The Big Picture - Making ‘John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum’ With Chad Stahelski, and Watching It With Shea Serrano | The Big Picture

Episode Date: May 17, 2019

Chad Stahelski, the mind behind John Wick, joins the show to discuss some of the unique difficulties of shooting one of the most action-packed franchises in Hollywood, his relationship with Keanu Reeves, and the converging arts of stunt making and directing (2:11). Then, Shea Serrano calls in to wax poetic about the Wick universe and what ‘Parabellum’ means for its future (50:42). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Chad Stahelski, Shea Serrano Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelley, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Before you get to the show, make sure you check out TheRinger.com for our extensive NBA playoff coverage leading up to the NBA Finals. Also look out for our 2019 NBA Draft Guide, which now features 50 of Kevin O'Connor's scouting reports. The Draft Guide has a first-round mock draft, big board rankings from our draft experts like Jonathan Charks and Danny Chow, and much more to come leading up to the draft itself on June 20th. Once again, check out The Ringer's 2019 NBA Draft Guide

and all of our NBA coverage over on TheRinger.com. But if I told you, and again, I pitched this to you in simple sentences, ex-assassin loses wife of natural causes, no effect to bad guys, kills 80 people because a puppy dies. I mean, we got kicked out of every room in Hollywood. No studio wanted to make that movie. I'm Sean Fennessey, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about ass-kicking action stars. We're here today, of course, to talk about the new movie, the only movie, the biggest movie here at The Ringer, John Wick 3.

Also an action-packed episode of this show. First, I'm going to talk to the director and the sort of creative overlord of the John Wick universe, Chad Stahelski. Chad is a longtime stuntman, stunt coordinator, stunt choreographer, and now filmmaker. This is his third film. All three are John Wick films. It is definitely the biggest. It is definitely the craziest. It's an incredibly fun movie.

It's also an intense film. Really fun to talk to Chad about how they did all of the things that they did and how he got to where he is in Hollywood. And then immediately after that, if you've seen the movie, I would recommend listening to the second half of this show, which is a conversation with our pal Shea Serrano. Shea, of course, is hosting a podcast about the John Wick universe called With a Pencil. And he had a lot of deep thoughts about JW3.

It was really fun to chat with Shea. So now without further ado, let's go right to my conversation with director Chad Stahelski. Delighted to be joined by Chad Stahelski, the director and the lord of our favorite franchise here at The Ringer, John Wick. Chad, thanks for being here. Of course, thank you for asking. Chad, I want to know a lot about the franchise, of course, but I'm very interested in you as a filmmaker and how you got started in film.

Obviously, it's well known that you were a stunt coordinator, stunt man over the years. But specifically as a kid, did you know you were going to get involved in the movie industry? No, I'm from Palmer, Massachusetts, which I think probably has more cows than people. It's in Western Massachusetts. You know, I just grew up in a small town. Always loved movies. This is Saturday afternoon, Sunday afternoon. My mom and dad both worked, so Sunday afternoon was family time to watch the old –

the equivalent of Turner Classic movies with the old Bonds and Bridge Over River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, some of the classics. And I just always liked movies, really. But you never think you're going to be in movies. I remember seeing the Burt Reynolds movie Hooper when I was like 10, I think, which is, I guess, an adequate way to date myself. But yeah, then I ended up going to college at USC, the University of Southern California. And in the dorms, I ended up rooming with a guy from San Diego

who was actually a film school student. And when we were discussing it, I kind of joked with him, like, that's a bullshit major. That doesn't exist. I didn't know you could major in movies. And he's like, yeah, film school, man. So I started hanging out with him and his friends and kind of got appreciated for it.

And I monitored a bunch of his classes, and I took a bunch of film appreciation, film history, the typical stuff that a film student goes through. And I really kind of got into it. I thought it was really, really cool. And I'd always liked live performances, whether they be a martial arts performance, a stunt performance, a sport performance, or a theatrical performance. So I kind of got into theater and dance and just kind of not doing them them obviously, but just watching them and kind of appreciating it. And that's always kind of stuck with me. Were you doing martial arts or anything like that as a kid growing up?

Since I was like 10. I saw a Bruce Lee movie and I was like, hey, mom and dad, I'd like to do that. I wasn't very good with balls. So I didn't play basketball or baseball or football. I just wasn't quite the team sport guy. So I did, you know, Dad was into motorcycles. I got my first dirt bike when I was 10. I saw a Bruce Lee movie, so I wanted to do karate. My dad was on the fire department with a guy that did judo, a guy named Lee McDonald, who

was quite good at the sport. He was nationally ranked. You're in the gi, the pajama-like things. Dad figured one's as good as the next, judo, karate, kung fu, it's all the same. at the sport and he was nationally ranked and you know you're in the gi the pajama like things so dad figured one's as good as the next judo karate kung fu it's all the same so he stuck me with that and that's that was kind of my indoctrination into martial arts and i've been pretty much hardcore into it ever since you mentioned hooper which makes me think of burt reynolds and hal needham and the legacy of the stuntman making this transition so i'm interested how do you actually get involved in the industry doing this work after monitoring some film courses and growing an appreciation for this?

Lots of bad career choices, I would assume. Throw in a couple bad life choices. No, honestly, I got out of college. I was studying a lot of different martial arts at a place called the Inosano Academy with this very famous instructor called Dan Inosano. And you got gotta remember, this is before iPhones, before computers,

before the internet was popular, anything like that. So like, you know, it was word of mouth. And if you wanted to go see somebody, you had to travel a distance, get the plane ticket,

hitchhike your way over there. So by the time I got to California, got to this guy's place in Marina del Rey, no one had heard of Muay Thai yet, which is Thai boxing. No one heard of Boxing, or the Filipino arts, Kali Anis, Sigaran, Silat that was made popular in the raid.

All these different martial arts that no one had really heard of that weren't mainstream were all taught at this place by incredibly proficient people from around the world. It was like a college of martial arts, and that's where I ended up seducing or bullshitting my way into when I was still 16. Started studying there, and through that I met a lot of stuntmen, a lot of people that were in the industry that all were going there for the added advantage of what was taught there. And made some connections, and I ended up competing at an amateur level in kickboxing. And I got watched. I did an exhibition bout, and two people in the audience

were stunt coordinators at the time. And again, you got to remember, this is even pre some of the Schwarzenegger stuff where martial art fights didn't exist in big budget film. And it hadn't hit Hollywood yet. No one knew who Jackie Chan was. That was this little secret we all had that we'd see. You'd pay $4 to go see in the Lemley Theater in Santa Monica or something. But martial arts weren't mainstream. So they were in the low-budget action realm even before Steven Seagal was known.

And they needed guys to do it because it wasn't a popular thing. If you're a driver or a cowboy or you're a horse guy, those were popular activities and stunts. But martial arts was very rare, especially – I'm 6'1". So I had a body type that wasn't really into the acrobatic martial art thing. So I just kind of fit a bill. And then they asked me after the bout, Hey, would you like to be in this movie? And it was a Chris Christopherson, Kathy Long, who was a female kickboxer at the time, directed by Albert Pugh and had done a lot of like the early nemesis movie cyborg, helped discover Von Damme way back when. So I started doing a bunch of movies for him,

little million dollar movies. What were you thinking when you were doing this? Were you like, this is the pathway to something bigger or is this the job? No, I was just thinking like, wow, they pay better

than actually getting punched in the face. So like, you know, for like the time when we were competing, you know, after I turned pro, we'd fight

and you'd get maybe, if you got $1,500 for 10 weeks of training and the shit kicked out of you and then you divided it with your trainer and your sparring partners. You were pulling in $250 to $300 a fight.

You were working stunts. I think the SAG weekly at that time was like $1,400 or something like that. And you didn't get punched in the face. I'm like, that's a pretty good deal. But it wasn't just that. It just gave me a chance. There's just something more I wanted out of it. When you do practical martial arts, I love martial arts.

I love the ones that people may think are inefficient or don't work or what street fightable and what, you know, I, it's like arguing over, you know, who would win Godzilla or King Kong, you know, Kung Fu versus UFC versus Jiu Jitsu. And I really just, I didn't really care about that. I just liked the idea of all martial arts. I like to move my body. I like the, the cultural thing. I like the aesthetics of it. And when you compete, you got to hold true to those four or five things that work great. Your training is very, very different. So you focus less and less about overall learning different martial arts. It's focusing on the things that will get you through the next bout and hopefully win and pay your rent.

When I ended up filming, I realized, wow, this thing about choreography is like now I get it because I was a huge Asian cinema fan. Like, wow, I can use everything I know. I can jump from judo to kickboxing to Kung Fu to karate. I can use all these different things. They can be swords, they can be guns. And the creative experience of choreographing was very enticing to me. It was very fun. And it gave me an outlet to do all the things that normally as a competitor, I wouldn't have pursued. And that was the main appeal. When did that develop your ability to start choreographing fights as opposed to just participating in somebody else's plan?

You know, when you, anybody that's choreographed anything from dance to martial arts, to car sequences, to overall camera orchestry, you always start, the choreography is always the same kind of process. It starts with imitation.

You know, you copy a movie that you saw, you copy a Jackie Chan fight, you copy a Bruce Lee fight, you know, you copy a dance routine that you've seen. You copy what you know. And then you get into self-expressionism of like, I'm going to do it my way. I'm going to create my own style. I'm going to do this.

Then it becomes a blend of the two. Then you kind of transcend all that. And you start dealing with story and character and creating both of those through motion. And then for film, we have a third dimension, which is camera. You know, I've always enjoyed training people and working, you know, being hands-on and, and, uh, doing perspective changes from performer to director, from performer to director. And I think that not only is fun, but it's just something I felt natural doing. So in answer to your question, I, you know, as a stunt performer, performer, I saw these guys doing motorcycles, cars. It just seemed like there was more out there than just – again, I love kicking people in the head.

It's awesome. It's just I want to do more stuff. And film, I don't know, there's something magical. It's like everything. Everybody falls in love with film. Everybody wants to be a little part of it and create something. But it was more about the behind the scenes that I really fell in love with film. Everybody wants to be a little part of it and create something. But it was more about behind the scenes that I really fell in love with. I saw what the choreographers

or the stunt team was doing when I did my first couple of jobs. I was like, I think that's what I want to do. I'm going to be that guy. I'd be happy to be that guy. That'd be great. And then you start doing it and you realize, you start watching some of these directors and some of the editors and some of the choices made that we could do a great job choreographing. We could train

the cast and they'd do a great job. And then it wouldn't be shot right or it wouldn't be edited right or they'd just try to get it through time because they weren't really getting it. So then I said, well, why don't I just start editing? So at the time, me and my Mac 2 CI with like half a gig of RAM at the time with Final Cut Pro, the program for editing first version, so you could do like a whole 10 seconds of video. You could hold on your hard drive.

And I started playing around with editing. What would you be editing? Would you be editing raw footage from a shoot? My great-grandmother at the time for Christmas present gave me an old video camera. It was literally the size of a suitcase, I think, back in the day that actually held a full VHS cassette. So we'd go shoot things, and we'd literally do the VCR to VCR thing.

Then we'd learn to input it into the computer and play. And you know, fucking horrible. Sucked. Fucking horrible. And you start learning. Then I took a bunch of still photography classes. Just stuff you start. I've always liked art. I love museums. Like honestly, you look at a John Wick film, if it's in that movie

it's something I love. That's why you see so much Caravaggio art. You hear classical music. You hear wacky things. You see horses, cars, things like you'll see lights and architectural set pieces that shouldn't exist. You'll see mythological references to Greek mythology and to Asian opera or Chinese opera. And then you'll see the color palettes and you'll see all these wacky references to Latin or different languages of the subtitles. So those are things I just grew up with and loved. And they all kind of, I think I love some pretty nerdy stuff. And you always want to kind of bring that out a little bit.

This convergence is what makes the franchise and the film so good. I mean, that's definitely what I want to talk to you about. I think so. And if you knew the rest of the people involved, like the little creative circle that we have there, especially Mr. reeves uh i think he's equally as as odd with mainstream uh aesthetics as i am so you know the process for us is we sit down and just riff on all the shit we love and we tack it up on a big wall and then we start

writing a story around it before we go too far into john wick i'm just curious was it difficult for you to then make that transition from stuntman to choreographer up the chain? Creatively, no. But just sort of tactically inside the business, it's hard? Yeah, I would say logistically. I mean, it's like any profession. Okay, we're sitting here in this room. If you want to own your radio station, I'm sure you could do it.

Do you want to take that responsibility? Do you want to have that kind of bullshit on your shoulders every single day you know you go for a performer that you're told to do something to you know a major or a corporal you know i'm sorry a major or a colonel that you know you're only taking responsibility but you're still answering to somebody or you just want to go fuck and i want to run the whole show when you're a choreographer do you have to or coordinator do you have to have a team working under you yeah like uh you know you're like uh bob fossey um great choreographer dancer director um you know choreography is you know 50 conception from choreographer and the other 50 is finding people more talented and more crazy than you are to pull it off so yeah i mean i i

have some cool ideas and funky ideas but I can't do them like I'm not the guy I gotta go find a team to pull them off and when we say that it's not like just a theatrical thing that you need dance I need my stunt team I gotta train my cast so I physically have to get out there and train the cast you know it's not like

I have this chorus line of expert Broadway dancers I gotta go get cast that may or may not be my choice that I have to train to get to the level that I can hang with my stunt team. What do you do when you're working on a film and you realize someone's not up to the task, like particularly an actor?

That's not an option. Like it may not be up. You know, I use the Star Trek reference. It's like Harabashi Beru, that kind of thing. If you can't answer a question change the question not the answer so if the cast member isn't up to par with something else you got to change something else so if you're choreographing this huge sword routine you can't swing a sword you better come up with some funny gag you know we always use the indiana jones thing is saying

you know if you run into problems that's not going to change pull the gun pull the gun do the thing it changed choreography you know come up with aick. Being a nice long fight isn't always the answer. We use long fights to get to the gag. You know, if you watch John Wick 3 or John Wick 2, you see, well, sometimes we'll go more than you think we should just to get to the line at the end that makes it feel like, okay, that's why they did it. It wasn't just to show off martial arts. Sometimes it'd be one move. Was there one significant film that you worked on that kind of flipped the switch for you, realizing that you could either be a stunt coordinator

or choreographer that kind of took you up to the next level? Oh yeah, First Matrix. Working with Wachowskis and Yungo Ping, of course. Arguably one of the greatest martial art choreographers of all time. Plus, you know, I mean, that's Keanu and I and Lawrence Fishburne and my partner Dave Leach. That's our unifying factor. We've all been through the Wachowski

school of filmmaking, which is difficult and exhilarating and titillating and stressful. I've never worked with a film, a group of filmmakers that bring out who you are quicker. And I'm very thankful for that. People in the general public before that film came out, I think were a little dubious or confused about it. When you guys were making it, did you know what you had your hands on? I didn't come in at the beginning. Keanu, when he signed up for it, had some neck issues and had to go through a neck surgery. So they had to postpone some of the action. And Keanu had already been training quite a

bit for the movie had already started filming and they needed or it became clear that for some of the the stunt work and we'll go over what stunts are and what action is um the way it worked out they needed a stunt double that was going to take a lot of impacts it could overlap some of the the more um arduous of the the martial arts stuff. So I did an audition. I actually turned the job down twice because it didn't fit with my schedule, the work schedule I had. Anyways, long story short, I ended up taking the job a few months later. I got the script.

Literally, it was not an easy read. As you can imagine, trying to describe what we all now take for granted is the magic of the Matrix. But it was a thick read, very cerebral. And it talked about the fights. And it's like, yeah, it sounds cool, but it's a sci-fi philosophical piece. Within two weeks of landing in Sydney, Australia and starting the training, I remember calling one of my best friends back at the time and going,

yeah, this is going to be different. Cut to a year later when we saw the premiere in Westwood, California. We were like, yeah, holy shit, it was pretty good. It was a trip. It was a trip, but no one expected, even when we were working on it, we all knew it was going to be special just because of what they were doing to do, what was asked of us, and obviously being on set and seeing it come together. But no one, I don't think any of the crew, including myself, could have guessed what the final product was going to be did being associated with it specifically impact your career in a big way yeah uh impacts me as a filmmaker for certain i could talk volumes on the wachowskis and and the level of genius they genius commitment

creativity the the depth that they go into every single department with, the amount of detail, and I mean this in the best of ways, just the psychology behind them as leaders and as directors to pull what they need to do out of the crew and to communicate their creativity to get it out of the crew. They're amazing people. When did you realize that you wanted to do what they specifically were doing? Um, honestly,

uh, it's always in the back of your head, but it's like, you just, I kind of fucked myself a little bit. I worked, I worked a lot in the beginning of my career with some great filmmakers, some really great filmmakers.

And so when you, you know, if I had worked with really shitty filmmakers, like, Oh fuck, I can do that. You know, but when you work with some of the best at the time, I mean, some, I mean, these

aren't just regular shows. I mean, you know, I worked on the Matrixes, you know, I worked on, you know, The Crow with Alex Proas and Brandon Lee. I worked on 300 with Zack Snyder. I mean, just those three right now are all, you know, in the industry, you can say you like them, but they're game changing in what they tried to do at the time. You know, as far as what our modern, you know, with the Marvel Universe and superheroes now in action now. This is before Bournes.

This is before Underworld. This is before Marvel. This is before all that stuff. So these were the ones that kind of shaped our industry. So, yeah, I mean, it changed what was expected. And it also changed your mindset of what you can do. So you get there and you're like, i don't know if i'm that good you know cut to a few years later where you're put in the spot of like you know i feel the need to do this and uh both my partner dave leach and i were asked to

do other things slightly much bigger scale than the first john wick and we're like yeah we just felt like look uh all that money sounds really, really good to do a $40 or $50 million action movie. We'd have more money. But it's just the stories, the scripts weren't there, and no one was going to give us a gun for shooting people in the head and doing all this stuff and have an emotional hook. That didn't exist. If it's about bashing people's heads in or revenge stories or good cops, bad cops, or Navy SEALs, we got those scripts. That's awesome. But if I told you, and again, I pitched this to you in simple sentences, ex-assassin loses wife of natural causes, no effect to bad guys,

kills 80 people because a puppy dies. I mean, we got kicked out of every room in Hollywood. No studio wanted to make that movie. So we did it independently with Thunder Road. We chose that one because because one, Balzonic and Thunder Road and Keanu the two people in charge of the project gave us a shot to do something that

was all fast cutting and shaky cam from the Bournes at that point and we said we don't want to cut, we don't want to do anything we're going to do it like a live performance, we're going to do it like theater and we're going to kill a lot of people because we're going to do this thing called gun fu, we're going to do this really slow martial art Aikido, Judo, we're not going to punch and kick and you know

have somebody go sure I mean that's not normal and that's kind of how it came about we tried to do something a little different and you know we figured if we do something really small if we really screw the pooch no one's going to see it so we're protecting ourselves you know it's not like jumping off and doing a

100 million dollar movie on your first go, which a lot of people try. From my mind, they all fail. Was there a heavy stigma for you and Leach in that time because you were stuntmen and stunt coordinators? You can remember now, okay, John Wick, you get it, but at the time, no one.

Keanu had a year prior had finished 47 Ronin, which didn't quite have the appeal they were hoping for in the box office. And I'm not exactly sure where in his timeline it is, but he had a few other films that weren't mainstream. So we're kind of under the radar. Like no one was really looking at Keanu. No one was really looking at David. I mean, we're just two goofy stunt guys.

We had a really good name with second unit action directing for the studios. Like, yeah, that was great. These are the guys. I'll get these guys for the fight stuff. Get these guys for the car chase. Get these to fix the film. Like, yeah, we had a very, very good career. We took a massive pay cut to do John Wick.

Massive. As I'm sure Keanu did. We all did. Just because for whatever reason, we liked the script. We liked the world that we were trying to create. And we just said, you know, fuck it. We're going to give it a go. And imagine our surprise when people actually liked it.'re going to give it a go and imagine our surprise

when people actually liked it like i don't we wrapped dave and i looked at each other okay we find a second unit job we're never going to direct again we literally said that and both went out and found jobs second unit jobs again we're like we're directing is done it was a nice try good luck thanks for everything and uh and now here you aren't talking to me about the third one yeah go figure and i just came from something with Dave. He's finishing up Hobbs and Shaw, did Deadpool 2 and Atomic Blonde. You guys have done well for yourselves. So you mentioned reading The Matrix for the first time.

I'm very curious about the first time you read the John Wick script and kind of what goes into essentially an action movie script. How much detail for the things that you have to execute exists on the page versus how much of it is invention that comes have to execute exists on the page versus how much of it is invention that comes from filmmakers, especially filmmakers with your background. It differs script to script, writer to writer. You know, writers write, you know, we choreograph. So to expect a writer to capture everything in our mind, that's not really expected. You know, I think that's an issue a lot of times with certain bigger movies is like the writer

is coming in for an exceptional amount of money so whatever he writes is what you're supposed to do it's the bible um but how can you expect any one person to get everything right especially when you know experts are from different fields the first john wick i think he killed the first script i read i think he killed four people and it just shot him in the head and that was done and it was very different you know like 20x there i think in the first yeah and then when you choreograph you realize like look the way we choreograph is once you know you don't wing somebody once you shoot in the head they can't get back up it's not like a fist fight you know you can't so we gotta keep recycling stunt guys so the budget jumps huge because you know you need 20 stunt guys instead of two um but honestly uh

the way myself uh dave uh two or three other of our friends that are from the action world, we encourage the scenes a little backwards. But we encourage the writers to write the fight scenes. We'll joke and go, yeah, no, they'll come in now and go, oh, you guys are the action guys. No, because you never know. Throw your ideas out. Let me hear you. There might be one or two. We had Derek Kolstad write it because he was always thinking, well, you got,

no Derek, right. And like, honestly, I would say about every, every fight sequence, there's something in there as a character beat. There's something to strip that if not left in the film inspired us to do

something tangent of that. So, you know, it's when you get a lot of brainpower work and ultimately it's our choice. So yeah, we can just say, right, whatever you want,

but you know, eh, we're probably gonna have to strike most of it. You know, we'll write our own shit. Um, for most just say, write whatever you want, but you know, eh, we're probably going to have to strike most of it. You know, we'll write our own shit. Um, for most of these, I, I, I scout locations. I scout cities. I spend most of my days traveling, writing, uh, looking at pictures, uh, taking pictures, doing all this stuff and get inspired throughout that. And that's what I'll insert into the script.

And we're a little backwards now on one, it was a script too. I went to New York and Rome and wrote all the sequences first and then had our writers stick it all together in some kind of coherent plot. Three was ten times that. Keanu and I got in a room, wrote all these great ideas down. I wrote a story with it and then fed it back and forth to the writers as they were trying to write some coherent version of a script while at the same time still rewriting the sequences and going. It's like the kitchen sink. We threw in everything. Just see what

kind of... Again, I'm not big on plot. I love story, but I'm not worried about three acts or plot. I just... Day in the life of somebody interesting is always fun to me. Just like when you meet somebody at a bar. I don't really want to know their whole

10-year-old thing. I don't need it all to end somewhere. I just want to talk to this guy and have an interesting story. I think that's what we apply to John Wick or what Kurosawa did a lot of the times with Yo Himbo or Seven Samurai or what Sergio Leone ended up doing with the Man With No Name series. Like, it's just a day in the life of somebody really funky, and you're catching a piece of that. It's not hard to see the comparison between those movies and John Wick. It should be pretty fucking rock on. Yeah, it's pretty clear. Tell me specifically, though, about when you're choreographing, do you need to know how to draw? Do you need to know how to write? How do you make

that? Cause people who don't work in this industry don't understand specifically how you make some, how you get that on screen. That's a good question. Uh, pain and suffering. Um, you know, it's, it's always your biggest fear. I think my, my thoughts and ideas definitely exceed my capabilities, at least as an individual. What I'm saying is I'm, I'm, I'm probably not good enough to pull off half the ideas I have in my head. So I need help. And let's see, at 25, I was probably, if not the, probably in the top three most arrogant humans on the planet. Maybe top two. So you think you try to get through, but as you learn, you don't detest anyone. You try to cooperate. You try to get like, look, I'm not a painter. I can't go brush to canvas.

I'm not a singer. I can't just sing a song. I have anywhere between four dozen to 400 people between me and my finished product. If I can't communicate my ideas, if I can't get what I need out of someone, I'm fucked. Like if I see red, but I can't tell you how to mix blue and green or whatever, I'm fucked. So like you learn very quickly that if you can't communicate your vision or your ideas, you're not going to get it. Yes, I'm lucky because I do action movies and I was an action guy and I'm fairly physical and I still keep up with that and I have a great understanding of martial arts and choreography.

And because of all my second year stuff, I have great appreciation just one of those lucky few that was either smart enough, dumb enough, or lucky enough to architect a life that utilizes all the useless stuff that I grew up learning and knowing. And it kind of falls together in this. Honestly, no one's more shocked about the whole thing than I am. I mean, what are the chances that all the weird shit you were literally beaten up as a kid for comes into play now? And you're like, oh, this is like, it's like, I mean, nerdy. I can love anime. I can love cartoons as an adult. I can love Kung Fu movies.

I can do it all. I can tell everyone, look, I like to make pretty pictures. I love beauty. I love pretty. I love Renaissance painting. And I love ballet. And I can put that all together in a movie. Are you shitting me?

And you're paying me? I'm a pretty lucky guy. Is that how so many of the kind of visual set pieces happen in the movie? You said you and Keanu get in the room and you just say, in this movie. What do you love? I want there to be this. I love ballet. Okay.

John Wick came from a ballet school. Literally wrote it like that. I'm walking in Central Park, just walking around the city with my production designer, Kevin Cavanaugh. It's right before Christmas, about two years ago now. It was freezing cold. I'm like, I wonder where they put the horses and the carriages. We asked the carriage guy. He's like, there's a stable right over there. There's a brown face

brownstone. That's a fucking stable. I walk inside and it was literally four stories of stables right off Fifth Avenue. I'm like, no fucking way. John Wick's running in here. He's going to shoot some people here. I'm going to kill some people with a horse and as a stunt guy i got fucking kicked as a horse not watching my ass in a in a stable i got fucking kicked once not not anybody like guys in the movie but i got hooked pretty good and i was like ah let's go to the movie and it

just goes in i have a notebook like this thick of all these ideas so we just go through the notebook every movie and i was like every movie idea i go through my notebooks and i'm like okay this is then you come with new shit even if I don't use what's in there. Yeah, it's a really back-asswards thing. But to Lionsgate credit, the amount they let us just do our own thing is unprecedented in this business. Now, I don't know if that's with understanding or detestment or fear. I don't know why they let me do it, but they're very nice to let me do it. They have a bit of faith

in the franchise, which is, again, awesome. More money, more budget, more scale. Is that good or is that a bad pressure? Both. I don't mind, you know, once people try to blow you up and jump out of hell, pressure takes on a different meaning.

I've been fortunate enough, people don't realize, most of the stunt work is mental. It's how much can you endure how much shit can you take i'd say only 10 of your career are big stunts where you got to have your shit together the rest is just being cold being wet being hung in a harness you know being uncomfortable and how much you know can you maintain a good attitude and not bring everybody down while still taking it so you learn to endure a lot and after all that like i've had my i was fortunate i i worked very well as a i mean i worked at and some very good shows on very big stunts i got to perform from big car stuff to big falls to big explosions like i got to do it all as a stunt performer um

which i feel thankful for that i still can walk uh but you know tough and jump mentally and you go a certain place i was a professional athlete for while, so that kind of kicked my brain in. So when you get to points of people just yelling at you over money and time, you kind of let that slide off your back. Like at the end of the day, they'll fire me. But I'm not going to break my back. I'm going to be able to walk the next day. I'm not going to have third-degree burns on me.

So you kind of click into, you know, it's all gravy from here. Like I just, you know, try not to be a dick. I try not to fuck up. So it takes some of the pressure off with that mentality. But then you put other restraints, I mean, other responsibilities. Like, look, Keanu Reeves is a really good friend of mine. He's trusting me to do something. I can't fuck this up.

And that, to me, is a greater pressure than any of the financial stuff. And then I'm not going to lie to you. You get hooked on it. We were completely surprised. If you're a director for hire, you're doing someone else's script, yeah, of course, you have personal investment in it. But the John Wicks for Canada, Dave and I, that's us. Especially number three for me, that's me.

If you don't like what's in that, just about 99% of the edits are mine. 99% of the choices are mine. If you don't like what somebody's wearing, I'm not going to tell you the studio made me do it. I did it. I should note that you're wearing all black right now. Yeah.

So there you go. It's notable. I'm not wearing a turtleneck. Don't get a turtleneck on. No, but it's like every decision there is mine. And I take responsibility for that. That's the hardest thing. Cause if, you know, the reviews are coming in

and we get some good ones and we get some shitty ones and I don't mind a bad review. Just be intelligent about it. But if you just go, this sucks. I'm like, hey, man, that dude's getting paid for that. That's the best he's got is this sucks. But, you know, it's more like if they go, well, it just wasn't the story. It didn't move forward.

We don't feel love for the character. You know, all in all, it's not that thrilling. Then you go, okay, I get it. And that's a heavy responsibility. That means I kind of failed. If you go, this is a really good ride. This is it. You know, it was a little too much action for me like i get it we we purposely went over the top

on this one to feel the fatigue of wick like i wanted to go over the top it was a constant choice you know i get a lot of shit for that going well there's just too much okay but what's too much i take 10 minutes out is it still too much is it two minutes too much is it and then the hardcore fans like why'd you cut out all the action you know so you just try to do what you think is best and this movie to me is what you think is best. And this movie to me is what I think is what I wanted to see out of a number three. Just like number one was what we wanted to see out of the number one. You know, we can't cry.

We didn't have enough money. We didn't have enough time. There are choices. And that's the most important responsibility I think any filmmaker can take. I feel like one of the anxieties that I hear from filmmakers who are working on bigger and bigger projects is not so much how difficult it is to actually do the work. It's the reception of the work. And there's like a, you know, you've got a brighter spotlight on you now because this movie is going to be bigger than the last one. I guess that's on the film. And I've talked to all my friends, the directors and stuff. And it was funny. We were just talking about it on the way over here, again, with two other friends that are directors, it's how you take critique.

One of my closest friends doesn't read a single one. Won't read them. Doesn't care, doesn't want them. Pretty much, fuck off, don't want to read them. Another friend like me that we read everything. And it's not, two different reasons. I read them just, I want to know. I want to feel the pulse.

I want to see what's hitting. It makes me think a little bit. Do I doubt myself? No, fuck off. I do it. You want to rag on me? Go do it yourself first. I have that kind of mentality, like step in the ring and then you can talk about it until then. It's just an opinion. But then I have the other side of me, the more creative, more nice guy side, which is like, yeah, I want to know what you think. Tell me what you

think. It's fine. You know, if you just, and you can tell, like, you can read the reviews and it's not just about the reviews. You can tell who people are a little bit and you can say okay one's just writing something shitty to get a good review you know to get noticed some are like actually they love the movie but they're actually giving you what their their fanboy thing is and i dig that and my other friend uh they read every review because you know they kind of question their choices you know i question his choice like okay did did i do this well maybe i should have done that and, why didn't do me to, it almost has an argument with him. And I think that, and I just got done saying this,

I think that's a little self destructive. Like I, you got to own up. I mean, it's our choices at the end of the day. If you don't like the movie they're releasing, you got to stand up and be a dick. You got to go,

it's fucking anyway. Like it's your choice. If you let someone force you into a decision, you're an adult. I mean, that's your thing. You sort of answered a question I had, but it makes the point that I think a lot of time

when a filmmaker or writer or whatever has intentionality behind what they're doing, it makes a lot more sense and it's easier to stand behind it. And you said there's so much action in this movie. One, it's not, I mean, it's John Wick 3. Like if there's not a lot of action, I honestly don't know what you were doing.

Somebody's got to have the most action, so why not us? Why not you? But you said you did it for a reason. You know, you thought showing the fatigue, the sort of intensity that Wick is going through over this long journey is purposeful. Do you, is that something that you and Keanu were talking about when you're mapping out the story too? Yeah. Cause I mean, God, when you have like 30 pages of action, you gotta, you know, it's going to come up.

It's going to come in the end. It's like, you know, studio look at it like, and that'll be the note, you know, when they do all these tests. I mean, I don't know if the audience knows, but you do a shitload of test readings. The audience, I mean, the studios want you to test in different demographics, in different areas, in different cities.

And the studio, it's a business, you know, they're not the creatives. Like we are, we go with our gut instincts. They have to go with numbers, psychoanalytics.

And what, you know, women under 25 say, men over 25 say, what do, you know, different, you know,

and this city say different, you know, urban urban environments say, like, they go through all this and then that's their answer. That's their plausible deniability is, our guys, well, this movie tested well. I don't know why it didn't do well. You know, we got to go with, well, I mean, I'm just making a fun movie. I don't know. I don't know. You know, I don't know what women under 25 say.

You know, I'm making a fun action movie. You got to have action. They go, everybody thinks it's too much action. I'm like, yeah, but those people don't like action movies anyway. So I made this for action movie you gotta have action they go everybody thinks it's too much action i'm like yeah but those people don't like action movies anyway so i made this for action movie people you know like if you're going to see a john wick movie uh hopefully it's got some other wacky stuff in there but like you know it's it's for the people that want to see fun you know we're not taking ourselves seriously but interesting things they haven't seen before kind of action and that's that's what i grew up with that's what want to see. So we kind of did it like that.

But yeah, I don't know. I think from critics to choice, it's how you view really your creative process. Like I stand by what I did. I stand by every choice. I know full well, and I think this is the maturity level involved in any creative endeavor. I don't hate my audience. I don't hate my audience i don't hate my critics i don't i don't argue with them i i can't dispute you know what they think or feel if i get a bad review it's like fair enough you didn't like it i get it um there's a lot of movies

that people like that i i don't find favor with um i I have a professional opinion of how it was made. I made it like a superhero movie because of, it didn't click with me, but I can also tell it was a very well-made movie. I think I can have that separation. But I'm sure those filmmakers, they made the movie they wanted to make. It's funny because I feel like your franchise is very beloved.

I don't feel like you're under fire in a lot of ways. And a lot of action movies are not respected and I feel like yours really are. And I think that's, and again, it's not, I never really feel under fire. I'm grateful for the way people feel about it and that's good. I mean, it's a labor of love.

Hopefully people get that out of it and hopefully it connects at a different label that I'm not just trying to make or Keanu and I and Thunder Road and Lionsgate, we're not trying to make a movie that's just going to sell. We're trying to make a movie that you guys or the audience in general clicks with and they're like, oh, that was cool. That was neat. Like somebody out there gives a shit. Look, somebody, you know, we're going to get $15 too and they give a shit.

They're going to make something pretty. They're not going to make something monotonous. I couldn't, it's like John Wick 1, then John Wick 1 part 2, John Wick 1 part 3. Like I'm not making the same movie over and over and trying to give something else. But yeah, you're always going to. And I get it. The curse of the sequel. Too big, too little, too much, too similar, too plain, too much world building, not enough world building, not enough heart, too much heart, too little story, too much story. We can doll you out there. I get that.

I totally get it. I have watched as many sequels as you guys have watched. I totally get it. I have watched as many sequels as you guys have watched. I totally get it. So it's the most stressful part about being the director or the guy behind it. The guy in my chair is, okay, well, somebody's got to tell me. You can phone it in. You can have some studio head tell you what's too much. You can have test audiences tell you what's too much, or you stand up, be the guy or be the real director and say, this is what I think and stand by it. And that's just what you have to do.

Now, do you know for sure? No, I'm not omniscient. It's my gut instinct that this is good. And it may be surprising to some of you to know that I cut a shitload of action out of John Wick number three. There's sequences in there that I cut because I think they were standalone great. But in the movie, even I felt a little bit, I'm bored. What do I do now? Okay, let's go. So you got to go off your gut, you know, and that's what I did. I walked out feeling like I had seen two or three of the best action set pieces that I'd ever seen before. What is, what was the hardest one to do?

Um, all tricky in certain ways. Knife, uh, the knife in the antique store is rhythm and knowing that it was going to be a rhythmic thing. Cause it's in my head. It worked that way. Uh, it comes from the idea. Uh, I have two younger brothers. We had a, used to have snowball fights like you wouldn't believe. And it was pretty much look like that sequence in the movie, just three people throwing recklessly as fast and as many snowballs as you could each other. And some hit and some missed. That's where that idea came from.

A lot of nut shots, I'm sure. Yeah. boys are you kidding uh and there are a lot of rocks in that snowball yeah uh you know that was tricky mentally but i'm fairly logistically easy uh you know i have two animal sequences in the movie that are probably the toughest but just because i don't know if you know this but animals don't know it's a movie. They just show up. I have no idea how you did the dog sequence. Like literally no idea. Almost a year with me and a trainer named Andrew Simpson, who does all the wolves on Game of Thrones. Genius guy.

Again, for those of you that don't know, dogs don't know it's a movie. When you see an animal attack a human being, that's not a movie dog. That's not a movie attack. It's an animal trying to injure a human being. That's the way they do it. That didn't seem to click with me so well. I'm a huge dog guy. I have two dogs at home and I was playing my puppies early, early in development. And I was like, I had this idea, but like, you know, I get this little red ball, I play with them. They go, I say, okay, down. And they put the, I was like, I put the ball into my shirt and they started attacking a ball.

I said, stop. And they stopped. So I contacted all these trainers and they're like, well, this is the way we do it. Okay, I finally got a hold of Andrew through a reference. He's like, look, can we not train the dogs just to play, play attack? And he's like, well, you can, it's just you can't use the animal or you can't sell the animal afterwards to attack schools because you've taught them to attack. You can't just give that to a family after that.

They think hard play is acceptable. Most people spend time training a domestic animal to know that rough play like that or biting crotches is a bad thing. We came up with a plan and a way to do it. We found five other trainers that were down to own the animals, to train them, to keep them up, and just a whole different aspect of animal training when you get into it. That was going to be safe for the stuntmen and safe for the animals, obviously. You can't just have it, you know, dogs don't know half speed.

A rehearsal to an animal is the same thing as a take, and you don't want to injure their teeth or jaw. They have to bite, and the stuntmen are going hard, and they're flying all over the place. We decided that knowing what Andrew knew and knowing what I knew about the stunts and the choreography and what I wanted to do, that it was going to be, you know, is this going to work?

So we both went our separate ways. Andrew went on a big tour of the United States and found us five Belgian Malinois that had the physical attributes and the mental capacities that he felt like these dogs are incredibly intelligent, super strong, super athletic, and they get it. they have the temperament to do it and after three months of testing the animals exceeded all our expectations and then we had to train all the stuntmen

so the animals had to be acclimated to the people so we got Halle Berry literally five months early that spent every day with the dogs, a team of 12 stuntmen that are repetitively used in the Riyadh sequence that you see in the movie and they just pretty much see in the movie. And they just pretty much live with the dogs. They do their stone training and physical

training at the end of the day and then two hours a night every night of the week with dogs. So this isn't just extras. I mean, it's literally Keanu Reeves and Halle Berry, huge movie stars, making a huge physical and time investment to do something like this. Just from your perspective, what is in it for

them? Is it the challenge, the difficulty of doing this? You know, I'll speak on a guess. You'd have to ask them for sure. You know, the only difference between us and really any other movie is that attitude from them. You have great choreographers out there. You have great stunt directors out there. I know a shitload of them.

They're great. There's no reason that choreographers out there you have great stunt directors out there I know a shitload of them, they're great there's no reason that every movie out there shouldn't be as good if not better than Wick and choreography it really comes down to the most common of denominators which is cast, the people that have to do it like we said, all the great ideas in the world that's 50% of it the other, getting across the finish line

is who performs it so if you don't get the right stunt team, you don't get the right stunt choreographer you don't get the right guy to shoot it, you don't get the right guy to cut it, you don't get the right performers, all the great ideas fall in deaf ears. I spend three times as much in prep as everybody else. I take that money from the back end, but

I don't believe in six weeks of rehearsals. I believe in six months of rehearsals. People look at me like I'm a fucking psycho. Most people don't realize that only the stunt people in the cast do the stunt rehearsals, and it's usually in a gym, not with the right sets, not with the right wardrobe. I rehearse as if they're dress rehearsals four or five months out. And I just don't fake trying to be good.

I have my cast just good. They're trained like stunt people. I know everybody says they do their own action. I'm going to call bullshit. I know everybody says it's the hardest thing they've ever done. I'm going to call bullshit again. I know everybody says they train super hard. I'm going to call bullshit. I know everybody says it's the hardest thing they've ever done. I'm going to call bullshit again. I know everybody says they train super hard. I'm going to call bullshit again.

There's hard and then there's fucking hard. And then we train for the job. We train to work at performance levels. If you ever want to know how we train, go sit backstage or go to a New York City ballet dress rehearsal and watch what professional dancers do. They do an hour and a half performance without forgetting a move. Think about it. That's months of training.

We do the same exact methods only with martial arts, almost to a T what, what the professional dance companies do. That's because it's all memory. It's all physical, um, muscle memory and how we perform with on and off and how we rotate camera. There is very,

very similar to live performances. Um, so what do they get out of it um one as an individual i'm sure it's i've accomplished something i ever thought i can do i'm sure that's in there i've accomplished something that other people just don't want to do and you know in the acting field i know again everybody says they want to do it look i'm sure everybody wants to be the matrix i'm sure everybody wants to be john wick i'm sure everybody wants to be hall matrix guy. I'm sure everybody wants to be John Wick. I'm sure everybody wants to be Halle Berry flipping and flying. I get it. So would I. And I'm sure the first week of training is very fun for everybody. And I'm sure the second week is a little less fun. And I'm sure five months later of, you know, a fucking hardcore diet, being constantly sore, beat up and mentally exhausted. And so try to live a life with your

family. After eight hours of driving over Los Angeles to three different gyms and having to have that person out and still learning your lines, and the opportunity cost of not taking two other jobs to make you quick, a million here, a million there. Like, yeah, it fucking sucks. You know, Keanu, it fucking sucks for him. I mean, sure, it's fun, but for Hallie, it fucking sucks. But at the end of it, if you see it, and hopefully it all comes together and you take a big gamble,

you roll the dice. They bet on me. I bet on them. You come out of it and you see the work and you're like, eh, pretty fucking proud of that. And then you get the reviews and the kudos we're getting right now. Like,

yeah, I, you know, if, if you didn't want to roll the dice, if you didn't want to try and climb the mountain, you wouldn't be in this business. You know,

is that what it is between you and keanu is ultimately the final product is the most important thing and then it is worth it you know uh keanu's uh he's a great guy i mean for him he i i again i'll reach on this one but uh he loves cinema he loves movies he loves experience he loves making him he loves watching him was being in him uh he loves developing him i feel i'm very much the same um just from what i have experienced with hallie and lawrence fishburne ian mcshane they fucking love movies um i think we'd all be fairly clueless or working at a gas station if we weren't in film and i think the love of it is that so i i don't think it's, it's very nice to say, like, look, it's about to finish product,

but I think honestly for myself and Keanu, I guess it's the journey. I mean, we love the journey. We love the challenge. It's like, it's a very individual thing. But yeah, I mean, when you're sitting in that theater, like we've had a couple of premieres and screenings when the audience is laughing and cheering and going,

wow, it's a fucking drug. Like, yeah, you're very proud of yourself. Honestly, it kind of gets you choked up because you look across the theater and you see your crew, you see your proud of yourself you're honestly it kind of gets you choked up because you look across the theater and you see your crew you see your cast and you're like holy fuck like they all came to bat for me and it's like you feel that weight of like oh fuck i want to fuck this up because like they gave you everything and um i mean the relief i have is when people laugh or go wow at the movie or we get a good review it's like fuck i you know i let my friends out and that's the biggest thing For Keanu, he feels very much the same about me and the rest of the cast.

He's like, fuck, I hope I don't let you guys down. That's why he stands back up. I guess for anybody in that position, the strongest, most satisfying thing is to choose to get up that one more time. That's a choice. You can stay down. You can phone it in. You can do one less take.

But I think for us, it's, you know, choosing to stand up one more time, choosing to take that one more risk to make something good, to make something great. And, you know, that ride you go through with those people, they'll be the closest people you have in your life, you know, for your whole professional career, which is pretty cool.

You've been inside the WIC world for six years? Seven years? A little over five. Five years. Will you keep going? How do you figure out what to do next? Look, I love working with Keanu. I love the people I work with.

I love the studio folk. I love my producers. I love my crew. I love my cast. I love Keanu, obviously. And I love the character. I like WIC. I'm going to stay involved for as long as they'll have me.

Whether it's directing, producing, writing, developing, choreographing. I'll fucking carry John Wick's lunchbox on me. It's fun. I would like to try other things for sure. It's not really of a creative need other than, look, I think to be fair to the character and the franchise, if we bump into somebody who's got better ideas or has a fresh take on things, I want to do what's best for John Wick.

If we listen to 100 people and I still have the best ideas, then fuck it, I'll do it. Honestly, we think very different. We've had a very secure career. I'm very happy with what I've done in my career and where I'm at. So I just kind of go with my gut. If I get two other projects, I don't try and plot or plan a career like, well, I've done three weeks, so that's about it.

Now I need to go do this. I'm not trying to job hop or come up with some kind of Academy-nominated, Oscar-winning, Emmy-thinking road of success. I just want to have fun and work with good people. So if that means John Wick, great. If it means something else, great. And every episode of this show by asking filmmakers

what's the last great thing they've seen. Chad, what's the last great thing you've seen? Last night I watched two episodes of Cobra Kai. Oh yeah, so what do you like about it? That's a great recommendation. Fuck, it got a little hard, man. And I was a Karate Kid fan. Come on. I forget the...

What's the guy's name that plays Johnny, the actor? Oh, Zabka? Zabka, yeah. Zabka, yeah. I fucking just love what they did with his character. I love Ralph. I think he's phenomenal. But to switch it around like that and give the 80s vibe in today's thing, how they deal with kids.

He's got some fucking lines in that that just make me laugh because I'm from that era. I like Game of Thrones. I like Barry. I think Bill Hader's fucking hilarious. Yeah. Some amazing fight choreography on that show too.

Yeah, no, it's great. There's one of my guys, Daniel Bernhardt, who did the last episode. Yeah. The last two episodes, actually. No, it's great. Love a lot of stuff like that.

You know, for me, you can say things that are beautiful, Roma or something like that. Or you can say things that are funny. I mean, I that. Or you can say things that are funny, Cobra Kai. I mean, I don't even know what they make an episode of that for. But if any of those guys are listening, huge fan, great job. I think you guys rock to do what you do with the budget you have and make people laugh.

I mean, think of all the big superhero movies that come out. We're not talking about those right now. We're talking about these little TV things where people have a lot of creativity and just a lot of heart into them. I think that always sells. I like the big stuff too. You made me think. I literally watched an episode this morning

and I just thought it was clever. I think that's the same relationship people have with John Wick. Chad, thanks for doing this, man. Of course. Thank you very much. Thank you again to Chad Stahelski. Now let's give my pal Shea Serrano a call so we can chat more about John Wick 3. And if you have not seen the movie, remember Shea and I will be spoiling. And now super hyped to be joined by, I think for the first time, Shea Serrano on the big picture. Shea, what up? Yes, this is the first time. This is a very big moment for me, Sean. This is very big. Fantastic. I'm so glad that you're here. I've

been waiting. I've been biding my time waiting to have you on because we needed you here for John Wick. You are the Lord of John Wick. You have been doing a podcast all about John Wick with a pencil. I would encourage anybody who is not subscribed to that, that is listening to this, and I can't believe there are more than seven or eight of you on earth to subscribe to that show, check it out. But I still needed you here to help us understand. I just spoke to Chad Stahelski, the director of this movie, but I need to know specifically what you thought about the movie. So for me, describe your feelings exiting John Wick 3. My feelings exiting John Wick 3 is I was so, so thankful. That's how I felt. I was nervous going in. John Wick 1 was fantastic. John Wick 2 was even better. And it felt to me very similar to when there's a rapper or a musician who their first two albums

are really good and you're excited because you know if they stick the third one that they belong in the top level of every conversation in that particular field and that's what was that's what i felt was at stake with john wick three they're either going to nail this thing and john wick becomes like an all-time great action movie franchise or they're going to fumble the ball and then we're going to end up with a tokyo drift situation and it's going to take four more five more movies before they like figure it out and they fucking nailed it my good friend chad nailed it would you say this is sort of jay-z's volume two hard knock life execution here third album really living up yeah yeah that's a good that's a good analogy to plug in there what kind of expectations did you have just kind of creatively with the story where did you think

wick was going to go because this movie is significantly bigger i think even significantly bigger than than two which takes us to rome and and takes us back to new york but is ultimately you know pretty contained this movie is sort of all over the map literally yeah so with with these sorts of movies with john wick especially we are at the point now where you don't even try to guess what they're going to do in the next one because you just have no idea what part of that world they're going to open up for you it's similar to the way it feels when you watch like a jordan peele movie and you know after 10 minutes like i'm just going to stop trying to guess at what's going to happen because i have no idea what's coming next and that's part of the excitement of watching one of those movies you sit down and you have no clue what's going to happen because even in the

trailer they give you you know one second shots of action scenes you're like well okay boban is definitely going to get hit with a book and there's definitely going to be a motorcycle and there's definitely going to be a motorcycle, and there's definitely going to be a desert, but I have no idea how they're going to stitch all of this together. And that to me is like, that's really up there as far as movie making goes. When you can get to that point, when you just have the audience totally just at your mercy is when you have the best movie experiences. I feel like. Let me ask you a question. I want to hear about your, your, your favorite things about the movie specifically, but before that, are you at all nervous for Keanu Reeves? Because I found myself watching this movie and just being like, I feel like he could die at any moment. He's 50 years

old. There are a lot of extremely intense sequences, especially that sequence at the end of the movie where he's, he's fighting two men at the same time in the Continental. I just got tired watching him. Do you have any fear for Keanu's safety? I have no fear for Keanu's safety. Keanu caught this movie, he caught this movie at the exact right point in his life

because you especially see it when he's running somewhere and it looks labored and it looks like he's hurting his whole body is hurting you need that that's part of the john wick ethos this isn't this isn't john matrix fighting off a hundred thousand soldiers all at once and never even bleeding this is a guy who is you know 20 away from death for basically 80% of the movie. You need that sort of energy with it. And Keanu, being as old as he is, is able to pull that off without even really trying. It's true.

He's literally dragging ass at times. And it really does help the story. It helps the character. If this is not a person, if this is a Superman figure, the movies don't work. And he's obviously, he's got some weaknesses, some literal

physical weaknesses. All right. So let's do a little countdown. Give me four things from the movie that you really, really loved. And it can be anything. It can be a character. It can be a fight. Just hit me with what you loved. All right. Are you going to do four as well, or is it just going to be me? Are we going to bounce them back and forth? You might inspire me to share some of my own. Okay, cool. Well, then I'm going to start with an easy one. I'm going to start with a fight. I really love how violent this movie is. And that's probably like, it's a weird thing to say, but that's really what I felt. So with the first John Wick movie, Sean, the whole point of this one was to introduce you to the world. Here's the main character. This is like a peek at the world he lives in.

The whole point of the second movie was to show you how big and how expansive it is and how nuanced all of the parts are. And they're all sort of working together. And then with the third one, the whole point of the third one is to show you exactly how brutal and vicious this life can be. It's not like just a cool thing. This is a dangerous, deadly world that is going to inflict pain on every person in it so once the movie starts and we see him getting stitched up and we have the big knife fight in the beginning like they're setting the tone early this whole movie is going to be fucking breakneck for the whole way through so i want to start with a fight that i really really liked there are three i think

three or four big ones in there there's the knife fight in the beginning and you have this shot of him slow motion stabbing the guy in the eye which is fucking unreal you have the uh you have the dog is not the word i would use i don't think i would use um uh borderline vomitous i i was i was quite my stomach turned when i watched that happen it was it was hard to watch, right? It was very hard. But you couldn't not watch. Yes. I've never seen that in a movie before. I've seen eye injuries, but they happen really quick.

And it's just like, you see the after effects of it. This one, they show you, they let you hear the sound of the blade going in the eye because the guy is trying to fight it off. And you hear it going in the eye because the guy is trying to fight it off and you hear it going in there slowly i think this is probably like the second most intense slow moving stabbing scene that i've ever seen in a movie the first one is in saving private ryan when mellish gets it when he's like begging for his life and the guy is pushing the knife into it's like this is like a version of that so there's that fight there's a dog fight scene which is unreal there is the uh john wick versus zero

and then there's the one you mentioned the john wick versus the two guys at the end and i really really like if i have to pick one of those out of all of them i gotta go john wick versus zero mark to costco's as zero is maybe my second favorite part of the entire movie and to see those two guys going at it back and forth for as long as they're allowed to and all the little like tricks and jokes that they're playing they keep doing the gag where one of them disappears on the other one yep they do it like five times in a row and it gets funnier and funnier you're like there's no way he's gonna do it again because that point, after like the third time of disappearing, now you're only doing it to fuck with the other guy. And that is hilarious to do in the middle of a life or death

fight. So for anybody who doesn't know about Mark Dacascos, like just talk about where you may have recognized him from and what his history is in films like this. Because I thought that casting him as Zero was just a genius turn. It absolutely was a genius turn. Mark Dacascos is a B-level action movie star, kung fu star. And he's had a couple of like halfway big movies here. He had Only the Strong in the mid-90s, one of my favorite movies. Certainly my favorite Mark Dacascos movie.

He was in Cradle to the Grave. He was the main bad guy there that Jet Li fights at the end. He he was in the double dragon movie which is the first movie i saw him in oh that's right in love with him immediately so mark to cost was has this like really this earnestness about him this like sincerity in his eyes that he's able to do and in all of the other movies he's been in he was in this movie called drive in 1997 where he plays like this bionic man that has a like an engine in his chest and he's a super fighter and he's able to like you drop him into a movie like that and it feels a little weird to watch him be like this excellent excellent movie fighter and then he turns around and he's just like the sweetest nicest guy with his eyeballs. It's like a weird thing.

But in the John Wick movie universe, they played it perfectly. They let him be this vicious, vicious fighter. And then they give him two or three moments where he gets to turn that off, like break character and just become regular Mark. And just sort of gushes about John Wick to John Wick. Yes. And it's beautiful. And watching those two guys fight man it's like you've been waiting for this moment for for I don't know 20 years he's been waiting

to get a big league shot in a movie that takes itself seriously and places all of its characters in the best possible position and he finally got it and he nailed it he's the biggest surprise in the movie he's the biggest surprise in a movie with boban getting killed by a book i think that's accurate i love what you're saying so it's funny mark dakoskis is seven months older than keanu reeves they were both born in 1964 and i see the sort of outside of the movie narrative around these two having a showdown at the end of this movie as sort of B-movie America and A-movie America finally throwing down. And I feel like that is actually an amazing representation of what John Wick is, right? It's the best of B-movie,

you know, kung fu, martial arts, crime movies, meeting these sort of like high-toned, glossy, Keanu Reeves-style major studio movies. And the two biggest avatars for those kinds of movies, Dacascos and Reeves kind of coming together for an epic fight, a war, is just such a genius metaphorical execution on top of the scenes themselves being so good. Yeah, it was, I couldn't believe it. Watching it happen, I was so happy for Mark. This was a performance where if this was the first time you've ever seen him, you walk out of the theater saying, this is the star. This is the guy who's going to be the star of whatever next action franchise we get.

He just played all of those pieces great. That's such a great part of the John Wick movies is how they just let each of these characters be what they need to. Halle Berry was perfect. Asia Kate Dillon was perfect. Laurence Fishburne, Ian McShane. They're all perfect in exactly the way they need to be perfect. And it just is beautiful. Yeah, I feel like they're having a lot of fun.

You know, there's something evident. You can see in Asia Kate Dillon or in Ian McShane, the level of glee that they have just reading the dialogue. You know what I mean? Yeah, they all know exactly what they're doing. So we noted the fight with Zero as your number four moment. What's number three? Number three. This is a tiny thing.

Really, a really, really tiny thing. We were hinting at it a minute ago, just right now, about how good they are at sort of drawing out these characters and letting you understand exactly the purpose of each character. Asia Kate Dillon, who is my favorite TV actor, they're incredible in billions. I was excited when they along in the movie we got the more excited i was each time they did it is asia never one time turns around and looks back at anybody after they walk away from a conversation asia is in the most dangerous small population of the world just dealing with assassins all day long keeps talking shit to everybody and each time when they're finished

they just turn around and leave and they never one time glance back to see like am i about to die and that is just the cockiest greatest thing that i've seen i think there's something also wise about using a figure that is not physically imposing as sort of the ultimate big bad of the movie you know using asia and the adjudicator as this representative of a shadowy organization that we never meet, that we don't totally have access to, and saying, you know, this fairly small person is extremely powerful and at the drop of a hat can call upon 40, you know, military grade SWAT operatives wearing full body armor. I think particularly that raid

when the high table SWAT team hits the Continental and John Wick has to basically put his gun behind their helmet to effectively kill them is so intense. And obviously all of that comes from the adjudicator. It's a good twist and it's very difficult in these movies, I think, to continue to raise the stakes, to say that there is something bigger and more powerful than Tarasov or bigger and more powerful than Santino, bigger and more powerful than X. They have to keep going up a level to a new big bad.

And Asia Kate Dillon is a nice subtle reversion of what we were expecting. You know, Boban is the biggest person in the movie and also the first to be dispatched, and there's something clever about that, too. What about number two? Number two, I don't know if this counts as like a full one or a half one, but I want to make sure that I mention it.

Lance Reddick, back again as the hotel manager, the concierge, is an incredible character, first of all. But there's a part during the scene you mentioned when the raid comes in, all the other guys come in and they have their super armor on and the bullets don't work anymore. You need a bigger gun. You need a more powerful gun. You need to be a little bit closer for this to work. And so they're out there.

John Wick and him are on the same team now because at this point ian mcshane and john wick are just they're at war with the high table and so you've got lance reddick you've got john john wick out there fighting the raid by themselves two on however many it is two on 20 and they do it for a few minutes and nothing happens and then they cut back into the vault where all the guns and everything are and lance walks in and it's the first time you see him in the movie just he looks fucking pissed he is so mad that these guns are not working and he walks in and he looks around he grabs a bigger gun and then he just fucking leaves immediately to go kill people i thought that was i was almost standing up in my seat, clapping and yelling.

Like, let's fucking go. Is that what I felt like when I saw that, like John finally has a partner who was going to step up. I loved it. Yeah. And through the first two and two thirds of these movies, Sharon,

the, the, the concierge has been basically a dispassionate observer of everything that goes on. So when he straps it on, it's kind of a, it's kind of a wow moment that they don't actually make too much out of. They just make it clear that he knows where the guns are. He knows what weapon you need to go to. It's clear that he is, uh,

even though he stands behind a desk at a hotel all day is also a badass. It's okay. I enjoyed that too. Yeah, it was really, it was really neat. And there was one part where they show him sort of huddled up against the wall and he's, he's holding the gun and he's sort of, you know, he's doing the thing where he's looking to see where the bad guys are. And he looks a little insecure in that moment. And I was in my head saying, I don't know if he's going to be able to pull this off. Because you need to have a certain kind of confidence in your body for these scenes to work. Otherwise, it just looks like you're counting in your head. One, two, three, four, one, two, three. It doesn't work. Halle Berry is a perfect example.

Halle Berry running up on these guys, doing this jujitsu. Halle Berry was very body confident in this movie. She knew she could do all of the parts necessary. It was really exciting to watch her fight scene with the dogs. You're like, holy shit, this is incredible. I felt like she had been training her whole entire life for those eight minutes of combat in the movie. And with Lance Reddick, they do that first shot of him peeking around the corner and you feel like maybe he's not going to be able to do the same thing. And then when he gets mad, it just, it played, it was like they did it on purpose. They set you up to sort of pull the carpet out from under you yet again. And I loved it. Yeah. We talked to Chad a little bit about just the difficulty of choreographing

some of these scenes. He said specifically that, you know, the dog sequence you can imagine was very, very challenging because dogs are dogs. They're not actors. And so they, a lot of times, even if they're well-trained, they do what they want to do. And there's no such thing as play attacking. When they attack you, they attack you. And Hallie's dogs are attacking like crazy in the movie. Should we go to number one? I guess we should go to number one. Let's go to number one. Tell me your favorite thing. What was your favorite thing about John Wick 3? My favorite thing about John Wick 3, son of a gun. Let me tell you one before we do that one let me make sure I mention

the guy from the raid the raid part 2 yeah that fights John Wick at the end an incredible performance I was so glad to see him in this movie

as soon as he shows up in the background of the scene you know him and John Wick are eventually going to fight and you are just waiting for it the entire time

because if you've seen the raid movies you know that this guy is fucking about his business you see the scene in the raid too when when him and uh rama fight in the in the kitchen is unreal so you're waiting the whole time i love that guy i want to make sure we say his name but my favorite part of this movie something that they didn't do in the first two movies is is they gave us several sort of twists, several unexpected things that you had no idea were about to happen. Like we find out, for example, that John Wick, that's not his real name. He has a whole different name, which at this point was a total shock to me.

You also have the moment where John and Winston team up to go to war, which I didn't see coming. And then you have Winston immediately betraying John, and then John and the Bowery King teaming up. And then also there's the part where he fucking, Sean, we've been talking for this movie about 20 minutes, and we haven't mentioned that John Wick cuts his own finger off in the movie to prove a point. What's going on here? This movie is incredible. I love every single part of it. Yeah, I think I couldn't totally wrap my head around the cutting his finger off thing

because he essentially defied the requests of the person for whom he cut the fingers off of. You know what I mean? He goes and he spends some time at the top of a sand dune in the middle of, what country was he in? Was he in Casablanca there? I don't even know what country he had made it to at that point. I have no idea.

I was in tears by this point of the movie. I couldn't take anymore. But yeah, so he does cut his finger off to prove a point and then ultimately doesn't necessarily follow through on that point. I mean, the two guys we should talk about who we mentioned a couple of times from the Raid Tour, Yayan Rohian

and Seseb Arif Rahman. And they're the sort of the two shinobi that he fight at the end of the movie, both of whom have appeared in both of the Raid movies. And if you

know the John Wick movies, you know that the filmmakers obviously have a lot of love, respect, and admiration for the Raid movies because you can kind of feel the very similar close-range style that that the raid just i don't know i don't know if they

perfected it but they certainly put it on the map in a new way um i guess i don't know i'm trying to think of what my favorite absolute favorite thing about this movie is i think the fact that There's so many. The mythology, I thought, was coherently enough explained, but not solved. You know, they managed to leave mystery around the edges. The movie obviously ends with the option

for a fourth movie. I would be really shocked if there was not a fourth John Wick movie. Whether they choose to tell it specifically from John's point of view is sort of TBD for us. But, you know,

we got kind of a glimpse at what it meant what the high table was really all about but not in totality i also you know what i really enjoyed was um the actor who plays braun on game of thrones appearing in a significant role as sort of the coin master hally berry's uh boss in the movie i want to know more about that world too and everything that's happening there what did you think of that stuff yeah i again i'm going to just keep saying it i loved all of the parts i love that they give you just enough of each of the things where you're like i kind of understand it and i kind of want to know more that's the perfect spot to be in because then you can turn it into anything we still don't know what the high table is and we don't know if anything is above the high table

and we don't know exactly what they do all that we know is the name and they set it up perfect as you mentioned for for part four i know it's going to happen in part four i'm going to tell you right now sean tell me i talked to my good friend i talked to my good friend chad about it this is going to happen tell me the bowery king and john wick team up of course we saw that happening they're going to war against the high table the high table is going to have some some super group of assassins They're going to war against the High Table. The High Table is going to have some super group of assassins. It's going to be like four people. That's who they're going to dispatch. They're not going to send 180 people.

They're going to send these four, or maybe they send those four behind the 180 people. But the main one of that one is going to be the main guy from the raid. It's going to be Rama. And we're finally going to get the greatest movie fighter of all time versus john wick we've been waiting we've never gotten a level a fight of this level ever in a movie and it's going to happen and it's going to be i'm i'm tearing up right now i feel like mallory rubin talking about her beloved ghost that's what's going on here. I'm really excited that this is going to happen. I can feel it in my bones.

It's actually shocking that Eco U.A. has not appeared in a John Wick movie. It's kind of stunning that Rama has not had a moment yet in this series. There has to be a reason for that because he might be, and he was in like Mile 22 last year, which is a movie that maybe you liked. I was not a huge fan of. He's, you know, he's in Stuber later this summer,

a Dave Bautista action comedy. He's certainly making his way through a lot of the key Hollywood properties that have fight sequences. And he also appeared in a big role in Keanu Reeves' directorial debut, Man of Tai Chi, a movie I like a lot

that not a lot of people have seen in a somewhat significant role. So theoretically, a final showdown between Rama and John Wick, I think would be sick. It's going to happen. I did see Mile 22. I did like Mile 22. Of course you did. By the way, but here's the thing. Here's the thing. We can finish on this point, if you like. And I'm going to tie this back to mark to cascos the people who made john wick understood how to use mark better than anybody has ever understood how to use him that's why he came out so great even more than iron chef america even more than iron chef america

i remember there's a i don't know if you know this guy's a writer named jeff weiss and when when the kanye album 808s and heartbreak came out i'll never forget this is over 10 years ago and i remember reading his review i don't know where the review came out i don't remember any part but i remember seeing a line in there that i thought was really incredibly insightful and he said kanye west he's speaking about a guest verse that young gz has in it and he says kanye west understands how to use young gz better than young gz understands how to use Young Jeezy better than Young Jeezy understands how to use Young Jeezy. That's how I felt about the John Wick people with Mark Dacascos. In Mile 22, when we finally got Rama in a movie where, oh shit, he's going to fight Mark Wahlberg in this movie, is what everybody thought.

And it didn't happen. And we got one really good fight scene with him. But they kept cutting away. They kept doing the, like, taken Liam Neeson style, we have to make you think this person cutting away they kept doing the like taken liam neeson style we have to make you think this person knows what they're doing it was like a total waste it was like you have the best fighter in the world and you're not letting him do what he does the best like just put a camera on him and let him go nuts the john wick universe when they do their fight scenes it may they make it look like one long shot they don't do all the cuts they don't do

all that bullshit you you need to know what you're doing when we start filming. When they put him in this movie and they look at him and they go, here's the best way to use this guy. Here's the way that nobody has figured out how to use him yet. It's going to be something special, Sean. I'm telling you right now. Or maybe he becomes the new John Wick. Who knows? I'll take any part of it. Any part of him that we can get in a big Franchise like this sign me the fuck up. I can't wait I promise that won't be the next time you're on the big picture though You will definitely be on when we get john wick for maybe uh, maybe save a little room for me when hobs and shaw comes around

What do you think? Let's do it. Okay. Thank you, man. I appreciate you. Thank you again to Shay Serrano and to the director, Chad Sahelski. Go see John Wick 3. What more can I say about that? And please tune in next week. We'll have a new episode of The Big Picture. Amanda Dobbins and I will be talking about high school movies, and there's a reason we're going to be talking about those movies. It's because Booksmart is coming out soon. This is

Olivia Wilde's directorial debut. And I have a sit down interview with Olivia Wilde and the stars of her film, Caitlin Dever, Beanie Feldstein, and Billy Lord, in addition to the co-screenwriter of the movie, Katie Silberman. Yes, I interviewed five people at the same time. Please tune in for that next week.