This week on the Boxoffice podcast, Daniel Loria speaks to J.J. Perry, the director of the action-comedy The Killer’s Game. Perry, who has a long filmography as a stunt performer, discusses showcasing diverse combat styles in the film, including merengue, taekwondo, and wrestling. Hitting theaters this weekend from Lionsgate, the film stars Dave Bautista, Sofia Boutella, Pom Klementieff, and Scott Adkins.
How did you get involved in the project? How did The Killer’s Game come to your desk?
Strangely, I got this script 10 years ago when they wanted me to be a stunt coordinator [on the project]. I was working as a stuntman, stunt coordinator, etc. Then it came back around three years ago when I finished my movie Day Shift, [when they wanted me] to be the second unit director. Then I brought Andrew Lazar in to watch a rough cut of Day Shift. After he saw that, he offered the movie to me. I was thrilled to death. It was a big win. The script had been around a long time. When I got it, I asked Andrew, “Can I bring my friend James Coyne in to do little changes?” The script had been around so long, everyone had read it and took some of the characters and put them in their movies. So the unintelligible Scottish brothers, ‘El Botas’ my merengue killer, my two exotic dancer killers, etc. I think the only characters that really survived the original script were Love Doll and Marianne. Marianne was actually a Russian girl, but I got my friend Pom Klementieff to play the role, so we made her French.
Of course, a big part of this movie is your leading man, Dave Bautista. How did this end up being his movie? How did you come to the realization that this can work for him in a way that I don’t think we’ve seen him on film before?
I’d met Dave a few times before. I really wanted to work with him and we hit it off really well. I met him when we were prepping John Wick: Chapter 2, which was 10 years ago. Getting The Killer’s Game was a big win. Getting Dave Bautista was like winning the ultimate lottery for me, because he’s exactly who I foresaw to play Joe Flood. I heard there was some interest. We got on the phone, and next thing you know, he was like, “Yeah bro, let’s do it!” I immediately was like, ‘Did that just happen?’ Then Sofia Boutella fell in line. We had a SAG waiver for the movie, but we shot it during the strike. So I just called all my friends like Scott Adkins, Marko Zaror, Aurora, Daniel Bernhardt, Pom. If you’re going to go somewhere and get into a fight, what do you do? You call your homies. So that’s how it kind of all went down.
Bringing all that talent together, you have to take into account all the different combat styles. That’s what I enjoyed most about the movie. All the action set pieces really lean into the different combat styles that your very varied cast of characters has. How do you adapt the combat to Dave? What did he bring into those action set pieces that maybe you hadn’t been able to do before as a stunt coordinator?
You’re only ever as good as your starting pitcher. And Dave comes from WWE, which is a live show performance, meaning there’s no take two. There’s no, ‘Oh, wait a minute’, because there’s 60,000 people watching you. His ability to retain choreography – he watches it and he knows it right away. That’s a huge asset. Besides being an amazing wrestler, he’s also a brown belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu under Carlos Gracie. He’s an amazing jiu-jitsu guy that can box; he’s fought in MMA. A lot of the action stars aren’t really fighters. There’s a lot of movie magic that goes into making them look really badass. Dave Bautista is an apex human. He’s a dangerous MF, and he’s super kind, super sweet, and super generous. But you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of that, because his fists are the size of lunchboxes, he’s legit dangerous. So for me, having a starting pitcher like that – six foot four, 265 pounds, that moves like a tiger – all I’ve got to do is point the camera in the right spot. Put the choreography together and create problems for him and then show how he solves them.
Now, of course, you’ve been involved in fight choreography and stunt work for a very long time. Now that you’re directing your own features and bringing together a fully realized picture, what did The Killer’s Game open up in terms of your canvas, in terms of action sequences and set pieces that were maybe on your bucket list in prior projects.
I love when it’s not ‘good guys and bad guys’ like ‘cops and robbers’. I love it when it’s all bad guys, and some of them are good and some of them are bad, because then you have a gray area. There’s not a black and white line. I was stationed in Korea when I was in the army, so I have a love affair with Korea and all things Korean. Marko Zaror and Scott Adkins are dear friends of mine. I go way back with them and Daniel Bernhardt. I’ve done 12-14 martial arts films with each one of those guys. They’re all amazing action actors – actors that do amazing martial artists. I knew right away with Marco, I called him and said, “I want you to put these headphones in and we’re going to have this merengue style where you’re dancing.” When I was a young man and used to compete in taekwondo, there was a friend of mine that always used to wear a Sony Walkman. When he had the Walkman on, he always fought better than when he didn’t. So I kind of modeled that character after that guy.
With Scott, my unintelligible Scottish hitman, I needed a brother for him, but I couldn’t find anyone. I asked Dave, “Hey, do you know a Scottish dude that can do this?” He goes, “Bro, let’s get Drew McIntyre.” As soon as we got Drew McIntyre on the phone, we hit it off right away. I couldn’t understand a word he said – but he was super cool. I was like, ‘This guy’s perfect!’ So creating that kind of wrestling tag team style was another layer, another facet on the action diamond. You had Marco with this kind of merengue style. You had this Korean team with a kind of this taekwondo style. You have the two brothers with this wrestling style. And then I brought in my exotic dancers. I wanted to make them a little more ballistic and give them hand grenades and rifles and butterfly knives and knives that came out of their shoes.
For me, it was being able to take that diamond that has a lot of facets, but putting in my friends that I know can do the action. When you’re shooting action, if you don’t have great performers, it affects the way that the action is filmed, because you’re hiding a double, but I hired people that were all badasses. The best way to fake being a badass is just to be a badass. Hire a bunch of badasses – and that’s what I did. So the camera went where the action was the star of the scene.
It seems like everyone who is deeply involved with the genre comes from a combat background. Does that make the choreography easier or harder to execute your vision? Or was it more improvisational because everyone came in with that experience?
We shot Previs beforehand, but I hired people that I’d worked with many, many times. Everyone knows I’m going to make them look like a badass. Everybody had trust in me. And of course, I want their input performance wise, so we lay the stunt viz out broadly, and then we bring them in and show them. There are little tweaks that come and Dave is amazing with his style of jiu-jitsu and wrestling and kickboxing. We had the fight with Marco laid out, but we made a few changes. It’s absolutely based on the performers. I hired them by design, even Pom, who plays Marianne in the movie. The remake of Oldboy is when I met her, which Spike Lee directed, but she trained with us at 87eleven Action Design for three or four years and she still trains. Pom’s a legit badass.
Second unit is the man or the woman that comes in and directs the action in a movie. So there’s a level of responsibility that comes [with it.] It matches the director’s level. We have to come in on time and on budget. The other level of responsibility is [that] you don’t want to kill anyone, so that breeds a responsible filmmaker. In being a responsible filmmaker, and also coming from the army, I just stack my deck full of aces. That way all I have to do is throw the cards down. I was really blessed to get this cast. What an amazing cast, I was super stoked. I really enjoyed working with Lee Hoon and the Goyang crew, because that was a Korean stunt team [that] I brought from Korea. It was my first time working with them, but pretty much everyone else in the movie, except for Sophia, I’d worked with many times. I hadn’t worked with Dave, but we had a relationship and a friendship already. I’m really blessed that it that I got all these hitters in my movie.
We’ve talked a lot about the characters and about the talent involved in the film. A big part of the film is the location shooting you did. I love action movies from the 80s, but a big criticism of them is that a lot of them are set in anonymous, dark warehouses. Your film isn’t, so let’s go into that and the locations where you planned these big action set pieces.
My grandfather, who raised me in Texas, was from Hungary. He’s Hungarian. He had this really thick accent. I grew up eating fried chicken, but also Chicken Paprikash. The sound of his voice, the taste of the food, the smells – Budapest is very familiar to me. I’ve worked there many times, but I made Budapest number three on the call sheet. I made it a character in the movie. The reason we shot the motorcycle sequence indoors was because we shot the movie in June and there’s only four and a half hours of night there. It gets dark late and it gets light early. Originally, that wasn’t a motorcycle thing, it was a car chase. We couldn’t afford to lock the streets up and it was supposed to be at night. I said, “Let’s take them inside of a warehouse. That way we can shoot for more than four and a half hours. So that would probably be the only one. We also shot at a castle, but the interior was a build.
We shot the movie in 42 days, and it’s a lot bigger movie than what’s normally filmed in 42 days. I was very fortunate to have such a badass action team. As second unit directors, I got Justin Yu, Troy Robinson, and Felix Betancourt, these are my action brothers that are always on the road with me. They do the stunt visualization, they set the wires. They’re doing rehearsals. I become a part of that, but you’re not just directing the action as a director, you’re responsible for a lot of things. You’re responsible for 36 other departments. Making movies is a team sport. So I can let my action team go [to work], because they’ve been with me on the road. We’ve been together for like 12-14 years and we’ve done 30-40 films all over the world. So I trust them and they trust me. I get real time feedback and we edit the fights while we’re shooting them. So we can check things off the list in real time.
This film is going to screens at a time where we really need films to hit screens in diverse genres. What’s your message to our theater owner audience here as The Killer’s Game hits cinemas all over the country?
Man, I’m just excited for people to see it, because I didn’t really set out to make an action movie. I set out to make a love story that has a head on collision with a ridiculously fun action movie. I hope everybody enjoys it. Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a wild ride.
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