The Joe Rogan Experience - #1995 - Chad Stahelski

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

Chad Stahelski is the director of the "John Wick" film franchise, as well as a producer and stuntman. Look for "John Wick: Chapter 4" in theaters and video on demand, or Blu-ray and DVD on June 13, 2023.  www.lionsgate.com/franchises/john-wick www.87eleven.net/person/chad-stahelski/

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Yeah, Chad, just get, take, oh. Is that how I'm going to start the show? Take a hit of that, we'll start the show. Just get in there. Oh, jeez. And that's, that's not even a fresh one.

Okay. When they're fresh, they're real. I just wanted to do it twice to make sure that was real. Shout out to, how do you say his name? Jujimufu. Jujimufu. For his smelling salts. If it was fresh, you couldn't do that twice.

It's fresh. If it's fresh, you get like that close. And you're just like. Yeah, no, I'm awake. That was a good one, though. Definitely awake. I'm going to bring these to the comedy mothership. I'm going to see.

I'm going to see. I'm going to take a big blast right before I go on stage. It's supposed to wake up your central nervous system or something. I don't even know if there's any science to it. No, it just sucks. It might be just a bunch of psychos who are just, like, freaking their brain out with smelling salts. I'm awake.

Anyway, man, congrats on the movie. It looks awesome. Thank you. It's very exciting. Very nice, congrats on the movie. Looks awesome. Thank you very much. It's very exciting. Very nice to be here. Big fan. Thank you. My pleasure.

Boy, Jesus Christ, is it over the top. Way over the top. This fucking deal is so crazy. Yeah. It's so crazy. I saw a thing online of the amount of people that John Wick has killed compared to Michael Myers and Jason. I think we beat him, right? Oh, yeah. I think we beat Rambo, too. I think you beat everybody. that John Wick has killed compared to, like, Michael Myers and Jason. Oh, yeah.

By a long shot. I think we beat Rambo, too. I think you beat everybody. But I think we had more deaths than Keanu spoke words in the movie. Oh, for sure. A hundred percent. Everybody's bringing it up to me. I think he spoke 308 words in the movie or something.

Yeah. Well, listen, it works. It's perfect. Yeah, something fun, something for the guys. Yeah. And the action fans and everybody out there. Oh, yeah. It's perfect. Yeah, something fun, something for the guys. Yeah. And the action fans and everybody out there. Oh, yeah. It's murder porn.

Hopefully it's artistic murder porn. It's artistic. It is. It's interesting how they're all so different, too. Like the fourth one is like almost like a comic book movie. It's like it's so over the top and crazy. Graphic anime. I think it's probably the best story that we've told.

But it's definitely wrapped up in the hyper real world. You know, we get bored. So we wanted to go somewhere and do something. And it's always like, how do we start these things? What do we do? We never start with a concept, right? It's usually we're done. We're done.

We're never going to do one again. And then Japan gets released like six months after the rest of the world. So we're usually doing a press tour in Japan. And we're sitting in the Imperial Hotel. They have an amazing scotch bar and we start off with the first drink on thank god it's done god we survived and by like the fifth scotch we're like hey man i got a great fucking idea let's have them fight ninjas and then that's how it starts and it's been that way for the last three so you started off as a stuntman yeah and how did you how did you transition to becoming a director?

Because that's like, there's got to be a lot of barriers that are in the way. I think different time for sure. You know, before cell phones, before all that stuff, we started as a stunt guy, before all the streamers. You know, I was working for this guy, Ernie Ersadi, way back in the day, a brilliant stunt coordinator and second unit director on television. And I was working on, I don't know if you remember, the old show, like Pretender. Yeah. With Michael T. Weiss. Sure, yeah.

He could be anything, that kind of thing. And I was doing a gig on that. I had just done a car hit. I think I was only like 24. I split my head off on the windshield. It was a mess. And then he comes to me as I'm holding the ice pack on my head. He's like, hey, they're having auditions for this sci-fi film in Burbank.

You're off. If you hurry, you can make it. And Gene's in a T-shirt and I'm bleeding. And I'm like, all right, yeah, sure, I'll go make it. It's for that Keanu Reeves guy. You know, Speed. Keanu Reeves, I'll go see him, sure. So you go up there and it was an audition for The Matrix.

And, you know, at the time, you remember, back in the day, there weren't a lot of martial art movies at a big budget level. It was like Steven Seagal or Van Damme or Mark Dukaskis, all those guys at the time. And martial arts, they didn't do them in big budget films. It was considered low budget, action porn kind of thing. And we get there. We get to this big warehouse in Burbank. And you saw this guy really scruffy looking with a neck brace.

It's Keanu. He had just come out from neck surgery. Oh, Jesus. There's like 15 Hong Kong and Chinese stuntmen there screaming and yelling. I said, hey, I'm here for the audition. And I meet these two fellows that come over. It's the Wachowskis at the time, now Lana and Lily. And they introduced themselves, and we were like hey you know I'm Chad

I'm here for the okay great this is Yung Wu Ping and I was like oh no one told it and Yung Wu Ping we knew from was the big choreographer

that started Jet Li and Jackie Chan did like Iron Monkey oh wow once upon a time in China and all that stuff so it was Yung Wu Ping and his guys

and they're like okay you just you just follow this guy and this little guy named Tiger Chen Tiger Chen fucking phenomenal guy could do triple flip twist this could do anything a wushu champion i just follow that guy just do what he does and for the next hour i tried you know being the tall white guy trying to just keep up with him um can you do all that stuff god no god i just do as much as i could till I fell down. But I was pretty flexible. I

had a good gymnastic background. So I'd throw a backflip. I'd do the kicks. I'd do all the spin hook kicks. And we'd train with a lot of taekwondo guys and stuff. So we were pretty good at all the kicking and punching and some of the acrobatics. But then it got to a level, he picks up a stick and now it's, you've seen the wish you guys, they're going mental. And I'm like, oh boy, at the end of an hour, I'm in jeans and a t-shirt still bleeding from a head wound oh Jesus did you have a concussion I probably I think so knowing now we're looking back like yeah it didn't seem too good um but I finished drove home thought wow I really screwed the pooch on that one I never thought I'd hear from those guys again and then like a month later I call hey can you come back an exact same audition again exact same and got the call saying hey would you like to double Keanu Reeves on this

sci-fi movie in Australia and I was like yeah I got this other gig on TV I think I'm gonna have to pass and the producer time was Barry Osborn who went on to do all the all the Lord of the Rings and he was like yeah he's kind of little saying no and I thought okay i fucked that up i'll never work again and then cut to two months later it was in february and he calls back hey we had to push the shoot you available now it's like yeah actually i am so i literally flew to australia like two weeks later got there and within a day you realized oh this wasn't this isn't a normal show you saw the rehearsals you saw some of the sets you saw some of the footage and it was the fucking matrix oh wow so that's how we got in

how i got in with the wachowskis and i spent the next eight and a half years with them through all the matrix sequels and all there's some of their other shows and with james fatigue doing v for vendetta just lived in the wachowski world and that's probably one of the most incredible film schools you'll ever have you know that's where I got to know Keanu and all that. Cut two years later after all that, Keanu and I had worked together for so long there. He knew I had been doing a lot of second unit directing, which for people that don't know, it's the action,

the fight scenes, the car chases, the sunsets, all the shit first unit doesn't want to deal with. Usually big action sequences. So they have these action directors or second unit guys go out and do the units, trying to do it more efficiently without the cast with the stunt doubles and such. And Keanu had gotten this script that he thought was something interesting about it. It was called Scorn, and it was the original John Wick script. How did it become called John Wick? Derek Kolstad's grandfather's name is John Wick.

Derek Kolstad being the writer of it. So he just gave tribute to his grandfather, call him Wick, John Wick. Oh, wow. Pretty trippy, yeah. And so how did that become the name of the movie? Keanu, at the original script score, the guy was like 65. He lived in a little brown city. It was a very, very grounded script.

I think only two people died in the original script. It was like one in a car crash. That's hilarious. Yeah, it was just very cold. it was very Cold War, old school. And that's where the gold coins came from because you didn't want to leave a paper trail. It had very simple little ideas. Oh, wow. And he handed it to myself and was like, hey, would you like to take a look at this?

And I was like, sure, sure, sure. I read it and I was like, yeah, I don't know what to do with this action-wise. He only kills two people. He's like, well, we're trying to change it and we're thinking of this. I'm like, well, he's like, would you like to direct it? I was like, sure. I read it and I was like, ah, yeah, I don't know what to do with this action wise. He only kills two people. It's like, well, we're trying to change it. And we're thinking of this. I'm like, well, you know, he's like, would you like to direct it? I was like, whoa. Yes. As a matter of fact, I had no experience directing and then you direct John Wick. Yeah. Just second unit. Yeah. Dude. Me and my partner at the time, Dave Leach, I called Dave. That was on a Friday. I called Dave on a Saturday going, Hey,

we might have a shot. We got to put a pitch together in 24 hours. So I always had this idea about Greek mythology and how we could layer it and do this. I'm a big Tolkien fan. So how do you take a fantasy gig and make it modern day? So we're like, let's take it that way. And we'll put gods and Greeks and Sharon and the river Styx. And we'll make this whole Zeus thing going on. And we kind of layered it.

And Keanu just heard it on Monday and went, hmm, interesting. And he said, sure, you want to do it? I'm like, yeah, you know, me and my partner Dave, we'll co-direct, we'll do this. And we brought it to the producer, Basil Ionic, the next day. And he goes, well, Keanu, why don't you share? We had done a little tape on that Sunday about the gun-fu stuff.

We took Aikido, Aikijutsu, put it all in the close quarter, tactical shit with some reloads, and we did a quick little pre-vis in our space, 8711, the gun-fu stuff. We took Aikido, Aikijutsu, put it all in the close quarter tactical shit with some reloads, and we did a quick little pre-vis in our space 8711 back in LA and showed it to them. Everybody thought, oh my god, this is gonna be, you know, great. Can Keanu do it? We're like, yeah, I hope so. Where did the magazine reload

flip come from? That funny thing that I'm gonna give total cred to Keanu. Wow! 100%. He started doing that in the second one. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? He's like, yeah, I'm checking it out. Fuck. He started doing it.

I was like, that's awesome. It is awesome. People do that now. Yeah, it's a legit thing. They're doing a competition. You know how crazy that is? That an actor for a film decides to come up with a thing, and it's actually a quicker way to eject a magazine. He can do forehand and backhand.

Wow. He does it with the AR, too. Like, you're watching the second one, he'll do a quick flip with the AR, and he'll put it on. You're like, where the fuck did he get that? Well, he really, really trained for that movie. That's him. I mean, you can really tell. I mean, there's films where guys do tactical scenes where you go like, okay, I can buy it.

But in that movie – The typical military way of cutting through, pieing the corners and stuff, the very tactical sense. I think you're right. I see that. It's just – it's like with martial arts. You can do the quick finger jab in the eye, right? Right. Once in a while, that staccato beat is cool.

But choreography and for the visual of it, i think sometimes you have to add something you have to show people something they kind of expect subvert it and give them something a little bit different you know spice it up a little bit so i think we went more with the competition sense you know i saw taryn online you know jj perry a buddy of mine introduced me to taryn online and i saw taryn and i saw some of the quick i was like fuck that's what we got to put a little spice in this yeah and then sent Keanu out there. Taron is such a freak. Oh, my God. Freak of me.

Like, he's, no one, let's be honest, no one should be that good. He's crazy how good he is. He should not be that good. The speed that he has is so insane. How many people have you seen that are good at what they do? He's such a good guy, too. He's such a fun guy to be around. So easy going.

And what a great instructor, too, because he's so calm and easy. And he's got a naturalistic approach. It's just follow your body, follow your body. He's one of the only reasons I like to go back to L.A. For real. He's the only reason I go to Simi Valley. Well, that's, I mean, whenever I'm in town, I always make a trip. And you get better every time, right?

Oh, for sure. There's a little something. Yeah, for sure. Just by watching him, you can see. And, you know, I was up there just yesterday, as a matter of fact, picking up something. And I had introduced him to an actor about three or four weeks ago. And he had taken this cast member in just three sessions. And the cast member happened to be up there yesterday.

And to watch what he had done with him in three weeks, I mean, granted, there is a little unnatural ability there, I could tell, but the progression and how fast he gets you from just pointing a firearm to drawing it, hip shooting, pressing, walking, and running through the course. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to explain, right, until you actually, you can see it online, but when you're there and seeing how fast the pings are coming and actually watching Taron go through the obstacle course, it's really, really impressive. No, he's a freak.

He's weird. Something's going on in his brain. Do you think – there's something about the hand-eye coordination. We all have a little bit, especially through martial arts. Not like that. No. Well, obviously he's been doing it forever, but he's got some God-given ability. It's got to be some autism, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It has to be. A hundred percent. Because he can just – I've seen him do things where he's looking one way and he's still lining up. He just knows that – what would you call it? Like that physical dissonance, that body memory. Yep. The motor muscle memory to get in there and play it.

And no red dot. He's doing it all through the – No, all iron sights. All old school. All old school. And that's how he teaches, which I love. Yeah, I love it too because he says red dots fail. And I've had red dots fail.

All the time. All the time. And you're like, what the fuck? Is it fucking – ah, shit. And you're fucking with it. And he's just like, okay, as you're fucking around with that, I'm just going to go shoot a couple of bulls. But he's been very good. Like I'm naturally left-handed, but I always shoot with him right-handed.

But he's helped me so I can – he's got me to the point where I can kind of go through the range with both hands and the same dominant eye which is a bit of a trip next year you go try try alternate hands it'll mess with your but it I think it'll help your sighting I'm sure everything you do with your left hand will help your right hand I learned that from martial arts yeah they someone told me that a long time ago that if you practice your bad, it actually improves the technique on your good side. I think it helps you think in a different way, right? Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons why left-handed people are so good at things. What did they say, like, you know, back in the day, you know, gladiatorial or whatever, like, the left-handed, because it was harder.

It wasn't so much that they were better, they just, you weren't used to fighting with them. Well, I think also, well, there's definitely that. Like, when you spar with people, especially in boxing. Yeah, when they go southpaws. When you spar southpaws, it's so confusing. Well, it fucks up your footwork because you don't want to keep stepping on their foot. Exactly. Kickboxing maybe is a little bit different.

Well, kickboxing, well, MMA in particular, like the elite guys like Sanhagen, these guys, they switch stances constantly. Constantly. And so this is, you're getting overloaded with possibilities all the time which makes it so interesting when you get to these high-level guys you know we get to like an Israel Adesanya guy they they give you so many looks you don't know what the fuck is changing that stance all yeah and fainting all the time and it's very interesting I came up I did a lot of box front say like savant which is very open stance II like they'd move it's constant motion if you watch those old savant guys right they're constantly

so they would fall from what's a false lead and you see so much of that now and i mean you're right it's false leads they're switched so you don't it's hard to gauge or set them up yes it's fascinating to watch now i think athletes today especially in martial arts are like just right whole nother level a whole nother level you can can't even compete with what. They're the best of the best. No one's ever been better. It's like martial arts, I've always said this, that since 1993, in the last 30 years, martial arts have evolved more than they have over the last 30,000 years. Completely agree. No question.

No ifs, ands, or buts. The fitness, the training mentality, and just the combative alacrity that these guys have. Yes. The ability to, I mean, they're insane athletes, number one, but to kick, punch, shoot, and grapple and not miss a beat and get right back up. Like, you just watch them. It's almost choreography. That's how good they're being trained.

I mean, they're zero range. You know, before it used to be like jab, jab, jab until you can shoot it. Now it's like they can change ranges on the fly. They're so good at it. And they're switching levels on you. Like they're doing one thing to set up a takedown. They're using takedowns to set up strikes. I mean it's amazing.

It's mental. It's so mental. It's scary how good it is. It really is because it's so much different than any other version of martial arts that existed before the UFC came along. I think we had become so divided. You know, you were just the kicker. You were just the puncher. Right.

It was almost a stylistic civil war going on. Like, my kung fu could beat your kung fu. Well, yeah. My kicking will beat your punching. You're like, what? What did you start training in? I was originally a judo first. I did a lot of judo back when I was 10 to, like, 16.

Then I started karate. It was like a Kyokushinkai, Koko Kondo karate and Japanese Jiu Jitsu. Did that all the way until I came to I went to school at USC

from Massachusetts and I got here and I bumped in this guy Bert Richardson who was a big student under Dan Inosano and Bert was teaching like just a Kali class

Kali and Silat over at USC. And I met him, and I was a big fan of Dan Inosano from all the Black Belt magazine. So he hooked me up, and I got into the Inosano Academy. And that's where it went mental. We studied with Francis Fong and Paul Datoit for Indonesian Silat. We had every other Filipino instructor you could imagine from that. We had Francis and Chouinard and Salim Asselin for Savat search I Sarah suit from white tie and

then we get these you know guest appearances by like all these great martial art instructors and that's awesome and that's where I met this guy Jeff Amato at the time was a very big stunt coordinator and he kind of recruited us into the stunt world from there. Oh, that's great Wow, so and so then you get into the stunt world you're doing that for years and years and the this is so crazy That John wick is your first breakthrough movie as a director and it's a fucking Gigantic we tried to look for some of those kind of bulletproof we figure very short story Oh, man kills dog guy goes right, you know And then we kind of layered in with the subtext of grief and suffering.

Everything. It's perfect. It was all about the puppy. Who was the Russian gentleman, the guy who plays the father? Yeah, Michael Nyquist. Yeah, that guy was so good. So good. He was in the original Girl with Dragon Tattoo, and I think he did the third Mission Impossible.

I think he was the bad guy in. He died recently, right? Yeah, he died a couple years ago. I don't know if it was a heart attack or stroke, but he died. He still has a nice charity thing that they do every year for him. God, that guy was so good. Fantastic guy. That fucking scene. Swedish actor. The scene where he's

explaining to his son, who's also awesome. The guy was in Game of Thrones. What is his name? Alfie. Alfie Allen. That guy's incredible. So good. We cast a lot off Game of Thrones. Oh my God. I used to love Game of Thrones. He's so good. He plays such a good fuckhead. Oh, my God. He's such a good prick. But in life, it's so funny. He is the shyest, quietest, super nice, like hardest.

Just never left set. Always there ready to do his thing. The sweetest kid ever. Yeah, well, I can believe it. And he just plays, he's so good at that role. Oh, my God. He's so good. But that scene when he's at the bar pouring the drink. Yeah.

Explain it. Giving him the little fairy tale of the Baba Yaga. Oh, it's such a good scene. You know, we were kind of laughing at ourselves. We're like, how do we make a movie that people are going to watch? How do we do something other than the gritty, you know, born action and stuff like that? It's like, we got to do a fairy tale. We just got to do a fairy tale.

We're going to do a campsite fire. We're going to have this little fairy tale. So we started looking up all these russian fairy tales like we need a cool name okay babayaga it's a witch don't worry no one will ever know no one ever see the movie it'd be fine and we're like oh fuck it's not the guy it's the guy you sent to kill the boogeyman okay we'll work this out but it was like just building like i'm fascinated by mythology so if you can build your own myth that's what we're just trying to do like we're trying to be a little ridiculous that's why we use the color like um instead of just noir black and white we tried to do like neon noir we had jonathan sella and then

dan louse and the cinematographers on it and to try and take it and give visual cues to the audience that like this isn't real it's a fairy tale right and i'm bored with it that's why i see the color differentiation right when the cop knocks on the door and he goes, hey, you're working again, we just switch colors. And we're like, okay, hopefully people will get that we're now in a fantasy. Well, it just seemed it was realistic but not. Yeah. You need one anchor.

You always need one anchor. One of my buddies called me up. And he goes, have you seen John Wick? I go, no, is it good? He goes, dude. Did you good he goes dude when you get that dude you're gonna fucking love it and then I and then I saw it I'm pretty sure I saw it in the film in the movie theater and uh I mean right away I was like holy shit this is my kind of movie I mean this is so much fun it's uh right it? Everyone's kind of an odyssey.

Like, you know, we all, we're probably the same generation. We grew up with, like, Steve McQueen and Bronson. Sure. You know, a little bit where, like, not a lot of dialogue, but, like, you know, Bullet, he's in that car. Oh, my God. And you're fucking in it. The fucking, we just played the Bullet scene the other day. I mean, that car scene, no music.

No, just, it's all car. Just car. Just all car. Just car shit. And that's the real, that's what, the 68 Mustang. It's just all car. 68 fastback, yeah. All carrying that scene for the whole time.

Yeah. And you're like, that's pretty cool. Have you seen the Revology 68 Mustang? No. Revology makes, they make a replica of the Bullet. Really? But it's with a sick suspension, with a 460 horsepower coyote engine, it's lightweight so it's like 600 pounds less than a real mustang gt from today yeah you'd be able to throw that around oh my god it's it's it's

an incredible car yeah he makes we have to check that out that sounds awesome pull it up i'll show you this is this is what he makes look at that that's beautiful that's his car. I mean, and it's, you know, fucking zero to 60 in four seconds. You know, you can get a six-speed or a manual. And the fucking car screams. It's such a fun car. This guy's Tom Scarpello. He used to work for Ford. He used to be in the program to make the Ford GT.

And so he built this car assembly to get this but he does it it's it's what he does is incredible because he's essentially done it like a production car but it's a brand new 1968 and it's done but it's not just the bullet car. He does the 67 GT500, 67 GT350. That's for sure. It's fucking awesome. Well, that's what, I mean, again, for all your listeners, you're the one that told us to use the 71 Barracuda. I'm so excited.

When I saw it in the previews, I was like, yes, he listened. No, with context, I bump into you for the first time up at Taron's place. And, you know, we got the handshake. Hey, you know, how you doing? Yeah, yeah. And it was Joe writes me going, love the movies. Where the fuck are the muscle cars? Number three.

That was a problem. I was like, yeah, sorry. I'm like, okay, we'll put one in for the fourth one. He's like, you better. So we go into production and I'm literally sitting in Berlin going, I'm fucking looking for cars. We're over in Europe. How am I going to find a fucking muscle car?

Joe Rogan's going to fucking hate me. It's a bad review. I'm like, how do I do this? So I text Joe. I'm like, what's the perfect car? He's like, 71 Barracuda. Don't go with any of that pussy 69 stuff. You got to get the 71, the four headlights.

Yeah, you don't want to get the early Barracudas. You want 70 and 71. Those are the years. That's why you sent me that picture. And that's the exact car in the movie. It's the exact one with the fins. That's it. That's it Yeah, I mean come on that it's fucking class. We ripped that thing apart like we had a Tanner Faust like one of the best drift. I love that guy Tanner's awesome. He's awesome So he's helped us out on a lot of the John wick

So we brought him into my son quitter Scott Rogers and Steve Dunleavy brought him into T.C. Chicano to do all the 240 and the 360 drifts and all that stuff. So he gets right in there, they just put the new suspension in, put the fucking insane engine in this thing

and they had Keanu doing these fucking circular drifts literally like in two weeks. It hurts so bad watching you guys smash it up. I know. All of them. The 69 Mustang

and John Wick 2 when he destroys it, I'm like, no. I know. We destroyed probably a few 69 Mustang in John Wick 2 when he destroys it. I'm like, no. I know. We destroyed probably a few more than we should have on this one. Did you? Yeah, you got to break a few eggs.

Well, it worked. I mean, how many people went out and bought 69 Mustangs and 70 Chevelles after that film? I actually really enjoyed the Chevelle. I didn't think I'd like the Chevelle as much as I did. I have one. I have one just like that. Yeah, mine's not green, but yours didn't look green. It looked black.

It had that like matrix green that looked- Very dark green. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but in dark, the way you film everything, so dark and moody, it looked black. It's got that kick to it. Yeah. I know I'm supposed to say the Mustang, but I really like the Chevelle. I'm a Chevelle guy.

Yeah, I like the Chevelle. I love the Mustangs too. I mean, I'm a muscle car head. I love them. Yeah, they like the Chevelle. I love the Mustangs, too. I mean, I'm a muscle car head. I love them. Yeah, they're so... It's fun. The guys in Europe, when you go shopping around, it's almost you'll find a... I know there's a lot of people here, but we thought we were going to have a big problem

looking for all the different muscle cars in Europe. Like, there are amazing collectors over there. Really? I love them. Like, warehouse is full of... It makes sense because a lot of Americans collect European cars. Yeah, there's the 60, the 70, rather, 70 Chevelle and further Continental. That was kind of on a goof, too.

We wanted something else, and we ended up getting this, and we're like, oh, my God. We just saw it and went, that's the car. Yeah, that's the car. Yeah, we were trying to make a choice, and Keanu just walked by and goes, no, that one. Yeah, okay. Well, it's, you know, it's in the Mount Everest of the muscle car classics. Yeah. Especially the 70.

Chevelle's weird because, like, the old ones are nice. 68 and 69 are cool. They're really cool. 70's the motherfucker, though. And then 71, they go to, like, this goofy single headlight thing. It doesn't look right. 72 looks like shit. They fucked with the rear taillights.

Well, I think that's what we were really trying to, you kind of summed it up right there. For like the John Wicks, we did it as a goof. We thought we'd never direct again. We're like, Keanu's like, let's just do an action movie for us. You know, whatever.

We're thinking no one's ever going to see it. We'll just keep our second unit jobs just in case. And we're like, we got this big whiteboard and we went in, we wrote down, okay, everybody take a marker. Write down the 10 things you fucking hate

about action movies. And then go write the 10 things you love about action movies that you'd want to see. Like muscle cars, gun fu, or like martial arts,

or like, you know, like suits. We want to bring a little class back. Like what do we love about Bond? What do we love

about Mission Impossible? What's Cruise doing? What's Daniel Craig doing? What's Matt doing in Born? Let's write down all the stuff we love about Bond? What do we love about Mission Impossible? What's Cruise doing? What's Daniel Craig doing? What's Matt doing in Bourne? Let's write down all the stuff we love that makes this. And then we're just going to mix it up and throw all the stuff. I have a museum fetish. I have an art fetish, obviously.

I have a color fetish. I have a dog fetish, obviously. I like making something about a dog. We had attack dogs on the first one, but it just didn't fit. So I moved that over to number three when we have more money. And it's just like, okay, what's all the fun stuff that you want to see in action movies? And none of the structures we had in any of the scripts fit for it. So we're just like, okay, we'll go back to Odysseus in like the Iliad or the Odyssey.

And we'll go, okay, this guy just wants to get home. He just wants to grieve. And we're going to throw as many rocks at him as we can on the way and see if we can make obstruction. And we'll just have Keanu do an endurance race. That's kind of how we did it. And just threw in everything else we love. Well, it's got to be one of the most wild, pulse-pounding movies

ever. Because, like, the scene... I did this thing with my friends. We do it every year. We do this Sober October thing. And one year we did a fitness challenge. And my friends, Ari Shafir, Bert Kreischer, and Tom Segura and me. And Bert Kreischer talks so much shit. And the fitness challenge was we all had to wear these heart monitors.

And it's this thing called MyZones. And you have to keep your heart rate at 80 percent you it's like one point per minute at 90 it's like two points per minute and so it's like it's amount of points per day right and i watched john wick 50 times in a row and i did no i'm not bullshitting man i watched the scene from the the bathhouse scene 50 times in a row I did seven hours of cardio and I did it just to try to break Burt because he was talking so much shit and so like a normal score for a day a guy would get like 400 or 300 I got 1150 for the day holy shit and I put it up the just because I'm like I'm gonna kill you because

he kept talking shit I go dude I'm gonna kill you I'm gonna I'm put it up just because I'm like, I'm going to kill you. Because he kept talking shit. I go, dude, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to drag you to hell. I'm like, you're not going to be able to keep up. I'm going to push myself to the point where I'm almost dead and I'm going to kill you. There's probably a study in that. Visual stimuli. Yeah. To heart rate and adrenaline.

So I'm on an elliptical machine watching that scene with a remote control. Just on loop. Just rewinding it, going back. Rewinding it. That fucking nobody. That's John Wick. And then you go through that. Killing in the house. Get to the red circle bar. Assassinations. Left and right. So that just

carried me through the whole sober October month. That's a psychosomatic study. I probably watched that movie a hundred times. I'm not bullshitting. That's crazy. I watch it whenever I'm bored in the gym. I just throw it on. That's cool.

Yeah. That's cool that you can watch it over and over again. It's a fucking great get you pumped up movie. It was fun to make. But we didn't know. Honestly, we didn't know what we were doing. Did you have any idea it would be so huge, though? No, I swear.

When it was done, though, you had to know you nailed it. No, we got weird comments back. We got like too many headshots cut out all the headshots We got you can't kill the kid Alfion and you can't kill the puppy. Somebody's got to live there You know we were independent So everyone was scared that we weren't gonna get picked up because we had been we went when we shopped it we went to Like four or five studios and we didn't we didn't even finish the pitch They're like no, we're cool. Thank you real. Yeah, we didn and we didn't even finish the pitch. They're like, no, we're cool.

Thank you. Really? Yeah, we didn't get bought. So we made the thing independently with Thunder Road, with Bowser Ionic and Erica Lee. And it wasn't until we came out here actually to Fantastic Fest. Like, no one was buying the movie. So Bowser, let's go. We'll show it at Fantastic Fest, see if anybody will clap.

So me, Dave, and Keanu sneak in real low-key we're gonna do a little surprise thing at that and keanu do his little you know wave to the crowd and the crowd goes fucking mental like mental and like the first family and friends we had everyone got was really quiet afterwards like no applause it was just really quiet really why what do you think that is i just think at the time you were in the fast cut shaky cam and it was you know the the the just it was so ludicrous that he's going to kill 68 or 86 people over a puppy and no one got that i mean you gotta remember this is how we pitch it right so like we'll go to a studio and go okay so we got this game we got keanu reeves right i know

we're first time stunt guys but it's an action movie, right? He's like, okay. And he's going to shoot all this stuff. And so his wife dies of natural causes. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. The bad guys don't kill her. Like, no, no, no, no. But they kill his puppy. I'm like, yeah. And he kills all the people because of the puppy, but not the what.

They're like, what happens next? I'm like, no, that's it. The next 45 minutes are like just rampage. And yeah, yeah, no, we didn't sell it. Boy, they must be kicking themselves now. Yeah, well, Lionsgate bought us internationally, and then they sold us to domestic. And since then, you know, we've gone through a couple regime changes at Lionsgate. But now, like, the last one was really cool.

Like, everyone's on board. Like, Joe Drake, Nathan Kahane, Matt Leonetti um you know um adam fogelson everybody that's part of the regime they really pushed this last one they they knew john wick was cool they loved the third one and they got on board but for the first first round it we had once we sold the movie came out before it even came out there's like this lag they bought it and then there's like six months before we hit theaters i think dave went off and did teenage mutant ninja turtles nine or whatever it was i went off and did like the grimsby brothers or brothers grimsby sasha baron cohen movie second unit town in south africa for like five months because i was broke um it was pretty funny yeah we we thought we'd never direct again so we were

like we better go find some stunt jobs and then it worked out and then um like uh not even a month after it had opened Keanu had called up and go hey they called me about doing number two but only do it with you guys

you're in and I was like are you kidding yes fuck we're in whatever it takes wow that's awesome

completely nutty man yeah and number two just picks up right where number one left off yeah and we just were like

okay and right off the jump like opening scene yeah we had no idea what to do I was like trying to figure out ideas for that. We're like, ah. You know, it's like the Sanford deprivation tank.

It was just go into a room and not leave until we came up with an idea. So you decided just the hunt for his car. Yeah. And then he destroys it. I was sitting with my now partner, Alex Young. We were doing a second unit gig. We were doing Agent 47, the second one, whatever that was called. I think it was Agent 47, right, in Berlin.

And we're sitting there and we had got the call to, okay, we got to come up with an idea. And my partner at the time, or my partner now, Alex Young, was sitting there. And he's like, you got to get the car back, man. He lost his fucking car. I'm like, no one's going to care about the car. I'm like, dude. He was like, he fucking total loves muscle cars. He's like, you got to put the car. Every guy he kills, he's going to get a piece of the car i'm like dude he's like he's like he fucking total loves muscle cars like you gotta put the car every guy he kills he's gonna get a piece of the car back he's getting

his fucking car back i'm like that's a great opening he's gonna get the car back yeah no when he sits in the car and he's like touching the steering wheel he's just you can tell he's like but that's keanu like keanu bring like that's not just john that's keanu keanu loves cars he loves bikes he loves the discipline of it he loves like that's why he John that's Keanu Keanu loves cars he loves bikes he loves the discipline of it he loves like that's why he's got arch motorcycles right if you ever get a chance you should check that shop out it's the most pristine I'm sure I can't fuck with motorcycles I'm scared of them yeah but to build just to watch how he's got all the water cutters there it's very it's a very artistic oh the bikes he makes are incredible they're great but he brings that to every like

he just he's very not compulsive he's very uh he loves the art of things yeah he loves the art of it he like he's fascinated by like who makes this cup joe like how do you like he everything he'll he just fascinated over he wants a story on it he's one of the most curious most um i guess curious artistically like how things are done and who people are. He's just got a genuine curiosity and love for things. He's a very unique guy.

I think so. I've never met him, but just every interview you see with him, every movie, he's a very unusual person. Yeah, and he's got, you know what, I think anybody really artistic

or at least the really, I think, artistic people that I've met, they maintain that little bit of, and I mean this in the best of ways, a little bit of childness wonder. There's still kids a little bit. Like I could talk to you all day about like archery. I could talk to you all day about martial arts. I could talk to you all day about motorcycle.

I could talk to you all day about movies. And I think that's, you got to have that. You need that little inspiration. I think you need that little bit of wonder wonder lust into into certain things and I think he still got that like he he will still he'll see a sequence will come in with the nunchucks and do something he'll start giggling he's like you want me to do that he's like okay that's pretty cool and he just goes from totally serious guy to okay now how do I

learn how to do nothing he just everything you need to know about nunchucks he wants to know about nunchucks. He just throws himself into it. So how much time did he have to train martial arts before John Wick won? Oh, God, it wasn't that, he was coming out of a couple films, so he hadn't been, like, he wasn't in fight shape. So, you know, it's just like you can't just jump back in.

So we gave him, like, I think three to five weeks with some of the trainers we found to get into shape to get into shape. Cut weight, got himself back in, stretched, kind of got back into where he was on the Matrix. And then we stuck him with the fight teams and the stunt guys. I think we had him within three months. That was probably the shortest one we did. That was about three months to get him into that shape and teach him all the Aik the aikido stuff and the aikijutsu but you need so there's so much going on those movies physically that you need to be proficient in yeah the gun stuff the the throws

jujitsu striking everything the jujitsu was the new thing for him probably not the most physically demanding but you know how it is we used to use your hands and feet i mean i'm sure you remember the first time you transitioned jitsu it's like it looks easy but yeah know how it is. You're used to using your hands and feet. I mean, I'm sure you remember the first time you transitioned jiu-jitsu. It's like, it looks easy, but you're like, ah, completely. It's an eye-opener. Yeah, it really is. And only even recently for me, I'm starting to feel like, oh, I can move. It feels just as good to be on my back as my butt. But I think we took a lot of inspiration from dance.

Most of what we do is dance. They're based on dance drills. They're not based on martial arts drills they look like martial arts we kick, punch, but we don't train the actors in tie pads or focus mitts or heavy bag we'll do maybe a little of that for impact stuff but it's mostly about memory

because if a guy can punch and kick that's great but if he can't remember five moves you're not much good to us and it's more martial arts is action reaction or causing the guy to be off balance all our guys are trained to keep him on balance to make it look crazy but they got to dance with him so it's about that metronome keeping the beat going so when we trained him um he hadn't been trained that way before it's more like memorizing uh you know a few moves

hitting some kind of sequence but we realized we had no money and we had no time and every time you do punches and kicks you see in most movies right like they're on you right over my shoulder then you know you take the hit and it goes over your shoulder so i can sell the hit so you're always doing these reverses so if i do a big wide shot profile you throw in a nice roundhouse kick i got to cut somewhere to show the impact unless you're really kicking me which not advisable most of the time so all every time the more punching and kicking and striking you do, or if Keanu's not doing the motion, I've got to cut more.

And every time I cut, it's a setup. It's just time-consuming. Not that it's bad or good, it's just time-consuming. We knew we weren't going to have that, so we're like, fuck, what do we do? Okay, well, we're just going to grab people. We're just going to make it all grappling. And like, is that going to look, you know, remember, it's all during the Bourne, so everything's going to look very slow, you know, compared to

what it was, but we're going to do all great, we're going to do Aikido, Aikijutsu, or Jiu-Jitsu, that's it. That's all you get. And if you get a punch, it'll be a contact hit, that's all we're going to do. No punches, no kicks, no nothing, and we'll do it all in one take. And we're all like, yeah, sounds good. No one,

yeah, we thought it was a complete disaster after the first two days of shooting the fight scenes. We're like, this is going to suck. We're fucked. Why did you think that, though? I think it was everyone's mindset. Like, we did it out of necessity, and we thought it was cool. But, like, you'd see people that would, like, you know, sometimes people would look at it and go, well, he's doing the same throw over it.

I mean, Ippon Seinagi looks the same. But for us, the different grips, the different throws, it all looks different to me. Like, I'm a throw. You know know I love judo porn I could watch a million different throws it's awesome for some people it all looks the same they want to see the cool jump spin hook kick or something like that but then we put in the close quarter stuff and when you're seeing it remember we don't have the muzzle flashes on we don't have the blood splatters you're just kind of seeing you know it looks like they're dancing right and then you put in the

sound effects and you put in the muzzle and then you put in the fucking reload and like now it's making sense so what do you when when he's shooting in the actual filming is he just pulling the trigger and it's just going click well see that's the thing you have dummy rounds when you when you most movies always see a to B cutting right I'm on you you're the guy like guns in the camera you fire the blank most firearms up until very recently fire blanks and Most movies you always see A to B cutting, right? I'm on you. You're the guy. Guns in the camera. You fire the blank. Most firearms up until very recently fire blanks.

And for the people out there, a blank is a round without the actual bullet, the lead piece that hits. But a blank still has a gunpowder charge in it. Say maybe even if it's only 50 grams of black powder. But at a range of 10 to 15 feet, that can kill you. Yeah. It's a concussive force. That's, and you hear about all the accidents that have happened

with blanks over the years. Like, you can't put a blank under your head and pull the trigger. It'd kill you. Right? So, we wanted to do all this

close quarter shooting. Like, we wanted to put the muzzle and do all this stuff, close quarter contact stuff. So, we, you know,

we went to our VFX guys and the trick is not so much the muzzle flask, it's the lighting interaction, especially at night trick is not so much the muzzle flash. It's the lighting interaction, especially at night, and it's cycling the automatic. Yeah. Getting it in and having the casing ejection. All it do, but it can add up with visual effects costs.

So we went and we found the armors through Taron and the technologies that we found through the armors. We made a plug gun. A plug gun is a gun that has almost a steel rod inside the barrel and it kicks the gas a different way. So we still have an ejection but nothing. No energy, no flash, no padding or wadding comes out the barrel. Like you couldn't put a live round in it if you tried. So is it a lower level?

In England they use some that are like almost air contained. They can do it. In us it's a very very small charge of black powder. So it's a very very we call them plug guns they're very very limited in in the drainage so it's just enough to cycle around just enough to cycle it yep and nothing yeah ejecting but nothing comes out the barrel so all that stuff you see the blood splatter that's all cgi the blood is all cg there's one or two instances where it's not but most of the blood is the blood so good nowadays digitally that it saves so much Times we have to change the wardrobe we get it

I mean like you know you seen like a Tarantino like in Django Tarantino still uses old-school blood packs Which I old school I fucking love that I think it's amazing But we're just the time and you know you like you see a John Wick movie It's like you know the reset on 20 stunt guys taking hits of one day It'd be a three hourhour reset to change the wardrobe. Right. And headshots, you'd have to put a special head pack on with a wig and all that stuff. So we do the blood hits digitally.

The muzzle flashes, we actually shoot against a green screen, and we'll call them elements. And then we'll plug actual muzzle flashes back into the movie later on. So they're not digital per se, but they are comped in or in a composition. And that's how we get the cool lighting effect and keep the cool muzzle flashes. How long did it take you to film that red circle bar scene? I think less than four days. Really? Yeah, we went really fast.

And Keanu, he had the flu. He had like a 103 degree fever. He was going down. It was a rough day. It was freezing cold in New York. He had the flu, super high temperature, and we were just flying through it. Like literally two, three takes. Move on, two, three takes.

Filming it with the flu. Wow. Yeah, he's a trooper, man. He's hard to keep down. Wow. That's incredible. Yeah, he's a tough fucker. A lot of actors have a fucking earache.

They'll call it quits for the day. Yeah. Yeah. No comment. No comment. But look, most of the people we work with, they get it. And we try to be smart, too. Look, if there's another way, if we could have shut down and let them, we just, it was like one of those, we either got to stop or we don't.

We only get one shot. You couldn't afford, and Keanu's that guy, too. You can't make him go city check. Where did you film that? It was on New York City. But the Red Circle, where was it? It was in this little, it was up in the theater district. I forget the name of it.

It was a shut down little club that we just kind of opened back up and put our own lighting rig in there and just kind of lit it up. I mean, if you had seen it in the daytime, it was all like that shit brown leather. It looked like you were walking into Big Boys or something. It looked really bad. That gives credit to John Sella, the cinematographer on the first one. We went in, put our lighting grid up, flashed a lot of big screen neon lights um put the extras in funny colors and you know we ran out of money so we're like we didn't we didn't know how to put the the bad guys in something so we're like okay what would star trek do in star trek we always call them the red shirts you know the guys in star trek that

right always getting killed you have to do was right there. Kirk was transported down to the planet with the red shirt guy. That guy was gone. So we put all our bad guys in the red shirts. They were just going to kill them all. I think we had a deal. There's a local like one of the garment district things. I think we got all those red shirts for like $10. It was like a whole deal.

So we just got all the stunt guys red shirts. But yeah we did it all in this shitty little club in like four days. Maybe four and a half days something like that and this has got to be very stressful for you to be first time director doing all this and then so much pressure and also it's not picked up by anybody

you know it's weird I guess when you're in it you're just trying to just go into that mode of don't suck like you don't have to win you just can't lose just finish get the day, do your thing. And my partner, Dave Leach at the time, like, you know, we both were so, we just love being on set. So I think we just, it was kind of, you know, you come from the action, you say, oh, these guys can do action and you can do that. But when you're trying to put the storytelling in, you're trying to do that. I mean, you might get other guys you'll talk to or guys who come from the stunt

world and say, yeah, it's just like doing it's for me, it was nothing like second unit, completely different. It had that different kind of pressure, but like, I guess you see how things come together more.

You know, you just do the action. You're worried about just making it look cool. You're trying to do something like he is. You have Keanu Reeves. You have Ian McShane. You have Willem Dafoe, Lance Reddick. And you're kind of going something like, you have Keanu Reeves, you have Ian McShane, you have Willem Dafoe, Lance Reddick,

and you're kind of going, oh, I don't want to fuck this up. Who was the badass Russian guy that Keanu gets in a fight with and the guy throws him off the balcony? No, that's Daniel Bernhardt. That's a good friend. He was the star of Bloodsport 2

and Bloodsport 3. Pull that one up. Oh, wow. No kidding. Yeah, after Van Damme, Daniel was this, he's a Swiss actor. That's Daniel Bernhardt, yeah. He's very good. He's awesome. He's a good Damme, Daniel was this, he's a Swiss actor. That's Daniel Burnhardt.

He's very good. He's awesome. He's a good, good, good close friend. But I had worked with him. He had hired me as a stunt guy when he was the lead actor in Bloodsport 2, Bloodsport 3, Bloodsport 4 or 5. I don't know. They go on forever. Right?

But when it was time to do this, we called in every favor we had. And, you know, like that whole lower budget, that's how we got Scott Atkinson, Mark Dacascos and Gary Daniels and Daniel Berna, all these, Marco Zorro, all these great, you know, up and coming action actors. My friend Tate Fletcher was in it too. Tate, yeah. Tate was with the beard. We slammed Tate's awesome. Like he had that beard and we're like, what are we doing? Oh, we got a courtyard for the beard. We slammed down and shoot him in the head. Tate's awesome, man. Yeah, I've known Tate forever.

He's a great guy, right? He's awesome. Good stunt guy, too. And he's a really good actor. He's got the eyes. He can pump those eyes out. He's fantastic. But you look for those guys, right?

You put them in the cool spots. Yeah. But this fucking, there's Tate. This whole scene is just so fun. It's such a crazy scene. Come on. That's a real beard there, by the way. Yeah, that's his real beard. by the way yeah that's his real beard

he's awesome oh yeah no super fun i mean that's always the trick but like if you get the the people you like around you they kind of give you a hand so we had a lot of we called in a lot of favors and a lot of friends and you know they all know it's your first time like the crew and the cast like ian mcshane everybody kind of knew keanu had gone out keanu had one day off on john wick one and you know new york city base camp is like blocks away from the set so me and my partner dave leach um it's ian mcshane's first day on set so it's like four in the morning we're gonna walk over to his trailer introduce ourselves say hi how you doing i mean it's kind of a big deal for us keanu's sitting outside his trailer at at like 4.30 in the morning. It's one day off. I'm like,

what are you doing here? He's like, I just thought I'd come in early and talk to Ian and, you know, warm up for you a little bit. And we're like, that's what kind of guy he is. So he kind of greased the wheels for us. He walks in and, you know, Ian's like, so here's your first movie. Don't worry, we'll get you through it. You know, everybody was so cool because we just kind of admitted we didn't know what we're doing and we wanted to learn and get our thing going how difficult is it to take the dailies and then edit it down to a film like the editing process you know to put the assembly together to actually just put clips together it's it's not that hard i mean good bad you know you could take a couple shots at it

and you don't know this until you try it a couple times it's like where's the actual like how much can you take away it's like chipping away at the statue, right it's not adding things, it's taking away things to really shine what's good lose some of the good to get to the great you don't want to cut your action, you don't want to cut any scenes

but then you watch the movie as a whole and this is what I'd say to any other editor or directors out there that are just getting started. If you just edit a scene or you just edit a sequence or you just edit like an act and then watch it and go, I got it, I got it, you still haven't got it because there's this thing. We've all felt it in movies about pacing, right? There's a way a three-hour movie can feel like two hours. There's a way a one-hour movie can feel like three hours. It's all about the pacing, right? three hour movie can feel like two hours is a way a one hour movie can feel like three hours.

It's all about the pacing, right? So what, what I learned from it is you got to sit and every time you make, when you're in that place where you can just make these one minute or two minute changes, you got to take the time, sit back and watch the whole thing. No pee breaks, no phone calls. And that's what we did on WIC4. A lot of it was like, everyone kept telling me it's too long. So I know, but let's just watch it. And my editorial would hate me because like twice a week, we're like, everybody's watching it. You know, like we're watching this. And you have to sit and get through the two and a half hours of it. And that's the only way you know.

And then you're like, still, we're not there. This is too fast. But is it hard to, when you're in the middle of it, is it hard to see it? Yeah. Because you've seen it so many times. Is it hard to see it the way another person is going to see it it's like it's like knowing you're lost but also not being nervous by it it's being lost

in a good way because you can feel it right you can feel there's something cool there and you can feel like i just go back to being an audience member what do i wish i had seen in so much sorry that's okay uh you know you're you're trying to figure it out, right? And that's the exciting part. You know there's something tingly there. You know there's something good, but what is it? It's kind of, you can't be afraid to try. Because now digitally, we can go back and forth and have 20 versions of the movie.

Like, it's not like the old days where you cut film and glue it. Yeah. So we would always make a new, we'd try, I've always had good editors. I've always had young, hungry, hungry great great editors that wanted to experiment and you they swing big so let's just can we do this movie an hour and 20 minutes and they'll do a version of it can we do this out can we do this an hour and 45 what's the version of it and you'll start to see things that you obviously hate but you also see choices that you could make to tighten things up it's and i I know, I'm sure everybody you talk to will have a different process, but like, I think it's both terrifying and exciting. And I, again, it's hard to explain. You can feel

like you're on the right path, even though you don't know it. Does that make sense? And you just have to keep trying till you watch it in the room with the sound. And you're like, that's it. That's the movie I want to see. Did you bring in people that hadn't seen it before yeah just watched yeah i'm a big fan of like friends and family stuff and like at first you're gonna your ego may not be ready because like everybody likes something else everybody thinks something should be cut everybody thinks it's too much blood or not enough blood i literally in the same day i've've had some of our, you know, some of our, you know, female friends came in and wanted more action. And some of our guy friends were like,

we want less action. Like you just couldn't tell what people wanted. But you listen to what they all love. And that was the cool thing. They all love Keanu. They all cried when the puppy died. They, you know, they, they all, they all felt it was something they hadn't really seen before. It was action in a different way. They liked the mythology part of it. They liked the color. They liked the sound. They thought it was all very well made.

I mean, whether you like it or not, you know, like the crew is really good, you know, that kind of thing. And that's what sticks with you. But, like, now I'll show my movie. I love showing it because I love you i like it i get some of the most insane comments and it's pretty it's pretty funny like even the reviews like kio and i have this little thing like you know i know i've talked to some director friends that don't don't read reviews we read like everyone like masochistic about it you know or like everything on rotten tomatoes or honest trailers or everything wrong

with or like you know the critical drinker all these great guys on youtube are just fucking hammering us on little shit and we're kind of laughing because like okay fair game that we're right we're a little over the top but it's very interesting to see what grabs people because partly you're kind of like okay what's working you just can't let it direct you really you know you don't want to chase the dragon of what other people want. You want to do the movie that you want and hopefully people like it.

But it's very interesting to see what does touch. Because, I mean, you know, the only true north you have is what you like and what you're interested in. And that's how you drive your show. And that's what makes the show unique because it's from you. You start doing what you thought was popular,

what everybody wanted to see, and it didn't work. How do you course correct? You don't know because it's not you anymore, right? Yeah. And that's just kind, what everybody wanted to see, and it didn't work. How do you course correct? You don't know because it's not you anymore, right? Yeah. And that's just kind of what we try to do. Yeah, that becomes a real problem with people that pay too much attention to criticisms or comments. You can get lost in the middle of it.

I was actually just talking to a friend the other night that he said he thinks about negative comments while he's writing his jokes. I was like, eww. Yeah, I don't know if that's productive in the right way. I think it's okay to be aware of it, but I certainly wouldn't want to – I don't want to sit down and write a movie based, well, hey, how many sequels have you seen where they bring back the same cast over and over again or the same jokes or the same gag because they think it works? Ooh, you better not fuck with it right okay that's great in a lot of businesses but in entertainment i don't think that's going to push

or move the needle right the way we need to do i think we got to take chances right otherwise what are we doing well you've created one of the interesting things about the whole wick franchise is that you've created this universe this this universe of the continental, this universe of all these different rules that this group of assassins has. And now you have this opportunity with that to do so many other things because you have like, there's a whole world. We have tea for you there if you want it. Oh, thanks. I guess that's, you know, we created the world based on stuff that we had done. You know, being a stunt guy, you travel around, you live in hotels all the time. Wouldn't it be cool if the concierge gave you a firearm?

That would be great. You know, or if they had a gun range downstairs instead of a gym, that would be fantastic. But it's also like, I mean, again, if you made your list of the top ten things you wanted to see in movies, you know, you'd have dogs, ninjas, muscle cars, guns, archery. Right. You know, sword fight, you know, and then you made a list of the top ten people you'd want to see. I want to see Donnie Yen fight Steve McQueen, do Bruce Lee on Schwarzenegger. We just tried to create a franchise where we could put all that stuff in and no one would call us on it. We've been called for the superhero movies and all the other stuff, which are all interesting.

And I'm a big fan. I just don't think that's what I'd be good at. Which are all interesting and I'm a big fan. I just don't think that's what I'd be good at. Right. You know, I think a little crazier mindset of what's not being done. How do we get that in? Like, you know, the old Shokasugi movies, you know, Enter the Ninja or something like that. Or Chuck Norris' Invasion USA.

Like, you know, things that were kind of so nutty and wacky. But like, you know, they hit a chord. So how do we bring that back in just a and i don't want to say a cooler way but like a more modern uh or technically more i guess more developed way yeah that's why we spend so much time on the look of the john wicks like we want people to take the action like look we're trying to do a good job here we're not just trying to phone it in but at the same time we do want to be a little crazy like like i mean how many dog bites to the crotch did I do? Quite a few.

You know how long it takes to train Belton Malone to bite a crotch? Does it take a lot? No, actually about a day. You're pretty smart. It takes a stunt guy a lot longer to get used to being bitten in the crotch. What do you do to pad their crotch? You give them like a,

we have these cool little Kevlar suits. Um, it's funny, right? Uh, uh, Andrew, our,

our, our dog trainer. When I first i first he's the guy that trains all the um wolves for game of thrones that's how i found out so i i called him and said like i have dogs myself and you know you know how you play with the dogs that little ball and you again you have the little tug-of-war fight with them i was like i want to do that how do i do that because like i don't know if people mostly know when you've normally up until very recently, if you see a dog attack at a movie, that's a dog attacking a human. The dog doesn't know it's a fucking movie. The dog is just attack. The dog is literally trying to hurt that person on camera. It's not good for the dog. It's not good for the person. Those professional animal

trainers wearing a bite suit that, you know, all fucking Kevlar pad. You've seen them. It's bulky as fuck, like a suit of armor. And the dog just goes to kill him we didn't think that was such a brilliant idea and the way we wanted to do things so it's like there's got to be another way to train dogs i can train my dogs just to wrestle with me so um what we do is we take these long cylindrical pads bite pads that are painted green screen green right and they're velcroed on one side with a rip cord like the parachute ripcord. So they're laced onto either the forearm, the crotch, the leg, the calf, wherever we want the dog to bite.

And the dog's been trained to attack green. So you can't wear green on set. Holy shit. So we've got the dog trained to attack these green bite pads. And the dogs, that's why we go out. Andrew finds the Belgians that seem to have the most promise. And they're trained to wrestle. They're not trained to attack.

They're not trained to kill or to bite. They're trained to wrestle. They have fun. So the dogs think it's now fun. So we're training them. Usually when a dog wrestles with you over a bone, you know, down boy, down. We've encouraged it. So the dog is actually having fun. So it's not mentally traumatic on the animal. So it's fun. So the stunt guys go in, they go in for their martial art training and their physical training, Keanu and whoever else

we're working with. And for an hour and a half a day, each stunt guy that worked with the animal has to go in because the dog has to recognize you, has to smell you, has to get used to them. The camera guys, everybody that's around dogs has to go play, basically just an hour of play. So some guys go in, put the gear on, and they wrestle with the dog for the hour. And then the dog gets used to them, and we put the, wherever it's got to go, and then we have these really cool sleeves that have a little bit of a bite-proof ethafoam in it covered with a really soft pad so the dog doesn't hurt his teeth

and the dog will go in and bite and belgians once they clamp that's why they call them like maligators once they bite they don't let go so we had to figure out a way to get them off when we yell cut because they're so angst about getting the getting the 10 so you have the rip cord going so we yell cut the stunk guy would pull the rip cord the pad would release the dog would hold the pad walk away with it and just hold on to it for the next five minutes until he got tired and just would drop the pad. So we had five Belgians, and then we just wrote

to every take was a new dog, because the other one had to let the pad go. And what did Halle Berry have to do? How much? Well, we figured since, just like we did with Shamir Anderson, this one, you can't have, because we shoot so wide, we couldn't have a trainer, you know, right behind the couch telling the dog. So we just, Andrew and I had talked about, well, let's just, we'll just raise the dogs for the next six months with the cast.

So Hallie, for like, I think it was almost eight and a half months, actually, Hallie would come in and she'd learn to train them. She'd carry the little treats. them she'd carry the little treats and so they listened the two Belgians that were her number three there's actually four of them but the two that were always on cam with her like she literally trained from scratch no kidding so they obeyed like they were like her dogs Wow and they listened to every word she said like she could just snap her fan they'd be like boom but it got it got it got crazy to the point where that's Andrew back there but that yeah I mean if you came over to to Hall, you know, and the dogs were there, they'd give you the eye like, what are you doing next to my master?

Yeah, they're intense dogs. They're so brilliant. But they look at you. They sort things out. Yeah, the team guys call them meat missiles. Yeah. They fly. Like, we've played so many videos of Belgian Malinois running up hills.

Oh, my God. Just jumping over walls. They literally can fly through the air. That's really one of the rebellions that ran up the wall in that movie. That was like a 13-and-a-half-foot thing. Yeah, it's insane. They are such athletes. And the funny thing, they're not huge, but it is a real 65- to 75-pound animal.

Yeah. And I think the funniest thing when we're bringing in a new stunt team and we've got the – like before we even do anything, you line them up and you let the dogs go in. And everyone says they're good with dogs or I'm a dog person until you see that – you see the dog attack on camera. If you were to turn that camera around, what you see are two trainers holding this dog back and the thing is like ready to go. And it's a whole other level of animal behavior. behavior yeah and you can see who gets a little shaky yeah he's comfortable dave camrillo who we were talking about earlier uh who trained keanu for the judo and the jujitsu and number four i think he did over a hundred dog hits and he just he bought him for whatever reason crazy dave and the dogs bonded and they

were both they they spoke the same language they loved they loved him so whenever we needed a dog hit it's dave so pad because he was he's so i don't know if you like he's so calm yeah and the dogs vibe on that and even when they're going they just they're just yeah go play with dave and dave wrestled with him i think he had done so many by the end of the movie County him a special t-shirt of just like 109 dog hits or something crazy but like the surprise is the first time you see the stuntman get hit by the dog is it you know it doesn't look that big until 75 pounds hit you at 20 miles yeah it sits them down and they all get up with the same eyes but what just happened?

Yeah. It's pretty impressive. We use those on Fear Factor. Really? Attack people. Yeah. But unfortunately, we found that they're too light. So like with really heavy people, really strong people, well, they'd get bit and they could carry the dog as they ran.

And so then we moved to Mastiffs. Which are not small. We had this animal called a Regency Mastiff that's part pit bull, part Neapolitan. And this guy had bred them specifically so they don't show any animal aggression. And when they bite, it's just, it's horrific. They're 150, 160 pounds. Exactly, right? And they're just built like an athlete.

What did they have to do? Just attack them and then they had to walk with them? Yeah. Well, the people, with the mastiffs, there was a room and they had to enter into the room. They had to perform a very specific task. I don't remember what it was. But as soon as they get into the room, they're wearing a bite suit and nobody got past. No.

The dog's name is Curly. The dog, they used the dog for the original, one of the Hulk movies, the one with Eric Banner. Those were the dogs they modeled it. And when Nick Nolte, that's it right there. See, the original dog, though, see if they can find the original dog. The original dog is this. Just Google Regency Mastiff. See if you can find that.

Yeah. See if there's any images. So those are the dogs in the Hulk, but the actual, yeah, that's what they looked like. They look like giant pit bulls. Yeah, they have the jaw that goes out to here. But they're so sweet, like really calm. I actually had one of their dogs. I had a curly son.

His name is Johnny Cash. He lived a long time. He lived like 13 years, which is really old for a mastiff. For a big dog like that. Yeah. But, yeah, so the Malmois, they were just a little too light. Because like with the bite suit

on, it hurts, but it's 65 pounds. You can run with 65 pounds. It's like a suit of armor. Yeah. For sure. Unless there's two or three of them. So how long did Halle Berry have to train for that move? Because she had so many physical – first of all, she's awesome.

She's so good in that movie. She's so believable. Yeah. And she's so, like, physically adept. Like, believable. And she's so like physically adept. Like I had no idea she could move like that. No, I think she, and she came to, I hadn't even written the script yet. You know, I just got a call from WME and my agent saying,

hey, would you like to meet Halle Berry? Yes, yes, of course. I don't want to meet Halle Berry. Yeah, huge fan. I think she was down either that day or the next day, just banging on my door. And I'm like, oh, okay. Open it up.

She just walks in, jeans and a T-shirt, goes, hi, I'm Hallie. I was like, yes, I know who you are. Of course. She's like, I want to be in your movie. Wow. She was that straightforward. No bullshit. I'm going to be in your movie.

And I'm like, I'm flattered. Thank you. That's very cool of you. We haven't even written it yet. Yeah, I know. That's just i'm i'm going to be in your movie and i'm like that's i'm flattered thank you that's very cool of you um we haven't even written it yet yeah i know that's why i'm here now you're gonna write it for me and i'm just laughing that's some serious conflict she's yeah she was right on and i'm like okay um cool let me give it a think we'll figure out something and now i'm like oh i gotta write something cool for harry barry um but it was like i think three or four months later i was like okay you can come back in now she's like that's awesome it's great change this that this way okay i see it more like this okay we're gonna do this oh de casa blanca so i'm gonna be like rick i got it i'm gonna do this and she's like when do i start training i'm like well you know technically we go into she's like

no just i'm gonna start training today just tell me what to do wow she was so on it just on i was like okay well first let's get you into shape tell your trainer this Just tell me what to do. Wow. She was so on it, just on it. I was like, okay, well, first let's get you in shape. Tell your trainer this is what we need to do. We need you to stretch. We need you to get all the conditioning stuff in so we can start taking you in. And we literally had to slow her down the first week. Like, you know, if you haven't done shoulder rolls, if you haven't been thrown before, if you haven't done stuff, you're going to pull something.

So she just went crazy the first time. We couldn't kick her out of the gym she's another keanu you just couldn't get rid of her you know she's in the gym she's like put her up at taryn's and like she just lived it just lived it up there she'd go with keanu she's like whenever keanu goes i'm going so just make make room for me after that movie did she ever want to do it again yeah we were actually been in talks several times to try and get um i hate the term spin-off but they're trying to do other satellite projects off the Wick franchise, which it's very flattering. Hopefully, there'll be good ones.

I don't believe John Wick is dead. Is John dead or is John Wick dead? We don't know. We just don't know. Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. Yeah. Because it was very ambiguous at the end of the movie it's supposed to be yeah yeah we'll see yeah we'll see how keanu and the director feel in

three four years you gotta take him to that bar in japan and get him drunk we're going in september so like you talk to me again then man it could be like john wick five and a half man i don't know you never know but uh hallie wants to do – she's definitely still a game changer. And, like, you know, when Hallie came, I think she had just turned 50 or 51. I don't want to mislead. But, like, she's in amazing shape. Yeah. Amazing shape. Like, I can't even tell you.

To see her in person. She looks 35. Yeah, it's freaky. It's insane. It's insane. Like, literally. Well, she's so fit. I mean, that's the key.

Like, never stop. This is one of the first couple weeks she ever did anything with us. Like, she hadn't been doing anything at this point. It's so choreographed, right? Oh, wow. Scissor takedowns? Yeah. Wow.

That's awesome. Yeah. And she trained down at Terrence, too. I saw videos for her there. She's so game. She's like one of those, um, you know, she's like, you know, they think on the deal. Like some people turn off to memorize a choreography. They learn it so much that they can throw it away. It's like learning your lines,

right? They learn their lines so, so much. They can just flow. They spend so much time doing that because they know they want to add in their little details and stuff. They make it theirs. It's pretty impressive to watch. You almost feel lazy next to him like god i need to work harder you know but it's cool when the crew sees it you know everybody you can always tell when you're on a good movie or if people don't give a shit and then the crew kind of doesn't give a shit but when you see the cast it starts with keanu he guy never leaves set then you get him and hallie and neither one want to leave set they don't want to miss a beat they don't want to miss a chance and then you got the rest of the cast and the rest of the crew, and the crew's like, oh, we got to – it's just this constant inspiration thing. And it's really – it's pretty fun.

It's pretty cool. Now, there's – aren't you guys doing some sort of a television show that's based on the constant asshole? There's coming out – it was on – what was it? I think it's on Amazon now or whatever, called The Continental. It's kind of a spinoff that was done very separate from the world that we've created in the feature world. It's something that the studio had done a little on the side of us as we were going just to see what they could do with this Continental series. It's kind of interesting.

It's out? It's not out yet. I think it comes out. This is it? Yeah, end of the summer, I think. But there's not a John Wick? There's real no tie-in to the John Wick films. Really?

But it does have a, it has the continental in it. It's kind of like Ian McShane's backstory a little bit and how he got there. A little disjointed from the feature stuff, but it's just another, I don't know, it's kind of a cool world they built like that. It was very on the side of us. And then hopefully we'll be seeing another TV show that's really about the John Wick features. The bar at the Continental, the secret assassin's bar,

the door at the bar, I made a door like that for my comedy club. Yeah, you could open up the thing to see who's coming through. Literally, it's the same door. When people go, what the fuck is this door for the green room of the comedy club? And they go, that's the door from the Continental. That's the shh. Ours opens like a hinge.

But yeah, it's the same sort of deal. That's pretty awesome. It's pretty dope. We've inspired the comedy green room. Yeah. When people see it, they go, what the fuck is up with this door? What are you expecting? No, no, no.

It's like this fucking real heavy steel door. There's something cool about that, right? Oh, it's real cool until someone gets their finger slammed in it. Nothing says secret world like a slamming finger. But it is kind of like a secret world deal. Like, you have to punch the code in to get into the door, or you have a key fob. You know, that's kind of, like, subcultures have always interested me. There's always Sub RosaRosa, right?

Yeah. You know, the sub-Rosa world of the inside, whether it's comedians or stunt guys or cops or military, there's always that in, that in-click. And I think that's what fascinates a lot of people a lot of times because they don't want to be part of that little. We're originally going to name, some people give me shit because we called number three Parabellum

and then number four was like just John Wick 4. Yeah. We actually had a title for John Wick 4. It was called Hagakuri, Japanese word that really meant like hidden leaves. It was a treatise on samurai code of ethics. And it really spoke to – it was kind of like the art of the way of dying, like how do you prepare yourself for a good death. And a lot of it dealt with you can

only relate to people a warrior can only relate to a warrior you know whether you're on other sides or not a cop can only relate to a cop and like you know whatever a teacher can only relate to a teacher that inside subro is a thing that only each other knew each other kind of thing we got it but we didn't want to put it you know a title on it and we kind of lost it but i thought it was a really cool thing about being sub Rose or being in the inside clique or something. Yeah, maybe on the next one. Why did you decide just... It was, you know, it was...

The actual treatise, it was from like 1646 or something like that. Unfortunately, it had been used during World War II as a rallying cry for militaristic Japan to get behind so in in some asian markets it could be considered to be a problem and we didn't want to take a chance it was kind of yeah between china japan korea and we're like okay i get it we don't we want to be sensitive to that but we still thought it was a cool name yeah it's uh it's what a weird world it is to make films and then have them be

distributed worldwide it's because you know it's like i'm sure you know you're always going to piss off somebody yeah you're always going to get something or somebody can be something so you just again i i like doing the fantasy film kind of thing i like creating our own worlds i like doing that because it's ours and it's not taking a side. It's not really, uh, I don't have to adhere to history. I don't have to adhere to an IP and kind of just do our thing. And I think that kind of freedom helps a lot. You know, I don't think people get, I know it's bent out of shape sometimes on that because you're creating your own world. Do you feel like there's enough, there's room for another thing like this in your life? Like is this something you're going to try to do again, like recreate an entire ecosystem, an entire world?

That's a good question. Again, like we say, it was unintentional, completely unintentional, almost a fluke. We did one. I didn't know anything about the continentals worldwide or the markers or anything until the second one we made that up. And the third one, we're like, oh, let's call it the high table. Sure, someone will buy that. Sure. And we just keep kind of riffing on stuff to do and just use your imagination.

But it works. It does. And I think, again, huge fan of it. And it works that it's intercontinental too, that it's international. Like when he goes to Italy and he goes and gets suited out there. Right. That was probably one of my favorite things. I love the suit.

I love, you know. That actor, whoever that actor was that is explaining to him the guns and. Oh, what is it? Peter Saronovitz. Yeah. Yeah, he was in a couple. He was in. God, he's so good.

The suits and the guns. Like this whole scene is awesome. That guy right there, the ball guy right there. He was in, God, he's so good. The Suits and the Guns. This whole scene is awesome. That guy right there, the ball guy right there, that's Luka Moska. That's actually my wardrobe supervisor. I couldn't cast somebody in time, so I made him do it. And then Peter Svanovitz. This guy's fucking great. He's so fucking funny.

Yeah, you just buy him as a complete psycho. He literally flew in on the day, learned the lines, did the gig, and flew out. Really? Yeah, he was awesome the gig, and flew out. Really? Yeah, he was awesome. Wow, he's incredible. What was that movie, Spy, with Statham? Oh, yeah. He was the Italian.

He played the Italian spy. He was so funny. So the guy that's doing the wardrobe, was your actual wardrobe guy? Well, yeah, I kept telling him, like, people would come in and start reading. I'm like, just be like my guy here. Be like my wardrobe guy. And we couldn't find anybody to be Luca here. And Luca was was so subtle i'm like ah look good you're doing it dude and he'd never acted never acted before he's great he's fantastic he's great i got that like same in

number four like uh the the the actress that plays uh akira that's reena samayama she's a pop star from england but she had never acted before either. Wow. I just saw her on her YouTube videos and I was like, she's got to be able to act. Like, she's got so much presence. And we just picked her up too.

Sometimes you get really lucky and cool like that, you know? Was there ever a time while you were doing four where you're like, this is just too over the top? Oh, yeah. Like, every fucking day.

Like the shotguns that spit fire. We were like... And you just got to, like, you, you're knee-deep in it and you do have those moments of like yeah Let's go. Okay get that going and you kind of like you have those quiet moments. You're like Like you watch the monitor and like, you know You can feel everybody behind you and you can you can kind of get that vibe that you know Most of your crew thinks you're crazy and you're like, yeah let's spin the car one more time around and do it twice it's so over the top and there's so much it's so like i guess you kind of have to one up the movies before but you just like one up the one up the one up you just kept going i think if you because you

i guess i didn't want it to make it feel like it was a mistake or we were just trying to do the one up thing. Like, no, we're all in. We're going all out. You know, in Keanu, I have those talks. He's like, did you jump the shark? I'm like, yeah, let's jump two sharks. Let's just go. We'll just keep going.

Because why fall down? You know, a lot of my influences are all from Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd and a lot of silent movie stuff. Really? And Buster made – oh, you go back and watch the movies now, and go back to the documentary on Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd, go back and watch it. How did Buster Keaton do all that stuff? Yeah, I'm not sure.

Because we've watched some of those clips, and it's like, how are you doing? Because there's no special effects back then. I have been a part of so many great stunt teams and worked with so many great stunt riggers and visual effects people there are still gags that he does back then that we're all kind of like yeah it's a bit sketch man i like how i don't think you do a lot of what he do even do nowadays because like look this is stuff i mean they're cranking the footage a little bit but like that's him falling off a motorcycle yeah like he's still doing like these are all great gags and like if

you miss there's a penalty well how about the one, he's still doing, like, these are all great gags. And, like, if you miss, there's a penalty. Well, how about the one when he grabs ahold of the back of a train and he gets pulled? Yeah, the trolley? Like, look at this right here. This is, like, yeah, this is going probably a little bit slower. Yeah, but you know what happens if you miss? You're dead. Dead as fuck. There's no out. Yeah.

And when he's got, like, watch the shit he's doing here. Like, how's he even doing that? This is early wire work that you can't even tell. That's wild. But every time he falls and does this stuff, those are real falls. He's buried a mat in the dirt there, but he's still taking the hit. Yeah, it's a big hit, too. I mean, that's a long...

Watch this. Watch this shit. He's going to grab the dummy as it comes over the waterfall. Like, he's still got to do it. Yeah, it's insane. You know, like, we'd be doing it with green screen double safeties. We'd have wires on them. We'd have a backup in there.

The stunt guy would do it a couple times. And, like, you know, that's not tech 12 rope there. That's a woman. That's not even a dummy. No, no, no. Yeah, he's throwing her right to the ledge. Yeah, he just throws her to the ledge. There's so many of these. Like, look at yeah. He's throwing her right to the ledge. Yeah, he just throws her to the ledge. There's so many of these,

like, look at that. I mean, the penalty for that miss. Is you're dead. Yeah. I mean, that's not breakaway balsa wood. No. I mean, that's probably one of his most famous gags that Jackie's repeated in a few other things.

But that's, you know, so like, I love this. Like, you know, this is early trick cutting and stitching. But there's gags he does, and we're still like, whoa. How is he not completely broken by the time he was done filming? I mean, the one when he grabs the train and you see him go sideways, like he's holding onto the train and it's...

Yeah, the trolley go. Yeah, I think it's this one right here yeah this here like watch this he flag pulls it how the fuck like you know what your deltoid's gotta be right

you have to be so super fucking strong how about your grip I mean I just this is one yeah watch this thing like how does he do this like this that's a wire he's got a wire coming out of his his belt you can see it right there Yeah, watch this thing. Like, how does he do this?

Like this. That's a wire. He's got a wire coming out of his belt. You can see it right there. He's probably got an arbor up top there. But, like, you know, this is the one where I think he said he broke his neck on this one. Really? Yeah, he got injured on this one.

Back then when you broke your neck? Yeah. Wasn't a lot of help. Yeah, you weren't exactly getting any help. I don't know what the fuck the doctors did for you, but like this year. Like, oh. Boom, then he falls down the railroad track. Yeah. There's no pads down there.

Look, and he got up. Look at this guy. I mean, what the fuck did that guy? And how many movies did he do like that? A lot. Oh, my God. He had a ton. He had over like 100 productions by the time he was done.

You know, and Harold Lloyd was no slump either. Charlie Chaplin, all those guys. He had to fall, all of them. There's no trickery to it. They just, you know, they gave you the setup. But like, that's pretty over the top too. So we're like, okay. So when we send that guy down the stairs in number four, we're like, you know,

Keanu Stunt double, this guy, Vincent from France. Same, like just muscles where you shouldn't have muscles. And, you know, we scouted Sacre Cur. And it was like, you know, there's over 400 steps. And the portion we're using is like 222. We're like, yeah, we got to send somebody down this. Jesus Christ. And we're like, no, we're going to make Keanu climb up.

Then we'll send him down. And then, you know what? We'll send him down again. So we had Vincent come out and look at it. And Vincent's english is limited you know he's just you know very french and he looked down and said vincent you cool like you know one take you're gonna he's like we just lit up a cigarette and said sure where do we go really he did this the first take he went down only about 10 steps and he got stuck in the railing

second take is the take that's in the movie where it just went all the way down like 200 steps yeah i mean this is crazy that this guy did this what kind of padding is he wearing? He's just wearing like you know the regular Kevlar padding the stunt guys use some fucking air to Vincent's not shy Oh Jesus Christ. Yeah, he's great I can't I tell the overlap. It's awesome. Yeah, we have a stair fetish to yeah love throwing guys. It's car hits and stairs It's funny you get Tom Cruise hanging off the airplane. Mm-hmm. I think it's awesome. Yeah, right. I think fetish too. Yeah. Love throwing guys. It's car hits and stairs. It's funny. You get Tom Cruise hanging off the airplane. I think it's awesome. Yeah.

Right? I think it's amazing. It's awesome. I know what it takes to do that. But a lot of people can't relate to just, you know, hang off an airplane. They've never done it. But everybody's falling on ice. Everyone's falling down stairs.

Yeah. Everyone gets the car thing. So we focused a lot on body falls and, you know, falling down stairs. Shit that makes people go, oh, that could really hurt. Yeah. Especially being hit by a car. You know, I love car falling down stairs. Shit that makes people go, ooh, that could really hurt. Yeah. Especially being hit by a car. You know, I love car hits. I love watching that.

Yeah, he gets hit by a bunch of cars. When you see the stunt guys actually get hit by the cars, you're like. In two, like in the scene when he's retrieving his car and, you know. Oh, he whaps this one stunt guy, Efka. He whaps him with the reverse 180. He really sent him. It was a good hit. Really? I was like 20 feet away watching it really sent him. It was a good hit. Really?

I was like 20 feet away watching it going, oh, that was a great hit. How did you do when he hits the pole? We had a little bit of a wire on him. So the car hits him, sends him. The wire doesn't really pull him, but when he hits the pole high, the wire helps the landing. So we decelerate him a little bit. A little bit. A little bit, but is he actually hitting the pole?

Yeah, it still sucks oh absolutely Christ but like the the downside just in case he gets knocked out we don't want to land on his head I mean how the fuck yeah it's fun again we were super fortunate we get some of the best stunt guys. And most movies prep for like six to ten weeks. We'll prep for five months with our core stunt team. So the guys are really trying to design stuff. And other than some bumps and bruises, no one's ever really been tweaked. That's amazing.

So that's, again, just having the right people. Well, I guess that helps that you have this long background of stunt work. I think it helps knowing, one, who to call. And I think you get that sense of how far you can push. And again, I'm not against CGI. I'm not against digital help. We do so many digital stitches and hide things. I think it's all great.

It's just what gives you that energy or that what that that that feeling of what's going on If if I could do it all digitally get the feeling and not hurt anybody. Yes, that's an option But there's something to still real-world Physical effects that make yeah, you know still crunch. Yeah, there's something about CGI And that's the big I had Rick Baker on and we were talking about monster movies Where they use CGI versus monster movies where they use like his type of special effects. Well, The Thing is still one of the best.

Yeah. If you watch The Thing or American Werewolf in London. One of my favorite all-time films. It's one of the greatest movies ever. Ever. Ever. And it hits you in all the right ways. Yeah.

It's so subtle. It's almost like an old Hammer film with Christopher Plummer or Christopher Lee. Oh, okay. If you watch it, it's got that weird kind of in the moors, old school fog machines when they're in the thing. Well, John Landis did such a good job with that movie too because he made it funny. Well, that's the thing. Look at the tone of that movie. Yeah.

It's so different. It's not quite action. It's not quite thriller. It's not quite horror. But it's that little nexus of that weird, almost cheesy, but he rides the line. But then it's still fucking scary. Yeah. And it's got the best transition into a werewolf.

Oh, yeah. Ever. And I mean, what would you call them? Werewolf Nazis? Yeah. Those monster Nazis. It's so good. It's such a good movie.

But I would agree, man. There's something about, you know, I put the KY jelly on the creature suit and it comes out and there's something about that. But I think the really way to do if you could blend it you know if you could blend that great prosthetic effect with the CG motion and somehow really put those two together it's just most people nowadays they choose like half of what we're doing are blends like it's a practical stunt done in a digital composition like I'm layering in things like the the shotgun stuff. The guys are on fire,

but I'm putting the shotgun stuff and they're all different layers that I've stitched together. And all the guys are doing it so I don't have to worry about putting guys out because they're still on fire. So we're doing like a Texas switch.

We see one stunt guy on fire run in and another stunt guy, he goes out, he gets put out and the other guy comes in. So what was the inspiration for this? What was this shotgun supposed to be loaded with? Well, it's actually called Dragon's Breath.

You can check it out. It's real? It's real. Dragon's Breath is real. Oh, shit. It's called Duty. I've seen it. Yeah.

There's this great YouTube video with this Russian guy. If you type in Dragon's Breath, he's got a red, white, and blue shotgun. Wow. He's this crazy Russian guy that does it. And it's fucking awesome. That guy, second one down. That's the first video I saw of it with this crazy Russian guy that does it, and it's fucking awesome. That guy, second one down. That's the first video I saw of it with this crazy Russian guy. He shoots like a spear gun out of his 12-gauge.

He does all this stuff. He's doing all these wacky rounds, like, you know, these little needles that come out and a spear, and then he does dragon's breath. Oh, wow. And so it really does light people on fire that is fucking crazy they're the they're like the big balls right they're covered in phosphorus so when they hit the air they ignite so they're putting holes in you and they're lighting you on fire at the same time where do i buy them see i saw that like early in prep i was just fucking bored out of my mind i

was surfing through the internet i was going like i was looking up like we already did the benelli thing you know we did the Benelli thing. We did the cat eat, his quad loading. I'm like, I don't know if I want to do shotguns again. But I'm like, look, it's the third act.

I got to go ramp somewhere. I have the Arc de Triumph sequence in my head. I know I'm going to do the stairs. And then Taron introduced me to the Genesis shotgun, automatic shotgun. That thing is insane. I shot that at his place.

It's crazy. It's crazy. Isn't it like 12 rounds. How many rounds? I think it's more than 12 is it 20 may might it might as a giant banana club Yeah, I thought it was almost like 14 or 15. It's something like that, right? But like and it's it's boom It's like very on an AR platform, but it's a shotgun So he had already introduced me to that and that was out in Berlin going I don't you know, how am I gonna because it to regular people it looks the same it's not a stylistic change it looks like

again like an AR or a 308 or something right so it wasn't gonna be a shocking change if he grabbed it from the guy so I'm like yeah I'm gonna do this and then I saw that video I'm like oh but then I couldn't figure out like because it's just that starburst and like like you oh but then I couldn't figure out like cause it's just that starburst and like like you like no one they're gonna call bullshit on me

right that doesn't exist so I thought in the montage I'll have these guys pull out the dragon's breath and then I saw this you know I have this huge video game

like cinematic trailer collection and I was just scrolling through it and this game something I had I saw like years ago was called Hong Kong Massacre you have Hong Kong Massacre trailer and I was like what through it and this game went something I had I'd saw like years ago was called Hong Kong Massacre

You have Hong Kong Massacre Trailer and I was like what was cool about it was from the top like we use top shots a lot in film and action But it always looks like if I did top shot here She's looking at the carpet and be the top of our heads doing fight stuff, right? So it's okay, but like I wanted a way to make it color and poppy So I saw this in the blood on the white floors and the paper and all this. What the fuck is this? Right? But this is some wacky, I had never heard of, but I saw the trailer and I was like,

it's fucking cool. This is a video game? Yeah. Oh my God. Well, we're getting so close with AI and CGI and the ability to recreate scenes that aren't real. Right. Are you worried that there's going to come a time where you're not going to need to film movies anymore?

I don't. Yeah. Well, you know, that's part of the thing with the writer's strike right now. Part of the negotiations is AI and they're trying to. How do you prepare for emergent technology that's going to replace you? That's what's interesting. Like, you know, people think's interesting. People think the writer's strike is about something. And there's pay raises. There's a lot of issues to what the WGA is doing right now. But I think the writers are addressing something that people dismiss too easily, which is the AI influence. Somebody's got to be the first one to bring this up.

You'll have some people might critique going, well, why are we talking about AI? They're not going to write. But, yeah, it can. I think the writers are doing the absolute right thing right now by bringing this up, by introducing this. Because it's at that point where AI is doing the art already. You can pipe in, right? Yeah, illustrators are freaking out. Yeah, and they should.

I mean, we've seen what it can do. It's impressive. But you do have to feed it from somewhere. It's not quite going to take over the world yet. Well, there's this artist. Her name is Molly Crabapple, and she's been speaking out about this, and she's got a very good point.

They're not really making these. They're kind of stealing them from online. Well, that's what's happening. That's what the writers are about because the scripts have to come from somewhere. Right. They have to input something. That's what the writers are about because the scripts have to come from somewhere. Right. They have to input something. Well, at least with writing,

you're kind of inputting from language, human language that has existed forever. But with illustrations, they're taking illustrations like you're aware of the artist Alex Gray.

Alex Gray is a famous visionary artist. He does a lot of this wild psychedelic stuff. You can ask AI to make, like pull up the ones that I have on my Instagram. There's, they did these images in the style of Alex Gray and they're as good as Alex Gray's stuff.

I mean, but it's stealing from his style. It's his style. He created this, like all that. Right. Like that is all AI generated. And it's fucking fantastic. And then some people are like, I don't like it. Well, I do.

I like it because I like to look at it. But I would rather it be something that Alex Gray actually made. But if you look at that, that art is incredible. I mean, it's undeniably incredible. And it's all psychedelic inspired and like, look at that. I mean, come on. That's AI made that.

I mean, what the fuck, man? Keanu's really big on that too. We're all worried about... I guess we're concerned about what the... not just the licensing. I'm not worried about being out of a job yet. I don't think, um,

I think we're still a ways off from that as far as live action film goes, as far as animes or video game cinematics and stuff. I think that's, that's on the horizon. I really think that's coming. If you're doing trailers, if you're doing short films, especially with computer generated animation,

I think that's a legitimate concern. As far as the overall i i don't i agree with you i think it's a concerning thing but like how do you control technology you can't don't do it so it's just going to get better i think unfortunately what when my thought is that one day it's going to get to the point where people have to cherish things that are actually made by humans. Like this table is made by a person. Handmade. Yeah, handmade by a person. And it's not going to be everybody that cares.

There's going to be some people that are, I don't give a fuck. Get me an AI-made table. Yeah, maybe they want, look, I want a human-written song. I want human-composed music. Yeah. But I think the licensing part of it is like until, I as far as i know they still have to input like you're saying james or john gray they have to like him they don't have a word for it so they have to import and literally steal his input yeah yeah it's like you have to steal his images and then use ai to make something in the style of him but

as far as like illustrators for like the cover of books and things along those lines. I think that's very viable. Yeah, they're fucked. Performance still, I think, because even now with what they can do with Avatar, they still need performers to go and give you that little twist. Yeah.

I mean, I think, you know, directors come in and kind of create, you know, like the animations. Like you're still using a model that you've seen in your head to try and get that computer-generated character But I think the real genius of film sometimes is the unknown right the happy accident as Orson Welles would say You'll get Keanu or Brad Pitt or you get these wonderful actors up there and you'll get like I just watched heat last night Oh amazing like you can't tell me Man had all that and like those are just great people on screen and they're just you can't al pacino it's a great ass like you know that wasn't scripted that's outcome like

yeah there's still those moments that i think how about al pacino having a kid at 82 what a fucking psycho or stud i guess but i mean yeah where's he gonna be when that kid's 20 or five yeah you know or five yeah right right because like uh but like that's that's crazy But I mean, where is he going to be when that kid's 20? Or five. Yeah. You know? Or five, yeah. Right? Right. Because like, but like that's crazy, right? It's crazy. That's pretty crazy.

Yeah, that's crazy. He's 82 years old. Yeah. He's still shooting live rounds. What the fuck, dude? Or it's a great cover story. I don't think it is. Yeah, but that's impressive.

I mean, maybe he needs to get a DNA test done. I bet. He did demand one. Did he demand one? Oh, boy. Yeah, but that's impressive. I mean, maybe he needs to get a DNA test done. But I bet. He did demand one. Did he demand one? Oh, boy. That's a tense moment. He thought he could no longer have children.

That's a. Oh, boy. It turns out he is the father. That's a tense moment. That's an uncomfortable conversation. I thought I couldn't have kids. He wondered if he was like that, right? He had to. I mean, to say I don't trust you, I want a DNA test done.

That flavors the entire rest of the room. Yeah, it's not going to go well after that. Yeah, I mean. There's always going to be the mommy-daddy talk. He might not make it to the kid being five because of her. She might have a heavy pillow for him. I was going to say. Have another cup of tea, darling.

Yeah. Yeah. Whoops. What is that, a banana by the stairs? Yeah. Yeah. That's a tense moment. You're asking someone to take a DNA test, and then you say, I'm sorry.

That's not enough trust out there anymore. Sure. Well, that's probably going to be remedied, too. I think mind reading is around the corner. You think? Yeah. Is that where we're headed? I think mind reading is around the corner. You think? Is that where we're headed? I think we're about a decade away from no secrets, none, zero, people being able to read people's thoughts. Really?

Yeah. I don't think – I think the application of it will probably – they'll start probably doing Neuralink and similar technologies. They'll start doing human trials probably within I think they start doing it already but I mean in terms of like the ability yeah they're approved for human trials what kind of a psycho do you have to be to be one of the early adopters

like yeah go ahead cut a quarter size hole in my fucking skull and stick some wires in there you really want that cigarette or that bowl of soup yeah or was all that crazy stuff in the 70s on MKUltra

and all that they were already trying to do all that shit oh they were doing some wild shit in the 70s in the 60s yeah that's

with the book Chaos by Tom O'Neill I talk about it too much and I'm sorry for everybody who listens no no I've read it I'd love to read it no I haven't read it

it's about Manson it's about Manson and the CIA and MKUltra yeah MKUltra fascinating story this guy-in between the CIA, right? Yeah. MKUltra. Fascinating story. This guy, Jolly West, he was also responsible for making Jack Ruby go crazy.

He visited Jack Ruby in jail after he shot Lee Harvey Oswald. And then Jack Ruby was like saying, they're burning the Jews. He's like hiding under his bunk screaming. I'm in hell. They fucking dosed him with acid. Then they dosed Manson with acid. And I think they taught Manson, I mean, according to Tom O'Neill's research, which I trust. And it's an amazing book.

Tom O'Neill was a guy who was a neighbor from my friend Greg Fitzsimmons. And he was like, hey, what are you working on? He's like, oh, I'm writing this article about Charles Manson and the anniversary of the Manson family murders. He starts writing it 20 years ago. And he starts doing research and he can't get the article out. It's just too much research. He's doing too much. And it extends fucking forever.

He keeps having to give money back and the publishers are freaking out at him. And then finally they got him someone to help him and an editor to sit down with him and he puts out this masterpiece. And this book is called Chaos. And it's the definitive book on Charles Manson, the Manson family, and their ties to the CIA. And it's fucking crazy. They did it to discredit the hippie movement.

They had this guy and these flower children. They had them go out and fucking murder people. And they talked them into doing it with acid. And they trained them how to do it through the techniques that he learned through MKUltra. That's insanity. Yeah, it's pretty definitive. I mean, when you read it, it doesn't leave a lot to imagination. Yeah, it's like pretty much that's

what they did and you know they were involved in all kinds of shit with that back then you know they that's the stanford prison experiments that's the uh harvard lsd studies the harvard lsd studies when they did that you know who was in that the fucking unabomber the unabomber yeah ted kaczynski he was a part of the Harvard LSD studies. He was already fucked up. His brother said he was already fucked up because when he was young, there's a great documentary on him

that's on Netflix. It's really good. And in it, they talk about how he was ill when he was a child, when he was a baby. And they put him in like this, I guess some sort of a hospital. And in this hospital they didn't pick him up they didn't take it they just let him cry in a crib for like

weeks and months and like he had no human touch Jesus yeah so he became like this and that'll make him a fucking psychopath and then on top of that they put him in the Harvard LSD studies so then they don't and then he writes the manifesto and then starts fucking killing people because he thinks rightly so that technology is going to replace human beings which i think is probably as crazy as he was he probably saw something i mean if you extrapolate what's happening now with technology and you take it to to its logical end like what's the event horizon of technology? Well, it's an artificial life form.

It's probably not just AI. It's probably life itself. It's not the artificial intelligence that exists in a computer. It's probably a new form of life. And I think that's probably what human beings give birth to. I think that's what we're doing. That's why we're obsessed with technology and innovation. I think it's a part of the process that leads intelligent life forms to create intelligent life.

Yeah, which is evolution. And that intelligent life creates vastly superior intelligent life because it just knows how to do it better, and it probably does it almost instantly. It's like, oh, you guys fucked up everything. Exactly, and looks back and goes, okay, we don't need you anymore. Yeah. Well, not only that, just all we'd have to do is just make, all you'd have to do to get rid of people, it's people like, oh, they're going to wipe us out.

All I'd have to do is give us free electricity, free food, free internet, and an app that makes you cum. And that would be it. That's it. We'd all just stay in our homes. Yeah. No one would go anywhere. And that would be it. That's it. We'd all just stay in our homes. Yeah, no one would go anywhere. And you just let it fade out. Yeah, if you can cum 300 times a day, good luck having a family.

Good luck having relationships. Good luck even forming them. If you can have these experiences through an app or through artificial intelligence, something that's attached to your brain, that's infinitely superior. I mean, look how addicted people are to just looking at TikTok, just looking at people do dances and get hit by cars. It's just crazy. It's insane. And it's so addictive. And it's very minor in the reward that it gives you. It gives you this very minor dopamine rush. But if it gives you transcendental experiences like unbelievable

experiences surreal to the point that they feel real well that's the worry about the simulation right that like there's a lot of people elon included that believe that it's more likely that we are in a simulation than not and that's like i had a long conversation with this guy about probability theory and simulations. And according to probability theory, we are in a simulation. But it's like, how do you – what does that mean? Like what are you saying? Like, well, if there is a simulation, if it's possible, if there is infinite galaxies out there, which we're pretty sure there are,

and there's infinite numbers of life forms that are where we are and superior and then superior to that. And then like every variation in between. It's inevitable that someone is going to come up with something that's indistinguishable from reality or superior to it. And maybe we're in that right now. And if we are in that right now, you know. How would you know? Yeah, how would you know you know I mean maybe that is what life is maybe that that is yeah maybe that's exactly how it works out self-evolving yeah this auto correcting yeah and we think of it as like oh my god it's not even life but maybe that is that is what the universe creates the matrix did hit on a few things like that

which makes it a little bit mmm there's a whole thing i remember after that came out was 98 99 everyone was really thinking like that you're like how would you know right and they had they had that great little scene at the end was like you know the first one failed because it was too perfect yeah you fucking humans needed failure you needed pain you needed misery to make it work and that kind of autocorrects back to yeah, like at first you'd go like, well, we can't be in isolation because my life wouldn't suck so bad. And you're like, well, actually, you know. Yeah. Maybe it would. Maybe it would suck. Well, maybe that's also what motivates people to continue to buy things and innovate. I was going to say without that,

I want more. Right. How do you keep the machine going? How do you keep the gerbil on the wheel? And it's kind of like people inherently know it, which is why people are like, oh, I just want to camp and buy the lake. Yeah, but they want to go buy a new tent and they want to buy a canteen. They keep wanting it. Everybody wants their kit, man. Everybody loves kit. Yeah, they never stop. It never stops.

It's a desire that human beings have that no other animal has. Which is weird now, too, because it's not only just going out and camping. They want to go out camping so they can share the experience with someone else. Right. At times, I'm still a little old school, so I don't really do the social media thing or anything. You don't do it at all? We have Instagram for the company. That's good.

But you personally don't do it? I don't, no. Good for you. I'm so happy when I meet people that are just- I wouldn't know how. Good for you. Good for you. I'm going to say, Adrian, I'll let my assistant-

TikTok's where I draw the line. I don't have a TikTok. I'm like, get the fuck out of here. Plus for you. Good for you. I'm going to say, Adrian, I'll let my assistant do it. TikTok's where I draw the line. I don't have a TikTok. I'm like, get the fuck out of here. Plus it's Chinese spyware. Like 100%. Exactly, right? It's another way into the phone. As opposed to what, though?

American spyware. Well, that's what I was going to say. It's the same thing. It's just, okay, different country. Who do you want listening to you today? Well, this is interesting. That car that I showed you, the Steve McQueen bullet car, I was Googling that. And then all of a sudden it shows up on Instagram.

Of course. A bunch of them show up on Instagram. I'm like, what the fuck is this? Do you know how many times? Yeah, of course. How is that on my Instagram? I didn't look for it on Instagram. No, they just cross-referenced it.

Somebody's sharing it. Somehow or another it's getting in there. Is this what you want? Is this what you want? I literally have a separate computer at work completely dialed in, like almost air-cammed off me because the shit I look up is pretty sketchy. It's pretty sketchy. Yeah, that's probably smart. You know?

Yeah. And then, I don't know. It's weird. People do experiences just to share them instead of experience them. That's always been weird. That is weird. Like when people go camping just to let people know they're camping. They're camping.

Like, look, if you love camping right on, because like, you know, I don't need to videotape myself rolling to know I love jujitsu. Right. You know, I don't want that. But people do love to do that. They do it. Look at me. Like, okay, that's a bit. There's also value in it for some people that do it that are in that world, like competitors.

No, absolutely. No, marketing is one thing. Yeah. But what you're doing as a social structure, I think that can be damaging because you're not giving 100%. You're not focusing. I think that's eroding a lot of the – It's a blurry line, though. It is, right?

Because it's weird. I get a lot of our stunt teams are younger – obviously, they're younger. I call them kids. But they're in their 20s. I mean, freak athletes. Fantastic. But that generation is completely woven into that. They're younger kids. I call them kids. But they're in their 20s going into 30s. I mean, freak athletes. Fantastic. But that generation is completely woven into that.

But again, we're in the entertainment industry, so they're trying to get themselves out there because that's not how you get jobs. Like my day, you had to go knock on doors. Now it's like put yourself out on Instagram, doing a cool trick, and now you get the next gig. So I can be the old crusty guy going, oh, you guys with your Instagram. But to them, it is part. It is a weird line because it is how they get work. It's how they get themselves out there. Self-branding is a part of our world now.

Yeah. But it's weird where people just want to take pictures just for the gram. Yeah. That's all they want. Like experience it and take pictures. But don't do it to take. I met this guy at the gas station today and he asked to take a picture. I go, sure. And he goes, don't worry, I won't post it.

I'm like, do you have any pictures of me that are out there? Go ahead and post it. It was nice of him to say. It is nice. It was nice. It's weird that you have to say that. Yeah. I think he's a pretty old school guy.

Yeah. But the fact that he said that, don't worry, I won't post it. Well, that's good. It wasn't for him to get recognition. It was for him because he's actually a fan and he just wanted to show his you know well he wanted to do it for his wife because he said his wife calls me uh his boyfriend or something like that that he's a fan boy all right good okay a little deep with the story there let me just some fucking you know oh you got a man crush on Joe Rogan so he took a picture but he's like don't worry I won't post it

like that's interesting I thought it was interesting at the but he's like, don't worry, I won't post it. Like, that's interesting. I thought it was interesting at the time. I was like, I don't care. It's okay. But it was, it was interesting that he like,

it was aware of that. Like, not, but that's, I think that's a good thing. That's a good thing. Yeah. That's a good man.

Yeah. But it's that, the thing is like, does it exist? You know, if a tree falls in the forest and you don't Instagram it, does it exist?

Yeah. It is a, I mean, it's an inevitability. You know, and my kids are like firmly entrenched in that world. That's their deal. Born with cell phone in hand. Yeah.

You know, that's it. What's shocking to me is how well they are at navigating things. How, have you seen, like, you know, I have a 10. Mm-hmm. Flying through that iPad. Oh, yeah. Crazy. I'm like, I can't, I'm still looking for my email.

They know how to edit shit. My daughter figured out when she first got a phone that if she screen records, because my wife gave her a time limit on it, but it was a password time limit thing. So she would have to give it to my wife to get extra screen time. So she set screen record. So she knew when record so she knew when so she just rewound it and like she's doing six nine whatever the fuck the number is literally yeah bank heist and my court is all I want to give her

not yeah a bus for figuring that that's pretty dope I like I did that's that's a clever little happiness is a big skill well it's like they're they're like little prisoners you know prisoners figure out all kinds of stuff to do because that is necessity. They figure out a way to make things and manufacture their own stuff. Isn't that a trick? Like, I was, you know, people always come up and ask, like, okay, I want to get into directing. How do I get into directing? I'm like, okay, what have you directed?

Like, what do you mean? Well, you have an iPhone, right? I mean, do you see what these things can do? Yeah. You know, we had the big VHS cameras, two VCRs. Like with an iPhone, like, so let me get this straight. You can edit, shoot, color correct, sound correct, sound effect, visual effect. Like you can go out and shoot. You can edit it on the phone on the and I've like again my ten-year-old like nice enough you can fly Yeah, they're so good. I can do effects you do slow motion I've seen stuff that like I the you know wire removal. Yeah, you full-on composition. Oh, yeah, like it's unbelievable It's unbelievable and it's just they're free apps. Mm-hmm. What's all the photo ones you get different heads on people?

Yeah, you can start deep faking people literally on your iPhone right now. That's another thing that's fucking people up is these filters where girls see these girls that have this perfect face and perfect skin. Yeah, and they don't realize that it's a filter. It's Photoshop. Yeah. You're getting Photoshopped out there. Basically, you're looking at animation. Yeah. It's a version of animation applied to an actual human being.

Isn't that creepy though? But everybody thinks that's what you have to be. There's a lot of VFX companies thinks that's what you have to be. There's a lot of VFX companies nowadays that do strolly cosmetic work. Not just to fix scars or inconsistent flyaway hairs and stuff, but you can do... The level of

what's possible cosmetically in digital work right now is pretty fascinating. One of my wife's friends was a model and they would take photos of her with no makeup on. It was all no makeup and they put it all on afterwards that's insane like she's basically a canvas see very strange now you go to ai and you go to like because i know kiana a lot of actors have deals you cannot digitally alter their image in any way kiana tells a story when we were talking about ai a while ago was like you know he had done a certain performance and they had added a digital tier. It seems so subtle and so trivial, but it

did change the performance. You know what I mean? So you've come in, you've committed to a performance and someone's changed it without your knowledge. Like that's, granted that's, that's beyond editing because we could choose different takes, but still it was augmenting a performance that was never given. Right. You know, that's just the's that's beyond editing because we could choose different takes but still it was augmenting a performance that was never given right you know that's just the tip of what you could do now what if you started digitally enhancing smiles or frowns or you gave an eye like it's not just a look it's not cosmetic it's performance yeah you can alter so much about a person's facial features and in a film well what just i mean god i do it in this you know we do face replacements all the time you know not on camera but on some of the other

cast or when we're doing a dangerous stunt or we have like a helmet on a guy we'll erase it and put a put a a nondescript person's face or head on it it's it's fucking cake it's really easy which is scary yeah you're laughing about it when you're in the theater and you're editing but you're like but that's what my thought is that in the future will you even have to make that scene can it all be done with ai because i think right now there's that in the future, will you even have to make that scene? Can it all be done with AI? Because I think right now there's that uncanny valley, right, where you see AI scenes. You're like, oh, that's not real. You know, like in Game of Thrones, like when they have the dire wolves walking around, you're like, that's not a real wolf.

Right. But how far away are we from totally being? I think you could do it now. It's time and money. being i think you could do it now it's time and money if you watch if you gave a digital artist enough time with just the technology we have today you could do a digital character and work with the i mean just it's time but we can do the like we can make it look photo real it's just it's the it's the organicness right it's that heaviness when you step or it's the incons it's almost too perfect it's the inconsistencies yeah it's the fucked up hair. It's the little gesture that you can't figure out.

Looking like a person. Yeah. Or the Steve Buscemi. Yeah, exactly. The unpredictability. The nuttiness that you can't quite get. But that's just a matter of time. That's just time.

But the technology's there. If they're just going to take all the weird characters that have ever existed and come up with one. Well, then you get an algorithm to pull in the aggregate of all the fucked up weirdness out there. And how do you spit that back out, right? It's basically a version of these Alex Gray paintings. They're just going to take all the weird guys that are – Yeah. No, I don't doubt it. Character actors.

You know, I mean, that's why a lot of directors get into animation. There's very – other than, you know, taking references and stuff. But, like, no one's calling – I mean, those animators, they know, taking references and stuff. But like no one's calling. I mean, those those animators, they're drawing their characters from somewhere. Yeah. Whether it's a person they see in the street or it's a Tekken video or it's, you know, a Taekwondo match. They're taking that action from somewhere and then they're embellishing upon it. So like, you know, no one's calling them out on where they're drawing it.

Yeah. It's just such a strange world that we live in now, i'm 55 i don't know how 54 yeah so we're essentially we grew up in the age where we were there when the answering machine came about we were there when we had pages yeah we had pages we were there when the vhs came about like those were to go from that to where we are today yeah it's fucking insane. And to try to figure out what's next, like where the future is. Right. I mean, it's like, what the fuck? That was just in the last, God, what, 20, 30 years?

And then Apple released that thing today. Did they release it? Do we know what it is? I'm like, I'm looking. It's going to be expensive. It's not going to come out until next year. But it's got a headset, and I'll try to find a picture. They just released some new Apple AR headset that's supposed to be a real game changer.

Really? Yeah. It's going to be augmented reality and virtual reality. It's the side view of it. With the goggles. Yeah. It's got see-through, though. So, like, there's a picture I've seen.

I'll look at this one. I'll show it. You can see their eyes through it Oh What does it do does it layer in reality and okay? So it's augmented and that might be able to shut off and you can do some VR stuff I haven't seen the right we're doing the show so this might be the step this might be the one No controllers, so it's all with your hands right that's the same saying but you can project the hologram and then you so minority report style yeah

minority reporting moving stuff around yeah underrated yeah very underrated film yeah here's everything this is it so you get so was that a screen so you're watching they do have a controller there but maybe you don't need it so you're playing video game there I think oh so you play the video game right in front of your face oh I I'll see the world around you. Oh wow So there's no screens you're watching a movie, but that could just be a screen I won't I don't want that what I want is full immersion What you know like that's that's what I'm interested in when it comes to like video games and films like full immersion

I have to do well. We'll find out you talking, you don't want to see the world. You just want to be wrapped in it. Yeah, I think that's what's going to get real weird. Well, that brings me to what you were talking about earlier when you were talking about like the WALL-E thing. You've got a bunch of people sitting in chairs. Now you're watching, you've got your family on couch instead of watching a TV together.

You've got your goggles on and you have five individuals in their own world. That's weird. Very bizarre. Yeah, you're all watching a show together, but then your kid sneaks in porn. Yeah, and you got another show. You're like, how's that going? It's great, Dad.

It's great. It does end up doing what you were asking for. So here's just a little video they showed at the event. So here's the guy's looking at different screens that would be on his phone or computer. And this thing then expands out here in a second. He probably hit a button. Oh, wow. And the next one then shows it taking over your whole room.

Whoa. He's floating in space watching something. You're not going to get anybody to leave the house in 20 years. This is going to be very strange. I know. Very strange. Remember when you had to go to a bar? Yeah, remember those days?

Yeah. You just told your friend to meet me somewhere because you couldn't call him? Those days are still... Oh, yeah, you had to meet him. You couldn't call him. Yeah, oh, I remember those days? Yeah. You just told your friend, meet me somewhere because you couldn't call him? Those days are still, oh yeah, you had to meet him. You couldn't call him. You couldn't call him. Yeah. Oh, I remember those days.

When I used to go to the pool hall, the most valuable thing was the payphone. Did you? Because people would call the payphone. How many quarters did you used to walk around? We'd have our pager and stunts. You'd have about 10 minutes to get back to the answering service if you were available or not. So you had to pull off the 405, find a payphone and put those quarters in.

Yeah. You always had that roll of quarters. I remember the phone cards too. Remember phone cards? Yeah, phone cards. You always had that roll of quarters. I remember the phone cards, too. You remember phone cards? You had to slide them in. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't. Fucking strange. Strange world we live in now.

Yeah. I mean, who would have ever thought that everyone would have a phone on them everywhere you go? No, even kids. Yeah. And none of that, you don't need the computer after a while. Yeah. The computer is kind of an afterthought now. It's just so you can see something but you can do it all

on your phone yeah I used to always travel with a laptop like if I was going on the road I always and now all my notes are on my phone it's phone or

I mostly take an iPad yeah it's hops and it's just to read on I know it's so strange such a strange time like on set

like people like you know you just give people just throw their phone everything's fine everything's happening moving yeah I don't know how she'd do it now to be that efficient well it definitely makes you more productive and more efficient you can get a lot done yeah you know the right motivation you say with the right people it's it's a it's a tool right people it becomes a distraction yeah but it's just most people do not have the

kind of discipline that's required to like. To manage the technology we have. Yeah. I get it. And as it comes, it gets strong. Like, you know, maybe you have the discipline to avoid coffee. Do you have the discipline to avoid meth? Yeah, exactly.

That's what your iPhone is. It's brain meth, right? And it's also like if you're doing meth, you know you're fucking up, right? But what if your doctor gives you the meth? You know, it's great. Like we're doing now. Like we say something, he pulls it up. It's good for research.

It's good for something like that. But like, it also can be that, like, don't you want to think about it a little bit? Right. It doesn't always have to be a reference. It doesn't always have to be what's on YouTube. Right. YouTube has become the new Encyclopedia Botanica. Oh, yeah.

And you take it as real real which is the scarier part oh that's the scarier part if you have gullible friends and they send you things you're like hey man that's not real yeah you need to like google that thing and then debunked in fact don't even google it

go to DuckDuckGo there are people that are actually like great story idea. Yeah. They'll Google it. Like, they'll actually Google great story idea or great script or great action sequence. Well, AI will do it for you now. Chat GPT will do that for you.

And this is just Chat GPT-4. You know, what happens when they get to Chat GPT-30? So, again, to all that, it's like, okay, so let's think. Like, if you're not inputting it, right? Right. If you're just asking it and you take that idea, is that copyright? Right. You know what I mean? That's where it gets funky, right?

It does get funky. You could be the programmer. You're doing the copyright infringement. But if I'm the one benefiting it by Googling it or doing the AI thing, am I infringing? That's a very good question. You know what I mean? I mean, they can code websites for you now, like really quickly, like AI thing. Right. Am I infringing? It's a very good question. You know what I mean? I mean, they can code websites for you now, like really quickly, like instantaneously.

Right. They can do code flawlessly. They can do so many different things. So, yeah, what does that do to that industry? Yeah. Oh, it's going to kill so many industries. I mean, this is something that Andrew Yang was talking about with automation,

but I don't think he anticipated AI and things like this. Well, the creative aspect of business is a whole other level. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's weird. Writing, creative, visual, graphic art in general. Right. Architectural design would be the same thing.

Right. Yeah, exactly. And I think really anything like that. But coding, especially. And it can do it instantaneously. I know. Stuff that would take people months. I know, months.

What's the waiting time? Right. Eight minutes. No need for creativity creativity no need to be sitting alone bored just trying to figure out ideas just trying to get those ideas to pop into your head i think that's you know they call it like zero to one learning right i hand you a blank piece of paper give me a great idea that's different than if i give you a shitty idea and i say okay joe fix it right like that's one to ten thinking yeah you can like i'm good at like someone gives me a shitty idea and I say, okay, Joe, fix it. Right. Like that's one to ten thinking. Yes. I'm good at like somebody gives me a shitty sequence, I can make a better sequence.

Yes. You know, the zero to one, that's what they really pay you for, to come up with the original cool idea. That was a problem with joke thieves. Because joke thieves would go to open mic nights and they would watch amateurs, but amateurs that had like a pretty good premise. Right. But they just sucked.

Yeah, didn't quite have it yet. Oh, I know how to do that. Right. So a professional would sit in the back of that open mic night and watch the open. Oh, yeah. It was a real issue. Really? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I never would have thought of that.

Well, they've all been busted. Most of them have been busted. But how do you get busted on that? Comics. Other comics. And then now the YouTube people. The YouTube people will take bits and show that this is where it came from. And some pretty prominent people have been busted doing that.

Really? Yeah, because it's just too easy. I'm really good at if a young comic says, I got this idea. It can't work. I go, tell me the bit. And they'll tell me. So I'm fresh, right? I'm looking at it completely from the outside, but they already have structure.

So I go, oh, okay. Cut that part out and put it in the front and say, just set it up with almost like the punchline. Right. And then your new punchline is this. And I'm like, oh. Yeah, you layered it. Yeah. You just figure out a way.

But I didn't have the idea. Right. Ideas are the hardest thing. Way hardest. Premises for stand-up comedy in particular, they're some of the hardest things to acquire. A good thing to talk about. And there's things that everybody talks about, like

Biden falls down. Ha ha, everybody talks about it. It's simple, it's easy, it's right there for everybody. So there's a lot of parallel thinking. But then weird premises, like someone who takes something that no one ever would have thought would be Comedy and then turns that into a bit. Well if that person's an amateur And someone's sitting in the back of the room

They're kind of clunky with their way of doing it But the person who's a pro season goes I can fix that and then they just steal it. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing Yeah, that's the thing. So when you ask AI to write jokes for you, how do you know if AI is not stealing it from a blog? Right. Because AI is scouring the entire internet. Right. So they could be getting it from all sorts of different people's intellectual property. Right.

Yeah, that's true. I think even more to that is, again, what the writers are saying about now is like, you know, they're paid on their first pass. They're paid in passes, you know, pass the script, pass the script. And they get paid less for a rewrite than they do an original idea. lot of my writer friends is that you know a real concern is no one's trying to replace writers with with you know the the finished draft yes an ai can carry out a shitty draft yes and then they can hire a human to do the second draft yeah at like half price yeah like that's it so like ai's pumping out the shitty first so they get you know that's the thing so what's a human like you're saying what's a human first draft what's it yeah what's the first draft what's the thing. So what's a human – like you were saying, what's a human first draft? What's a first draft? What's a second draft? And we're talking about a business that already has a bunch of shady practices.

Oh, yeah. I mean everybody's copying everybody. Everybody's stealing ideas. Everybody's doing – but whether you're evolving those ideas, whether you're just straight-up ripping them off or whether they're inspiring you, you're still using off something that exists, right? You're getting it from something. Well, we're all influenced by everything that's been created before us. Well, that's life, right? You can't stop being influenced. Of of course that's why you people watch that's why you get all your material that's how I

get my retail we just go watch we observe yeah or read you know whatever there's a guy's do jiu-jitsu with and he was a screenwriter and he brought a screen he brought a screenplay he brought a fully formed script to a very prominent production company, and they stole it. They completely stole it and made a blockbuster film, and he went to court with them and won and got credited in the film. But it was a battle. It was a fucking battle. And he probably had it as a draft right there. Oh, yeah.

He actually copied it. And he also had the papers. He had all the documentation that showed that he had registered it. Well, that's what the WTA is for, right? Yes. That's why they would do all that. But it's just dirty as fuck. They just took it and ran.

They're like, well, let them fucking sue us. Yeah. And that's what he did because they're like, nope, fuck you. He's like, fuck you. I met with you. I gave you this idea. And they're like, fuck you. Like, we're huge and you're some guy and you know don't fucking

cause trouble or you're never gonna work again that's a horror story it's scary but that is how common is that in i would hollywood again it's that fucking soft line because you're so inspired and everybody's everybody like this wasn't inspired i think no what i'm saying this was the star that he wrote it for wound up starring in the movie movie. Yeah, okay, that's probably how they got caught. That was all too on the nose. But that's why I think a lot of studios stay with existing IP. That's why, you know, comic books. You get a book, you're not going to run into a battle.

I am doing the book. There's no interpretation. It's Spider-Man. Yeah, you and I didn't have this, hey, we got this idea for this lizard guy, and we just made it up in parallel thinking. Right, right, right. You have a little lukewarmness there. But for people like that, like that have come up with a thing and had it stolen, AI is so scary.

Well, yeah. Again, that's a double whammy, right? And what if it can get into Google Docs, right? What if you upload it to the cloud and so you've got all your shit sitting up there on the cloud? All your notes. Oh, yeah. all your personal thoughts all your diaries all your drafts

all of it I guess that's the real thing people now like you know I have notebook and notebook and notebook I'm sure you do too of like all your past ideas

I still have hard copies but a lot of people I know have all their you know like my production designer designs that are yet to be experienced it's all uploaded

it's not all digital copies shit that's never made it out like I have like three or four ideas that's never made it out like i have like three or four ideas that haven't made it out yet that are fully flushed and like you know somebody gets a hold of that you're like you can't argue with them because they haven't written a thing yet right you know and they're like oh that was funny we both had that space fantasy yeah um interesting right it's a weird world we live in and in your world the world of creating these entertainment

properties these things like john wick it's like that that's a world where you're like more likely to get poached i i think so but again i'm gonna go yeah it does suck and we should at least start the talks about how to protect ourselves against that or what it could be, but at the same time, look, if you're creative, if you have good ideas, you're going to keep coming. So to answer your earlier question, yeah, I'm going to give it a go again.

I'm working on this project called Highlander. We're going to redo Highlander a little bit. Really? Yeah. No shit. I loved Highlander. Highlander's awesome. I'm super stoked to do something with that.

We have Ghost of Tsushima on the plates, based on the video game, the samurai film. Oh, wow. And Rainbow Six. Those are the three I'm working on now. Yeah, we need a good samurai movie. This last time was a good samurai. The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise? If you can, check out the game Ghost of Tsushima.

It's one of the best looking games out there. But it's got a great story. What is it about? Jin Sakai and the Mongol invasion. Oh, shit. When the Mongols invaded Japan? Yeah, they had to stop in Tsushima Island. Japan was the only people that kept them out.

Yeah. The samurais were the only people that defeated the Mongols. They got their asses kicked, but they stalled them long enough for bad weather to sink them in the Kamikaze, the typhoon that hit. Oh, wow. That's incredible. It's based on Kurosawa's cinematography and stuff. Look how good this looks. Holy shit.

Again, won every award out there for cinematography. When was this made? This was just a few years ago. We've been developing the script ever since, which we have, and we're working with Sony right now to bring this to fruition. Oh, my God. This is going to be incredible. But a great storyline.

Fantastic storyline. Wow. This is amazing. be incredible. But a great storyline. Fantastic storyline. Wow. This is amazing. The graphics. Yeah. Oh, some of the best sword fights. Oh,

Jesus. It's basically the birth of the first Shinobi about how he asked it, you know, be something less than a samurai, but more than anything else to save his people. This is incredible. Yeah. Fantastic.

I didn't even know it existed. Yeah, fantastic. Check it out. I'm not a big game guy, but I love the story so much. I contacted Sony PlayStation going, we got to do this. We really have to do this. Yeah. Oh, that's a great idea for a film.

So between these guys and what they got going on with Rainbow Six and Michael B. Jordan, I think one of those three will build a few worlds and have some fun. I'm sure. Yeah, we'll see what happens. Well, listen, man, it was great talking to you. It was great meeting you at Taryn's.

Yeah, hopefully we'll see you again. I'm super pumped that you put the 71 Barracuda in the film. That was awesome. All because of you. It was awesome. I mean, I could tell people that.

They're like, shut the fuck up. I'm like, no, I'm telling you. I talked to Chad. No, that's the reason. We listen to the fans. I appreciate it, and I am a fan. Thank you very much for being here, and congratulations with the movie. No, thank you the real deal. No, that's the reason. We listen to the fans. I appreciate it, and I am a fan. Thank you very much for being here.

No, he came back for you guys. Congratulations with the movie. No, thank you guys very much. My pleasure. Thanks. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye.