Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 325: Vampires, Stunts, Bloodsuckers & Netflix with JJ "Loco" Perry

Transcript

BPS 325: Vampires, Stunts, Bloodsuckers & Netflix with JJ "Loco" Perry · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

• 0:03
  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
• 0:08
  podcasts, just go to IFH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
• 0:13
  Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three twenty five. I love doing stunts. It's
• 0:19
  as simple as that Gerard Butler broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood
• 0:24
  when we really should be working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting
• 0:29
  Podcast, showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how to
• 0:33
  make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome,
• 0:39
  Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble host,
• 0:43
  Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage.
• 0:49
  Now. Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on the
• 0:55
  kind of project you are in the goals of the project you are, so
• 0:59
  we actually break it down by three categories, micro budget, indie film,
• 1:03
  market, and studio film. There's no reason to get coverage from a reader
• 1:06
  that's used to reading tempole movies when your movie is going to be done for
• 1:10
  one hundred thousand dollars and we wanted to focus on that. At Bulletproof Script
• 1:14
  Coverage, our readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, wm E,
• 1:18
  NBC, HBO, Disney, Scott Free, Warner Brothers, The Blacklist,
• 1:23
  and many many more. So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered
• 1:27
  by professional readers, head on over to cover my screenplay dot Com. Guys,
• 1:34
  you are in for a treat today. We have on the show legendary
• 1:40
  stuntman, stunt coordinator, fight choreographer, second unit director and now filmmaker JJ
• 1:49
  Loco Perry. Now, JJ has been in the game since the seventies.
• 1:53
  He has been in every major action movie. It's from the last three decades.
• 2:01
  He worked on the John Wick movies, A Fast and Furious movies.
• 2:05
  Any big studio movie that you can think of, he has been on it.
• 2:09
  And we are here today to talk about not only his journey as a
• 2:14
  stunt man through the business and some amazing stories along the way working with the
• 2:19
  biggest movie stars in the world, biggest projects in the world, but about
• 2:22
  his new movie Day Shift for Netflix, which stars the Oscar winner and legend
• 2:28
  Jamie Fox, as well as David Franco and the also legendary Snoop Doggie dog
• 2:35
  Now because JJ has been directing second unit for so long and directing action it
• 2:39
  is he is one of the most technical directors I've ever spoken to. He
• 2:44
  knows his craft so well. It was Quentin Tarantino who said the best directors
• 2:49
  in history are action directors because they know how to tell a story visually,
• 2:53
  and JJ definitely knows how to do that. I enjoyed day Shift immensely.
• 2:59
  I can't wait for you guys to see it. But without any further ado,
• 3:00
  please enjoy my insane conversation with JJ Loco Perry. I'd like to welcome
• 3:07
  to the show, JJ Perry. How are you doing? Jjo? My
• 3:10
  brother? How you I'm good man, I'm good now. There is sometimes
• 3:14
  I see in your credits there's another name in between JJ and Perry, which
• 3:17
  is local. Is Is that is that true? Sir? Look at all
• 3:25
  for people who are listening. He just stood up and showed me his tattoo
• 3:29
  of Loco on his stomach. Listen before we even get started, brother,
• 3:32
  I've worked with a ton of stunt people over over the course of my career.
• 3:36
  I've yet to meet a stunt person who's not nuts in the best most
• 3:40
  beautiful, loving way that word could be used. I've I've had this is
• 3:46
  what this is. This is this is the conversation with stunt people when I
• 3:47
  ever worked with him on his set as a director. I need you to
• 3:51
  jump off that. I needs you to jump off that that building over there?
• 3:53
  He goes, can't can it? Can it go f flo floors?
• 3:58
  No? No? I just third, third, four is fine? No?
• 3:59
  No, I could? I could go ten floors? I can.
• 4:00
  I could do fifteen if you want me to. And do you want me
• 4:03
  to be on fire? I could be on fire. I need it for
• 4:04
  my reel. Can I be on fire? Too? Can? I'm like
• 4:06
  it? Can I work it? So it's it's like no matter what I
• 4:10
  asked, they were like, no, no, no, that's not enough.
• 4:12
  We can I could drive the car off the roof on fire, flip
• 4:15
  three times. Oh, that's kind of the that's kind of the mentality,
• 4:19
  you know, like it's we're always trying to go bigger, faster, or
• 4:23
  stronger. You know, that's kind of the where the where the mindset is
• 4:27
  always trying to outdo what we did last time. You know, it's like
• 4:29
  anything else, you know, you you want to step one step beyond what
• 4:31
  you did last time. You're always trying to we're always trying to push the
• 4:33
  envelope. No, absolutely, and and I've and if you every step pars
• 4:38
  I ever worked with has been the utmost professional. And it seems like they're
• 4:42
  nuts, but they're so calculated and so specific about what they're doing. So
• 4:46
  everyone's stay safe, you know, and all that kind of stuff, because
• 4:48
  I mean, you know, the stuff that you guys do is is this
• 4:50
  insane and it and it can't go wrong, and it's really it's really amazing
• 4:55
  what you do. And you all right, so let's take it. Let's
• 4:57
  take it back whether how and why did you get into this insanity that is
• 5:00
  the film business. So I graduated from high school back in eighty six out
• 5:08
  of out of Stafford, Texas, and I worked on two films that came
• 5:12
  through Houston. One was called Pray for Death. It was a show Kasugi
• 5:15
  film back when the Ninja craze was out. And another one was called They
• 5:18
  Still Call Me Bruce. It was like an action comedy. Remember I remember
• 5:23
  that movie, dude. It was a amazing money Johnny you and exactly the
• 5:26
  Korean guy Korean actor, and so you know, I'd already sworn in to
• 5:30
  go to join the Army, so there was no getting out of that.
• 5:32
  And towards the end of my stint in the Army, I out processed to
• 5:39
  to Fodord, California. I was That's where I was gonna outprocessed from.
• 5:45
  And when I was at ford Ord, I was on the Army tekwondo team.
• 5:47
  At the time I was going down, I was competing all over California
• 5:50
  and all over you know, the US and etcetera. And I went down
• 5:54
  to La a couple of times to compete, and some of the guys I
• 5:57
  was competing against were were stuntman and you know, because I'd been stationed Korea
• 6:01
  for a year, I was I had a leg up on him. You
• 6:03
  know. I was, you know, competing on a very high level at
• 6:05
  that time. But one of the guys who's no longer with his name is
• 6:10
  Chris Carnell was a dear friend of mine. He died in a motorcycle wreck
• 6:13
  a couple of years ago. But he were the same size, same age,
• 6:16
  and I was like, where'd you get? He had a nice shoes,
• 6:18
  nice car, and I was like, dude, what are you a
• 6:19
  drug dealing because no, man, I'm a stunt man and coming down from
• 6:24
  from four word, you know, like I came down and trained a few
• 6:26
  times. About two weeks later, he said, hey, man, there's
• 6:28
  a big audition here for a movie called Lionheart. It was Van Damn's second
• 6:32
  movie. So I took a three day pass, drove down and booked the
• 6:38
  job. But the problem was where I went back to ask my first sergeant
• 6:41
  if I could, you know, take three weeks off to do a movie.
• 6:44
  He was like, Nah, you ain't doing no movie, boy.
• 6:46
  You got work to do. We got Army worked do, boy. So
• 6:50
  they called me Hollywood up until the time my out processed, and then I
• 6:54
  called them you know, like I said, you know, I didn't know
• 6:57
  what I was going to do. At that time. I figured I would
• 6:59
  go down to LA and get to try. I didn't really know anyone except
• 7:00
  for Chris and and I figured, you know, I'm gonna give it a
• 7:04
  try. And so I just drove down the five South, never made the
• 7:08
  left turn on the ten to go back to Texas, and thought I would
• 7:12
  probably fuck that up for sure and be back in the Army at no time.
• 7:15
  Because I knew they'd be saving a seat at the table for me.
• 7:17
  But it just worked out. And here we are, thirty two years later,
• 7:20
  talking about my talking about my movie that I just directed, which I
• 7:24
  can't believe. So I never expected any of this, my brother. I
• 7:27
  fumbled my way through all of it, and I'm super grateful for every moment
• 7:30
  that I've had. So was, so, what was your first big break
• 7:34
  in the A as a stunt guy. Well, so it kind of it
• 7:39
  broke down like this. I didn't really The first week I landed in La
• 7:44
  I was answering phones at a tekwondo school on Wilson Lavois Junshan Tekwondo, and
• 7:49
  there was a call for They were looking for guys for the Cross Trainer Rebok
• 7:55
  commercial, the very first one for the Super Bowl at that time. And
• 8:00
  one of the guys that he said, Hey, I don't have my car,
• 8:01
  can you give me a lift? One of the guys that was like
• 8:03
  an actor type dude that had an agent and whatever. So I drove him
• 8:07
  over there and it was in It was in West Hollywood, a park.
• 8:13
  He goes in, he's taking a while, so I put fifty cents in
• 8:16
  the meter. I go upstairs and the lady says, hey, did you
• 8:18
  put your name down on the So I wrote down my name in the number
• 8:22
  of the tech Wondo school, and then I wrote down my friend's name and
• 8:24
  his agent's name, and I went in. Because the movie the commercial was
• 8:28
  about, it was about basic training. It was like called the Reebok Cross
• 8:33
  Trainer pumps, but it was like they shave your head and it was like
• 8:35
  an army thing. So I went in there. I was like, Barry
• 8:37
  J. J Hey, Kerry five four or one, one zero or nine.
• 8:39
  You know, they were like, oh shit, who's this guy?
• 8:41
  You know, I just literally just got out of the Army and I booked
• 8:43
  the book that job. So that's how it started. And I didn't anticipate
• 8:48
  like when the when the checks started coming in the mailbox, you know,
• 8:54
  you know, he makes seven hundred fifty bucks a month in the Army,
• 8:56
  I almost started crying, you know, and and then then forever. So
• 9:00
  for everybody listening, you were in a Super Bowl commercial. What was it?
• 9:01
  We're talking about the earlier in mid eighties. No, I'm talking about
• 9:05
  like nineteen ninety for the right. So you're so in nineteen ninety super Bowl
• 9:11
  commercials, the money and the residuals off. It's insane. They're talking about
• 9:18
  tens of thousands of dollars in nineteen ninety Yep, yep, that's true.
• 9:22
  And then then I started doubling. I doubled Lorenzo Lamas a few times down
• 9:28
  on Renegade We're down in San Diego. Then I doubled Russell Wong and a
• 9:31
  TV series called Banishing Sun that that I told you about Jeff Cartiane earlier,
• 9:35
  your friend of ours. Yeah, and kind of how it started, you
• 9:37
  know, like the stuntwork is networking, and you know, it's kind of
• 9:41
  like they're they're always looking for the man or woman that's not scared to go
• 9:46
  big and it's safe, and they're not looking for the crazies. They're looking
• 9:48
  for the calculated, smart, you know, individuals who who are ready to
• 9:54
  go big and have a strong physicality. And we'll be right back, or
• 10:00
  a word from our sponsor and now back to the show. You know,
• 10:07
  having a background in tekwondo and being in the military, like when when I
• 10:11
  got out of the Army, I didn't realize what I would be able to
• 10:13
  apply. Some of the skills I learned in the army was except for being
• 10:16
  a cop. But then I quickly realized that, you know, the hard
• 10:20
  work and the work ethic of being in the army. After the army,
• 10:22
  nothing else is really ever heard again, you know. So I got that
• 10:26
  out of the way pretty quick in life. So it was really easy for
• 10:28
  me to get up at five in the morning and do my road work and
• 10:30
  go out and meet people and do my things. So yeah, that's how
• 10:33
  it all happened for me. Was those two TV shows got me going in
• 10:35
  that commercial and here we are, so but so there is I mean,
• 10:39
  I think there is a stunt school now, but there was. Was there
• 10:41
  anything like a stunt school or did you just learn on the job? Learned
• 10:46
  on the job. And I'll never forget my first car hit, you know,
• 10:48
  I had to do a get hit by a car on Renegade. They
• 10:50
  wanted me to run into the middle of the street with a with a with
• 10:54
  a female stunt woman and there's a briefcase the military and they want us to
• 10:56
  race to the briefcase and then a Lincoln Continental hits us both. So I'm
• 11:03
  thinking to myself, you know, I don't I don't want to seem like
• 11:05
  a you know, like I don't know what I'm doing. But I also
• 11:07
  don't want to get killed or make a mistake and hurt my my counterpart.
• 11:11
  So I asked the stunt coordinator. I said, well, you know,
• 11:15
  what's the objective of it this? He said, well, your objective is
• 11:18
  not to get underneath the car. Bro So so ride the rider, get
• 11:24
  light on your feet, right up the hood, get up into the windshield,
• 11:26
  and if he punches you through, just go all the way over.
• 11:28
  And if he doesn't, just get you know, get upside the car.
• 11:30
  And so what I did was I just got very aggressive and I the car
• 11:33
  actually hits you, but I in my mind I was thinking I'm going to
• 11:37
  hit the car. And next thing I know is light was darker as light
• 11:39
  was darker as live was dark at boom, I was on the pavement.
• 11:41
  I was like, Oh, that wouldn't so bad, you know. So
• 11:43
  there was It's my first car. I gotta ask him, and I've always
• 11:46
  wanted to ask. I always wanted to ask a stunt guy this, What
• 11:50
  is it in the brain. There's something in your mind and your brain that
• 11:56
  allows you to go, Hey, that wasn't so bad. You just said
• 11:58
  it. I think that it's absolutely horrific personally, because that's that's that's not
• 12:01
  in my DNA. So what is it? What is that thing that stunt
• 12:05
  people have that not only do they want to do it and enjoy doing it,
• 12:11
  but they want to continue to one up themselves and keep pushing themselves physically
• 12:16
  with the complexity of this stuff. And we haven't gotten into fight coordination yet,
• 12:20
  which we'll get into. But but just in stunts, there's something in
• 12:24
  the DNA of stunt people that I've at least that I've experienced. What is
• 12:28
  that? I'd love to hear your opinion on that. Man. So the
• 12:31
  generation before me that when I came in were a lot of there were a
• 12:35
  lot of cowboys, you know, and being from Texas, I'm you know,
• 12:37
  I'm kind of a cowboy too. But that background of riding rodeo or
• 12:41
  bull riding or bronc riding or or bulldogging, you know, you have to
• 12:46
  be able to you know, I can't can't be scared to get here.
• 12:48
  So a lot of stunt performers come from, you know, a rodeo background
• 12:52
  or an athletic background like football players or so for me, I had one
• 12:56
  hundred and sixty a amateur fights when I got out of the Army, so
• 12:58
  like I wasn't scared to get hit. And you know, being an athlete
• 13:01
  on that level, like being on the national team or being competing on that
• 13:05
  level, you have to there's a lot of there's that moment of truth that
• 13:09
  we all have, you know, like that where you can't lie in that
• 13:11
  moment. You have to be very real about what's going to happen, and
• 13:15
  you have to make peace with it. You have to be calm in that
• 13:16
  moment. And all those years of competition and being in the army helped me
• 13:20
  settle into being in a very precarious position and being being at peace with it
• 13:26
  and making up my mind, Okay, I did one, you can't.
• 13:28
  It's not just like you're gonna do one, you're gonna do it one time.
• 13:30
  You're probably gonna do it three or four times. So it's it's also
• 13:33
  pain management. It's also your ability to to strive under pain, like when
• 13:39
  you get when you're getting hurt, and then the difference between getting hurt and
• 13:41
  getting injured. Getting hurt means you get up and do it again. Getting
• 13:45
  injured means you're you're on a ride in an ambulance to the hospital and gets
• 13:48
  sewn up or a broken bone. So I would say that most of the
• 13:50
  stunt performers, we all share the same likes, you know, like we
• 13:54
  all came from an athletic background or you know X games now, which I
• 13:58
  think are some of the most people park core athletes. Now, you know
• 14:03
  UCLA liberal level gymnasts. Some of the some of the best female stunt performers
• 14:07
  that I work with were elite gymnasts at some point because you know, you
• 14:11
  think, like my daughter's in gymnastics and she started when she was poor.
• 14:13
  But you have the little girls doing this where they're peeling their hands up and
• 14:18
  they're dealing with pain, and they're it's all about that one second that you
• 14:20
  have to hit the vault, right, you know, you have to gather
• 14:24
  all that you have to make up your mind of going for it. So
• 14:26
  that's kind of like doing being a stunt performer. You know, you just
• 14:30
  have to be able to to not lie in the moment of truth, to
• 14:33
  be present in the moment of truth and execute, you know. So it's
• 14:37
  all about seeing yourself do it. So I feel like that's something that we
• 14:39
  all have in common, you know, like one of the one of the
• 14:43
  big things for me is like being on the road with a bunch of like
• 14:46
  minded folks coming up with just killer ways to physically displace humans. That's my
• 14:50
  job, you know, is coming up with clever ways to do it,
• 14:52
  but not injure them, you know, but make it like because now there's
• 14:56
  more movies and more content being made than any I'm in the history of cinema
• 15:01
  or film, and the expectations are way higher, way way higher, you
• 15:03
  know that, like with video games and anime and all these other things that
• 15:07
  kids are watching now. They you know, Guy Hard is a great example
• 15:11
  of a movie that I loved in the eighties. But if you if you
• 15:15
  put a sixteen year old kid to watch that now, they'll be on their
• 15:18
  phone looking at their Instagram in twenty minutes. You know. It's just it's
• 15:20
  it's it's not what they're it's not going to capture their attention, you know
• 15:24
  what I mean. It's it's stuff that we've done al rate, which it
• 15:28
  is an amazing film and I've got to work with McTiernan before. He's an
• 15:30
  amazing director. But that's an example to me of where it came from and
• 15:35
  where it's going. You know, that's really interesting because I mean I was
• 15:39
  watching because I'm I'm a huge fan of a Fall Guy, the original shell
• 15:45
  back in the day, and my wife and I were watching it. This
• 15:48
  is you feel like, probably five six years ago, we sat down and
• 15:50
  we watched the first full first season because we're like, oh man, remember
• 15:52
  Fall Guy, Let's go back and watch those and those were freaking awesome.
• 15:56
  And you're watching it and as you're watching what they did on a weekly basis,
• 16:00
  on a weekly basis, you're like, that was all real, But
• 16:04
  these guys are insane. You don't see that kind of that kind of stunt
• 16:08
  work in television today. It was just they were doing gags, I mean,
• 16:12
  jumping off rooms. I'm like, full blown. It was insane what
• 16:17
  they were doing. And you're going back and that's that was all in camera.
• 16:22
  Where now I think, and you've seen you've started at a point where
• 16:23
  it was all still in camera and now you've got digital stunt performers doing some
• 16:29
  really you know, insane stuff. But I do think that as as as
• 16:33
  the audience, we can tell when you know, fast and the furious is
• 16:37
  fun, but you know, and the marvel movies are fun, but and
• 16:42
  the stunt performers that do do stuff there is great. But when you watch
• 16:45
  something like john Wick, you feel it a lot more. And you've been
• 16:49
  on you worked on john Wick obviously, but you feel that this is not
• 16:53
  a CG situation. You know. Listen around two thousand and three or four,
• 17:00
  everybody's starting saying, ill, we'll fix it in post, you know.
• 17:03
  For me, And I'll tell you something about fast and furious, because
• 17:07
  I've done to you. I did eight nine, a second year directed eight
• 17:08
  and nine, and I'll tell you something. We did direct three hundred and
• 17:12
  forty cars, and we do go a thousand miles an hour when we're doing
• 17:17
  those movies. So there is the only way to fake fast is to go
• 17:19
  really fast. It's fast and furious, not slow and curious. But at
• 17:22
  the end of the day, at the end of the day, for me,
• 17:26
  it's like, uh I day Shift is an example of stuff. We
• 17:30
  did everything in camera, even the contortions. I just shot it in reverse.
• 17:33
  And yeah, it's so, you know, like it doesn't speak to
• 17:37
  me to do to work on a big cartoon movie, and I've worked on
• 17:40
  a ton of movies where everything's animated to spend five months in a blue screen
• 17:44
  stage. That's not what I want to do. I don't usually take look
• 17:48
  for those jobs. I'm looking for the jobs where I can lock up Edinburgh,
• 17:51
  Scotland like I'm Fast and Furious eight and do a massive car chase and
• 17:53
  a chase flying over cities on wires and fighting and breaking through buildings, or
• 17:59
  John Wick or you know any of these movie like I'll give you an example.
• 18:00
  Gemini Man is another example of of an amalgamation of both. We went
• 18:04
  to Cartagena, Colombia and did this massive motorcycle chase that we did all practically
• 18:11
  and then but they augmented Will Smith's face onto the motorcycle rider. So there's
• 18:18
  an element of both that I think works okay, that I like when it's
• 18:22
  a complete digital takeover, and pretty soon, you know, I think action
• 18:26
  directing is going to be a lost arts. Un there's not a lot of
• 18:30
  it's it's infinitely harder to to to block a big car chase up when we've
• 18:36
  got nineteen cars and four motorcycles and helicopters and explosions. That's that's not easy
• 18:41
  to do. It's actually a lot harder to do than most people think.
• 18:42
  That's where second unit comes in and and and all the experience that I gained
• 18:48
  from being a second year director making me efficient and fast, and it's like
• 18:52
  it's like cool, I'm not thinking about my shot. I'm thinking about my
• 18:55
  next five shots and my leaves to get to every shot. That's that's filmaking.
• 18:59
  I'm run nine cameras sometimes, so it's that it's that nine cameras,
• 19:03
  spread, redirect the next street, the nine cameras and push full track,
• 19:07
  counter and then mount and then go to the next street. So you know,
• 19:12
  that's something that I think will be a lost start team because they'll be
• 19:15
  animating those cars at some point, you know, which breaks my heart.
• 19:18
  But I'll be long gone by then, my friend, exactly. No,
• 19:23
  I mean yeah, I mean when I said like fast fears, I remember
• 19:26
  like when they know, jumping a car from a building to a building.
• 19:29
  I'm assuming you didn't do that live, but things like that. But yeah,
• 19:33
  there is in those those shows specifically, there's a ton of cars that
• 19:36
  they use and you could tell that there's car and that's one of the things
• 19:37
  that made the original so amazing. It was all real in camera, and
• 19:42
  that's the thing You're right, there is a lost start. I have to
• 19:45
  want to ask you, is this I think it's confusing to a lot of
• 19:47
  people listening, especially young filmmakers. What is the hierarchy in the stunt department.
• 19:52
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and out back to
• 20:00
  the show. So you started off with the stunt performer, what is the
• 20:04
  hierarchy as far as the department adds and things. I can tell you the
• 20:08
  way it went for me. I started as a utility stunt man. Then
• 20:11
  I became a stunt dumple, and because of my background of martial arts and
• 20:15
  being in the army, I started becoming I started choreographing the fights that I
• 20:18
  was in, and then that led me to becoming a fight choreographer, and
• 20:22
  then I became a stunt coordinator, and then I became a second unit director.
• 20:26
  And you know, there's there's a lot of ways to climb the ladder,
• 20:30
  but I feel like that's the long route, but that's the most important
• 20:33
  route to take because if you miss one of the rungs, you want to
• 20:36
  you want to hit every rung. You want to learn every fast to the
• 20:37
  game. You know, driving motorcycles, water fighting, falling fire, you
• 20:45
  know, horseback, every fast. The more fasts that are on the diamond,
• 20:48
  the shinier that diamond is, and the more money you can eventually make
• 20:51
  if with you're in your profession. So I wanted to educate myself on every
• 20:55
  facet of that, and that's that's how it went for me. It's a
• 20:59
  bit different because now there's infinitely more jobs than there are than there were when
• 21:03
  I started, And now you can come in as a specialist. I'm a
• 21:07
  fight guy. Oh I'm a parkour guy. Oh I'm a gymnast. And
• 21:11
  that's that's the way they come in and that's the way they go. But
• 21:15
  you know that doesn't I'm not knocking him. There's some amazing talent out there
• 21:18
  now with you know, I think once YouTube hit and editing software became a
• 21:23
  consumer product, editing software made a lot of us action directors because once you
• 21:29
  know how to edit, it informs what you need to shoot. And you
• 21:32
  know, growing up on watching that as meat eighties Jackie Chan films where he
• 21:36
  really changed the game of fightings and he's one of them. He's an idol
• 21:38
  of mine because he's a stunt man that became a star and then became an
• 21:45
  action director. So I mean that's you know, like he was a Charlie
• 21:48
  Chaplin and a what's his name, the Buster Keaton Buster Keaton he was in
• 21:55
  Chan is a huge fan, we all are, but that's kind of where
• 21:57
  his inspiration came from. And are my generation, like I came up with
• 22:02
  Chad Stahowski and Dave Leech and a lot of the guys over at eighty seven
• 22:06
  eleven. I'm a member of that crew. And I'm also a member of
• 22:07
  Stunts Unlimited. Who are those original guys that did the Fall guys Stunts Unlimited
• 22:11
  is they've been around this nineteen seventy three. But that's yeah, but that's
• 22:15
  kind of how it was, and you know, watching the Chance trajectory is
• 22:21
  kind of the way like because he changed what we would do did. We
• 22:23
  took his movies and we would re shot shoot his action sequences with cameras and
• 22:29
  then cut them even on vh VHS, deck to deck until final cut became
• 22:33
  a was costumer product. We all chipped in and then we all learned how
• 22:37
  to edit, and then we became action directors. Budding action directors now you
• 22:42
  know with all the insane you know, gags that you guys have done over
• 22:47
  the years. Has had there ever has there ever been a stunt that you
• 22:51
  just said, Noah, man, I gotta walk away from this one.
• 22:52
  This is just too too risky. The biggest stunt I ever did was getting
• 22:59
  married to a lawyer. And I'm still marian so no. I look at
• 23:07
  the end of the day, I'm not. I'm just okay in the water.
• 23:11
  You know, I'm not. I'm not. I've done it on the
• 23:14
  Did you see the movie The Rundown? Yeah, of course, yea the
• 23:17
  rock though I was doubling Sean William Scott when we went down the mountain and
• 23:19
  over the falls and all that ship, Me and Polly Leopolis and tun of
• 23:22
  y read marcos A or we were. There was two sets of double spreech
• 23:26
  because we're getting so busted up. And there was a scene where we had
• 23:29
  to go into a lagoon and swim towards a waterfall, and I had boots
• 23:33
  on and jeans on, and tun of I read is Hawaii. He's from
• 23:37
  Hawaii's big, big. He's like a shark. When he gets in the
• 23:40
  water, he's massive, and he's like, you know, he's got gills.
• 23:41
  He can swim like a fish, and his wife was doubling the girl
• 23:45
  in there, and she's another one grew up in Hawaii's like after take three
• 23:48
  or four, I started getting really tired and I was like, hey,
• 23:51
  man, I probably need to tap out. So I would say, like
• 23:52
  doing a lot of water work for me is not my forte. I'm like
• 23:56
  a brick. I'm like a brick from Texas. You put me in the
• 23:59
  wa and I might go right to the bottom. Bro, fair enough,
• 24:03
  now, you you also got involved in one of my favorite films of the
• 24:07
  nineties, Mortal Kombat. Man, dude, how did you get involved with
• 24:11
  that? And then you eventually played some of the parts of like sub Zero
• 24:15
  and those kind of things. I mean again those at the time. I
• 24:19
  remember at the time, man, I mean, you couldn't go anywhere without
• 24:22
  listening to that damn song in the radio. First of all, what was
• 24:26
  it? I mean, how did you get involved in that project? Man?
• 24:27
  And how did you guys make it look so cool back that then?
• 24:30
  So I was. I used to have two Techwindo schools in LA while I
• 24:33
  was a stunt man. I had one in Englewood, It's called Techwando West.
• 24:37
  One in the Englewood and one in Sherman Oaks and the one in Sherman
• 24:40
  Oaks. I had a friend named Dana he who was already working on the
• 24:42
  movie. She was an Olympic gold medals from Techwondo. We're friends from my
• 24:45
  sport from Techwondo. We were teammate, like friend, you know, competitors
• 24:48
  together and dear friends. She was dating Larry kawsenof the producer Mortal Kombat at
• 24:53
  the time. They were looking for a stunt double for Johnny Cage for the
• 24:56
  additional photography of Mortal Kombat. She brings Larry into my school in the middle
• 25:02
  of one of my classes and I can see him look staring at me,
• 25:04
  and I'm like, Dano, who's the dude staring with Larry kas And I'll
• 25:07
  be pretty similar combat and you know, classes over, I meet him a
• 25:11
  like nice to meet you, sir, and he said, hey, can
• 25:12
  you show me some kids? And I bust out of five forty and I
• 25:15
  bust out a bunch of Oh man, that's awesome. Can you turn around
• 25:18
  for me? And I was like, what's that mean? He's looking at
• 25:19
  the back of my head. So if I could double the actor who's playing
• 25:22
  Johnny Cage and he was like, this is perfect. Two days later,
• 25:26
  I get a call from Robin Shoe, who's who's the star of the movie
• 25:30
  and also one of the fight coordinators, and Jeff im Motto was a Sun
• 25:32
  coordinator. I get a call, heybe what should come down and double Johnny
• 25:34
  Cage for the additional fight with Scorpion on the on the bamboo bridge thing.
• 25:38
  It was a it was a big additional scene. So I got to do
• 25:42
  that. And as soon as that was, you know, as soon as
• 25:45
  it was a big hit, they greenlit two. Then I played Scorpion in
• 25:48
  Syrax in two and did some doubling for little doubling for Raiding, a little
• 25:53
  doubling for Smoke, a little doubling for all the characters, but played two
• 25:56
  of the characters. And then when the TV series came out and Larry he
• 26:00
  called me and says, hey, will you come down and double kung loud?
• 26:03
  So double Kung loud for the first few episodes, and then they said
• 26:04
  can you play Scorpion? Can you play sub Zero? And I was like,
• 26:08
  yeah, I need I'll do whatever, you know, like I'm happy,
• 26:11
  Like I was always concerned about my acting, but when you have that
• 26:15
  thing on your face. You know, it's like it's just eyes zero.
• 26:18
  So I was sub zero. Now I'm chub zero and that's how it goes.
• 26:22
  But that was like my Mortal Kombat experience, you know, like I
• 26:26
  was super super stoked. Now that a lot of the youngsters that worked for
• 26:30
  me, now they'll pull it up on YouTube and I'm a little embarrassed about
• 26:33
  my bad acting and whatever. You know, like being in a loincloth.
• 26:38
  Hey man, hey, it's the nineties, bro, what are you gonna
• 26:41
  doas bills dog? What are you gonna do? It? Pays the bills
• 26:44
  and paid the bills, no question. Now you knows as you became a
• 26:48
  second unit of director, which I still think second unit of directors are some
• 26:52
  of the most technically sound directors out there. If you can direct action,
• 26:57
  you can direct cinemaup because it's a visual medium. I think Quintin is the
• 27:02
  one who said it is like my favorite directors are action directors like Tony Scott
• 27:07
  and those and those kind of guys who just are so technical and visual.
• 27:12
  What are mistakes that directors make when setting up an action sequence that you've seen
• 27:19
  so you know what we've done like eighty seven eleven. It is the team
• 27:25
  I've been on before that. It was called Smash Cuts and it was it
• 27:27
  was kind of the crew of us that came up in the nineties together,
• 27:30
  like the House Heat Leech, Marcus Young, Mike Gunter, Danny her name.
• 27:36
  There was a bunch of brand Martin, Garrett Warren. These are all
• 27:38
  guys that are prominent to community directors now that are running. They are running
• 27:41
  all the fight stuff in the last thirty years. What we did once the
• 27:45
  final cut came out, we start shooting stunt viz, which is an act
• 27:51
  we shoot and cut the sequence before we go to the set on we make
• 27:55
  a room full of boxes that measures out from the production designer and then we're
• 27:59
  shooting cut it shot for shot where we make the action the star without.
• 28:03
  We want to tell our certain story points after having a discussion with the director
• 28:08
  and a discussion with a DP about his style, you know like, and
• 28:11
  we give them a broad outline of what it would look like based on their
• 28:17
  version. Usually we get it right within three versions, like we tied it
• 28:19
  up within three versions. I've been paired up in the past few years with
• 28:23
  a lot of first and second time directors. I getting paired up with them
• 28:26
  often to you know, to help. When it comes to the action,
• 28:30
  it can be quite daunting, you know, like if you're not used to
• 28:32
  doing it, and you're right locking up Scotland with a bunch of cars and
• 28:37
  doing wire work over a city and using nine cameras is infinitely harder now that
• 28:44
  I've done both, than directing a scene with three people in a room talking,
• 28:48
  unless you don't have three good actors, well there's that bad actors,
• 28:52
  maybe it's way harder. But my point being the technical execution of that,
• 28:57
  the application of filmmaking is extremely difficult, especially when you're going seventy miles an
• 29:04
  hour and you're gonna go like through seven streets with explosions and whatever, and
• 29:10
  you have a finite amount of time to do it. Because second unit is
• 29:11
  never is elaborate or is funded as first unit is. It has to be
• 29:17
  a streamlined, a streamlined event that moves like that moves like a rocket.
• 29:22
  So I think that one of the mistakes that one of the mistakes that a
• 29:26
  lot of first and second time directors make is not having a clear vision of
• 29:33
  what they want. And sometimes my job is to help them discover their vision,
• 29:37
  whether he or she knows what it is or not. So it's my
• 29:41
  kind of I always take it upon myself. Is it's my job if they
• 29:44
  don't know, to show them and they give them options to that's my job.
• 29:48
  Is a stunt coordinator, as a fight coordinator, and a second unit
• 29:52
  director is to help the director achieve their vision of the action. We'll be
• 29:57
  right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show.
• 30:06
  Which is harder than achieving your vision of the action. When I know what
• 30:11
  I want, I always know what I want. So as a director,
• 30:12
  I came in with a really solid plan for my movie. I've had to
• 30:17
  set my production designer, Greg Barry, we already knew what the sets were
• 30:19
  going to be and where to put the neoprene in, which walls needed to
• 30:23
  fly because the camera's going to do this, I already knew. So it's
• 30:27
  it's it's a new It's like it's in the neighborhood that I've been roaming around
• 30:33
  for thirty two years, and if you're new to the neighborhood, it's easy
• 30:36
  to get lost. And I think a lot of the one of the things
• 30:40
  that some directors are a little intimidated by is they don't want to. They
• 30:44
  don't want to They want to go out and wander around and find it for
• 30:47
  themselves. And that's cool. But we're not in film school. We're in
• 30:51
  film work when we're making a movie. So you do have a finite amount
• 30:53
  of time, and you have to be decisive because every decision you make as
• 30:57
  a director has a ripple effect from all of the departments that it has to
• 31:02
  go to production designer. Okay, you're fighting, go to tear, this
• 31:04
  costume needs to go. You're punching your what makeup needs this, You're gonna
• 31:08
  break his arm. Props and prosthetic arm needs to go and using it.
• 31:12
  So you have to be decisive and give your team a chance to react to
• 31:18
  your decisions so it's not last minute. And this is one of the mistakes
• 31:22
  that I think a lot of first time directors make is there they don't want
• 31:26
  to decide, They will not make decisions in time. Now, when you
• 31:32
  were involved with John Wick, I mean that must have been a dream,
• 31:36
  like that project must be because it was just such an old school approach to
• 31:41
  fight and it's not like being cut fifty thousand angles. It's like you see
• 31:48
  Kanu beating up three guys one shot and it's not like the famous one is
• 31:55
  like, you know, I don't know if you know who shot taking three
• 31:56
  or two or whatever, but you see, you know, I saw this
• 32:00
  one, this one sequence somebody bought on YouTube. It was so beautiful.
• 32:02
  It's like it's Liam running and jumping across uh offense as he's chasing somebody.
• 32:08
  It was the seventy five cuts. It was that no joke. It was
• 32:10
  like dick as opposed to something like John Wick. You just look at it
• 32:15
  and you're like, that's just that. So what was it like, dude?
• 32:17
  Just getting the call and going that I'm that gay brother. So I
• 32:21
  was on the Expendables three in Bulgaria with Jason Statham and Sylvester Stallone on a
• 32:25
  container in in in in in Sophia, shooting machine guns. When chad'st the
• 32:31
  house he called me. We're teammates, and you know, Mad respect to
• 32:35
  Chad and Dave for what all that they've accomplished. You know, they that
• 32:38
  style of mixing judo with jiu jitsu in gun work. He calls me,
• 32:44
  and I was about to finish up in Expendable Stree he said, hey,
• 32:45
  listen, I'm doing this shootout in nightclub in New York on this on my
• 32:49
  movie John Wick. I need your help because I was in the Army,
• 32:52
  so I know how to work the gun work. And and look, we
• 32:55
  were all big fans of Hard Boiled, you know, the John movies.
• 33:00
  But I want to get my hands on those Chinese guns that have five hundred
• 33:04
  bullets in them. He never reloads. I love those guns. I want
• 33:06
  to get one of those. But that's one of the things that we one
• 33:09
  of the monsters was was then we would be true to that. If you're
• 33:15
  running a glock seventeen with a regular magazine, you have fifteen and one.
• 33:21
  You have an extended mag you get eighteen seventeen and one or eighteen and one.
• 33:24
  So that was it. I got the call to come down. They
• 33:27
  were shooting the final scene out on the dock when he's fighting the father of
• 33:30
  the guy at the end. He gives me an address of a nightclub and
• 33:34
  he says, we want to shoot. We want to start shooting. We're
• 33:37
  gonna shoot the cyclub scene at this place. Can you go there. I
• 33:39
  got there on a Friday afternoon. They're shooting at night so I just drove
• 33:44
  to that address, gave the door guy one hundred bucks to let me in
• 33:47
  and walk through it. He said, it'll start at the top when you
• 33:50
  go off the stairs the room. You're right, it'll start there as a
• 33:52
  door and walk in. You'll go through. We'll work our way all the
• 33:55
  way around the top floor, and then we'll the beginning of it. We'll
• 33:58
  pull him through the dance floor. So I just walked with my iPhone doing
• 34:01
  a first person shooter at patrons of the club. Then I would turn the
• 34:07
  phone around to myself do a reload and then so what John Wick is,
• 34:12
  it's exactly the opposite. It's reverse first person shooter. It's always on Keanu
• 34:16
  pullium and then rapping and until it falls apart, and then we do it
• 34:21
  all over again. So it's a big pull into a wrap and that's that's
• 34:24
  technically the idea of the theory of shooting. So you see Deanna Reeves is
• 34:29
  doing this so for me. Once we once I got there and we started,
• 34:32
  we're gonna working that out. I knew right away looking at the monitors
• 34:36
  with Chad and Dave, I was like, dude, we're on one.
• 34:38
  You guys are on one right now as it's cutting edge, because you know,
• 34:43
  gunn this is a thing. Now that I've done it, John Wick,
• 34:46
  I've done to you. I did just a club scene shootout in the
• 34:50
  first one, and then I did all of the second one, and we
• 34:52
  upped Kean Who's training camp for the second one. Because what Chad said to
• 34:57
  me said, how can we make two better than one? I said,
• 34:59
  will you can make Kianu better? So we put him in a really hard
• 35:02
  jiu jitsu camp, judo camp, took him to a three gun range and
• 35:07
  had him trained by a you know, a fourteen time world three gun champion
• 35:10
  name Tarren Butler out here in Cindy Valley. We just made him better and
• 35:15
  then let the camera run longer. So you know, that was it was
• 35:19
  one of the highlights of my career because I'm a dear friend and fan of
• 35:22
  Kianu Reeves. I'm a huge fan of Chad Stahowski because we go back thirty
• 35:24
  two years. One of the first people I met when I got out of
• 35:27
  the army. He's been a huge, a huge ally. You know.
• 35:31
  Like again, I didn't really have a plan when I got out of the
• 35:35
  Army. I just didn't want to fuck things up and have to end up
• 35:37
  back in the army. But you know, Chad, you know, went
• 35:38
  to USC. He was always he always knew that he I think he always
• 35:43
  knew he was going to be a director, and I really admire that.
• 35:45
  I kind of watched where he walked in the snow and followed his footsteps.
• 35:49
  So you know, he was actually a producer on day Shift. He was
• 35:51
  the one that I took it to that got me greenlit. So that was
• 35:54
  you know, that was one of the big helping him out and working with
• 35:58
  our team at eighty seven eleven was always a pleasure. There was a lot
• 36:01
  of hitters on that movie, bro on the first Dance, second one.
• 36:05
  So it's so funny because I remember Dave I met Dave On in Sundance in
• 36:14
  two thousand and five when he was promoting as a sledge yep, do you
• 36:19
  remember that movie? Yeah, I worked on it. We all did you
• 36:22
  do it? You work? So I was yeah, he was like he
• 36:24
  was doing like a stunt thing and I met him and we hung out for
• 36:27
  a while. And this is before you know, this is but a few
• 36:30
  years before he did John Wick. But as I was watching his career grow.
• 36:34
  I'm like, man, God blessed. I'm so glad he's he's done
• 36:37
  good for him for himself over the years. Man, that's it's awesome.
• 36:42
  No, no, I always listen, you know, if you look at
• 36:44
  if you look at stunt performers trajectory, like I've worked on one hundred and
• 36:47
  fifty features and over three hundred episodes of TV. When you're working with Angle,
• 36:52
  Jetly, Spike Lee, when you worked with everyone, you have to
• 36:57
  learn something. If you're paying attention, you know, that's a different I
• 37:00
  guess the difference between a stunt guy and a stuntman. A stunt guy is
• 37:02
  just trying to make a bunch of money and get some toys. A stunt
• 37:06
  man is out there trying to make the movie better, and he's paying attention
• 37:08
  to every shot and trying to make every shot better. So, you know,
• 37:12
  being being a stunt man, you know, and learning from some of
• 37:15
  the masters, and learning just as much from second and first and second time
• 37:19
  directors on what not to do sometimes part of my film school. And you
• 37:23
  know, Dave and Chad are like so the first one is the guy who
• 37:28
  directed from my group that directed Smoking the Bandit I'll need him. So he
• 37:36
  busted out in the seventies. He's one of the founders of my group.
• 37:37
  Stunts are Limited, you know, So he's one of the guys that busted
• 37:40
  out. And you have a few stunt directors from the US that have done
• 37:45
  some movies, you know, like Jackie Chan for me, is one of
• 37:47
  the all time greats because he you know, he took it completely to the
• 37:52
  next level in there, and he did stuff that we're still doing now.
• 37:55
  But Chad and Dave for me, were in instrumental in opening the door and
• 38:02
  hopefully that door gets torn off the hinges because in the mid two thousands,
• 38:06
  in the early two thousands, there was this wave of visual effects directors.
• 38:09
  We're directing movies, and the difference between us and them, not to knock
• 38:15
  them, is they don't have a human experience. When you're making a visual
• 38:17
  effect previous, you're on a computer and the computer will do exactly what you
• 38:22
  tell it to do. Right now, fast forward to me training Keanu or
• 38:28
  us training Tom Hardy and Warrior, Joel Edgerton and Warrior or Charlie's here on
• 38:35
  atomic them. We're training them. We're grading to do this. We're directing
• 38:38
  them. We're making them badasses. The only best way to fake being a
• 38:42
  badass is just to make them a badass. We are directing them and we
• 38:45
  have their trust. So when we're on set and someone says, well I
• 38:49
  don't want to stand over here, I want to stand over there, I'm
• 38:52
  like, I can adjust quickly. But that visual effects director was like,
• 38:54
  well wait a minute, no, my, You know, they don't know
• 38:57
  how it's the computer does exactly what they tell them to do when they get
• 39:00
  the human effect. When the human effect comes in, it became very difficult
• 39:05
  for them. And also it's interfacing. As a sun coordinator, you're constantly
• 39:08
  interfacing with all the other departments, So you have this dialogue and this repertoire
• 39:13
  with everyone in the movie and production meetings, going to their offices, so
• 39:16
  I know how to communicate with everyone. I have a relationship with pretty much
• 39:21
  every crew every anywhere because I'm filmed in thirty six countries. So it's a
• 39:24
  huge advantage for us as action directors becoming directors because we have this film not
• 39:31
  film school experience, but filmmaking experience, which is entirely different than theory.
• 39:37
  It's execution. It's like fighting. The guy that hits the bag all day,
• 39:42
  you don't know what he's gonna do when he gets punched in the face.
• 39:44
  But the guy that spars all day, he's reactive and proactive and hyperactive.
• 39:51
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to
• 39:58
  the show. You know. So that's that's my take on on action directing.
• 40:02
  You know that's my take on it. Well, it's kind of like
• 40:05
  Mike Tysons has everyone's got a plan. Ntil you get punched in the face,
• 40:07
  my brother, you can be as badass as you want until you get
• 40:13
  that first punch in the face. All that it goes out the window really
• 40:15
  quickly. That's right. So, man, I got a chance to watch
• 40:20
  your new film Day Shift, bron. First of all, congratulations. When
• 40:23
  I saw it, I was just like I was expecting great action. I
• 40:27
  got great action. And then as I was seeing some of the techniques in
• 40:30
  the movie, I was watching it and I'm like, oh, this is
• 40:34
  all old school style in camera stuff, like yes, And then when I
• 40:37
  saw the contortionists vampires, I was like, oh, yes, he did,
• 40:43
  like because then you can't bs that it's so, I mean, you
• 40:46
  could do visual effects to do that. But man, when you get a
• 40:49
  contortionist out there doing crazy stuff, it just brings such reality. So tell
• 40:53
  everybody what the movie's about, and then we'll get into the how you made
• 40:57
  it. So the movies are about a man that got out of the army
• 41:00
  a lot like me, that's trying to keep his family together. And you
• 41:04
  know, LA is a tough place to live. Brother, Like when I
• 41:06
  got out of the army, I was not prepared for rent and insurance and
• 41:09
  etc. Etc. So he's he's a guy that he has a job cleaning
• 41:14
  pools and he augments his income by killing vampires and selling their teeth in an
• 41:20
  underground in an underground market of vampire hunters that extract vampire tea can kill them.
• 41:25
  And what really attracted me to this. You know, I've been reading
• 41:30
  a lot of scripts and I was super stoked just being a st coordinator or
• 41:32
  second yar director making a ton of dough flying all over the world, smashing
• 41:37
  people with all my friends and then getting on a plane and going somewhere else
• 41:39
  and doing it all over again. It was a big risk for me to
• 41:44
  step out and direct a film, So I was going to be very picky
• 41:46
  and I read a bunch of scripts. Oh JJ, you in the army,
• 41:49
  you should do a movie about TSD. Sipers. I was like,
• 41:52
  no, man, the world's dark right now, you know, right now,
• 41:53
  with COVID and a double feature of monkey pots and a triple feature of
• 41:58
  war and Ukraine, the world's dark. You can turn on the news right
• 42:00
  now and find a thousand reasons to want to turn it off. When I
• 42:05
  saw when I read the script, DAP, it spoke to me immediately,
• 42:07
  because big Trump, a little China, Lost Boys, evil Dead, fright
• 42:14
  Night from the eighties action comedy horror. I don't have a message, there's
• 42:17
  I'm not trying to tell anyone to do anything or change anyone's mind. I
• 42:22
  just want them to enjoy. And having those three elements action, comedy and
• 42:24
  horror, I always will have the upper hand on the audience. I can
• 42:29
  wow them with action, I can make them laugh with comedy, and I
• 42:32
  can make them jump with horror. So using those three tiers, those three
• 42:37
  elements of it, those three layers of attack, it was like triangulating my
• 42:42
  crossfire on the audience to keep them right where I wanted them. The script
• 42:45
  spoke to me because there's an under ground world of vampires and an underground world
• 42:49
  of hunters that chase them, which is just like John Wick but different.
• 42:52
  So that's when they were coming. I got a lot of John Wick ish
• 42:55
  scripts esque scripts, and I was like, I did that, man,
• 42:58
  and I don't want to bite on what Chad and Gianna were doing. People
• 43:01
  always say it's John Wigg, you know, but this and the movie I
• 43:06
  made is not John Wick with vampires. It's definitely not. I definitely wanted
• 43:08
  to get as far away from that as I could because I'd already worked on
• 43:13
  that, and I don't want to I want to give the bow to my
• 43:16
  bros at eighty seven eleven, Chad and Dave. They did a great job
• 43:20
  with that. I don't want to bite on that. There's enough people doing
• 43:22
  it right now. So I got that script. I got it from Sean
• 43:27
  and Evette Yates from Impossible Dream. They brought it to me. They've been
• 43:30
  big, you know, advocates. And then the guy Tyler Ties, who
• 43:34
  wrote it a gem Me and him worked on it for about a year.
• 43:37
  Do we just put big action teeth on it, you know, be teeth?
• 43:40
  And then I made it. The characters is familiar to me as possible,
• 43:44
  Like Big John's character was like my platoon sergeant in the army. Budd's
• 43:47
  wife is like my wife. My wife's an attorney. She's the Mike Tyson
• 43:50
  of arguers, you know. So, and Budd has a nine year old
• 43:53
  daughter. I have a nine year old daughter. So I try to make
• 43:57
  it relatable to me. So when the Thesbians would asked me, I would
• 44:00
  be able to speak intelligently. And I'll be honest. The thing that really
• 44:05
  worried me more than anything was the comedy. Yeah, because that's something.
• 44:08
  Yeah, but I think I'm funny, but I don't know if anyone else
• 44:13
  fucking things sound funny. So Harry having Harry Jerry Fox, Jamie Fox is
• 44:19
  not about getting day shift was a win. Getting Jamie Fox was winning the
• 44:24
  lottery. Oh so doubted. Oh my god, what a g bro And
• 44:30
  and him and Dave Franco together, Oh great, great chemistry, great grim.
• 44:35
  I worked on a movie called Spy several years ago, with that Paul
• 44:38
  Fieg directed. Yeah, I did the action for him, and I did
• 44:42
  some second unit for him, and I watched to seem I was I first
• 44:45
  saw. I was hoping this would happen from right when Chad and Dave finished
• 44:51
  John Wick, I started going to you know, read I'd ask directors when
• 44:53
  I'd get hired, I'd be like, hey, can I sit through read
• 44:55
  throughs? And I wanted to be more a part of that, to watch
• 45:00
  the decisions being made. I really paid attention to Paul on how he directed
• 45:04
  the action. And he had these things posted notes and he would have it
• 45:08
  was almost like an accordion, a post it notes with alts that he had
• 45:13
  scribbled down. So when he would just let the camera roll and said all
• 45:15
  right, try this, all right, try this, and then he would
• 45:19
  say, okay, now run with it. So having Jamie and Dave Franco
• 45:22
  in the comedy bro, I just let the cameras roll and let them just
• 45:25
  have at it. So, you know, I think, you know,
• 45:30
  Jamie for me was the biggest win of all. You know, getting a
• 45:34
  movie is huge. Thank you Netflix, Thank you Chess. That else would
• 45:36
  be Greenlitt, Thank you Impossible Dream for bringing to me, Thank you Tylert
• 45:38
  for writing it. And Jamie Fox. I will forever owe a debt of
• 45:43
  gratitude and all we always be a good program because that was him showing up
• 45:47
  to do my movie was such a massive thing for me. Now with you
• 45:52
  know, a lot of second unit directors don't get the shot. Did a
• 45:55
  lot of them stay as second unit directors for their career and like you said,
• 45:59
  I have fun, I can go out, I'm working on big budgets.
• 46:01
  I'm having this fun fun. So when I saw that you were,
• 46:05
  you know, when I went and started doing research out and I was like,
• 46:07
  oh, this is his first shot, Like this is this is not
• 46:09
  a normal scenario because a lot of times actions second unit of directors no action,
• 46:15
  but they have no idea how to deal with actors like on a on
• 46:19
  a watch McCall on, like a dialogue state, or how to carry character
• 46:22
  arcs and things like that. It's a little tougher to do that. But
• 46:27
  when I saw what you was like, man, I'm interested to see how
• 46:29
  he does. And I was like, man, he held it together,
• 46:30
  man, Like the whole story was well put together. There's some beautiful easter
• 46:35
  eggs for someone of my my vintage to grab onto, some some lost boy
• 46:42
  lines, well give it away. When I saw a lot, I was
• 46:45
  like, I was like, nice, So some some nice little easter eggs
• 46:50
  along the way but it was just it was just it was just well done.
• 46:53
  It was really well done. And I was telling you earlier before we
• 46:57
  got started in the color of it looks great like the the you could feel
• 47:00
  how hot it is during you could feel like the the valley. And then
• 47:05
  that since I'm from the valley, I was just I was just like I
• 47:08
  was from the valley. I was just like, yep, oh, well
• 47:10
  they're deep in the valley over there. That's not Burbank, Nope, that's
• 47:15
  over So it was fun always It's always fun for me when they issue something
• 47:17
  in La tod like, yep, been there, yep, I know where
• 47:21
  that is. Yep. So you know brother listening. When I got out
• 47:23
  of the army, it kind of was like that. I moved to the
• 47:25
  valley. First. I lived in a back of a technodo school for a
• 47:28
  while, and when I got made my first bit of money, I moved
• 47:30
  to the valley. You have to that's the trajectory. I think. You
• 47:31
  can moved to the valley. I can be down by the airport when you
• 47:34
  first get here and you don't have any money. Then you make your way
• 47:36
  over the hill, which will be night Shift. Part two will will be
• 47:38
  in Hollywood or you know, we'll be in Hollywood maybe next time. But
• 47:43
  that was the trajectory. And one of the things that I remember about the
• 47:45
  valley when I first got there was being from Texas. Is got in human
• 47:49
  but the colors in the valley that orange and listen, I'd be told disclosure,
• 47:53
  I am completely color blind, the worst color blind you can be.
• 47:58
  But that orange for me, really resonate in the opening of of die Hard
• 48:05
  when the plane lands, the orange sun is setting when the plane lands.
• 48:08
  That's what I showed Toby Oliver when I said, I need your help with
• 48:13
  this because I want the interiors to feel cold like vampires would be there.
• 48:16
  You can almost steal their breath. But when you're outside it should be hot
• 48:21
  and sticky and like like the valley, you know, where you hear the
• 48:24
  of the water, of the water watering things, or the you hear like
• 48:29
  of the cicadas. You know, you all of that that I wanted to
• 48:31
  get and bring that to the movie. So yeah, that was part of
• 48:34
  it for me and Toby Oliver is a gem. You know. When we
• 48:38
  shot the movie in forty two days with no second unit, which is a
• 48:40
  very short shoot for a movie of that size, and we didn't have a
• 48:45
  lot of time. We shot thirty one days in Atlanta in eleven days in
• 48:50
  LA. So I was scared. All my interiors in Atlanta in a few
• 48:53
  X tiers. So what I did in LA when all of my establishing shots
• 48:58
  of La, I would speak drawing own handoffs peak drone shots showing the valley,
• 49:02
  and we have certain the operator catch the drone. We hit a button,
• 49:06
  the drone would fly off, and then we follow our actors into wherever
• 49:08
  they were going. So I really pose the valley because I wanted to,
• 49:13
  and I think the value is hot, sweaty, sexy, cool, exotic,
• 49:16
  trippy. You know, you can smell the different flavors of food in
• 49:21
  the air, you can hear seven different languages being spoken. It was this
• 49:23
  mystical place when I moved there, being from South Texas. You know,
• 49:28
  like the valley, you know, like what a trip. So that was
• 49:30
  part of it for me, is to show how exotic the value was.
• 49:34
  So there you go. So you know, as a director, you know,
• 49:37
  and I'm sure you've had this happen on other projects as well. There's
• 49:38
  always that one day that the whole world's come crashing down around you. You're
• 49:44
  like, oh my god, we're not gonna make it. We're not gonna
• 49:45
  make the day, We're not gonna make the shot with something's gonna happen.
• 49:49
  And it's generally every day we have. Every every day there's a moment of
• 49:52
  that. But generally on this project, was there one day that stands out
• 49:57
  that you're just like, I feel like security is going to come, would
• 50:00
  take me away. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 50:07
  and now back to the show. No, but there's a moment. I'll
• 50:13
  tell you it's funny. So I was never afraid of the action at all.
• 50:15
  Ever. And my first ad, his name is Bill Clark. I
• 50:20
  call him Wild Bill. He's Quentin Tarantino's first ad. He's a dear friend.
• 50:23
  The scene where the vampires come to get Budd and his wife, it's
• 50:29
  the very end of the movie when they leave Steth and they take his wife
• 50:31
  and daughter. Bill comes to me the night before when we were wrapping up.
• 50:35
  He goes, you know, you got seven and a half its of
• 50:37
  dialogue tomorrow And I was like yeah, And I didn't know what that meant,
• 50:40
  you know. I was like, hey, Bubba, you got seven
• 50:45
  and a half pages of dialogue tomorrow, and I was like, cool,
• 50:47
  great, he goes uh. He just kind of pulled me in and he's
• 50:51
  like, hey, so let's talk about this. So it didn't really dawn
• 50:54
  on me till about four o'clock in the afternoon, when I was I better
• 51:00
  paying better attention to that. But you know, at the end of the
• 51:02
  day, we ended up getting that right, we had we had. You
• 51:07
  know, it's because the cost was so great and everyone no one went back
• 51:10
  to their trailers. Everybody hung out on set. We're playing music between setups.
• 51:15
  You know, everybody was having a good time. I wanted to keep
• 51:16
  the set light, like I keep my second unit light Keeter Metallica or Stevie
• 51:21
  ray Vaughan between setups or you know, dealer's choice could get a new DJ.
• 51:24
  And we had Jamie with his boombox, and we had you know,
• 51:28
  the taco truck here and there and the coffee truck. So it ended up
• 51:30
  working out all right. And it was my ignorance that saved me because I
• 51:35
  wasn't afraid. You don't you're not afraid of what you don't know until you
• 51:37
  know it right well, of course, and then it kind of worked out.
• 51:42
  And Bill at the end of that day when whoa, he said that
• 51:45
  was almost like having a baby, and I was like, well, I
• 51:45
  can't speak on that yet, but I can tell you now I know what
• 51:49
  seven and a half pages mean. So seven and half pages is a lot
• 51:52
  of dialogue, man, I mean, unless you're doing unless you're doing mastershot
• 51:54
  theater, Uh, then it's cool. You can knock that on thirty minutes.
• 51:59
  But you're too you know, a normal setup, man, that's a
• 52:00
  lot of dial There were nine people in the room too, so there's a
• 52:04
  lot of coverage. You know, there's a lot of coverage. And also
• 52:06
  you had to not we had to be careful not to shoot the mirror because
• 52:08
  the vampires are invisible in the mirrors. And I didn't have a huge visual
• 52:13
  effects budget on a movie, so I had to be very conscious of everything
• 52:15
  I was doing right, no, exactly, And how many cameras did you
• 52:20
  shoot with? Generally, well, when we were doing all of it,
• 52:22
  when we were doing all the dialogue, always three cameras. I always run
• 52:25
  three cameras. And then when we were doing the car chase, I was
• 52:29
  running seven cameras because we you know, it wasn't like I said, it
• 52:31
  wasn't. We didn't have a lot of time, and it wasn't a Fast
• 52:35
  and Furious budget or you know, a gray Man budget, but it was.
• 52:38
  It wasn't a little budget either. They were very generous with me.
• 52:42
  So I just because of the second unit, I know how to budget my
• 52:45
  time really really well. When it comes to action, I just know this
• 52:47
  is gonna work. This is gonna work. I gonna do this. Okay,
• 52:50
  this I can make a change here. We can not cut here and
• 52:52
  go here. I know how to I know how to run the table,
• 52:53
  I know how to play shoot that. I knew how to clean the table
• 52:57
  to run that payball. But so, what was the biggest challenge you had
• 53:00
  on this project? Since I mean since it's your first full feature, you've
• 53:05
  done times a second, what was the biggest The hardest part for me was
• 53:07
  getting the opportunity to do it, bro you know, to be honest,
• 53:09
  I was gonna how'd you do that? By the way, Well, you
• 53:13
  know, like when Sean and Evette brought it to me and we worked on
• 53:16
  it for a year. I was doing Fast and Furious eight in London.
• 53:22
  Chad was in London with Keanu promoting John Wick three. Now, I had
• 53:25
  shot the first sequence with the old lady as a stunt biz, and I
• 53:29
  had done a vampire genogram different species, and I'd done two sizzle reels and
• 53:34
  a look book. So we're out partying at the Gaucho Room with Keanu and
• 53:37
  Chad celebrating the release of their movie. John Wick three went and hanging out
• 53:42
  with him in about four in the morning, Chad leans over and he goes,
• 53:45
  Amen, I'm probably gonna get some sort of first look deal. Do
• 53:49
  you have anything? And I was like, yeah, funny, you should
• 53:52
  mention that I slid it. You know, I didn't slide it across the
• 53:54
  table, but I texted, I emailed it to him, and I knew
• 53:57
  he was flying back to LA the next day, and at six am,
• 54:00
  when he was in the car on the way to the heath throw, I
• 54:04
  text him. I said, Hey, give that thing a look while you're
• 54:06
  on the plane. He landed in LA and he by the time he landed,
• 54:09
  he calls me he's gonna make this move. And literally two weeks later,
• 54:15
  we're in meetings to make this movie and it was happening. So COVID
• 54:17
  hit which put it on a hold. So the trajectory was Shan and Evett
• 54:22
  Yates as Sean Reddick in Evet Yates from Possitory. You give me the script,
• 54:24
  get behind me, Tyler Tyson, I work on it for about a
• 54:28
  year together, chats the house, he sees it, gets excited about it,
• 54:31
  walks it in Netflix ory Marmer Taylor z get excited about it, about
• 54:37
  the package of Chad and this movie and myself. Jamie Fox comes on board,
• 54:42
  and it turns into it like a holy shit, it's gonna be massive,
• 54:45
  and here we are. It's all in the past now it's all behind
• 54:47
  us. So that's kind of the way it happened. And it happened really
• 54:52
  fast. We shot it really fast. I had the one of the best
• 54:55
  times I've ever had prepping and shooting the movie. The only place that I
• 55:01
  was not aware of was post production because thirty two years of prepping movies and
• 55:06
  shooting movies, you never like I've been in the adding room a couple of
• 55:08
  times with directors cutting together because I always when I shoot second unit, I
• 55:14
  cut while I'm shooting and I deliver it. So I shoot a stunt biz
• 55:16
  for proof of proof of concept. Then when I'm shooting what I shoot,
• 55:21
  I shooting. Cut the footage off of the T T I and hand it
• 55:24
  to them and say proof of execution. You don't have to cut it this
• 55:28
  way. You cut it anyway you want to. But this was my version
• 55:30
  of your vision. And now it's locked, and now it's done. If
• 55:34
  you want to give it to your editors as a roadmap, do whatever you're
• 55:37
  like, but here it is. So all that being said, prepping the
• 55:42
  movie and shooting it was such a piece of k going into post production.
• 55:45
  I had already cut all of the action while we were shooting, so theoretically
• 55:50
  a third of the movie was cut already when we get to post. So
• 55:53
  watching the whole process of posts, I learned so much in posts about what
• 55:58
  I don't need to do. And I'll tell you, like all those shots
• 56:02
  of the techno crane pushing over the pool, it follows the feet up and
• 56:07
  closes the door, and a lens flayer hitting from the sun that forty five
• 56:12
  second shot my cinematic my core sawar shots all gone down, all freaking gone.
• 56:17
  Yeah. So to learn so much about what I don't need to do
• 56:23
  that I would tell you confidently as a fifty four year old budding filmmaker that
• 56:30
  my sophomore effort will be infinitely better than my freshman effort. Wow, that's
• 56:37
  so true, man, It's so true because even looks so it's so funny
• 56:39
  that you say that, man, because you've been in the biz man for
• 56:43
  you know, decades at this point, you've shot so much, you've worked
• 56:45
  at the highest levels, and yet you fell into the same trap that first
• 56:49
  time directors fall into. It, like, let's make this one shot here
• 56:52
  and then we'll do the good Fellas shot through the through the kitchen and they
• 56:55
  and all that stuff. And remember Corre saw that Kubrick thing, We'll do
• 56:59
  that thing, and it's and you and you fall into that and you realize
• 57:02
  when you get in the cutting room, like it just stops the entire movie.
• 57:07
  You can't do that. It went like this, So the action was
• 57:10
  cut. We watched the movie for the first time, probably three two and
• 57:15
  a half or three weeks in. We just put all the reels together and
• 57:19
  the movie came in at two hours and forty three minutes. So I looked
• 57:22
  at it and I was like, oh, all right, cool. So
• 57:25
  I wanted to listen. I never wanted anyone. I was very consciousness because
• 57:29
  I'm always watching. I made this movie for our generation, gen X,
• 57:32
  but I also made it for the millennials and the Jen gen Y and gen
• 57:36
  z Hanson, Bud and Steph counterparts. That that difference, and I'll get
• 57:40
  into that in a minute. Remind me to t tell you about why that
• 57:43
  wasn't fired from But that was It was easy for me because I didn't want
• 57:50
  my movie to feel long. I wanted it to be easy to watch.
• 57:52
  Because listen, I'm not gonna say any I'm not gonna call any movies out,
• 57:58
  but there's a lot of movies now that I watched that are heart like.
• 58:00
  I love them, but they become like I'm sitting now, I'm aware
• 58:02
  of they're fat. I was making Day Shift for not for the small screen,
• 58:07
  for being seven or ten feet away from your big screen tvat from yourself,
• 58:12
  but you're sitting four feet high looking at your screen. That's in my
• 58:15
  mind, that was the movie I was making. I was not shooting it
• 58:19
  for a theater because it was, you know, in Netflix's small screen,
• 58:22
  but it's big screen ambitions on the small screen. So in saying that,
• 58:27
  it was very easy for me. Once I cut that first part of my
• 58:30
  finger off. I let that long shot go. It became easy for me
• 58:35
  to see it. It's just at fifty four, in all those years of
• 58:37
  experience comes in wisdom like I know, I have to I have to sift
• 58:43
  some of this out, so I let it go quickly. You know,
• 58:45
  like, listen, I be honest with you. It's not it's not it's
• 58:50
  not Shakespeare. And if it was Shakespeare, they wouldn't be hiring me,
• 58:52
  bro, they wouldn't hire a cave man like me. It has to be
• 58:55
  fast and fun and something has to happen. And I don't want any one
• 59:00
  to feel like, Okay, I'm waiting now and what's going on. I
• 59:04
  don't want them looking at their Instagram. So that was kind of the the
• 59:07
  full full filmmaking experience that I wanted to create is something that was scary,
• 59:13
  actually funny and easy to watch. And it's exactly like, that's not a
• 59:17
  movie that can be two hours and forty five minutes like that. That story.
• 59:21
  It's not that story. So it's just not. But it needs to
• 59:24
  be fast and tight and quick and and and you're fun. And that's the
• 59:28
  kind of thing you know, you're not making Brave Heart. Uh you know,
• 59:30
  which is what would you need three hours to tell that story? And
• 59:34
  it's and it's okay to do that. And honestly, I don't know if
• 59:37
  Brave Heart gets made today, And that's no. I used to double mel
• 59:42
  Gibson strangely, and I'm a huge fan. I think he's one of the
• 59:45
  best filmmakers. Oh all right, you know, like listen, I used
• 59:49
  to be a stunt doll and I'm huge fan. Bro. Apocalypto. Apocalypto.
• 59:52
  Oh god, it's a brilliant film. We'll be right back after a
• 59:58
  word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. I the two
• 1:00:07
  hundred and fifty millimeter lens on my set is called the mel Gibson because he
• 1:00:09
  always has a camera on a two fifty and he always he told me,
• 1:00:13
  he goes, hey kid, you want to see what's going on in there?
• 1:00:15
  Put the two fifty in and reach in there and get them and you
• 1:00:16
  can see what they're thinking. Bro. So I always use that two fifty,
• 1:00:21
  but I can get the mel Gibson out, guys, when I wanted
• 1:00:23
  to tell what are they thinking that moment? You know? So, yes,
• 1:00:28
  you're right, it's not and they probably won't make a Braveheart, but
• 1:00:30
  kudos to mel for making it and yeah when when they could, and you
• 1:00:35
  tell me to ask you about the generational thing. So yes, I'm on
• 1:00:38
  the road is a stunt coordinator, second director with all of these APEX stunt
• 1:00:45
  performers and stunt coordinators that that work with me for the last we've done,
• 1:00:49
  We've I've been on the road with the same guys for about eight or nine
• 1:00:52
  years, eighty seven eleven stunts unlimited. I hire within my team justin you,
• 1:00:57
  Troy Robinson, Mike Lair, my rows, but they are except for
• 1:01:01
  Troy, those are the guys and FEMA and girls that are in my group
• 1:01:05
  are all millennials and gen X and gen y like our four champions World Come
• 1:01:08
  Food Champion, Car Drifting Champion, Trip Motorcycle Champion. But they're all kids
• 1:01:14
  and I love them, but I don't know what the fuck they're talking about
• 1:01:15
  half the time, dude, and we all love each other and laugh at
• 1:01:19
  each other, but it's it's that awkward thing that I wanted that I experience
• 1:01:22
  on the road with my teammates that I love them and we spend time together
• 1:01:25
  and we hang out and watch MMA and go to the movies and do functions
• 1:01:30
  and stuff together and risk our lives together and make a bunch of dough together.
• 1:01:32
  But when I listen to them talk about things, I'm like, how
• 1:01:36
  are they talking about? That's exactly what I wanted to portray that dynamic between
• 1:01:42
  Blood and Seth in my movie. Like there's the generation that gets their knowledge
• 1:01:47
  from this. They get their phone and it's Google. You and me.
• 1:01:52
  I'm fifty four and we're probably your gen X. I'm I'm not too far
• 1:01:54
  away from you, sir. So you know, we were kids. If
• 1:01:58
  you wanted to learn something, you had to go there and learn it.
• 1:02:00
  Oh dude, you get library library. I joined the Army because I was
• 1:02:07
  a junior national tekwondo champions so I could go get stationed in Korea so I
• 1:02:10
  could fight the best in the world. So I committed four years of my
• 1:02:14
  life to the Army just for taekwondo, just so I could go there and
• 1:02:16
  fight and train. So I know the way this Jim smells, It chumps
• 1:02:21
  hill. I know the way that Jim smells in Thailand and Lupeni Stadium.
• 1:02:24
  I know the way that boudhaicon the floor feels when you walk on it.
• 1:02:29
  Kids that learn on this, they don't know that they're getting the knowledge without
• 1:02:35
  actually earning it, which comes without the wisdom of learning. No, not
• 1:02:40
  knocking my younger brothers and sisters, because I have a huge admiration for them
• 1:02:44
  and we can learn a lot from them as well. But that for me,
• 1:02:47
  the practical application versus the quicker knowledge is another thing that I wanted to
• 1:02:52
  portray in my MOVID and and if if I can get up on my old
• 1:02:54
  man soapbox. The difference is that our generation is I call us the bridge
• 1:03:01
  generation, because we were at a time when we understood pre internet, pre
• 1:03:07
  technology. I don't know about you, but I remember a time when there
• 1:03:09
  was no remotes. I was. I was the remote for my grandfather because
• 1:03:14
  I get up and change the channel and you would go like that stuff.
• 1:03:17
  I showed my daughters the rotary phone the other day and their minds just exploded.
• 1:03:22
  They just couldn't understand. And I go, yeah, and on on
• 1:03:24
  on the on the seventh number. If you mess it up, you gotta
• 1:03:29
  start over all these But so were we know that part of technology and history
• 1:03:37
  and society. But then we also were around when the Internet was born.
• 1:03:43
  So so we have feet in both both generates as opposed to like my daughters
• 1:03:49
  they don't know anything different, you know, and millennials they don't know a
• 1:03:52
  world without this kind of stuff. So it's a different, different way of
• 1:03:57
  looking at things. The Internet crashes, we would go back of the Thomas
• 1:04:00
  Guide in a hot minute, but they would maybe not know how to deal
• 1:04:02
  with that. And coins for the for the phones. You remember, of
• 1:04:08
  course, I remember the pager when I was a kid, a pager one
• 1:04:11
  church and the pastor said, hey, you better get that. It might
• 1:04:14
  be god page. And you told him my mom, my grandmother must get
• 1:04:16
  a doctor. He must be a doctor. Is now what when? So?
• 1:04:21
  When is they shift coming out? Man? August twelve? It drops
• 1:04:26
  we are I'm super excited. Like all my other director friends that do this
• 1:04:30
  is the worst time for you because you don't know. And I was like
• 1:04:31
  Puba. For me, not knowing is the bliss of not knowing. For
• 1:04:36
  me, it's awesome because I feel like I've did everything I could to make
• 1:04:39
  it as good as I can. I had a great time doing it.
• 1:04:42
  I had a great partner in my cast and my shooting crew and my producing
• 1:04:45
  producers and Netflix. I'm just super stoked to get it out there and let
• 1:04:48
  it. Let the ship sail, and let's see how far it goes.
• 1:04:51
  And the thing I also love about what you're doing, man, is like
• 1:04:55
  you just made your first feature, but you're still You're still hustling it out
• 1:04:58
  there as a second unit and you're still working. You don't stop. Man.
• 1:05:00
  I saw your IMDb Man, You're like, nah, man, I'm
• 1:05:02
  keeping You're not like I'm a director now. I only direct. No,
• 1:05:06
  no, no, no, I'm working as a sunman next week too.
• 1:05:10
  So this is how it goes for me, brother, Just so you know,
• 1:05:12
  like I learned all my lessons in life. I didn't go to college.
• 1:05:15
  I learned my lessons in life in the dojo and in the army.
• 1:05:17
  And my master said something to me when I was eleven years old. He
• 1:05:19
  said, if you want to be a fighter, you have to go fight.
• 1:05:21
  Fighting is a perishable skill. Directing, in my opinion, for me,
• 1:05:26
  is a perishable skill. If you're not out there doing it all the
• 1:05:29
  time, you know, it's you're not reactive or proactive. You become reactive.
• 1:05:32
  You gotta be proactive, you gotta be in front of the wave all
• 1:05:34
  the time. So I'm constant. I'm just just got back from doing a
• 1:05:38
  movie for Warner Brothers called Blue Beetle, did Murder Mystery Too for Netflix,
• 1:05:43
  getting ready to do back in Action for Netflix. Like I'm just I want
• 1:05:46
  to keep myself directing action and hopefully my movie does well and they give they
• 1:05:51
  give this old cowboy another shot at the title. Baby, I'm ready to
• 1:05:54
  bring them bell now. Bro. I'm gonna ask you a few questions.
• 1:05:58
  I ask all of my guests, what advice would you give a filmmaker trying
• 1:06:01
  to break into the business today. Believe in yourself and be as good as
• 1:06:06
  you can be. Be the best version of yourself, because when opportunity comes,
• 1:06:12
  you might not get another shot at it. It comes when it comes,
• 1:06:15
  and you can make your faith in certain ways, but you think,
• 1:06:17
  like, for my example, it took me thirty two years to get a
• 1:06:19
  directing job, you know, so I was when my moment came. I
• 1:06:24
  was absolutely ready. I had a script that I loved and was passionate about.
• 1:06:29
  I knew what that set was gonna smell like before I got there.
• 1:06:31
  And it's just coming from a dyslexic color blind guy that never went to college.
• 1:06:36
  You know, so if you get the opportunity, you have to make
• 1:06:41
  the most of that opportunity and don't take anything for granted, and learn as
• 1:06:44
  much as you can about all the other departments. What did you What did
• 1:06:48
  you learn from your biggest failure? So in making day shift, no,
• 1:07:00
  in general, in general life. Yeah, for a moment that you just
• 1:07:04
  like you just the ball dropped, You're like, man, I learned a
• 1:07:08
  lesson on this one. Yeah, I've taken a bath a few times.
• 1:07:11
  You know. It's tough love, especially when you get out of the army.
• 1:07:14
  The army prepares you for certain things, but it doesn't necessarily prepare you
• 1:07:16
  for what to do when you get out. Always, especially in the late
• 1:07:19
  eighties early nineties. I got out in nineteen ninety, so it was hard
• 1:07:25
  for me too because I didn't know many p I didn't know anyone in LA
• 1:07:28
  except for one or two people, like I slept on the floor of a
• 1:07:30
  karate school for a long time. You know. It was very like there
• 1:07:33
  was no room for error. Like, if I didn't make money, I
• 1:07:36
  was definitely going to be back in the army. So, you know,
• 1:07:40
  but LA strangely was you know a place at the time, and even now
• 1:07:43
  i'm you know, I'm I love this place. It's a trip, you
• 1:07:45
  know. But the weather in the place. I fell in love with it
• 1:07:48
  the first time I saw it, you know, back in nineteen eight eight,
• 1:07:50
  while I was driving the Ford Hoard, you know, like when I
• 1:07:53
  drove through LA So that's probably the biggest lessons came from, you know,
• 1:07:58
  like just learning how to apply the work ethic that I learned in the military
• 1:08:00
  and from martial arts in how to monetize that and make make it make me
• 1:08:05
  able to survive in the real world. And three of your favorite films of
• 1:08:10
  all time whatever comes to mind, brother, but it won't be on your
• 1:08:15
  tombstone. Whatever. Okay, Police Story and Armor of God are tied.
• 1:08:20
  Is action grace. You have to I have to mention enter the Dragon,
• 1:08:25
  Armor of God and Police Story. So the Terminator and Rocky, the first
• 1:08:29
  Rocky and the first Terminator, because the first Terminator for me was the story
• 1:08:32
  was like I remember, I remember sitting in the theater I was in.
• 1:08:36
  I was in downtown Houston, It's probably Stone with my buddies and we were
• 1:08:41
  like, remember the first hang on, Remember the first time when you saw
• 1:08:46
  Star Wars and when they went to hyper Speed remember that first look? Yeah,
• 1:08:50
  flash your mind. Yeah, yeah, that's it. So that was
• 1:08:53
  kind of Terminator for me. And Rocky was such an inspiration as well.
• 1:08:56
  You know, so I would say, it's hard for me to say,
• 1:09:00
  but I would go Police Story, Armor of God, Rocky, Terminator,
• 1:09:04
  and yeah, any one of those three for men, any of those,
• 1:09:10
  and you're like, for for for entertainment, like it doesn't have action extragely
• 1:09:15
  forced. Gump was such a feel good movie, good movie awesome. Now
• 1:09:21
  one last question, man, because you mentioned Terminator, you've gotten a chance
• 1:09:26
  to work with Jim him as well. I go to the gun range with
• 1:09:30
  him as well. Sometimes she's so, so, what is it like walking
• 1:09:34
  on the set of a Jim Cabra movie for the first time, and you're
• 1:09:39
  like, dude, that's terminating, Like like you have to geek out?
• 1:09:43
  Do you geek out every once in a while. I mean, at this
• 1:09:45
  point you've worked with so many but that first time, the first time I
• 1:09:48
  walked on the set. Prep we get prep work on the first Avatar and
• 1:09:50
  while we when I went in at lunch, we'll be right back after a
• 1:09:57
  word. From our sponsor. And now back to the show. They were
• 1:10:04
  using this new that that new technology where it was real times genesis. Garrett
• 1:10:09
  Warren, my friend, was the stunt coordinator. Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg
• 1:10:15
  were there with Jim, So it was like this triple geek out moment where
• 1:10:20
  like, you know, like so Garrett walked in front of him and I
• 1:10:25
  snapped the picture just they were eating and he didn't want to bother him,
• 1:10:28
  but he walked in front of him and stopped and I clicked a picture for
• 1:10:31
  him. You know. You know when Jim James Cameron is coming to work,
• 1:10:36
  you can hear the helicopter landing. That's when he shows up for work.
• 1:10:40
  That's how he comes to work from his place, a helicopter. He's
• 1:10:43
  a g man like for me, that's generation of filmmakers. Yeah, this
• 1:10:47
  stuff had to make the movies in camera, you know, and then went
• 1:10:51
  with the waves to technology. Even Angle is another example that I've done a
• 1:10:56
  bunch with Angley. He's another one that's, you know, practical filmmaker that
• 1:11:00
  went all the way into technolog All of those guys are epic and if we
• 1:11:02
  have seen any farther as filmmakers because we stood on the shoulders of giants like
• 1:11:08
  those men. Absolutely, no question, Jji, Man, it has been
• 1:11:12
  an absolute pleasure and honor talking to you, geeking out with you, brother,
• 1:11:15
  it is I hope so, I hope somebody learns a little bit from
• 1:11:17
  our conversation here. And there's a lot of gems in this one man.
• 1:11:20
  But congratulation on your success on your career, on your new movie, and
• 1:11:25
  I hope, man, I hope they give you the keys again. Brother.
• 1:11:27
  I'm really looking forward to see what else you do. Man. Thank
• 1:11:30
  you, brother, I appreciate you. I want to thank JJ so much
• 1:11:33
  for coming on the show and sharing his journey and dropping his knowledge bombs on
• 1:11:38
  the drive today. Thank you so so much. JJ. I recommend that
• 1:11:42
  everybody log onto Netflix and watch his new film Day Shift Now. If you
• 1:11:47
  want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over
• 1:11:49
  to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv. Ford Slash three twenty five.
• 1:11:56
  Thank you so much for listening to guys, as always, keep on
• 1:11:58
  writing no matter what. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to
• 1:12:01
  the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcasts at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv,