Interviews
Interview - Jesse V. Johnson
With „The Butcher“ you have directed your sixth movie. Meanwhile one recognizes certain characteristic features. Your main characters for example are always antiheros and outsiders with similar traits. What fascinates you about this special kind of figures?
I'm most interested by characters with human weaknesses, characters I can relate to, we are none of us really good, or really bad, we are all susceptible to the same temptations and needs.
"The Butcher" is your most acting based movie so far. Your earlier movies rely more on action and have the advantage to conceal other weaknesses with strong action sequences. How difficult was the dare for you to change your style and to trust completely in the script, the dialoges and above all the actors?
I didn't really change my style with "The Butcher," I just worked very hard at making the film I wanted, I was lucky that I had the support of the producers, Thad Pryor, Anthony Pugliese and Charlie Crowe, they took a risk with me, and after they had hired Eric Roberts and set the shoot date I was pretty much given the freedom within the budget constraints to make the film I wanted, which is an ideal and very rare privilege (just stay on budget).
I had quite simply never had that before, it had always been a case of battling, arguing and struggling for what I wanted over the desires of a producer or producers, whose agenda was not always to make the best movie possible.
Who inspired you to Merle Hench and his destiny? As fas as I know you had Eric Roberts already very early in mind for the leading part. Was he an important factor during the development of the script? How do you research the backgrounds in such a milieu?
Merle was born from the Manolo character in my film "Pit Fighter", the character played by Steven Bauer, I always felt he was the strongest character in that film and was very interesting to me. A sad, under rated "has been", whom everyone has written off and openly ridicules, but someone who also has some fight left in him and by God a healthy helping of pride, too. there was something timeless and mythic about a character like that. A man who lived on his reputation alone, but gradually found that the memory of that reputation is becoming clouded and muddled over time.
In the underworld you can still have a reputation based on deeds of great daring, blood letting, vengeance or brutality, there are not many occupations that these skills work for your resume. I enjoy that, I don't care much for the amassing of money, or toys, or worldly possessions, a man should be judged on his actions alone, but rarely is.
Merle is very much a man out of time, like a character from the "Wild Bunch" he wakes up one morning and looks at himself, only to see a man who has missed every opportunity.
After you have shown your qualities as a director who can work very effective with small budgets on more action based movies you head into a new direction. "The Butcher" and soon also "Charlie Valentine" focus on the actors and a consistent story. How do you imagine the next step in your development?
I like where I am headed, I enjoy the producers I am working with and the projects I have in development, it is part of a very conscious decision to move into performance based material (over effects or action motivated product). It is challenging and exhausting, when you work on a project you love, you never sleep, tossing and turning and reworking shots in your head, you leap out of bed in the morning before your alarm goes off, it's incredible the energy you find. I would like longer shooting schedules and some bigger names that would entice more money, respectability, public awareness but at this time I am 100% confident that that it is coming. I have two more scripts in development that are very close personal stories along the lines of "The Butcher" and "Charlie Valentine" -- these have been optioned and are in development. Each one increases in budget and in cast and the work speaks for itself as it always must (it is very different attaching cast to good material over substandard fare). I like to work in a budget range that ensures profit is good, this promotes a good work flow. A number of friends who started out when I did went for the studio sized budgets, I am working slowly to that same end, but I will have a body of work by the time I get there. My friends are still in development.
Every director has his own strategies to scout the right locations. Do you already look around during writing the script or is this a part oft the pre-production when the project gets green light? Do you trust in other advices or is this a job you have to do on your own because you have a vision in mind?
A little of all of the above, with shorter shooting schedules I am always looking for a location that will service a number of different looks, satisfy a number of different scenes, you lose so much time picking up all your gear and moving while shooting. I have my eyes open all the time, and often write for a specific location. I love Los Angeles for it's locations, especially the lesser known ones.
How important is L.A. as a setting? Already your first movie "The Honorable" aka "The Doorman" is characterized by this city and also "The Butcher" derives a lot of his atmosphere from the unique flair of L.A. I especially like the moments by night. Do you have you inspiring examples in this regard?
Being in love with a city helps, I came here almost penniless, and this town nurtured and fed me, I love exploring and driving around here. I read a lot of Raymond Chandler as a child and he wrote about the town in detail, I like to see the places he wrote about. As far as films go, "Collateral" "Matchstick Men" "Heat" all good LA stories. LA is a living organism and watching it grow can be enlightening or disappointing in varying degrees, but it never stops growing.
In almost every of your movies you are working with often hidden symbolism. The tarantula in "The Last Sentinel" and "The Butcher" is an obvious example. Are these cross-references intended? I'm sure the scenes serve a special purpose. Are they a part of your complete works? Will the audience be looking back and find out new aspects in a few years after your next movies are done?
I hope these details have significance for an audience, it's easy to get caught up in telling a story, and forget we're all just animals of opportunity surviving in a harsh and mean environment. We try to be enlightened and Zen-like in our daily lives, to raise ourselves above our beast-like origins, but we all catch ourselves yelling in traffic or somewhere else, sadly, we're just a hop skip and a jump away from braining each other with sticks on the evolutionary scale. I'm glad you noticed the tarantula in "The Butcher" -- I like that sequence quite a lot.
As long as it's released and released well, I don't mind the time it takes. I am influenced more by my feeling about the finished film than by any audience reaction.
How has your public reputation changed in the last few months? After "Pit Fighter" you were a an insider's tipp and after "The Last Sentinel" a new hope. On the other side you got a massive adverse wind of the "Battlestar Galactica" - communities. Do the positive news prevail?
I don't know, the internet is a fickle thing, I'm not sure how much it really counts, positive reviews or negative, unless you're talking phenomenal activity figures, neither good or bad review has affected me or my career at all. It's all so temporary and superficial. The movies will way outlast the chatter. "The Last Sentinel" was in profit before we'd finished shooting, it has never stopped making money for it's backers, that was how "The Butcher" came into being. For, me the journey into Sc-Fi is complete, I'm not really interested in the genre, I have turned down several Sci-Fi projects, and horror projects lately, I like the contemporary, I like realism and redemption and heart. I like the mythic emerging out of the ordinary. I'll pursue these projects and my own, until I can't, and that hasn't happened yet, thank goodness, so I am glad I took the early assignments because they have lead me to where I am now, for better of for worse.
How big was the danger for you to get nailed on low budget action movies after the success of your first movies? I am sure the offers were there.
Yes, and I said no to all of them!!!
There's a very real danger of getting stuck in low budget, and there comes a point where you just have to say no. I have had to work for almost nothing on "Butcher" and "Charlie Valentine" to ensure the movies get made and get to be what they should be, and I don't mind that at all, they will pay me back, but without them existing I would be associated permanently with the other films on my resume.
There are ways to make movies that contain certain actors and certain amounts of action that will generate certain profits, and rarely will these movies be anything by certainly boring. It's at great risk to the profitability that you lessen the action and raise the drama quota of a film, it takes adventurers for financiers, gamblers with a lot of money, guys who will trust you and stand beside you, World films did this for me on "The Butcher", and the producers of "Charlie Valentine" Ted warren and Ed Robin have done this, too.
I am very passionate and committed and have a very singular agenda, to make the best possible movie, I look for partners who share this same agenda, that way we always seem to get along, eventually.
Can you profit from contacts in Hollywood you made when you were stuntman? Has this history made it easier for you to profile as director? Normally you work with almost the same crew. Have you met most of them at that time?
It helped when I was inexperienced as a director, it was an insurance policy for a potential backer. Now it usually comes as surprise to collaborators that I ever did that stuff at all, a distant memory.
You are always a busy man with enough possible projects in mind. A teaser poster for "Savage Dog" was published online and rumors assume you could work out something with Action Concept. Can you bring light into the darkness? What's next?
I am finishing "Charlie Valentine" of course, which is a full time job. But I am also writing two scripts for different production companies. AMG, the group that produced "Charlie Valentine" has optioned a script of mine "The Debt Collectors" which I would be thrilled to make next, it's really solid material and a deeply personal and important script for me.
"Savage Dog" is on hold as Dominiquie Vandenberg has a series for TV that is going into preproduction. The movie was written for him as a follow up to "Pit Fighter." I like writing in foreign countries, where the internet and cell phone distractions are lessened, also the combined stimuli of new sights and sounds works for me.
You have tried different styles/subgenres in your action movies: a mafia film, a post-apocalyptic movie, a tournament fight film etc. Do you prefer any subgenre or do you like to work in such different fields to keep up a certain variety within your works as an action director?
I am not interested in fantasy films, real life is far too diverse and interesting, I regard those early films as the works of a toddler with a crayon. I like real life, and real people, there is always the epic in everyday reality, finding it is the challenge, at least for the time being.
Is there any difference when you are working with action veterans like Eric Roberts or Don ’The Dragon’ Wilson in contrast to Newcomers like Dominiquie Vandenberg?
All actors have different ways of approaching their craft, and should always be approached as such, some of the oldest pros are the most nervous while the youngest newbies can be rock solidly confident.
Certainly time and experience affords the actor a tool box from which to choose short cuts/techniques, sometimes good, sometimes not so good, you have to be on your toes, it's a tricky job, just watching quietly can be all it takes, sometimes.
On reflection we were incredibly lucky to find Eric, and something interesting and unexpected about him, that completely took me by surprise is his willingness to get in on the action. I've worked with a lot of big and small name "action" movie stars, and the amazing thing, although really it's just human nature I suppose, is how nervous, edgy and terrified they are of the actual situations they are asked to portray on screen. I don't judge at all, a stunt is a stunt and unless you've assembled the pyrotechnics to be used by the special effects team, or driven with the stunt drivers and fought alongside the choreographer before there should and must be an element of caution, in fact I recommend it. But Eric was fearless, and almost seemed to get a rush from the action, the more dangerous the scenario the scarier or more edgy the stunt gag, the closer to the actual danger zone he became the more enthusiastic and cool he got. Very interesting and a character trait I've witnessed in some of the great stunt men (not me), and some of the elite special forces operators I've met, it's like a "counter-nervousness", a calm and focus that almost needs the adrenaline rush to exist.
Eric Roberts has this, and I think it's just about the coolest thing to witness. He came out of "The Butcher" with burns to his hand from a machine gun, cuts on his face from squib hits, a broken rib and bruised kidney from hitting a wall during his shoot out with Robert Davi, and a massive abdominal bruise from the reciprocating cocking handle on the 1919 machine gun he uses to decimate Doyle's strip club, as far as I'm concerned Eric is the real thing. That and having the balls to sign onto a film with 80 pages of dialogue 48 hours before the start of principal photography, I'm a life long fan and a would love to work with him again.
As always the last words are yours. Some space for whatever you want to say to the visitors out there.
I just hope folks enjoy the movie and for a few moments find some entertainment in the sad, heroic life of Merle "The Butcher" Hench.
A man who was all but written off by those around him, until fate and chance dealt him a hand that afforded him a second shot at nobility, and he seized it with a vengeance. Thank you, dear Andre for an awesome list of questions, I hope I have done your hard work some justice with my responses.
With „The Butcher“ you have directed your sixth movie. Meanwhile one recognizes certain characteristic features. Your main characters for example are always antiheros and outsiders with similar traits. What fascinates you about this special kind of figures?
I'm most interested by characters with human weaknesses, characters I can relate to, we are none of us really good, or really bad, we are all susceptible to the same temptations and needs.
"The Butcher" is your most acting based movie so far. Your earlier movies rely more on action and have the advantage to conceal other weaknesses with strong action sequences. How difficult was the dare for you to change your style and to trust completely in the script, the dialoges and above all the actors?
I didn't really change my style with "The Butcher," I just worked very hard at making the film I wanted, I was lucky that I had the support of the producers, Thad Pryor, Anthony Pugliese and Charlie Crowe, they took a risk with me, and after they had hired Eric Roberts and set the shoot date I was pretty much given the freedom within the budget constraints to make the film I wanted, which is an ideal and very rare privilege (just stay on budget).
I had quite simply never had that before, it had always been a case of battling, arguing and struggling for what I wanted over the desires of a producer or producers, whose agenda was not always to make the best movie possible.
Who inspired you to Merle Hench and his destiny? As fas as I know you had Eric Roberts already very early in mind for the leading part. Was he an important factor during the development of the script? How do you research the backgrounds in such a milieu?
Merle was born from the Manolo character in my film "Pit Fighter", the character played by Steven Bauer, I always felt he was the strongest character in that film and was very interesting to me. A sad, under rated "has been", whom everyone has written off and openly ridicules, but someone who also has some fight left in him and by God a healthy helping of pride, too. there was something timeless and mythic about a character like that. A man who lived on his reputation alone, but gradually found that the memory of that reputation is becoming clouded and muddled over time.
In the underworld you can still have a reputation based on deeds of great daring, blood letting, vengeance or brutality, there are not many occupations that these skills work for your resume. I enjoy that, I don't care much for the amassing of money, or toys, or worldly possessions, a man should be judged on his actions alone, but rarely is.
Merle is very much a man out of time, like a character from the "Wild Bunch" he wakes up one morning and looks at himself, only to see a man who has missed every opportunity.
After you have shown your qualities as a director who can work very effective with small budgets on more action based movies you head into a new direction. "The Butcher" and soon also "Charlie Valentine" focus on the actors and a consistent story. How do you imagine the next step in your development?
I like where I am headed, I enjoy the producers I am working with and the projects I have in development, it is part of a very conscious decision to move into performance based material (over effects or action motivated product). It is challenging and exhausting, when you work on a project you love, you never sleep, tossing and turning and reworking shots in your head, you leap out of bed in the morning before your alarm goes off, it's incredible the energy you find. I would like longer shooting schedules and some bigger names that would entice more money, respectability, public awareness but at this time I am 100% confident that that it is coming. I have two more scripts in development that are very close personal stories along the lines of "The Butcher" and "Charlie Valentine" -- these have been optioned and are in development. Each one increases in budget and in cast and the work speaks for itself as it always must (it is very different attaching cast to good material over substandard fare). I like to work in a budget range that ensures profit is good, this promotes a good work flow. A number of friends who started out when I did went for the studio sized budgets, I am working slowly to that same end, but I will have a body of work by the time I get there. My friends are still in development.
Every director has his own strategies to scout the right locations. Do you already look around during writing the script or is this a part oft the pre-production when the project gets green light? Do you trust in other advices or is this a job you have to do on your own because you have a vision in mind?
A little of all of the above, with shorter shooting schedules I am always looking for a location that will service a number of different looks, satisfy a number of different scenes, you lose so much time picking up all your gear and moving while shooting. I have my eyes open all the time, and often write for a specific location. I love Los Angeles for it's locations, especially the lesser known ones.
How important is L.A. as a setting? Already your first movie "The Honorable" aka "The Doorman" is characterized by this city and also "The Butcher" derives a lot of his atmosphere from the unique flair of L.A. I especially like the moments by night. Do you have you inspiring examples in this regard?
Being in love with a city helps, I came here almost penniless, and this town nurtured and fed me, I love exploring and driving around here. I read a lot of Raymond Chandler as a child and he wrote about the town in detail, I like to see the places he wrote about. As far as films go, "Collateral" "Matchstick Men" "Heat" all good LA stories. LA is a living organism and watching it grow can be enlightening or disappointing in varying degrees, but it never stops growing.
In almost every of your movies you are working with often hidden symbolism. The tarantula in "The Last Sentinel" and "The Butcher" is an obvious example. Are these cross-references intended? I'm sure the scenes serve a special purpose. Are they a part of your complete works? Will the audience be looking back and find out new aspects in a few years after your next movies are done?
I hope these details have significance for an audience, it's easy to get caught up in telling a story, and forget we're all just animals of opportunity surviving in a harsh and mean environment. We try to be enlightened and Zen-like in our daily lives, to raise ourselves above our beast-like origins, but we all catch ourselves yelling in traffic or somewhere else, sadly, we're just a hop skip and a jump away from braining each other with sticks on the evolutionary scale. I'm glad you noticed the tarantula in "The Butcher" -- I like that sequence quite a lot.
As long as it's released and released well, I don't mind the time it takes. I am influenced more by my feeling about the finished film than by any audience reaction.
How has your public reputation changed in the last few months? After "Pit Fighter" you were a an insider's tipp and after "The Last Sentinel" a new hope. On the other side you got a massive adverse wind of the "Battlestar Galactica" - communities. Do the positive news prevail?
I don't know, the internet is a fickle thing, I'm not sure how much it really counts, positive reviews or negative, unless you're talking phenomenal activity figures, neither good or bad review has affected me or my career at all. It's all so temporary and superficial. The movies will way outlast the chatter. "The Last Sentinel" was in profit before we'd finished shooting, it has never stopped making money for it's backers, that was how "The Butcher" came into being. For, me the journey into Sc-Fi is complete, I'm not really interested in the genre, I have turned down several Sci-Fi projects, and horror projects lately, I like the contemporary, I like realism and redemption and heart. I like the mythic emerging out of the ordinary. I'll pursue these projects and my own, until I can't, and that hasn't happened yet, thank goodness, so I am glad I took the early assignments because they have lead me to where I am now, for better of for worse.
How big was the danger for you to get nailed on low budget action movies after the success of your first movies? I am sure the offers were there.
Yes, and I said no to all of them!!!There's a very real danger of getting stuck in low budget, and there comes a point where you just have to say no. I have had to work for almost nothing on "Butcher" and "Charlie Valentine" to ensure the movies get made and get to be what they should be, and I don't mind that at all, they will pay me back, but without them existing I would be associated permanently with the other films on my resume.
There are ways to make movies that contain certain actors and certain amounts of action that will generate certain profits, and rarely will these movies be anything by certainly boring. It's at great risk to the profitability that you lessen the action and raise the drama quota of a film, it takes adventurers for financiers, gamblers with a lot of money, guys who will trust you and stand beside you, World films did this for me on "The Butcher", and the producers of "Charlie Valentine" Ted warren and Ed Robin have done this, too.
I am very passionate and committed and have a very singular agenda, to make the best possible movie, I look for partners who share this same agenda, that way we always seem to get along, eventually.
Can you profit from contacts in Hollywood you made when you were stuntman? Has this history made it easier for you to profile as director? Normally you work with almost the same crew. Have you met most of them at that time?
It helped when I was inexperienced as a director, it was an insurance policy for a potential backer. Now it usually comes as surprise to collaborators that I ever did that stuff at all, a distant memory.
You are always a busy man with enough possible projects in mind. A teaser poster for "Savage Dog" was published online and rumors assume you could work out something with Action Concept. Can you bring light into the darkness? What's next?
I am finishing "Charlie Valentine" of course, which is a full time job. But I am also writing two scripts for different production companies. AMG, the group that produced "Charlie Valentine" has optioned a script of mine "The Debt Collectors" which I would be thrilled to make next, it's really solid material and a deeply personal and important script for me.
"Savage Dog" is on hold as Dominiquie Vandenberg has a series for TV that is going into preproduction. The movie was written for him as a follow up to "Pit Fighter." I like writing in foreign countries, where the internet and cell phone distractions are lessened, also the combined stimuli of new sights and sounds works for me.
You have tried different styles/subgenres in your action movies: a mafia film, a post-apocalyptic movie, a tournament fight film etc. Do you prefer any subgenre or do you like to work in such different fields to keep up a certain variety within your works as an action director?
I am not interested in fantasy films, real life is far too diverse and interesting, I regard those early films as the works of a toddler with a crayon. I like real life, and real people, there is always the epic in everyday reality, finding it is the challenge, at least for the time being.
Is there any difference when you are working with action veterans like Eric Roberts or Don ’The Dragon’ Wilson in contrast to Newcomers like Dominiquie Vandenberg?
All actors have different ways of approaching their craft, and should always be approached as such, some of the oldest pros are the most nervous while the youngest newbies can be rock solidly confident.
Certainly time and experience affords the actor a tool box from which to choose short cuts/techniques, sometimes good, sometimes not so good, you have to be on your toes, it's a tricky job, just watching quietly can be all it takes, sometimes.
On reflection we were incredibly lucky to find Eric, and something interesting and unexpected about him, that completely took me by surprise is his willingness to get in on the action. I've worked with a lot of big and small name "action" movie stars, and the amazing thing, although really it's just human nature I suppose, is how nervous, edgy and terrified they are of the actual situations they are asked to portray on screen. I don't judge at all, a stunt is a stunt and unless you've assembled the pyrotechnics to be used by the special effects team, or driven with the stunt drivers and fought alongside the choreographer before there should and must be an element of caution, in fact I recommend it. But Eric was fearless, and almost seemed to get a rush from the action, the more dangerous the scenario the scarier or more edgy the stunt gag, the closer to the actual danger zone he became the more enthusiastic and cool he got. Very interesting and a character trait I've witnessed in some of the great stunt men (not me), and some of the elite special forces operators I've met, it's like a "counter-nervousness", a calm and focus that almost needs the adrenaline rush to exist.
Eric Roberts has this, and I think it's just about the coolest thing to witness. He came out of "The Butcher" with burns to his hand from a machine gun, cuts on his face from squib hits, a broken rib and bruised kidney from hitting a wall during his shoot out with Robert Davi, and a massive abdominal bruise from the reciprocating cocking handle on the 1919 machine gun he uses to decimate Doyle's strip club, as far as I'm concerned Eric is the real thing. That and having the balls to sign onto a film with 80 pages of dialogue 48 hours before the start of principal photography, I'm a life long fan and a would love to work with him again.
As always the last words are yours. Some space for whatever you want to say to the visitors out there.
I just hope folks enjoy the movie and for a few moments find some entertainment in the sad, heroic life of Merle "The Butcher" Hench.
A man who was all but written off by those around him, until fate and chance dealt him a hand that afforded him a second shot at nobility, and he seized it with a vengeance. Thank you, dear Andre for an awesome list of questions, I hope I have done your hard work some justice with my responses.
