The Big Picture - The Making of an Action Star in 2019, Plus: Reviving Action-Comedy and 'Stuber' With Director Michael Dowse | Interview

Episode Date: July 12, 2019

David Shoemaker joins the show to talk about how action stars are minted in the post–The Rock era of filmmaking, Dave Bautista’s rise to legitimate actor, and who is primed to make the leap from WWE to the big screen (0:45). Then, ‘Stuber’ director Michael Dowse comes in to talk about the role of improvisation in his films, working with Bautista and comedian Kumail Nanjiani, and what his future in directing looks like (25:07). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: David Shoemaker, Michael Dowse Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelley, and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. After you finish the episode, make sure to check out a brand new episode of our live music series on YouTube called The Ringer Room. Each month, we feature a new up-and-coming musical artist to play a live set in The Ringer Studios. So far, we've featured artists like Cautious Clay, Mount Joy, and Earthgang, and we just posted our episode for July showcasing Charlie Bliss. You can check out those videos at youtube.com slash The Ringer.

I'm Sean Fennessey, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the rebirth of action comedy, perhaps? Later in the show, I have a great interview with the director of a new movie called Stuber. His name is Michael Dowse. This movie stars Kumail Nanjiani, who you may recall from Silicon Valley and The Big Sick,

and Dave Bautista, who is now emerging as a significant, I think, movie star. Joining me to talk about Bautista and the transition from wrestling to movie stardom is my pal David Shoemaker who does about nine jobs here at The Ringer. Dave what's up? Everything's up. How are you feeling? Fantastic website to be a part of. I'm feeling great man. Love to see you in the flesh talking movies and wrestling. This is what we do and I've been thinking about Bautista a bit because I thought Subaru was very funny

and it's surprising how somewhat seamlessly he's been able to make this transition from Vince McMahon's empire of musculature into Hollywood. And I feel like historically it's not that easy to do that. No. I mean, it's funny because you look back now and there's like all of these examples that, you know, they pile up. You you know you can go back and look at of course Roddy Piper with Jesse Ventura um I mean obviously Hulk Hogan even but even like smaller players like Terry Funk or Kevin Nash from our you know our childhood and and um I don't know I mean it's it seems like there's a lot but for so long it was just it was at least the perception was it was impossible to make the transition from you know the squared circle to the big picture do you think that oh wow that's brutal i just did that uh do you think that's because some of those people were misapplied like thinking of terry i

think terry funk and i think obviously historic wrestling career destroying his body for ecw in his 50s but but i think mostly about roadhouse yeah and he's funny in roadhouse but i don't think he's trying to be that funny. No, I mean, Terry Funk is, obviously, if you know anything about wrestling, there's a lot of correlation between him and Mick Foley, but they had actually a very similar presentation at times. They're both like, in the wrestling world,

two of the greatest actors, but you can't just take that and move it into the into hollywood any easier than you can do the the end or the reverse which um i talked i think i've talked about this a million times on my show but when when hollywood stars will come to monday night raw to like promote a movie they'll get in the ring they'll kind of like get into a shoving contest with it's inevitably dolph ziggler but um the they all they always suck they're always terrible at it except for the ones that are diehard fans the people that grew up that you know that watched it forever like Seth Green is really good at doing that kind of thing John

Stewart sells out John Stewart's fantastic um but the biggest problem isn't that they don't know wrestling or they don't know it's just a different it's a different skill set it's a I mean it's like wrestling is is closer to like Greek theater where you have a giant wooden mask and you're playing to the person in the 50th row. You know what I mean? It's a totally different form of acting. So you can't just be, so if you're the best actor to bring this back around,

the best actor in wrestling doesn't necessarily make you a Hollywood actor, but it does show maybe that you have, you know, the nuts and bolts of the artistic soul that would lead you to be successful in Hollywood. I feel like the figure who looms largest, obviously, is Dwayne The Rock Johnson. Sure. Because he is the most successful, I guess, person who has transitioned. And I'm trying to figure out why that is, why he was the one who emerged. Obviously, as a WWE superstar, he had something ineffable that was just like, I just want to see this guy talk and

I want to see him perform. He had charisma. He had the same thing that Burt Lancaster had or Marilyn Monroe had, where you're just like, I just want to watch that person do stuff. But the way he operated, I think, was closer to what you're describing, that Greek theater style, the arched eyebrow and the intonations. And as a movie star, he's been a little bit different. He's been a little bit more, obviously he's making action movies and comedies and sometimes he's hamming it up.

But when I think about Hobbs and Shaw, it's weirdly a little bit recessed and serious and conservative. And I don't think that Batista, and maybe you can help us understand who Batista was

and who he is now, but I don't think he's gone about this in exactly the same way as The Rock. Is that fair to say? No. And if you ask Dave Bautista, he would, you know, he goes out of his way to say there's nothing, he has nothing in common with The Rock. The Rock's trying to be a, you know, a superhero. The Rock's trying to be an action star and Dave Bautista's trying to be an actor, you know, he has, and trying to put, although he did, he was, you know, back with WWE as recently as

WrestleMania this year, he's trying to formally separate those two parts of his life. And I mean, there's a little bit of irony in the fact that Dave Bautista's IMDb to this point includes some of the greatest fighting scenes of the past decade and not much else that's come out yet. But Drax the Destroyer is one thing. But seen through the lens of Blade Runner, Drax the Destroyer is one thing, but seen through the lens of Blade Runner, Drax the Destroyer, you know, you kind of start piecing these things together and look at Dune, this other stuff he has in Stuber, which is obviously about to come out. And it does look like he's, I mean, he is an actor. He, this is, he's taking this, he's taking, he's pursuing the craft. He's pursuing, he's doing fight scenes to get in the room with great directors. You know, he's doing this very deliberately. And The Rock, I mean, you can't be too dismissive of The Rock because whatever path any wrestler takes in Hollywood from this point forward, The Rock did break down that barrier. The Rock made it possible for people to get meetings, you know?

Yeah, I always felt like there was this divide between what kind of a wrestling movie star you could be. You could either be Suburban Commando or you could be They Live. You know, you could be bare knuckle action or you could be like, let's make a joke about how big this guy is. Right. And it feels like Batista is the first person

who's trying to create a third paradigm, I suppose. It's a little tricky though. If you look at his filmography, here are some of the names of the characters he's played, especially in the early days. His first significant role, he played Big Ronnie. Then he played Argamel in the Scorpion King 3 Battle for Redemption. Did you see that one?

And again, he's following, no, following the rock, like literally following the rock in the Scorpion King franchise. The next film he appears in is The Man with the Iron Fist, and the name of his character is Brass Body. Yeah, that was a fantastic movie. I do like that movie. That's the Riz's movie. And then in Riddick, he plays Diaz. Right.

And then he gets to be Drax the Destroyer in James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy. And that obviously changed everything for him. But even still after that, he's still in a lot of weird...

He plays the drug dealer number one in L.A. Slasher. He plays Aaron the Cruel in The la slasher he plays aaron the cruel in the warrior's gate he plays stoop in a movie called bushwick which was a not bad uh action movie that came out in 2017 and then he plays sapper morton and blade runner 2049 which you mentioned and which michael dow also mentioned to me as the reason that he wanted to make stuber with batista it wasn't because of drax. It was because of, you know,

the sort of performance. And he said, he also mentioned that there was a sort of digital short that was about Sapper Morton that I guess Denis Villeneuve made in addition to Blade Runner 24 and it gave some backstory on his character

that made him seem more interesting. The tricky part about it is it's really hard to be taken seriously as an actor when you are just that big and imposing. You know, I think that this was a struggle for Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was a struggle for Sylvester Stallone. I'm glad that you mentioned Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It's hard for us. And you and I are, you know, the old fogies at the ringer. But even but for us, we can't even wrap our heads around what what Arnoldnold schwarzenegger was to our parents right i mean he was like an alien from another planet to be walking around like that and we're only i mean at that point we're only a decade or two removed from a period where hollywood stars had to pretend they didn't work out even if they did right they're just like i'm just born with good genes even though they're out there like pumping iron every day because it was perceived to be uh what i mean is it was it like sinful to be out there like i have no idea no there was like a level of like um pursued vanity

yes that i think we find ugly in the culture a little bit but like clint eastwood i mean in his early days would like you know i mean he clearly was doing push-ups and sit-ups at a minimum and he was just like oh nope just good genes you You know, his PR people were saying that. No doubt. And then, you know, Schwarzenegger comes along and obviously his movie, I mean, he's very successful making films, even from the beginning. But there's a little bit of a freak show quality to it. But we were raised in this, right?

So it's totally normal. So we're used to seeing it. And then now we're in this sort of like third column of this situation where not only are we used to seeing these bodies, but we know people with these bodies. And it's not even that weird. It would not be...

The Rock is not human, but it would not be bizarre if The Ringer had an employee who is as big as Macho Man Randy Savage. Yeah, that's like Chris Ryan. He's our Macho Man. He's more of a Ricky the Dragon Steamboat to me.

But yeah, he's, yeah. So I mean, so in some ways, it is more normal to have someone that looks vaguely like Dave Bautista just in a role that doesn't involve his size. Now, if you go back not long ago, I wrote a career piece for grantland.com about The Rock covering all of his career and

all of his movies up to that point and my biggest hang-up with all of the rocks movies and this was you know how many years ago was this six years ago or something like that yeah but all of his movies up to that point my biggest hang-up was that when he in his non-action movies was that nobody would ever nobody said the line man this guy's really big where he would just be playing like some kid's stepdad and he would show up at the principal's office like in a serious drama and nobody was just like, dude, your dad is enormous.

Like just say it, get it out of the way, you know? It's like The Rock had like veins popping out of an Argyle sweater or whatever and nobody will say those words. But you're right, at this point, it's a little bit less important to say you know i mean it's it's a it's a little bit more of a given and and we all know that part of the rock's creation myth is that he had to lose all this weight like hulk hogan and all these other wrestlers did before him to

cut down to i mean i and i and batista has said this recently i mean it still applies uh mark henry has told me this personally if you want to get acting roles, you have to like drop a hundred pounds to look even, I mean, you'll, you'll still look as impressive, but if you look like you do in WWE standing next to Tom Cruise, you look like a mutant. That's exactly right. So, but what happened with The Rock was after losing all this weight, he, and just not enjoying his career, he switched agent, switched over to Ari Emanuel and Ari said, no, no, quit losing weight, start adding weight. I want you to be bigger than you were in WWE. And that's how,

and that is how we got the rock that we know and love today. That is amazing. Do you think Batista has changed his presentation at all since he was a WWE star? And he just performed at WrestleMania too.

And I was, there was a lot of opportunity to see, like remember who he was back then. Because he always struck me as kind of a bad WWE superstar. He was not really in my realm of interest. He's a little bit robotic.

When you look back now, I think I didn't, I mean, I certainly didn't appreciate him as much as I should have at the time. My favorite Dave Bautista run in WWE was the very last one where you could tell he was trying, he was outgrowing WWE but he had a feud with John Cena where Batista was the heel and he just didn't talk he would

just come out they would turn off the lights no music and he'd walk out in the spotlight and just sit on a chair and just stare I mean or you know he would just like he just refused to speak and it was so weird and so different that it just, it was really compelling. But yeah, I mean, he was never, I think that his frustration with wrestling was that he was never going to be John Cena or The Rock there and he might've been happy with that, but he wanted to spread his wings.

And so he embarked on this acting career, which I mean, to be honest, I thought was incredibly misbegotten at the time. I did too. He just never struck me as a very good talker. Yeah. And obviously to act, you have to talk. Yeah.

And he's somehow become, you know, line readings are an underrated part of acting. Your ability to sell a joke or sell pain or sell excitement. Yeah. And he's uniquely gifted at this. Yes. And the whole movie of Stuber is built around him and Kumail kind of back and forthing the whole time. And if you can't really pull that off, I just find it so fascinating. And when you were talking about Schwarzenegger, I thought about, there's this

great 76 movie called Stay Hungry that Bob Rafelson directed. And it's basically Schwarzenegger's first big role. This is pre-Pumping Iron. I think they were filming Pumping Iron while he was making this movie. And he exists there just to be that thing that I think Ari Emanuel was telling The Rock, which is just be huge. You are the muscle in this movie and you are meant to make all the movie stars seem tiny. For Batista, I wonder if somebody like him just appearing as just a buff cop or a buff alien in Dune or a buff Drax the Destroyer is more acceptable to audiences somehow? Have we just kind of reset our ability to enjoy the strongman, for lack of a better word? Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you also have to look at Guardians of the Galaxy where it's like, it's important that he's big and muscly

for his character. I mean, he's a comic book character, you know, brought to life, but he's big and muscly for his character i mean he's a comic book character you know brought to life but he's also standing side by side with like you know gamora who is a hundred bucks a hundred pounds soaking wet and can beat the crap out of people the same way you know i mean it's like we're in a world it's their superpowers you don't have to be necessarily be ripped to be super humanly strong but yeah i think that we um i mean i think that we just we perceive it differently and i think to to his the his ability to act i mean let's not overlook the fact that he's not he's no young man right he he was he was well into his what 40s by the time he started pursuing acting and he's he he has the wisdom that comes with age you know like it's like you know just like it

would be easy for you to like score a 1600 on the SAT now when you, you know, I don't have no idea. I'm not so sure of that. No, but it's like, there's, there's some things that you're just better at doing stuff as you get older and you're better at understanding like the process of doing a thing. And I think Batista at his worst is a little bit of a robotic actor in the way that he was a robotic wrestler at times,

but he clearly understands what he's supposed to be doing. Yeah mean he's 50 years old yeah which is unique what do you think john cena makes of dave batista's rise funny john cena is also a robot i mean i think people that know him personally would agree with that i think john cena might agree with that in a lot of ways but he's also got he's also coasting on a set of gifts, like comedic gifts that are really hard to put words to, right? I mean, he's, like if you, to take this back to the beginning, you know, there's the wrestler that wants to be a superstar. You know, that's Hulk Hogan when he goes to Hollywood. I don't really know where you put Jesse Ventura, but certainly in his head, he was going to be a giant movie star. But then you have,

what we look back now, it is like the successes of that era. The successful one is Rowdy Roddy Piper, right? Who embraced being a B movie star, who was self-aware enough to know that this is the place for wrestlers in Hollywood, right? And if you actually want to do things that are fun and have legs,

and we'll be talking about in 30 years, that was right path and i think cena in a certain way has done has gone that same way he realized that that the look that made him a multi-time wwe champion is inherently comedic right and the rock has a little bit of that self-awareness too it's funny that you mentioned piper though in that way because the one thing that was always a little dissonant to me about Piper as an actor is Piper was loose cannon as a wrestler. That was his persona. And it was so fun knowing that he would fly off the handle at any minute. He was unpredictable. And as an actor, he was way more just recessed and stoic.

And I think that that was a little bit confusing as a fan. And I remember seeing They Live the first time and being like, when's Piper going to flip the fuck out on somebody? Now, obviously, he gets into an extended fight sequence that is a version of flipping out. But I feel like Batista is kind of similar. I feel like the guy who is the actor, even though he does have some of that robotic nature that you're talking about, doesn't seem like the same.

There's no crossover persona. And I wonder if like take stone cold steve austin for example oh god i'm glad we got to him you know he he appeared in some films oh yeah uh he he made a bid to be i don't know i mean who is his his comp point i don't even know what he's sort i mean i was looking at all these all these names we might come up today he's sort of the mendoza line of wrestler actors you know because he was like he made again he he what he made is i mean he he's making B movies, too, or C movies. I don't even know if it's a different category.

But and, you know, he's just sort of comfortable being, you know, what is I think his first I could be wrong about this. But one of his first acting gigs was on Walker, Texas Ranger back in the day. OK, and and I feel like he's just sort of continued to pursue the Walker, Texas Ranger level of acting or level of production. I don't know what his historical comp is. I mean, maybe, I mean. Maybe it is Chuck Norris. I mean, maybe that's actually a better way to think of him as a kind of high-grade C movie star. Yeah.

I mean, I think that that's what, I mean, listen, we're in a world, people have talked about this, about The Rock, about, I mean, even John Cena now. We're in a world that's like sorely lacking for action movie stars yes there's maybe not as much room for action movies in the marketplace you know just one-off diehard style action movies or rambo or whatever um but we don't have that many people to do it and and a lot of that space has been taken up by these like bc level movies it's just like you want to like, you want to watch something, you want to watch a guy, you know, run after some bad dudes and things blow up. Well then, you know, we can do that for $1.5 million and get it out on DVD tomorrow.

Yes, the VOD market of that is full. And then where that space used to exist for the Die Hard style movie, The Rock still does do some of them. I talked earlier this week on the show about Red Notice, which is this movie that Netflix just picked up from Universal that is going to be a very similar kind of, you know, man-on-a-mission action movie.

What happened with that? Can we sidebar this really quickly? Isn't, what had to happen for Universal to say, like, we are willing to piss off The Rock? I think that it just means the budget was too high. I mean, the reported information about that movie was that The Rock was scheduled to earn $21 million in salary and 30% of the profits with his term sheet from Universal.

That's a lot of money. So maybe it was just too big a cost for him to swallow. By the way, that's one of the things that sets The Rock apart. And I think you really can draw a wrestling parallel here because The Rock comes from a family of professional wrestlers. And if anybody that knows anything about wrestlers, especially the ones that achieve some sort of success in the 60s and 70s, they're freaking carnies. And they will, you know, you could call them up and say, hey, I'm doing a piece on your legacy and how great you were as a wrestler. And they'll say, how much are you paying me? You know what I mean?

It's all about saving or earning and saving and everything else. And The Rock's, I mean, obviously one of the things that has made The Rock the success that he is, is his business wiles. You know, I mean, his, like, you know, some people start production houses just to have business cards, but like, man, he is a grinder.

He is extremely productive and seems to recognize the opportunity that he has. And I get the sense that Batiste is going to do the same in a way that maybe Stone Cold never could. You know, even though Stone Cold is probably as significant a star as wrestling has produced since Hulk Hogan and was a great talker one of the all-time persona builders yeah and couldn't figure out a way to crack this I wanted to just ask you just to wrap up who is a current day active roster WWE superstar who has the chance to make a transition like this?

Oh, man. I mean, a lot of it is, well, I mean, obviously a lot of it is having the guts to just take the plunge. And there's got to be some like wild opportunity. I mean, just some crazy happenstance, right? I mean, without Drax, a lot of these other movies wouldn't have happened for Dave Bautista. Completely true. I'm trying to think who the bet i mean who would be great there's a there are a lot of there are a lot of i mean and we know that like being great talker like you just said with stone cold doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be

that you know you can do that and like we said at the very beginning those two skill sets don't necessarily go one-two. Man, I'm trying to, I mean, the people that pop into my head are guys like Dolph Ziggler, who I mentioned before, Cody Rhodes, you know, who's out there launching AEW right now. People with a lot of self-belief. People with a lot of self-belief who, you know, have taken turns staring at the camera and making you believe. It would be hard, it's hard camera and making you believe, um,

it's, it would be hard. It's hard for me. It's hard for me to say that, like, I can't write off the Miz, although he might be more of a John Cena, you know,

as he, as he, if, if he ever, you know, fully makes the transition. He always struck me as the kind of guy who should have a CBS sitcom. That's loosely based on his life,

not an action movie star, you know? Yeah. I mean, he is, he has an, there's an inherent humor to him. Not an action movie star, you know? Yeah. I mean, there's an inherent humor to him too that is, you know, again, a little bit Cena-esque, although he's not as comically built as John Cena. So, you know... Do you have an answer to this question?

Well, there's two people that I think are interesting and there's not a lot of precedent for, and that's Becky Lynch and Sasha. I was about to say Beckycky lynch that's okay um because obviously there's been way more energy put behind um the female division of wwe and they've made an effort to supersize them in a lot of ways yeah if not physically at least visibly in the world becky lynch is on the cover of ESPN magazine this week. And she has that, I want to know what she's doing quality. Even if I don't think she's the best talker in the company either. Very similar thing with Batista where I'm like, I kind of can't take your eyes

off this person, even though you're not necessarily fully, you're not being sold every five minutes when they're holding a microphone. And I wonder if somebody like that could break through. As far as other people, as far as male... I mean, Roman Reigns, who is in Hobbs and Shaw... Great point. ...is going to get a look. He might not... He might be too good looking. He might be...

Is that... I know what you mean, yes. He doesn't have... I think he has a level of self-awareness. I know that he has a lot of self-awareness. He doesn't come off as... You know, he doesn't raise his eyebrow. He doesn't come off as somebody who's inherently self-aware necessarily all the time in

the ring so there might be that disconnect and also he might be yeah i mean i is he is he going to out act jason momoa for any of these roles like i don't like i was just thinking that i feel like he got pre-market corrected by jason momoa and that makes it a little bit more difficult for him anybody else anybody else that you think has a chance to, like, can Finn Balor be a Mark Dacascos style? I don't think Finn's ever going to have that sort of, he has a different sort of charisma, I think, than it takes.

I mean, but again, who knows? Guaranteed, Braun Strowman will be in like 10 movies that we care about by the time that we die. You can point at a lot of, you can point at a lot of people as like wild cards, right?

Like Drew Gulak, who's tearing it up in the cruiserweight division right now, is just so smart and regular human-sized. I wouldn't be shocked, but I wouldn't place a ton of money on it. Yeah, who's in John Wick 4? I think that the answer... I don't think that he's necessarily going to be a star on the level of some of the people that we're talking about. But if you want to draw a line, I think just because of availability and baseline skills, I think the answer is Jon Moxley, who used to be Dean Ambrose in WWE. He left. He's now doing his own thing.

He is incredibly charismatic, has a sort of mumbledy jake robertsy style to his to his delivery there's a lot of roddy piper in him too that has always been the big comp point is piper with him so you could see a similar kind of swaggering alpha male wearing a you know a a white tank top he's he's he just needs to find the right part because he's done some like action stuff in wwe films or whatever and's, he just needs to find the right part because he's done some like action stuff in WWE films or whatever. And I think that he needs to find whatever the, whatever his Drax the Destroyer is. And I don't think it's an action movie,

but he needs to find his thing so that then he can go back and do, I mean, his, his comp in the acting world is John McClane. I mean, he's, you know, he's Bruce Willis.

So, um, he has to be able to like, he has to somehow get the cred to be able to get those sort of roles if he's going to be that level of successful. Shoemaker, thanks for doing this, man. Thank you for having me.

Thank you to the big homie, David Shoemaker. And now let's go to my conversation with Michael Dowse. Delighted to be joined by the director of Stuber, Michael Douse. Michael, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Michael, you just said to me this is the biggest release of your career. Yes. And I do feel like this movie has a relationship to the other movies you've made.

And they all feel of a piece of a certain kind of movie that we used to love and we used to get a lot of and we don't get as much anymore. And I was thinking about your work and I was thinking about what are the first movies you can remember seeing and what kind of switch do you want to movies in the first place um great question i think um i think the first i started out sort of playing uh football and like being much more sports oriented um you know we had um we had a dark room in the house so i was i was i was sort of the kid with the video camera, but my focus initially was sports. So I wasn't that focused on film.

And then I quit playing football. And the first film that I remember going to check who the director was in the theater afterwards was True Romance. So True Romance, I was just like, there's something special about this film. I can't piece what it is. I mean, I watched films as much as anybody else did, but, but then I was sort of looking for, uh, what I wanted to do next. And I was sort of like, yeah, film feels like the right thing to do. I would sort of, I did a bit of acting as a kid, nothing crazy, just like, and was sort of interested in that world. But, uh, when you sort of put the photography and, and making videos with my friends together, yeah, I sort of felt

like, yeah, I want to get into film. So True Romance was the first sort of Hollywood film that I was like, this is really interesting. Who was behind this? What turned you on about Tony Scott? I mean, I'd seen other Tony Scott films, obviously. I think it was just the, I loved the story, the dialogue, obviously it's a Tarantino script. I had no idea who he was at that point.

And I just loved the performance the dialogue, obviously it's a Tarantino script. Uh, I had no idea who he was at that point. Um, and I just loved the performance and how they sort of, they played with fantasy in that movie and, and took different, um, tangents, you know, with, uh, the Gary Oldman character and the fight with James Gandolfini. I mean, it just has a very visceral, I just had a great sort of classic feel. And then I think the other, the other film that I saw that was a massive influence on me was probably Man Bites Dog. The Belgian film, the fake documentary about the serial killer.

And I've seen you, I've heard you talk about this before. What is it about this movie? Well, it was the first film that I saw where I was like, oh, you don't, because back when I was starting, you needed about 100,

$200,000 to make a film. If you wanted to do it traditionally, you still had to shoot on film. I was just, by the time I'd made FUBAR, we just had the editing and if you wanted to do it traditionally you still have to shoot on film i was just by the time i'd made foobar we just had the editing and the video technology to do it but that was the first film that i saw where they shot it with three people or four people and just had a great idea and just went for it and the tone of the tone of it was very black and funny but it was really like oh you can make a film like this and that was sort of the seed that planted the seed for foobar in terms of like, oh, we can run and make something really,

really gritty. But as long as the story is funny and we're doing something interesting and telling an interesting story, um, that, so those were probably the two, the two big influences in terms of films that I saw. I mean, you get into film, you watch all the classics, obviously like Kubrick and Scorsese and Fellini and all those guys are influences on me as well. But those were probably the two big ones that sort of turned me into making a film. I want to ask you about FUBAR and launching your career, but why was there a darkroom in your house? Oh, for photography. My dad had a darkroom for photography.

Was he a professional photographer? He was not a professional photographer, but he had a nice Mamiya camera. And, you know, he taught me how to sort of process. And it was sort of, it was a great sort of thing to do. I probably, you know, killed some fish porn chemicals down the wrong thing. Or some brain cells myself doing it. But he was an engineer,

but he was always into photography and had a darkroom as a kid and then just sort of had all the equipment. So we just kept it going. Was it difficult to imagine being a quote unquote Hollywood filmmaker while growing up in Canada? Was it an easy goal to set? Like how far away does that dream seem? It feels really far away.

I mean, it's more of just, I mean, I think you can sort of set your goals on anything, you know what I mean? If you, if you, if you want to, I don't think at age of 22, I was like, I'm going to be a Hollywood filmmaker, but, um, it was sort of step by step. So I realized I really liked editing. I sort of got involved with university television stations and, uh, and, uh, I was growing up in in calgary so the calgary society of independent filmmakers which had cheap 16 mil equipment so it was just a process of learning how to cut and learning how to shoot and all that stuff and then uh avoiding film school and just uh making my own stuff as much as possible how old were you when you made fubar i was 28 i think what were you doing before that what was your life like i I was, uh, I was an editor.

So I was cutting other people's stuff. I was, um, I was a runner for Canada's much music or MTV called much music. So I'd lucked into a job a few years earlier where, um, they have this contest where you can be the temp for the summer. And so I made this video of my mother sort of making the video on my behalf, like get my son out of the house. And my mom is very funny and it won. So it got me, it gave me five grand. They gave me a car and an apartment and then a job at this TV station in Toronto. And that's where I learned the Avid. So that was sort of the big break that gave me the skills to basically pay the rent. Because at that point, there wasn't a lot the Avid. So that was sort of the big break that gave me the skills to basically pay the rent. Because at that point, there wasn't a lot of Avid editors around.

It was a hard thing to get your hands on. What did they have you doing day to day at MuchMusic? I remember MuchMusic. Yeah, like anything. You know, I could sort of pick and choose. I wasn't actually officially on the payroll, but then I gravitated towards editing. And then I came out of that, and they needed runners guys who could shoot uh stuff like when bands were in calgary so and that was a good pain for what it was it would be a two days of work and pay you 600 bucks or

something so it was good for for that time well so what about foobar you said you were inspired by three four man shoots low budget yeah i i tried tried to make a film the summer before and had just failed spectacularly. And it's just sort of that sort of, you know, get a crew, get a house, write a script, do everything by the book. And I found myself sort of like cutting like watermelon for catering before. I was like, what am I doing? So then one of the actors who was in that film, he had this character that he had been playing at this theater called Loose Moose Theater in Calgary.

And he said, why don't we try and make a film about headbangers? And I was like, hell yeah. And I just said, let's not, we're not going to raise money. We're not going to, we're going to, we're going to shoot in August in three months. And that's what we're going to do. And we're going to have a, we're going to,

I'm going to shoot it. We're going to get a sound guy and we're going to get a couple of people to help us out. And that's what we're going to do. And we're going to have a, we're going to, I'm going to shoot it. We're going to get a sound guy and we're going to get a couple of people to help us out and that's it. So just throw away all that idea of lighting and dogma was sort of around at that time. So that was sort of an influence a little bit, but no lighting, nothing,

just worry about pace, comedy and story. And that's it. How'd you pay for it? We paid, Dave put a bit of the money in to do the shoot. And then I put the money into, I bought an edit suite and, and, uh, took care of the edit. And then we were able to, at that time I was, I was editing trailers. That was another thing I used to do for a living was edit trailers for Odeon Films in Canada.

And I was cutting a trailer for them at that time to pay the rent. And then I cut a trailer for FUBAR time to pay the rent. And then I cut a trailer for FUBAR and put it on the end of the trailer. So I said, just take, check it out and see what you think. This is my film. And then they came back to us and they were like, yeah, we want to see the movie. So we, we screened it to them and then they bought it and we were able to raise, um, enough to finish the film between them and telefilm and a few other grants. Okay. So, and then we got into Sundance and the rest was history for us yeah so were you making that movie as a springboard was this is my living resume for the kinds of things I want to do yeah I mean not not to get ahead of

myself I wasn't sort of thinking this will this would this would be the springboard but yeah I definitely wanted to make a great sort of first film for sure and like what happened after that did it was it a cinderella story or did you have to struggle oh it wasn't it wasn't like a cinderella story like it screened well in um sundance and it was a good uh definitely good springboard as you say but it didn't really like lead to oh you gotta have this job but uh what it did lead to was um i i ended up going to a festival in london and a friend of mine was working for a production company and so i landed i was there for a week i landed on the monday she said oh you should give me a copy of the film to show my producers

and just from um just sort of good good luck at that time the first office had come out and was a massive hit and that's sort of a fake documentary low budget so they were very into the tone of foobar and they had um they had this idea that they wanted to shoot a film in ibiza which was it's all gone pink tongue they had a title and they had uh where they wanted to shoot it and that was about it and that led to that job offer which was uh so that was sort of the springboard to that, but that was sort of a leap from a half a million dollar film to maybe a $1.5 million film, but still a great opportunity. How did you conceive of the kind of movies you wanted to make? Cause when I look at the films that you've made, I feel like there's a little bit of, you know, obviously Slapshot and there's a little bit of like John Hughes going on. There's some Lethal Weapon going on. Like

there's a lot of different kinds of movies as i said at the top right you like movies that we used to love but you seem to still have an ability to recreate and to update and modernize like it was that a purposeful choice i don't think it's a i don't think it's a purposeful choice it's just sort of the tone i think there's a consistent tone of comedy throughout all my films which is sort of what i think is funny and And I think that's a nice mix of American and British humor, which a lot of Canadians sort of talk about, which is you grow up where you have SNL and you have SCTV, but you also have sort of the Fawlty Tower shows and Blackadder and that sort of influence. And my parents are Irish. So, and I grew up a little bit of the time in England. So I definitely had that sort of

influence to the comedy. And I think that's in there too, a little bit. Um, I think more than anything, I just try to be honest when I make films. And, and I think that sort of shines through. I don't know if that answers the question, but it's a, it's a tough question to answer. Well, I'm curious what you like look for when you're looking at scripts, when you're figuring out where you're going to go next, what is it you want to say? Right, right, right. Yeah. I mean right yeah i mean i'm looking for something different so i'm looking for somebody to challenge myself so after making uh goon which was uh you know a violent hockey film and and you know when i look when we start to when i start to make those films i look back at those old like slap shot or north dallas 40 so that's where that sort of vibe comes from is is you look at those films you know how we're going to make this different and still

embrace what made that made those films so cool. Like the original Longest Yard or all those movies all had this grit and, and, uh, a nice authenticity to it. And I thought the hockey genre had been just so maligned, like you've got them dogs as goalies and people as tooth fairies and stuff like that. You know? So I was like, why doesn't, and there has been some great hockey movies like Miracle, uh, for sure. like not saying all of them are bad but for the most part they were all pretty campy for what hockey was so um so i want to do that and then after making goon you sort of say okay how can i challenge myself differently and then um a script comes across your desk and it's it's um it's a great romantic comedy you're like oh let's try you're like, oh, let's try something else. And then after doing that, I'm like, now I want to do something hard

again and I want to do, so it's just sort of trying to, trying to show your range as, as well as trying to just challenge yourself and do things to do something different every time. What's it like for someone making films the way that you have been? Are you pitching yourself for a project? Are you getting your pick of scripts that are out there at this stage for you um it's a bit of a mix um you'll you usually when a script is really good it's competitive like um a script will come across and you grab you read it and you're like yeah this is great and nine times out of ten there's probably two or three other people vying for it so you're up against a bunch of people and so you have to go in and pitch.

The other way you do it is you develop your own material and then you go in and try and get a cast on it and sell it around. And then there'll just be ones that are like, there'll be an occasional Marvel film or something that comes around that you get on a list for that you have no idea. It's just a big thing that you have to go in and pitch for. Goldstein and Daly, who produced this movie,

seem like two of the only other people that are trying to make the kinds of movies that you have to go in and pitch for. Goldstein and Daly, who produced this movie, seem like two of the only other people that are trying to make the kinds of movies that you make. Yeah, yeah. Sort of mainstream studio comedy that is, like, great for audiences. Yeah. How did Stuber come to you? Were they there first?

Were you there first? They were there first. Yeah, they were attached as producers, but they were just fantastic to work with. I mean, they're great directors in their own right, great writers, and turned out to be great producers. Definitely sort of gave you enough rope to do what you needed to do, but always overseeing stuff and stepping in whether or not if it's a line here or sort of tweaking some things here in the script or just helping out. But they were fantastic and i agree i think game night's one of the best uh comedies in the last five years and and they really um

they really know how to turn things on their heads a little bit even if it's just individual scenes just make it feel fresh or surprise people with tangential lines or whatever it is just to try to make it feel feel different so how did Stuber come to you then? Stuber came to me. Um, I'd known, uh, the executive over there, uh, for a long time we had been involved in, uh, I'd written a couple of scripts for him and try to get a couple of projects off the ground. And, um, yeah, they sent me the script and I just read it and thought, yeah,

this would be a great sort of blueprint for an old school action comedy if we cast it right and get it right. And, yeah, this would be a great sort of blueprint for an old school action comedy if we cast it right and get it right. And it just felt like I've been trying to make sort of that action comedy for a couple of years and a lot of the projects had fallen apart and this one just stuck and seemed to have the momentum to get through. Why do you think the action comedy is in a relatively low state right now? I think it's because it's hard to fire on both cylinders. And I think what the action comedies that I grew up loving had a bunch of things going on. And that's what I tried to make Stuber in the same vein as.

I don't know. I think people have, and I'm already sort of feeling it, the reaction on this one is that they don't know, quite know how to traverse that thing of like hardcore violence and comedy. And I think those two not only live well together but complement each other. If you make the violence hardcore enough, it goes full circle of being funny. Yeah.

And you can implement a ton of mistakes and weird shit into the violence uh, into the violence that, that makes it funny. And, and, uh, and it feels like it's either the comedy suffers and the action is good or the action suffers and the comedy is good. But I think if you can get the, both those cylinders firing, it's a great film. So that was sort of the goal on this. And that's what I think where a lot of the,

the, the things fail, like the action is so soft. It doesn't feel like there's real stakes and it's really just a comedy. And those films do well. I mean, you know, but it's,

they're not the films I like. What's in your action comedy hall of fame. Oh, uh, 48 hours for sure. Which didn't even start as a comedy until they cast Eddie Murphy. Um, uh,

midnight run lethal weapon for sure. Um, running scared is probably a pretty good one. These are all ringer hall of fame movies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure Running Scared is probably a pretty good one these are all Ringer Hall of Fame movies yeah yeah for sure Beverly Hills Cop

again again and Eddie Murphy wasn't an action wasn't a comedy and then they cast Eddie Murphy I think they were gonna cast Sly Stallone initially

was Stuber always this exact balance did it change at all based on how the cast came in how you know as you said I mean we developed the script.

It maybe would have been a little... I think I tried to inject a lot of the violence into it and a lot of the set pieces and try to just flesh those out a lot more. But yeah, it was essentially this story. But once you get the cast, then you can get the tone right with everybody and make sure

everybody's on the same page. Were Dave and Kumail attached to this before you came on? No, no. So how did you go about making them your stars? What was the thinking behind both of those guys? We initially, yeah, I mean, Dave felt like a guy who was coming up and up, and I liked his work in Guardians of the Galaxy, obviously,

but it wasn't until i saw blade runner and he also did a short as a promotion for blade runner that i don't know if a lot of people saw but i think you can see it on the internet it was sort of a five minute ten minute short film about that character i haven't seen that yeah it's great it doesn't have a lot of screen time in his character doesn't have a lot of screen time in the film but even what i saw in the film i was like yeah this kid this, this guy has a ton of gravitas. You know, he's a great actor. He says a lot without, does a lot without saying a lot, just has a ton of presence.

And I thought, you know, Vic to me was always like Nick Nolte, like always sort of this crotchety, banged up old guy who, you know, has a lot of sort of baggage on it on his weighing him down and um so i just thought dave would be great and then camille um i'd loved him in in big sick and was a fan of his comedy and then or sorry in uh silicon valley but when i saw big sick i just thought yeah this guy can carry movie for sure he's a star uh he's funny he's dramatically great and uh and then we just put them together in a chem read and as soon as they were sort of sharing a screen together i was like oh yeah these guys are perfect it's funny because on the one hand i think those guys are big stars who have been part of successful projects but the concept of the comedy movie star is really evolving and it's a little hard to know who is an actual like i can get my movie made with this person kind of star sure what was that

was that hard for you to kind of get something across the line by saying these are my two guys? No. And I have to credit Fox, the studios that Emma and Jeremy were pushing that. Is that they didn't want somebody who had baggage. They didn't want necessarily a big massive star. They wanted somebody – they were able to take educated bets on people. And, and these guys are pretty safe bets in my opinion, is that we felt their trajectory was going up. First and foremost, we thought they were talented and were great together as a team. And, and

we thought that some of all the parts could probably outshine sort of a big quote unquote star established star in that part. What's it like using a company like Uber as a part of your movie making mechanism? It's in, I mean, it's so, it's so well known now. It just feels like using a Kleenex or something. It's not like, this is not a advertisement for Uber. We have no connection with Uber. We never talked to them. We never, there, there was no, it's not a 90 minute ad for them at all. Um, it's just part of life. Like we all take Ubers now and we all ride share. And, um, it was just a device like, you know, the taxi cab and collateral or whatever to, you know, it just is what it is. And, uh, we thought it was, you know, it's been around so

much and everybody use it enough. It would be a good sort of point of reference for people. I never made the collateral reference reference but this is a little bit of collateral in the sun a little bit of collateral yeah for sure that's funny uh this is the biggest budget i imagine you worked with right yes what was the biggest challenge that came with that uh it's always time i think yeah um it's always time i try to prep as much as possible and make the film and prep um but even with that you never never have enough time. Do you storyboard? Do you do shot lists? It's like overhead maps. I storyboard action sequences for sure,

but I don't need to storyboard two people sitting in a car. I just use sort of overhead maps and shot lists, and I sit down with the DOP and the AD, and we try to meet every day at 7 a.m. and just spend two hours every day shot listing and organizing what we're going to shoot. And then the AD is there to deal with logistics.

Bobby, the DOP is there to deal with sort of how we're going to do this and figure this out so that by the time we're on set, we're efficient. We're not dealing with where we're going to put the camera or what are we going to do. We've scouted it all. So as much as I can, I try to that environment not only to have the action the time to do the action properly but most importantly to have the time to do the improvisation properly is that um that time with your actors on set is so valuable especially when you're trying to make a comedy and the more alts you can get the more time you have to play with them uh i think the more energy and the funnier, just mathematically, the film will be.

So it's, yeah, and you have to really protect that time in prep. You have to make sure you hire the right crew, that if you get a slow DOP, you're done. You'll never have the time as you'll sit there watching people light and stuff like that. So you just have to make sure you design the production to have that time with the actors to uh to improvise do you improvise on all your movies all of them i mean the first i mean

the fubar films are completely improvised i mean the first one was done off a three-page outline the second one was off of like a 45 page treatment essentially um and then but even all the other films i do i try to i try to improvise as much as possible what was it like with kumail and and dave's uh chemistry easy to easy to improvise easy they're they're great um you know i you get the script first i'm a big proponent of that or else you're just sort of off in the ether fooling around so at least the editor has a tight version of what this what the scene should go from a to b and then you um you let them play and it's a combination of of having an onset writer who's who's coming up with alts and then that'll provide tangents for both me and for the actors to to to

jump off of and try different things but it's about having that extra sort of every scene you have that extra 50 minutes to peel back and to just let them go. And with those two guys are great. As the deeper you got into the film, the more of a shorthand they had, but they're just fantastic together. And Kamail is obviously a bit more of the comedy motor, but Dave is as funny and great as more of the straight man too. Yeah, their chemistry is incredible.

They're really funny together. So I read that this is the first disney r release yes since 2013 yes obviously when you started making the film there was not you it was not a disney release yes but uh we've survived a weird phase in that studio yes uh was the movie always are always are uh yeah i think my lawyer scared me and just reminded me at some point during shooting that contractually I had to deliver something less. But then, no, they, I mean, that's Fox is that they're, they understand that those movies can do really well, obviously, with Deadpool and stuff like that. So they're big proponents of R-rated comedies. And a lot, I think a lot is, from what people tell me around town,

a lot is riding on this one as it's Disney's. They bought Fox and they want, you know, okay, let's give an R-rated comedy the Disney sort of promo machine treatment. How does that feel for you? It feels great. Okay. No pressure? A ton of pressure, but, you know,

I've done my job, you know. We'll see how audiences respond, but I love the film and it plays great in front of a crowd. And, um, you know, people, people really have responded to it.

So I think of the film as legs. And I think the more people that see it, the more word of mouth they'll, they'll spread it. And it's weird to have it with such a saturated release. I mean, it's, I'm not complaining by any means,

but I think in the same breath, it, it, there's a sort of a, uh, a backhanded response to that where people like start to rail against it because they see the ad so much and they see the trailer so much yeah i've been on the other side and i'll take this side any day i suspect you'll have a good word of mouth that's my that's my yeah yes because i have not talked to a person who's seen it so like oh i didn't like that everybody that i yeah everybody who's seen it seems to like it and everybody and they talk uh and that sort of stuff will spread after a while and you guys kind of did the smart shotgun south by southwest screening which tends to drive good buzz for a movie I think yeah and I also think there's a thing where like when people

sort of discover the film a little bit they're like wow this is great rather than like you must go see this film sort of being advertised on. So what do you do next as a studio filmmaker? Because I feel like a lot of people come in and I talk to are at a weird crossroads where it's like, well, should I make a series for a streamer? Should I continue to pursue? Yeah, I mean, it's a good time to be making stuff because the market is great right now. I've already shot another film. I just shot a film called Coffee and Cream for Netflix, which is another action comedy script

that I was sort of developing around the same time as I was developing Stuber, and then Stuber went first, but Netflix waited for me. So once I finished that, I went off to make this one. This one is Ed Helms, Taraji Henson, Betty Gilpin again. And this 12-year-old who is amazing called Terrence Little Garden High, who is like a junior Marshawn Lynch. And it's essentially about Ed Helms plays a white cop in Detroit who's in a new sort of affair with a single African-American mother played by Taraji. And one morning while they're having a session, Kareem, the 12-year-old, witnesses them having

sex and puts a hit out on the white cop. So it's this 12-year-old kid and this white cop. So the story sort of sits on a powder powder keg of you know political social issues in the states right now but i think that makes it just riper and sharper for the for the comedy that's fun what other kinds of movies do you want to make uh i'd love to make something on a bigger palette i'd love to make something in space um i'd love i've kids so i'd love to make a kids movie um a western because i grew up in calgary and probably a horror film. I got probably got a pretty good horror film in me. So how do you do that?

Are those things that you would write yourself? Do you have to go searching for the right project? It's a bit of both. Like, um, I'm always developing stuff on my own. Like I have a project I really want to do, which I can't talk about quite yet. Um, that I, um, it's an adaptation of a documentary, uh, which, um, which is comedy, but it's, it's, it's, it is comedy, but it's a great project. So there's that stuff like that. And then people are sending me scripts all the time and you sort of read them.

You have to think, is there a nugget of an idea? Probably 90% of the time, the scripts aren't ready yet. But if there's a good idea that you think you can run with, or it has the right tone that you like or it makes you laugh and you can develop further then you throw your hat in the ring and go for it. But you have to be picky and you can't be throwing your hat in the ring all over town. A lot of filmmakers

attach themselves to a ton of stuff and I think that dilutes what it means to attach yourself to something. Do you have a strong feeling about where you want people to see your movies? Very good question. I would love for them to see um see it in theaters more but i'm also hyper realistic of what's going on these days so

um like for the netflix film i was like talking to the post supervisor about oh where are we gonna mix you know i like a big mix stage and she reminded me that we're only have to deliver a stereo near field mix and i was like right because everybody's just gonna watch it on their tvs or on their ipads or phones or or whatever so that's a weird thing like i always love going to the theater so i would love to people to keep going to the theaters and i also think there's you know there's there's also like a not a greed but a ambition to to screening in theaters and having a release like this, that it can pop and a film can work. And that's, I think that's any filmmaker's goal is to have a film that really reaches a wide audience. And with the streamers, it's a little hard or impossible to tell if it has or hasn't or what that effect is, you know? So how do you

define success for something like Stuber then? Is it based on the amount of money it makes? Is it, are you looking at the reviews? You know, what's your relationship to that? I think it's, I think if people see it and enjoy it, that's probably the success. The reviews I'm less concerned about because I love the film and, you know, I can't account for critics' tastes. And I think their, you know, their ammunition is, or their currency is contrarianism. So it's, and that's their job. They're supposed to be critical.

But yeah, if a lot of people saw the film, that would be success for me for sure and enjoyed it. Because I've had it sort of – with Goon, a lot of people saw the film and I hear how much people like it. But it never got the theatrical release. So you kind of hear about it and it's sort of a critical or a thing that amasses over the years and stuff like that. Yeah. In our office. You don't get that immediate response. Yeah.

There's a cult fandom and it like everybody missed it in theaters and now everybody who's seen it advocates for it. But you want everybody to show up on opening night. Exactly. Yeah. That would be the goal. Mike, I end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen. I don't know how many movies you see these days. I see a lot um the last great movie i saw is a netflix film a french film

called the wolf's call i haven't seen it's a submarine film with um omar seer uh rita keleb i'm probably screwing up his name um and um matthew kesevitz uh and a young french actor who's fantastic but it's about like a's about a guy who listens on the subs. And it's fantastic. So that was the last movie I saw. It was great. And I also re-watched Tootsie recently to show my kids. And I just cannot.

I'd seen it 20 years ago, but I hadn't seen it in a long time. And that might be the coolest Woody Allen movie he never made. Yeah, yeah. It feels like it would be hard to make a Tootsie in 2019. I don't think you should touch it. Nobody should remake that movie because it made. Yeah. Yeah. You never, it feels like it would be hard to make a Tootsie in 2019. I don't think you should touch it. Like nobody should remake that movie. Cause it's, it's almost perfect.

It's literally almost perfect. It's such a funny movie and has so much heart. That's a great one. Mike, thanks for doing this. Thank you. Thanks again to David Shoemaker and Michael Dowse. Please stay tuned.

Next week on The Big Picture, we got a couple more episodes coming for you. First, we'll have a conversation early in the week with the writer and director of a beautiful new film called The Farewell, Lulu Wong. And then later in the week, Amanda Dobbins and I are going to be breaking down, yes, indeed, The Lion King.