BACKGROUND

How did you become involved in stunt work?

David: I started doing stunts about 13 years ago. I was competing in martial arts in college and a friend, Chad Stahelski, who is actually is the stunt coordinator on V for Vendetta, and I were wrapping up college. He was just starting to explore stunts and was living in LA, I was living in Minneapolis, we had competed against each other and he suggested I try stunt work as you get to do martial arts and get paid to do it. I wasn't sure, so a couple of years passed, I was teaching, and I went out to LA one summer to train some martial arts with him and he was working on a film for just a couple of days. He's like, "I'm telling you, you should try to get into the film business. You get to use all this martial arts knowledge that you have." Literally two weeks later I called the administrator of the school I was teaching at and said I wouldn't be coming back next year. I moved to LA and started to try to get into it, it took a couple of years.

Why were you so hesitant?

David: I was hesitant because when you come out of college, you get a degree in something and you think you're going to do that for the rest of your life. After teaching I was always looking for something that was more physical because I had been an athlete since I was a little kid and I wasn't through that phase yet, I still wanted to be an athlete, I still wanted to perform. Chad needed martial art guys, and he had a vision of what he wanted to do as well; he wanted to work on martial art movies and create action sequences. There's been a lot of hard work involved, but we have been really fortunate with the films that we got hooked into. Chad got on the first Matrix because he's a great martial artist, but because he also looks a lot like Keanu. You couldn't find a better double in LA for Keanu Reeves.

Did you form your own company?

David: Yes, we've had several incarnations of that company, but basically there were 3 of us that started together. Chad, and Brad Martin who was in The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions, and we came up doing low budget martial art movies together hoping that we would soon be doing bigger movies. Then after Chad got The Matrix this whole martial art thing happened, and we were hot commodities. That's when we started our company Smashcut Action Team, and we started to choreograph a lot of fight sequences for other movies just because we had the attachment to The Matrix. We didn't get to do the first Matrix with Chad, but just having him involved in it was a big enough buzz for everyone on our team. And then Chad brought us in on Reloaded and Revolutions.

Around the time that Chad was doing The Matrix, what were you working on?

David: When he was on The Matrix in Australia, out of the blue I got the biggest break I've ever had, the call for Fight Club to double Brad Pitt. It was just one of those chance things where I'd sent in my headshot and the stunt coordinator knew me as a martial artist as I'd done some TV shows with him. Brad Pitt's stunt double had a family crisis and couldn't do this film, although Brad had requested him several times, so they were looking for somebody else. My resume showed up two days before that and he looked at it saying, "Oh, Dave would probably work." Then I got this phone call asking "You wanna come double Brad Pitt?"

We got along great and created a lot of action for that movie that never made the cut. It's a psychological thriller, but with a [David] Fincher movie, much like Reloaded and Revolutions, we were able to experiment and create things that maybe never made the film, but developed us as martial artists.

The Wo Ping and the Cheung Yan Yuen world absorbed us for a while. We became the white guys that they hired on their shows. Cheung Yan Yuen was the choreographer on Daredevil and he brought Chad, Brad, myself, Marcus Young, anyone who was involved in The Matrix, to work with them. Then on Charlie's Angels he brought the same group of guys out, but their time sort of fizzled out for a lot of reasons… their style of doing it in Los Angeles is expensive, to have a team of ten guys with living expenses, and their creative costs are expensive. I think producers have realized there are some American stuntmen that can do the same thing and that maybe we should just cut out the language barrier, and cut out the cost of having so many guys around.

Did you facilitate with some of the language issues?

David: No, not so much the verbal language, but definitely the martial arts language ­ the physical language. Spending a year with Wo Ping on The Matrix, we learned a ton; we also learned a lot from guys like DD [Huen Chiu Ku] and Dion [Lam] and Tiger [Hu Chen]. We didn't waste any time when we were in the training hall absorbing stuff.

There's this physical language you want with stunt people, and we had a hard time when we got to Germany finding people that had that physical language. You flow with certain people in a fight scene. We'd worked with Wo Ping so much and Cheung Yan Yuen that it became really easy: this type of block, that type of block, this type of kick, and a language grew between us that everyone who was surrounded with The Matrix world has now. In the shot selection, they might say it is a Wo Ping-er, or we're doing a profile shot, or this is a power powder shot… any sort of lingo that is in that Hong Kong cinema world that all the Kung Fu junkies like.

Everyone knows so much about wirework now, it's crazy. We were doing the rooftop scene yesterday and they changed what was wanted, but we had rigged something different, so they're like, "Oh, you need two pick points, I'm sorry. I thought I wanted this but this isn't going to work." Most directors would be like, "What?"

Describe a pick point for someone that might not know.

David: In terms of doing martial art wirework, it's usually the top point that the wire is connected to. A lot of stunts are done on the swing of a pendulum, so you walk a person out on that wire and you let them swing in. You use another point up high to control that speed, to pull them out of the frame, or to control the body position. A lot of things you can get away with just one wire - one pick point - and a certain point on your harness that you tie it to. Most gags, especially on this film because they're so specific about body position, take two wires, or three wires.

V FOR VENDETTA

How did you become involved on V, and when did you start working?

David: I started in February [2005]. I was working on The Dukes of Hazzard right before Christmas [2004] and Chad was finishing up on The Dukes of Hazzard, so I flew back to LA to take a meeting with James because, as fight choreographer, Chad couldn't leave. James said he really wanted us to do the film and he showed the storyboards. We'd worked with James for so long [on The Matrix trilogy], and I think he thought we were efficient and that he could trust us because we're always there, ready to make it happen. James wanted people he had worked with before surrounding him; V is his first movie as a director. So anyway, he had some of the storyboards already laid out with what he wanted and we went over the script points.

Then after New Year, right before James came over to Berlin, Chad and I met with him. We had already choreographed the three main sequences the way we thought from the notes he gave us. Two weeks later, Chad was on a plane… then there were a lot of issues about whether or not they could bring a stunt double over. It came down to working with people everyone had worked with before for that physical language that you don't have with someone you haven't worked with - the rapport.

Having worked with James as a 1st AD, how is it now working with him as a director?

David: It's a lot different than what I expected from James. I'm sure everybody says this, too: 1st AD, he's going to be really tight with his schedule, it's going be like a military camp out there, we're going to make our days and it's not going to be this creative soup of things. It's the opposite. James is changing things, he's really looking, he's taking the time to get really good footage, as a director should, and he's not worrying about the schedule. That's the 1st AD's thing, so he's really let the 1st AD thing go, and I didn't think he would.

David: It's really important, I think, as a director to fight your battles creatively. Every day you go out there, everyone's going to try and minimize what you do, because that's their job, they have a budget. They're trying to reign themselves in, and you've got to fight every day to get what you want, and it sucks and it's painful. He's relentless, so I admire him for that. I think he's doing a great job.

Is James fluent in the language of stunts?

David: I think to him it's more conceptual. In the final scene with V in the train station he wants to see a ‘blood-letting.' There are certain things he wants to see, like, " I need to see a reflection in this guy's eyes before they kill him." There are points of things that he really wants, but the stuff in between isn't as important. We were talking earlier that there are different types of directors, and you learn over the years to work with different types of directors. I know that I'm going to have to provide a lot more choices for him, because he's not quite sure yet. He's not quite as versed in Kung Fu as the Wachowski Brothers are, or some other directors, so we keep giving him choices.

The Victoria Station sequence is supposed to take out 14 Fingermen, so we created a sequence that took out 35 or 40 and showed him on tape. It was sort of a buffet of death at the end, where he could wade through the gags that he liked. Then we'd start to put them into the style that he wanted and we'd go back and re-shoot it, and re-edit it, then show him again. We did that a couple of times. He loved it. We did the same thing with the Hallway sequence and Fingermen Alley.

Are you getting a sense of where James is leaning as to the gags that are being chosen?

David: It depends on different points in the story. For Fingermen Alley there was a lot of discussion about whether or not V was going to kill these guys. Chad and I were like, "They're going to rape Evey, let's kill ‘em. They're Fingermen, kill ‘em." James started to really think about the character of Evey and whether or not she was going to trust V if she witnesses three brutal murders. I thought that was a very good observation. It's not an action movie, it's a psychological movie about V teaching Evey who she is and the power that she has as an individual, and maybe you wouldn't trust a teacher that did that, so we took that back. Instead, we made it a little bit comical, we made fun of the Fingermen with pants falling down. They get beat up, but it's like V is almost mocking them with his skill. At the end of the film when we've just seen Evey crying at her realization of the state of the world and how much power she has, V is at that state in the Fingermen Alley: it's all ready to happen.

Do knives introduce anything unique from a stunt point of view?

David: This is a perfect movie for Chad and I, because one of the martial arts that we studied is called Filipino Kali or Arnis, which is stick and dagger, double dagger, or single dagger. So a lot of the stunt work stems from that, but it's then been influenced by Chinese Wu Shu, Karate, and Kung Fu ­ we movie-ized it. There isn't a martial art that I know of that uses knives more effectively than the Filipino styles, it's essentially their weapon of choice.

As far as choreography, it was really challenging because you come off a movie ­ any martial art movie ­ and the guy can kick, punch, use a weapon, head butt, knee, elbow, and they're like, "No, V doesn't do any of that. He uses knives. He goes right, left, left, right." So we're challenged about trying to make this interesting for the Kung Fu junkies. He doesn't kick, he doesn't punch, he doesn't sweep, he doesn't throw, he's got knives, so we were racking our brains. Also, he doesn't really defend, he doesn't block; he just attacks. We just keep paring away ways to be creative… so then it was a question of how can we be creative with two knives being completely offensive, as well as make it look different and interesting? Hopefully we did a good job!!

DOUBLING V

Does it feel like you're more than V's stunt double?

David: That's something that's really interesting for the martial arts of it all, we haven't really had to train any actor, because those types of sequences it's a guy in a mask… when does that ever happen? When you shoot a fight scene and you're doubling an actor it's always limited by the specific angles that hide your face. So the camera is always on your back or just slightly profile over the shoulder or really wide, and it can limit what you can do. After practice shooting the fights and editing them and showing them what we can do with me as V, James and Larry and Andy have all totally relaxed and given us a lot more input. On set we're even able to suggest something is probably not the best shot, so let's look at it over here.

That doesn't really have anything to do with me being in the mask, I just think it is so much faster and easier to get a fight scene done using a person who does it for a living. This is what I do, I am a fight specialist. It would have been like putting Tiger [member of The Matrix trilogy martial art stunt crew] in the Neo costume, we would have been out of there in no time, but now we can actually do it because I have the mask on.

There are two things going on… you get more freedom, and there's the idea that there is really no one behind the mask.

David: Right, it's perfect for this story… the last line is awesome: ideas are bullet proof. It's really about V as an idea, particularly the end scene with all of the people wearing the V mask and taking charge of their own reality, their own life. V is more than one person conceptually anyway.

What have been some of the more challenging moments behind the mask?

David: I was talking to Hugo about it the other day, like how being in the V mask for him is a technical exercise and that it is really a technical experience. Because I'm shooting on second unit all the time, a lot of times I'll do the finishing of the fight, the close up or whatever, and I've found that with the mask your eye line is not really what your eye line is. You might feel like you're emoting something through this mask, but it's not reading on camera, so you have to over emphasize it, or conversely take it back. You really have to trust your director, James and Harvey [Harrison, second unit director] to give you that feedback and allow them to be technical with you. As a stunt performer I have no problem with that, in our job it's all about the technical. Does this work for camera? Is this a punch? Does this sell? But sometimes actors don't want the technical, they want the character to come from inside. You realize that a lot of that is gone if you trust that it's just a technical exercise and you have to say, when I get to this moment I have to turn my head like this, or they're not going to understand or feel what they need to feel when they ADR the lines in.

Is that literally the way it's being described… beat, beat, beat, hit that mark, we need that emphasis?

David: At times, not always. Sometimes it seems to work, especially when they're having me do pieces that would be considered acting moments, they're comfortable being technical with me and it's faster. For instance, I'm asked to move to a mark, and when I get to a particular line to tilt my head.

How does that feel being on camera in an instance where normally you wouldn't because it would be over the shoulder?

David: As stunt performers we're often in front of camera and we have a skill - I've done forty films probably, there are a few actors that have been around that repetition. Any stunt performer would feel comfortable in front of camera with a mask, they're not seeing my face, my mask is on. And to perform technically is my gig, it's what I do, I create motion for people. We create the motion on the screen. V without the voice is dependent on the motion that he moves. When I double an actor I try to mimic the way they move because I never want to break that myth of the character. You never want to cut to the reverse and go, there's the double.

What kinds of challenges have been presented with doing stunts wearing a mask, hat and a flowing cape?

David: A lot of superhero film work has boots and capes so that wasn't abnormal, but the mask really limits my vision. I have no vision from the bridge of my nose down and no peripheral vision. They were adamant about not making a stunt mask with the eyes wider because they realized how much we were going to shoot with me doing V's stunts. It's not like making a V stunt double, it was actually V doing this and they didn't want to have to hide him. So we just had to compensate, rehearse more, plan accordingly and I wear the mask as much as I can during rehearsals, just to get used to turning my head more to see the guy coming at me. Normally, when you're fighting you can just use peripheral vision to see the guy coming in a multiple attacker setting. With the mask I'm turning my head all the time, as well as up and down. That's why V is always, looking, looking, looking.

Did you talk to Hugo when he first started to play with the mask?

David: I gave my suggestions because he asked for them. He's an actor, so obviously he knew what he had to do, but I said I always wore it for the entire set up and I didn't take it off between set ups because I wanted to get really comfortable in it. I told him that it became a technical adventure ­ even with action it's like I might have to overturn, I could see camera and know I'm in the shot, but I might have to turn even further for them to actually read what I'm doing. Hugo called me to the set after that and we talked even more about it. He'd created three different physical movements for the mask so James would always have three different pieces to pick from, and he wanted to give me what he had gotten so I knew in the future. We were sharing mask technology as it was developing!

What were three different types of motion that Hugo developed?

David: There's the floating head V, the military head V, and the very subtle V. Hugo was even put back a little bit on how technical working with the mask was. It's not about what's inside for a lot of those moments, it's a matter of the mask needing to be here, the mask needing to be there. It's really perfect for a comic book adaptation, you're getting great visuals, he looks like a comic. Getting emotion through though is going to be hard, so I'm interested to see if people are going to be able to watch a close up of V for a long time. I haven't seen a lot of the scenes done with proper sound and ADR with Hugo's dramatic voice, and I know that's going to change everything. There's not a more ominous character in the history of film that Darth Vader, and you never see his face. I used to have Darth Vader nightmares as a kid. So, as much as we thought it hadn't been done, to a certain extent it has. He was a villain, he was a different character, but we never see his face.

LONDON SHOOT

Will the stunt crew have much to do with the London shoot?

David: Logistically, we're herding the people playing the multiple Vs to where they should be. I've heard that it's shrinking from 500 to 150 people, with a lot more visual effects, so maybe less of a part, but I've also heard there maybe a scene where there's some action where they go over a fence and people are starting to revolt a little bit.

The little girl getting shot is our gig, which is brutal… my question is, why can we shoot a little girl on camera, but we can't stab a guy in the neck? I think that'll be a hard scene. I know it's always bad for box office from a producer's stand point, but for this message the story needs to be R, it needs to rip people's guts out. So when there's a little bit of retribution in the train station, and it is really visceral and bloody and gory, the audience might need a little bit of that.

Do you mean the sequence where V is taken out?

David: Yes. He's shot with all the bullets and then he's like, it's my turn, and it's fourteen guys just decimated. The concept now is that he's going to kill them all before they reload, so they're doing this big slow mo sequence, which is pretty cool. He kills them all before they reload and they intercut it with these guys who are slow mo dropping their clip, looking and then death. From my perception V is there to start something big, and killing these people is minor compared to what really needed to happen in this world.

On the little girl scene, how difficult is that because there is a child involved?

David: There will be the typical movie magic tricks. We can cheat the angle of the gun, we can shoot the gun shot in a separate shot then shoot the reaction of her, so you'll see the close up of the gun go and then you'll cut to her and the gun is gone but she's already flying back. You could do a profile and have the gun off at a different angle, or you could do a visual effect. We will also have a stunt double for the little girl, which will either be a little person or a stunt kid.

Are there parents who let their children be "shot"?

David: These parents are usually stunt coordinators. For a lot of stunt coordinators it becomes a family thing.

FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHY

How was the choreography process done; did you take inspiration from the storyboards and/or the graphic novel?

David: Specifically for V, and how we choreographed the scenes for V, we met with James and got the gist of the story because I'd never read the graphic novel. Then I got a copy of the novel and read it, and he pointed out the three scenes where they really needed the fight choreography. He drew what he wanted on a yellow notebook saying, "I kind of see them configured like this. The Fingermen are in an alley, they're sort of semi circled around her." I noticed what he wanted was really similar to the way it's laid out in the graphic novel, and also on the storyboards that we got later.

So we took his concepts, his drawing, the overall master of it, and then we took the storyboards. We knew we had to shoot those beats on the storyboards, but the moves in between are the ones that we came up with. So we thought about V ­ what kind of martial arts background does he have? What kind of fighter is he? Well, he likes the The Count of Monte Cristo. So he has some sort of sword, maybe a European or a fencing type of background. What sort of weapons is he using? Knives… OK, how can we do fencing moves with knives? Now that we'd established V's character for ourselves we pitched that to James, and he thought it was a good idea. It became a piece of V. So there's this little piece in the alley where a Fingerman is attacking him with a riot baton, and V defends like he's doing a fencing move with his hands on his hip.

In the course of the choreography process for V, we started with James's maps of the motion path of where V was going to travel in the fight. Then we added the dramatic beats that he wanted, which were the storyboarded moments, and then we tried to influence the character in a certain way.

Were a part of the creative tools at your disposal letting people attack V because he wasn't on the defense?

David: It was more of V not being physically challenged by anybody, as a character. No one is physically stronger in this world than him, so he crushes everybody that way. Any strike that comes at him, he launches the guy across the room. The whole offence / defense thing is very Hong Kong-esque, block, block, hit, block, block, hit. When we started to play with that and show samples of that, James said that was not what he wanted. He wanted V to go through people. If anything, there's one small parry and then in for the kill; if there's a block it's really simple. That was all a conceptual thing from James, that there's no back and forth with V, when he hits somebody the guy is dead.

V is very economical and very skilled, and he's very powerful. The chemical mutations that went on at Larkhill made him this powerful creature through whatever it was. In the storyboards there was talk of him cutting a guy's head off with his knife. It has since changed, but he could do that, that's the power we are playing with. So that's why we were limited on the back and forth choreography. In Victoria Station he has knives, he goes forward, and there's not a lot of back and forth… so how do we make that interesting and different? The concept is that we're going to slow down time. The scene will probably take two and a half minutes on screen, but it actually happens in the amount of time that it takes you to drop a clip, pull it out of your pouch, rack it, and then rack around and shoot.

When they're all out of ammo from shooting V and he decides it is his turn, he throws two knives knocking these guys back and the Fingermen are like, what? We see the power of V, just in a knife throw he can launch a guy back six feet. Then they decide they're going to reload, and that's when time slows down. We see a guy trying to get his clip in and he's dead… or three guys are dead. Another guy is just barely getting his clip in and three more are dead, and another guy gets his gun knocked out of his hand. There are all these things happening that lead you to believe he could actually do this by the time they get the clip in. I think the concept is really cool.

What were the three main set pieces James wanted you to choreograph?

David: Fingermen Alley, which is the first sequence, establishes V's character, and that's when he meets Evey. The television station where V first broadcasts; there's a sequence there where he takes out some police officers. The last one is the train station where he meets all the Fingermen and it's sort of like an old west showdown where he's standing face to face with Creedy.

Some interesting choices were made with the TV Station… we chose not to kill the Fingermen in the alley, but yet we killed police officers in the hallway of the TV Station. We had some discussion about it… would V really kill those people he's trying to liberate? He'd kill Fingermen because they've been justified as evil, but would you kill cops just trying to do their job? Are they agents of this totalitarian society? Maybe… that's how we labeled them so he's justified in killing them. However, those are also your future allies in this fight and they could also be just common folk that are caught up in the whole system. Then it sort of went the way of it being better action if we just kill ‘em.

However, the morality was discussed?

David: The morality was discussed. We kill enough Fingermen in the end. I understood the morality in the beginning of not killing the Fingermen because you're establishing Evey's trust for V. But in the TV Station it depends on whether you perceive cops as good or bad, cops as common folk or as part of this totalitarian world. Even though Finch is a detective, he isn't part of the system per se, he's just this guy investigating what is going on. I find it really interesting… what is the morality of a revolution? There's going to always be innocent blood spilt, how much of that are you willing to accept? Those are a lot of questions that will be asked.

I'm very fascinated in our media's perception of what a freedom fighter is and what a terrorist is, and how it changes from year to year, from administration to administration. I think this film is a great analogy for it. From the viewpoint of the people V is a liberator, from the viewpoint of the establishment, obviously he's a terrorist. For instance, Che Guevara, liberator to many, horrible terrorist to others. A guy like him helped assassinate people, but yet people still have him on their T shirts as a liberator, and he did liberate people.

Or maybe it's just a comic and not really all about this! But I think it is, that's why I really like the script, I love the story. I really don't know if it's palatable for the American audience, but I hope it is. It's so apropos for our times right now.

LARKHILL EXPLOSION SCENE

What preparations did the stunts team make for the walking through fire shot?

David: V had to be naked basically, so we played around with a couple of different concepts. If they really wanted us to walk through flame, we thought it was probably going to have to be a composit shot with visual effects. So we did some tests to see how much heat we could withstand, and how close we could get to flame with the stunt gel that we normally use. Stunt gel is just basically aloe vera and water, you keep it cold and it provides a barrier between you and the heat. So we got with special effects who put up some flame bars and we started to get in closer, then we added more flame bars, and we just started to feel what we could withstand.

You know when you're in that situation how much you can take, and you know when you're starting to burn. In this situation it was safe because you could just walk away. In other fire stunts, if you're within a set that's enclosed and you can't get out, it's a little more crucial, but at any time during that sequence Chad could just step out and he would have been fine. It was a matter of trying to get enough fire for film and keeping Chad safe because the human body won't allow us to be above a certain temperature. Chad did get a couple of small flicks on his back where the gel wiped off, but nothing major. It's one of those stunt things that look far more dangerous than it really is.

How did the cold that night affect, if at all?

David: It probably helped because part of the fire stunt itself is psychological, kind of like walking on coals. If you're cold your body will accept a lot more heat, you will psychologically be able to stand there longer. So it being so cold probably helped him stay in that situation longer. Also, we didn't have to cool the gel down as much; normally we have it packed on ice. When he walked away he was already starting to get cold again. Also, you saw the moisture coming off him, you saw it condensing, it gave it a cool effect. It looked like his flesh was actually burning.

So you were actually putting cold towels on him, not hot towels?

David: Yes. We wanted to keep him as cold as possible for that time. We were starting to get to a point where I was going to warm him up, but it was just better, because we knew we were going to do it four or five times, for him to stay cold.

How much do stunts coordinate with visual effects, one being virtual, the other real?

David: Surprisingly, we coordinate with them all the time. Generally, visual effects is associated with action as well. Oftentimes they're our competition in the early stages of a film when it is being decided what the visual effects budget is going to be, and what the stunts budget is going to be, and whether something is going to be done practically or virtually. I think the best products are when they put them together, and Dan [Glass, VFX Supervisor] is really good at that; on this film he wants to get much as we can practically. So we'll have discussions about the roof jump [when V goes to the abbey to see Lilliman]: are they going to build the sets? How much can we get practically? Is V going to be on a wire? If they're not going to build the set should we at least do motion capture for the movement?

With different effects, we're squibbing V - he gets hit 62 times by the guns - how many of these squibs are we going to do practically? Are we going to add visual effects blood? It's probably easier and safer if we don't do all of the squibs practically near the face. Sometimes they're our ally and sometimes they're our competition, but generally the best product comes when we can collaborate. And they're always our savior with wire removal and rig removal and many other things.

THE FUTURE

What does the future hold for you?

David: Directing I hope! I've worked with the director Ringo Lam - I've done three movies with him - he is a Chinese director, and we got along… we have a shared vision of action and realism. He let me second unit direct, which is how I got the bug to make my own film. I've learned a lot from working with him. This last movie I did with him - a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie called In Hell that I know no one will see because it's on DVD - I'm really proud of the fight scenes that we put together, because they're extremely brutal and realistic. For someone like Jean-Claude, who's normally this fancy high kicker guy, and we're having him tackle people to the ground and wrestle them and doing these different things, sort of like real guys that don't know how to fight. Like, two people who don't know martial arts, what would it look like? I had a blast working with Ringo who allowed me to shoot a lot of things and experiment. We shot in Bulgaria so our budget went really well and he gave me two weeks to shoot these fights. We would shoot and then he'd show up and give me notes, and I'd go back and re-shoot things.

How did it develop that you ended up taking over a second unit, directing the sequences?

David: I kind of leveraged him into it… he asked me to come back to double Jean-Claude on this movie, and I said that I wanted to stunt coordinate and second unit direct, and he was like, smoking his cigarette and shaking his head no. I don't think he really wanted me to, but he was watching over the whole time. It wasn't like he fully trusted me, which was good, because I learned a lot more. If he had have just let me shoot it I would've been done a week earlier, but he brought sequences back and made me go do it again, and do something different. It was great.

And that opportunity gave you the desire to direct your own film?

David: Yes, a bug to direct… there's only a certain life span of a stunt performer. You have to go in one direction or another, and a lot of stunt performers go from stunt performer to stunt coordinator to second unit director. Other stunt performers continue to be stunt performers and their career slowly dips and then they retire and they find something else to do. I love film and I want to extend the longevity of it, so I've been exploring other things. When we were on The Matrix, I wrote a screenplay called Sledge, which was a mocumentary on the life of this hapless action star who goes through the whole Hollywood arc. I shot a short film and got cameos from some of the actors like Hugo [Weaving, Agent Smith] and Carrie-Anne [Moss, Trinity]. I even had Ben Stiller in the short, and I got someone to finance the feature. Brad Martin, another stunt man and I, made this movie and we're trying to get money to make another one. We went to Slamdance this year, and we got good reviews and written up in Variety. I got a bunch of other cameos in it. When I was working on Mr. and Mrs. Smith Angelina did a cameo for me, so that helped a lot. That probably helped more than anything ­ the buzz that she was in it!

Angelina was dead pan funny.

David: That shot was literally in the stunt trailer and we had the poster up and the curtain up for the mock EPK in the mocumentary, and we were waiting all day. I had my DP there, Brad was there, I was there all day ­ 12 hours ­ waiting. She had blood makeup on from this other scene, so that's when I caught another clip of her going to her trailer. She walks out of the stage at Fox, and I'm like, "Just say Frank has no control. He's an f-ing idiot." So she's like, "OK." So anyway, at the end she cleaned up and got in the trailer and I really only had 15 minutes for that interview. I had four lines I wanted her to say and she's like, "I don't do comedy. I'm not really good at it. I don't understand the timing." She nailed the lines on the first take, and I don't even think she knew how relevant what she did was because she hadn't seen where I was going to connect these two pieces. It was brilliant. Her timing was perfect.

Were there any other shots stolen on set?

David: That was the only one where we stole it on a set. Everyone else, like Carrie-Anne, I approached. It was the holidays and she had a week off so she came out for a day and did the mock EPK and the actual film scene from Bloodfight 2. A lot of the other actors came out for a day, and a lot of them I had never worked with, like Eric Roberts, Ernie Hudson, Sean Young, Richard Lewis… I hadn't worked with them, but once one celebrity comes on board, a lot of them get interested.

We had built sets - there was a thirteen day shoot originally - then with all the pick up shots of other cameos and things, we probably shot nineteen days total. It ended up being 86 minutes.

Being a mocumentary, is there tons of stuff sitting on the cutting room floor that's great?

David: Tons, it was such a battle of the minds involved like myself, Brad Martin, who co-directed it, and the financers, to choose what was going. Fortunately we're all still friends, but it was rough.

What did you shoot on?

David: We shot on 35mm for all the film clips, and then the other thing is 24p HD. We had eight formats because that's part of the documentary style. We had Super 8, we had 16mm, miniDV.

How can people see it if they want to?

David: Well, they should go to www.sledgethemovie.com and look for screening dates, and hopefully that'll build. We don't have theatrical distribution for the US yet, we're working out a deal right now. Hopefully in the next three, four months, we'll have a deal in place, and then maybe you'll see it in a year? I hope so. If not, it'll be on DVD within a year and you can rent it!

Thanks Dave.