set in this swamp that we built in there, and John Travolta is
• 53:53
  in there having a big fight, you know, and doing water work.
• 53:57
  And because there was everybody that visited the Paramount lot for a couple of weeks,
• 54:00
  they see this giant black tent where they used to park. So all
• 54:04
  they would do, they'd come up to ten and they poked their heads through
• 54:07
  to see what was going on. So every day there would be different people
• 54:09
  poking, and you know, like Robert de Niro's head pokes through. Then
• 54:14
  you know, I don't know, like all the you know, famous actors,
• 54:17
  producers, everybody wants to know what the hell's going on in this black
• 54:21
  tent. So we've got I wish i'd taken a camera, you know,
• 54:22
  set up a time lapse if everybody's coming through this hole. And anyway,
• 54:28
  one day it was John Frankenheimer and he knew Masonwfelt, the producer, so
• 54:30
  he came in and had a chat and I was looking at him and he
• 54:34
  was and we would and I needed this one part. It was a a
• 54:38
  senior general in the army. But it was only one scene. It was
• 54:43
  only you know, one and a half page scene. But the guy had
• 54:46
  to appear very important and a lot of weight. And it's the sort of
• 54:51
  thing you do want to call in a favorite. You know, if your
• 54:53
  pals with Robert de Niro al Pacino, you go like, can you come
• 54:57
  and do me a favor and do one scene because I need your GRAVI tests.
• 55:00
  But I was looking at John Frankenheim and this this staturesque guy was like
• 55:04
  six foot five or something, and he was very authoritative. And he's one
• 55:07
  of those old school Hollywood director who's a huge shouter and a big you know
• 55:13
  guy, and he's done all these amazing films. And I thought, well,
• 55:15
  I wondered if he would do it, and so I asked him and
• 55:19
  he said, yeah, you know, I'd do it. He hasn't really
• 55:22
  done any acting, or much acting, I don't think, but he agreed
• 55:24
  to do it. And he came on set and he got in the uniform
• 55:29
  and you know, had the hair and makeup done. He said, and
• 55:30
  you know, how do you want to shoot this this page and a half
• 55:32
  of dialogue, this long speech. And I said, I really want to
• 55:37
  just do it all in one shot, so no cutting. He said,
• 55:38
  what? No cutting? Oh my god, you know I've got to learn
• 55:40
  the whole thing. I said, yeah, if you don't mind, I
• 55:44
  don't really want to go cut, cut, cut, you know, it's
• 55:45
  really important to be like one shot. And so he said, oh my
• 55:47
  god, I've got to go and learn this. And I said to him,
• 55:51
  I said, look, you know, I hope you're okay with me
• 55:53
  directing you, because you know, this is only my second reform, you
• 55:58
  know, yeah, and you've you know, would winning Oscars before I was
• 56:00
  born, and you know so. And he said, no, no,
• 56:04
  no, it's his great as you know, it's your film, is your
• 56:06
  film. And again on the set I was directing me in the seat.
• 56:07
  I said, look, I hope you don't mind me saying, but could
• 56:09
  you just, you know, move over here and do this. He said,
• 56:13
  yes, yes, yes, no problem. And he said, gosh,
• 56:15
  it's really weird. He said, you know, all I want to
• 56:17
  do is please you. I've never been in that position before, you know,
• 56:21
  because he's a huge director that everybody wants to please him, and he'd
• 56:25
  never been in the position he wanted to please somewhere else. So it's very
• 56:29
  sweet. And then you know, great performance as well. That's that's remarkable.
• 56:34
  Is there anything that you wish someone would have told you at the beginning
• 56:37
  of your career that could have helped you you know that that one's a little
• 56:40
  bit of information. You're like, oh, man, I wish I would
• 56:43
  have known this, you know. I mean, there's no secret, you
• 56:46
  know, magically. I think it's it's like we're all, you know,
• 56:52
  exciting worlds, whether you're you know, a rock star or a secret agent
• 56:57
  or you know, making movies. I think is to try and appreciate it
• 57:01
  at the time because all those incredible things you do, you're so busy stressing
• 57:07
  at the time and trying to It's sometimes it's hard to step back and go,
• 57:10
  wow, what we're doing is really cool here, and this is so
• 57:14
  I think it's to try and enjoy it along the way because you're so busy
• 57:20
  being hard on yourself. And I don't know, maybe maybe that's not possible.
• 57:23
  Maybe everything would turn out terrible if you did relax and try and enjoy
• 57:28
  it. But that's what I would have told myself. It's look, you
• 57:30
  know, it's it's probably going to be okay, So why not relax a
• 57:35
  bit and enjoy it rather than you know, beating yourself up that you've got
• 57:38
  to work harder and harder, and you know, and it's but I haven't
• 57:43
  you know, you can't do the experiment the other way and go back and
• 57:45
  say, like, if you did just kick back a bit and enjoy it,
• 57:47
  would it would everything have turned out the same way. I don't know,
• 57:51
  Well that's I mean you were saying that it would, you know,
• 57:52
  like Schwarznagger and Willis and all these kind of Chuck Norris and all these kind
• 57:55
  of guys that came back on unexpendables too, where they just they probably had
• 58:01
  a ball because they were probably not stressed. I like, I'm not the
• 58:04
  star of this lies dealing with that. I'm just here to have a good
• 58:07
  time and shoot some things, say some cool lines, and hang out with
• 58:09
  my friends, you know, smoke some cigars. Yeah, And I mean
• 58:13
  I have to say I enjoy directly much more now than I did when I
• 58:15
  started, because because I do, you know, you have less to prove,
• 58:20
  I suppose as you go on right, and and also it's like you've
• 58:24
  been through all those sticky situations and you usually get out of it somehow,
• 58:30
  and so there's a you get a lot more confidence with age and experience,
• 58:34
  and so I definitely enjoy it now. Rather before it was like a task
• 58:38
  that had to be achieved and to win the fight and get it done.
• 58:43
  Now I can actually enjoy the process and you know, so you know,
• 58:47
  it comes with experience and doing it, you know for a while. I
• 58:52
  suppose well, I mean you've got more than fifty thousand hours now. I
• 58:55
  think the trick is not the you know, not fall out of love with
• 59:00
  it. I do know some people that you know, fallen out of love
• 59:02
  with it and are really miserable, you know, and are miserable to be
• 59:07
  around on the set because they don't like it anymore. And but you know,
• 59:10
  they're sort of wedded to it. But I think if you don't like
• 59:14
  it anymore, you should definitely stop doing it. But usually making everybody's life
• 59:17
  misery. But I you know, I definitely like it more more I do
• 59:22
  it. So it's you know, and I've been and it's and it shows.
• 59:27
  It shows in your work that you you know, the movies that you've
• 59:30
  stayed consistent since Connor. I mean you've been working every you know, you
• 59:36
  pop out your your your output is is pretty good. It's not like you
• 59:38
  do one movie. You're not at Kubrick. You don't do one movie every
• 59:40
  eight or nine years. I mean, you're you're constantly working whether in television
• 59:45
  or in this you're always working, so that's you can tell that you love
• 59:49
  what you're doing. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 59:57
  and now back to the show. Yeah. Yeah, well that would be
• 1:00:00
  really frustratingating. I mean, I'm a huge Kubrick fan, but it would
• 1:00:06
  be really frustrating for me to know that I was only going to do a
• 1:00:08
  film once every five, six, seven, eight years. I would be,
• 1:00:12
  oh, you know, heartbreaking, because there's only so many films you
• 1:00:15
  can make in a lifetime. And you know, sometimes obviously you know,
• 1:00:19
  some are better than others because whatever reason. But you learn something on everyone,
• 1:00:23
  and you know, I think making any film is better than staying at
• 1:00:28
  home. You know, you're absolutely right. Now, I'm gonna ask you
• 1:00:31
  a few questions, ask all of my guests, Ammon, what advice would
• 1:00:35
  you give a filmmaker trying to break into the business today. I would just
• 1:00:39
  say, don't turn any opportunity down, you know, don't be too like
• 1:00:45
  I have to make this kind of film. I have to because I you
• 1:00:47
  know, I, as I said, I went through all these different types
• 1:00:51
  of filmmaking, from current affairs to documentaries to drama, to you know,
• 1:00:55
  everything, music, videos, commercials, and I would say, just try
• 1:01:00
  and shoot as much as you can on anything, whether it's on your iPhone
• 1:01:04
  or you know, with friends, and any opportunity a friend says, oh,
• 1:01:07
  you know, I want to be an actor, but I need someone
• 1:01:10
  to shoot me doing something. Go and do it. Don't go nod he's
• 1:01:13
  not very good, or you know, I haven't got time, or I'd
• 1:01:16
  rather do that any opportunity, do it, because any connection you make with
• 1:01:21
  someone else who's also in that world can leap frog to another connection. And
• 1:01:25
  every anything you shoot, it gives you a little bit more experience and a
• 1:01:31
  little bit more like, oh, I know, you know, like I
• 1:01:34
  really want to do sci fi. All I want to do is sci fi.
• 1:01:36
  I'm going to shoot. And then someone said, can you come and
• 1:01:37
  shoot this little comedy short film for me? And you shoot the comedy?
• 1:01:40
  Go, Actually, I really enjoyed that comedy. Maybe I'll maybe I'll do
• 1:01:45
  some comedy, you know. So I would just say shoot as much and
• 1:01:49
  as often as you can, and don't be too prescuous, don't sit around
• 1:01:52
  for the perfect situation, and you know, and and work on films in
• 1:01:57
  any way you can I mean, I you know, worked in props and
• 1:02:00
  art department and sound and camerasism on other people's films for a day here,
• 1:02:06
  a day there, and it's kind of fun. You get to learn other
• 1:02:09
  people's jobs, You meet other people and and work for free. So they'll
• 1:02:15
  have you, you know, so they'll have you back, or you know,
• 1:02:17
  there'll there's a reason to hire you. It's because you're free, you
• 1:02:21
  know, and just work as much as you can and take every opportunity to
• 1:02:25
  shoot anything you can. What is the lesson? Uh? What what did
• 1:02:30
  you learn from your biggest failure? Oh? Yeah, I mean what I
• 1:02:38
  guess what I learned is no failure, it is total. You know.
• 1:02:45
  What I mean is that is that every every disappointment or failure if you want
• 1:02:51
  to call it, can be corrected to a certain extent in some way.
• 1:02:54
  I mean, that's the beautiful thing about filmmaking. Like a sequence, you
• 1:02:59
  know one an angle doesn't work, you cut to another angle. One you
• 1:03:01
  know, an actor doesn't isn't great. You know, in a performance you
• 1:03:06
  can make the performance better through editing. If there's there's always a way.
• 1:03:09
  So I don't think any failure is total. And also, you know,
• 1:03:15
  there's that whole theory that you know, you obviously don't learn anything until you
• 1:03:20
  fail at something you know, and so you shouldn't look at any kind of
• 1:03:23
  failure as a failure. It's more like a you know, a learning experience.
• 1:03:27
  But also none of I don't for me, I don't know, it's
• 1:03:30
  lucky order, but I never treat any failure as a total failure. It's
• 1:03:32
  it's always can be, you know, dragged back, and to be a
• 1:03:37
  ten percent failure rather than a one hundred percent failure because you can you can
• 1:03:43
  do something to fix most things, you know, situations. Now, what
• 1:03:46
  is the lesson that took you the longest to learn, whether in the film
• 1:03:50
  industry or in life. I think it's pacing myself. It's like not rushing.
• 1:03:58
  You know. The hardest thing in filmmaking people don't realize it's time management,
• 1:04:02
  because you can make a fantastic film with unlimited time, and it's time.
• 1:04:08
  It's not even resources. I mean, if you've got a camera,
• 1:04:11
  that's basically what you need in the waves were calling the sound. But if
• 1:04:14
  you had unlimited time, you can make the world's greatest film if you've got
• 1:04:18
  the talent. But you know, every film you're on is a time pressure.
• 1:04:23
  It's like you're constantly doing a deal with this stuff. If I if
• 1:04:26
  I take longer on this scene, I've got to take time off that scene
• 1:04:30
  if I you know, if I rush this scene, it's not going to
• 1:04:31
  be makes sense for the story. So I've got to allocate my time,
• 1:04:35
  and every minute of a film, you know, a professional film is accounted
• 1:04:40
  for. You know, you're supposed to do a certain amount of work per
• 1:04:44
  day, you know, per hour, and you have to stick to that
• 1:04:47
  plan and that schedule. And that's very hard in an artistic endeavor to be
• 1:04:51
  so dictated to by time management. And that's the that's the hardest thing is
• 1:04:59
  to okay, the discipline of saying I've got it as good as enough because
• 1:05:04
  I've got to get on and get all these other things, when really,
• 1:05:08
  you know, it's very rare that directors in the position where you just can
• 1:05:11
  keep going and keep going and keep going until he's absolutely satisfied, because that's
• 1:05:15
  not a real world situation, and you know that that's hard. But I
• 1:05:20
  mean, yeah, but the opposite is like, don't be panicking about time
• 1:05:24
  or something. So I would is I think I've learned it's not to rush
• 1:05:29
  and take a time because you know you can make a bad decision if you
• 1:05:31
  rush. If you just take a couple more beats, you can make a
• 1:05:34
  better decision. And but it's it's that balance of don't rush, but you're
• 1:05:41
  still got to hit those time you know, deadflins. So you've never so
• 1:05:45
  you've never heard the term, You never heard the sentence ever uttered to you,
• 1:05:47
  Simon, all you have is time and money, have fun. That
• 1:05:50
  would be nice, Yeah, that would be love. I mean, yeah,
• 1:05:54
  but you know I have I do have questions, you know like that.
• 1:05:57
  But you still you know when they're scheduling, whether they say, well,
• 1:05:59
  well, how one would it take you to shoot the scene? And
• 1:06:01
  I go, well, how long will you give me? Because I could
• 1:06:03
  shoot it in two minutes the length of the dialogue, or I could spend
• 1:06:06
  two weeks shooting the most incredible version of this scene with you know, every
• 1:06:12
  conceivable angle and like beautiful lighting and take waiting for the sun to be in
• 1:06:15
  the right spot. I mean, how much will you give me? You
• 1:06:18
  know, I just need as much time as you're willing to give me,
• 1:06:21
  you know, and I'll make it work with what you've got to a certain
• 1:06:24
  extent. And last question, three of your favorite films of all time?
• 1:06:30
  Oh well, I mean there's so many. I hate that question because it's
• 1:06:34
  three as hard to bring down. But I mean I do love, you
• 1:06:39
  know, films that I grew up with, and films at different times in
• 1:06:43
  my life, so you know, sort of in my sort of teens.
• 1:06:47
  There's a film called With Nail and I with Richard E. Grant and Paul
• 1:06:53
  McGann. It's a small comedy about two struggling actors in England and not many
• 1:06:59
  people in America and know it because when I do mention if people go and
• 1:07:00
  I haven't seen that. But in in the UK it's a kind of a
• 1:07:03
  cult you know. I've been on I've been on sets in and the camera
• 1:07:08
  crew will recite lines from the film to you because it's it's a cult film.
• 1:07:13
  But yeah, so I will I try to encourage all Americans to see
• 1:07:15
  this film because it seems to be very well known in England but not in
• 1:07:17
  the States. But it's called With Nail and I. And then films,
• 1:07:20
  you know, I said, different stages of my life and these are not
• 1:07:24
  necessarily you know, great classics. I mean, I love all the big
• 1:07:28
  classics, you know, the David Lean movies and everything like that, but
• 1:07:30
  that you know, everybody does, but films that meant a lot to me.
• 1:07:33
  You know, a different parts of my life with things like you know,
• 1:07:35
  when I was very young, uh would be Chitty Chitty Bang bang.
• 1:07:41
  Yeah, Like the fantasy of that to me is a you know, magical,
• 1:07:45
  magical there's six or seven you know old with me of that would I
• 1:07:49
  thought that was the most magical thing ever, and that would that was the
• 1:07:53
  sort of thing would get me into filmmaking, is the fantasy because to me,
• 1:07:56
  filmmaking is taking into another world. And you know, because I have
• 1:07:59
  to confess, I don't make very realistic films. You know, they are
• 1:08:03
  you know, they are quite fantasy and larger than life an operatic because I
• 1:08:09
  kind of want to be taken to another place. I you know, I
• 1:08:12
  don't necessarily, I mean, you know, I watch other people's very great
• 1:08:15
  realistic films and love them, but my my world is a bit more ridiculous
• 1:08:23
  in a way. But you know, and so then you know, and
• 1:08:26
  then that was you know, my five or six year old me getting into
• 1:08:29
  film, and then the twelve thirteen year old Me was a film called Swarp
• 1:08:32
  Melody, another English film that was written by Alan Parker and directed by Warris
• 1:08:38
  Who's Saying and produced by David Putnam. And it's a It's again. It's
• 1:08:44
  a small film set in a school in London, in a kind of a
• 1:08:46
  rough part of London, and it's all sort of actors. There were eleven
• 1:08:53
  and twelve and it was just my life, you know. So it's the
• 1:08:57
  first time I went to the movies and didn't see Sames Bond, you know,
• 1:09:00
  jumping off a cliff for you know, snow at the Seven Dwarves doing
• 1:09:04
  something. You know, this was my life. It was kids at school
• 1:09:09
  but very realistically shot, and they're getting up to all sorts of mischief and
• 1:09:12
  they're really you know, route to adults and they're kind of like but it's
• 1:09:16
  very sweet and so it's the sweetest soundtracked by the bags, which is not
• 1:09:20
  the strongest point, not the strongest point, but hey begs a very great
• 1:09:27
  Yeah, they're great, you know Saturday like fear and all that stuff.
• 1:09:30
  Yes, but not in this but but but the rest of the film is
• 1:09:35
  great. So I'd have to say like three films they're not, you know,
• 1:09:38
  as I said, the big epics, but they meant that something to
• 1:09:41
  me at different ages my life, you know, and so that's where they're
• 1:09:45
  importantly. So when I say favorite and I'm gonna go, I'm talking about
• 1:09:47
  I'm gonna watch them again now, because I mean you're going, I mean,
• 1:09:51
  as you were talking, I'm like, what was the film like when
• 1:09:54
  I was coming up, like an eight, nine, ten years old?
• 1:09:58
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to
• 1:10:04
  the show and the obvious one Star wars Et all those kind of things.
• 1:10:10
  But there's something like Never Ending Story by Wolf Wolfgang. You look at that
• 1:10:14
  and you're like, at that moment, you know, that was a very
• 1:10:17
  powerful movie, you know, to me, and those kind of things,
• 1:10:20
  it's you know, I've heard, I've heard the greatest. You know.
• 1:10:24
  Some people are like, oh, I loved Under the Dragon, and I'm
• 1:10:26
  like, I loved Under the Dragon too, But is that on your top
• 1:10:30
  three? It's like it is. It meant a lot to me when I
• 1:10:31
  saw it when I was twelve. Things like that. So it doesn't all
• 1:10:35
  have to be Godfather exactly. I mean, I've watched Godfather, you know,
• 1:10:40
  I know how many thousands I got it on every format ever made,
• 1:10:44
  you know, and I still watch it on TV with the commercials when it
• 1:10:46
  comes on, you know, because we're ridiculous. How why do we do
• 1:10:49
  that when we could literally just get up grab our blu ray other than And
• 1:10:55
  that's happened to me multiple times, and I'm like, why am I?
• 1:10:58
  I mean, it's just too lazy to get up. But it's such a
• 1:11:00
  good film you don't want to waste that thirty seconds to it. So so
• 1:11:03
  yeah, those those epics are fantastic. But I think a film that means
• 1:11:08
  something to you and also that probably led you know, people like you and
• 1:11:12
  me into the business, you know, means even more because it's you know,
• 1:11:16
  it's what we ended up doing. So Simon, it has been an
• 1:11:19
  absolute pleasure and honor talking to you, my friend. I know I can
• 1:11:23
  talk to you for at least another five or six hours, but I appreciate
• 1:11:27
  your time, and thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing
• 1:11:30
  your your knowledge and your experiences with the tribe today and continued success, my
• 1:11:34
  friend. I can't wait to see your next one. So thank you so
• 1:11:36
  much, my friend. You're welcome. Love you to talk to you.
• 1:11:41
  I truly want to thank Simon for coming on the show and sharing his knowledge
• 1:11:45
  with the tribe. Thank you so so much, Simon. If you want
• 1:11:48
  to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to
• 1:11:50
  the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv. Ford Slash three twenty nine.
• 1:11:56
  Thank you so much for listening to guys. As always, keep on writing
• 1:11:59
  no matter what. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the
• 1:12:01
  Bulletproof Screenwriting podcasts at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.