Filming the Hero's journey- a conversation with director and producer Dimitris Logothetis

How do you build a  universe around a character in order to make a successful action film? In this very special episode, I sit down with filmmaker and producer Dimitris Logothetis, to get an insider look into the creative process behind Dimitris' latest movie, Gunner, starring Luke Hemsworth. Dimitris is no stranger to creating characters that inspire, standing firm in their beliefs and actions, and he uses his passion for martial arts to bring a unique flavor to his storytelling.

In this richly textured conversation, we uncover Dimitris's journey that started as an immigrant, and how this experience influenced his vision and work in the entertainment industry, including the push he got from Martin Scorsese to go to film school.

He shares how the essence of the 'underdog' spirit is reflected in his roles as an actor, writer, producer, and director.

We also have a real as it gets discussion on the intricacies of the filmmaking industry. Dimitris provides a clear perspective on funding strategies for films and the art of creating compelling universes that engage audiences.
 

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Transcript

Alexia Melocchi: 0:04

Welcome to the Heart of Show Business. I am your host, Alexia Melocchi. I believe in great storytelling, and that every successful artist has a deep desire to express something from the heart, to create a ripple effect in our society. Emotion and entertainment are closely tied together. My guests and I want to give you insider access to how the film, television, and music industry works. We will cover dreams come true, the road less traveled, journey beginnings, and a lot of insight and inspiration in between. I am a successful film and television entrepreneur who came to America as a teenager to pursue my show business dreams. Are you ready for some unfiltered real talk with entertainment visionaries from all over the world? Then let's roll sound and action. Welcome to the Heart of Show Business podcast. Yet another fantastic episode with somebody who not only is a super well-known producer, director, and multi-hyphenate (we'll talk about all that) but he's also a fellow Greek, Dimitris Logothetis. Here on my show, we're going to talk about his latest movie, Gunner, with the wonderful Morgan Freeman and one of the Hemsworth brothers. We're going to know who's more handsome and talented. I'm gonna put him on the spot. But beyond that, he also is the man behind Kingsroad Entertainment part two, the new version of Kingsroad. He has taken on all these amazing, classic films of the 80s. He has also produced films with John Claude Van Damme, Dennis Quaid, and Kurt Russell, to name a few. He's been an EP and showrunner at Warner Brothers. He is a martial arts, I would say, champion. I don't know if you can define that. He is a martial arts pro with the French jujitsu. What else can I say? His latest movie was selling in Canne. I got to take a peek at it. So, welcome to my show, Dimitris.

Dimitris Logothetis: 2:35

Thank you, Alexia. It's very nice to be talking to you.

Alexia Melocchi: 2:39

It's so great to speak to you. Honestly, you had me at martial arts, because I'm not a martial artist, but I do think that some of those actors and talent who are professional martial artists have had very prolific careers. Look at Van Damme. Look at other people like David Bautista. You can tell I don't know anything about martial arts and WWE fighting, but I want you to tell me, how do you get to work with all these incredible actors? And why are you focusing on action and martial arts types of movies?

Dimitris Logothetis: 3:27

When I first became a filmmaker, I was really a writer. I started out as a writer. I wrote an awful lot of projects. I ended up luckily working in television, which gave me an opportunity to really focus on story. The action itself is an obstacle but the characters that I usually pick are characters that are up against completely unforgiving odds, so they have no chance of ever winning at all. I'm drawn to those kinds of characters. I write those kinds of characters where they are just overwhelmingly going to lose. So consequently, they go ahead and they choose to go down this path anyway because they have a code. These characters have their own code, and it's about family. It's about putting your life on the line for family, whether it's your own blood family, or your own chosen family and friends. They're characters that want to do the right thing. I'm drawn to that. Now that action itself is just the obstacle, and the bad guys are the obstacles that are in the way of that and that's why I originally chose those characters. In my teens, I got a black belt in Tang Soo Do. I also got a black belt in Kenpo. Kenpo was the style that Bruce Lee studied under Ed Parker who was a wonderful sensei. Then Tang Soo Do, I studied under a world champion. It ends up creating a core. There's a kind of a core that you learn, and with most of the things that we do in life, is all about childhood anyway. We develop all of these ways and the kind of character you have, etc. And I believe, if I pull it off properly, that my characters have character, and they're the kind of people that you look up to, and you hope, and you can live vicariously through them. Because so much of civilization today is about compromise. This guy is taking advantage of me, but what can I do? This woman's taking advantage of me, but what can I do? The people at this company are not really doing the right thing, and they're not giving me back the money that they owe me but what can I do? My characters don't live with compromise. When something terrible happens to them or more so to their families, or somebody that they love, they turn around and they'll punch somebody in the face. They'll turn around and they'll take some action, they'll do the right thing, they'll do what we all want to be able to do. Hopefully, you live vicariously through these characters. Not suggesting that you should do what they do, but certainly you can have some fun, lose yourself for about an hour and a half forget about your troubles in the day, and just have fun watching my characters do the right thing.

Alexia Melocchi: 6:58

I love this answer. I have to tell you, that's why you're such a great guest for my podcast because this is exactly the kind of stuff that my listeners wanna hear. I also read somewhere in an interview where you're talking about some of the presets of martial arts or the principles of loyalty, respect, and honor. You and I both know that those qualities are not necessarily omnipresent in Hollywood business dealings.

Dimitris Logothetis: 7:30

I'm hoping that the younger generation of all kinds, because my films travel, and they tend to last from one generation to the next. I tend to make what's called an evergreen, where it gets relicensed over and over and over again. Hopefully, they'll get something out of those characters where it's okay to do the right thing. It's okay to be loyal, it's okay to lose the battle by loyalty because you're not going to lose the war. That's the kind of character I'm drawn to. I'm an immigrant. I came to the States when I was six years old. My father, God rest him and my mother, my father was an auto mechanic and he opened up garages and gas stations. So my entire life I would hear, you don't really know anybody in the business, you don't have a chance, you're wasting your time, you're never going to be able to write, nobody's ever gonna buy anything you write, nobody's ever gonna let you direct anything, etc,. I find that I was against all odds myself. Being Greek and all, I was probably too stubborn or too stupid to recognize why not me. I say to everybody who's got a dream, why not you? You deserve it just as much as anybody else. The one thing that my father used to tell me that resonates with me is nobody's better than you. Nobody's smarter than you. Nobody has more skill than you do. Don't think for one second you're better than anybody else, but you certainly have a right to succeed in life, because of your determination. If you take that on, that in and of itself has a respectful statement in it because not only should people not talk down to you, but you shouldn't be talking down to people. You should put yourselves on an equal level. That's how I proceeded.

Alexia Melocchi: 9:38

I think when you are an immigrant, and I can relate to being an immigrant myself, you almost inherently learn to go with the flow, to be fluid, to be flexible, and always keep an eye on the top of the mountain. You have to learn to be flexible and you have to learn to be humble, humble in a good way, not in a submissive way. Humble, like you said, cooperative, know how to respect people because I think that the people you're gonna meet on your way up, you're gonna meet them on your way down. Hopefully, there won't be a way down for either of us. But I think the immigrant spirit is that resilience, that wanting, as you said, Why not me? It is so important.

Dimitris Logothetis: 10:24

This is the best country in the world. I mean America. The reason we're here is because it's the best country in the world. There's a lot of things that we could not have done anywhere else. This is the place to be, and I love being an American. There's a spirit and a groundedness that I have. So consequently, going back to the characters. I like underdogs.

Alexia Melocchi: 10:49

Were you first a writer then a producer then a director? You shifted and I'm interested to see how that process came about. What was the first thing you did? You started writing a script, and then you ended up finding the money and doing all the things that a producer does? Then you said, I want to be a director, I think I can do this because I've been on sets? How was that transition?

Dimitris Logothetis: 11:15

I was always a very good writer going all the way back to grammar school. Writing was storytelling and was always what got me through school. I could always write essays. I started out as an actor not because I wanted to be an actor because I was a business major at a junior college here, in El Camino. I had to take either an acting class or a speech class. It was an elective. I decided to take the acting class, and the guy who taught the acting class was the head of the department over there. He said, You know what, you're a pretty good actor. He said I'm going to star you in the next play that we do here. I was like, oh, no, I don't want to do play. So in any case, I ended up doing this play. Out of the play, I got an agent. I started to do commercials and I started to act in movies. That was doing very well. At 19, I think 20, I did a movie called New York, New York with Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro. I was on the set and I was still in school so I was writing an English paper. And Marty Scorsese walks up behind me and he said, What are you doing? I said I'm writing this paper, I gotta get this paper in. And he says, Let me see. And I said, No, it's not ready to be seen. He goes, Oh, come on, let me read. So he takes it and he runs away with it. He goes and reads, he comes back, he goes, Hey, you know what, you're a pretty good writer, you should think about going to film school. And I said, What's film school? Because film school was a brand new thing. Nobody knew film school. He ended up writing me a letter recommending me to film school. That was the beginning of the process for me where I decided to start submitting applications to film schools. I ended up getting a scholarship and all that kind of stuff. That's how I got into filmmaking. Through film school, I started to trip into a number of really good documentaries. I did a documentary for a rock group called The Knack which had a hit song called My Sharona. They were the number-one band at the time. I ended up going ahead and working for this cable TV company which was a big deal at the time. I just kept learning how to do things always that were writing-based. You always needed to write. You needed to write a commercial, you needed to write a pitch, you needed to write a TV series for the cable company, etc. So the writing skills started to kick into gear. Then I got into television directing because nobody else wanted to do it. It was non-union stuff and it was overseas. They consequently started to pick me to be the guy who knew how to deal with Europeans and go work overseas. Writing was always the core because I really knew story. One way or another, I'd end up writing. The only thing that was missing was trying to figure out how to raise money which you often have to do as an independent. One way or another, you always have to sell these projects. I wish to this day that film schools taught people how to sell because you either need to pitch it to a studio, you need to pitch it to a foreign sales company or you need to pitch it to an investor. If you can't figure out how to put the money together, the actors and the money, etc, it doesn't really make any difference if you've got the greatest script in the world. I often tell everybody there's probably a lot of guys and gals out there who are much more talented, and much better at writing than me. However, they really don't know how to put the project together. So it doesn't make any difference.

Alexia Melocchi: 15:10

I think in our days we didn't have the internet. We didn't have places where we could research things. We couldn't watch YouTube videos, you couldn't talk to pros, you couldn't book consultations, you couldn't do all those things. I think that was very, very challenging. I always say that to filmmakers, you are a writer, you better learn how to be a producer or a director or a distributor or a lawyer who knows how to negotiate their IP. You have to know a little bit of everything in order to navigate. I have a question, though, because I feel Yes, the script sells it. The script sells the project. However, do you believe that it is actually the director who sells the actor to sign on to the project? Or do you think the script and the money are just enough? I'll be curious to hear your feedback on it.

Dimitris Logothetis: 16:02

I call myself a filmmaker. Because I am. The only reason I produce is because if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to hire myself. I hire the best man I know for the job. I think that the script has to be good. But at the end of the day, everybody are going to look at who is making it, who was involved. I think it's very important to have a director on board. For instance, if a friend of mine wanted to come to me and say, I want to do this big, outlandish comedy, I'm the wrong person for that. I put a lot of humor in my stuff. I pull off a lot of humor in action. But I'm the wrong person to try to pull off a comedy. Now, there's oftentimes where you'll get a newbie, and people will back a newbie and try something new. But most of the time, that doesn't work out. The statistics for motion picture studios are that seven and a half out of ten movies that they release fail. So they count on two and a half to take them out. They count on the gigantic franchises to go ahead and make a billion dollars today and they go ahead and cover all the losses of the other seven and a half films. There is no genius in this, in that nobody knows when they're making something if it's going to succeed or fail. You can at least say, You know what, he's gonna make a pretty good movie. As long as you can say that, then people are going to be comfortable getting behind it. Those of us that have been doing this for a long time go, Yeah, you know, that's a pretty good group of people that they put together there. I'm interested in watching that. Anybody who tells you I know for a fact that that's going to be a smash success, they're lying because they don't.

Alexia Melocchi: 18:12

I think longevity is indeed the biggest calling card. I also see even myself when I'm working on projects in whatever capacity, the fact that they know that I know distribution, that I know what the market wants, I know what the buyers want, even though I haven't personally produced the biggest blockbuster movies ever. I will. I'm on my way. That's what I'm aiming for. At least they know that they can trust me because I know the market and I have experience as you do. We've seen it all. We've seen all the changes go through the 20, 30 years that we've been around. Speaking of the changes, have you noticed that there are a lot of actors from the 80s and 90s, we're talking Van Dammes the world, the Stalones, the Schwarzeneggers, even the Morgan Freemans, who still in today's world, still being older, they still have a value. I can't seem to wrap my head around anybody in the 20-something, early 30s generation that has the capacity or has the potential for longevity. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that those actors from those days still to this day are able to sell projects, especially on the independent side? There's other actors who are the younger ones who work in a specific genre but then people forget about them. Are they different movie stars? Are they no longer movie stars? Is the era of the movie star over in your opinion?

Dimitris Logothetis: 19:46

No, I don't think so. You brought up Stallone and Stallone is, as far as I'm concerned, a genius when it comes to putting projects together that fit directly in his wheelhouse. This TV series that he did, he said, the hardest thing he ever did was perfect Stallone. The TV series is cast in such a way that you have a really wonderful group of actors around him and young people, etc, but he's completely in his lane. And he's coming out with Expendables 4. He put together that whole crew of guys that you're talking about. Instead of playing a grandpa, which is what he should be cast as, according to Hollywood, not according to him or the rest of us, he's still playing this big-deal action star, and he's wonderful. To answer your question, the buyers that you know, that you're dealing with, you have certain sets of buyers. How do you get to your movie? How do you get your movie funded? Either you have a couple of people that really believe in you, and they're willing to give you financing, and they're willing to put up all the money for the movie. Or, if you're gonna go with a conventional route, you're gonna go to the buyers around the world, and they're gonna say, who's in it that I can sell to television? Because if I can't make any money anywhere else, who's in it that I can sell to television? They're going to do what's safe. What's safe? Well, I've sold Morgan Freeman a lot, well, I've sold Stalone a lot. I know for a fact that with these actors in the movie I can go ahead and at least get so much money, and then they start to quantify. They say France is worth half a million or a million based on these actors as long as they're costarring. I think that's the first tier. After you get past them, then you have to get to the audience. The audience may not care whether or not you've gotten major stars in the movie, or older stars in the movie or not. The audience cares about whether they're entertained. If you can't deliver entertainment, and they're not entertained, you're not going to do it again. It's as simple as that. We happen to live in the $10 to $20 million film price range or less. Sometimes my friends are doing it for less So we're not going to get killed. If you come out with a studio film that costs $80, $90, $100, $120 million, you get one shot at that. If that movie doesn't do well, then that's pretty much over for you. It's really all about how many layers of sellers you have to go through to allow you to fund a movie and make your film.

Alexia Melocchi: 22:42

I think it's finding stories that resonate with your talent so that your talent is willing to take pay cuts. My buyers were output partners with Lionsgate and they were behind the John Wicks of the world and all of those. You saw Keanu Reeves. John Wick was not his genre. He came from The Matrix, which is different, but there was a moment when his career wasn't great. He was smart enough to take pay cuts, just like Bruce Willis does, just like some of those actors. They take pay cuts because they see the universe being built around those characters. That's another smart way to go is to build universes and if you don't have a comic, or if you don't have something that's franchisable, at least build the universe.

Dimitris Logothetis: 23:35

With John Wick specifically, the director was the stunt coordinator from 8711 which is one of the biggest stunt teams in the world.[Keanu] had trust in him because he'd worked with him already as a stunt coordinator. He trusted that he was at least going to make a really good action film. He took a leap. John Wick, the original, the story itself is a Western. In the original story, they kill his dog. Everybody thinks he gets all worked up because they kill his dog. They killed his dog which was the last thing that he had from his wife who he adored. His character itself is a bad guy. He's a hitman. He's killed hundreds of people. He is one of the most lethal things that ever existed. However, just like I started by telling you, he loved his family, he loved his wife. He adored his wife and that was where his heart came from. Consequently, like in The Godfather, you ended up with a character that all of us could relate to. It didn't matter what he did before. So they killed his dog, which was the last memory he had of his wife and that brought him back into killing all these heartless people. You went with it, which is great. That's a Western story. That comes right from the old Westerns about the poor kid or the poor woman. Unforgiven, it's about a bunch of hookers who hire these bad, bad men to take care of this guy that cut up one of the young girls. That's the genesis of a story that ended up winning Academy Awards. You always can relate to that guy or that gal who does the right thing. That's where you go back to.

Alexia Melocchi: 25:47

That is such a brilliant Instagrammable quote from this incredible podcast. Taking you back to Gunner, because I know you're in post-production with that, what are your hopes and expectations for it? You have an interesting combination of actors, I know the story, but what are your hopes for it? Are you looking at this as a potential character that's going to be franchisable or characters that are going to be franchisable and doing sequels? Or are you going to move on to something else that is completely different after this one?

Dimitris Logothetis: 26:32

I never think about stuff like that. I try to make the best possible film I can. I think these actors are so good. Luke Hemsworth, and Morgan Freeman, Morgan Freeman is like a poet, and you just watch him deliver these lines. He makes a meal out of a couple of sentences that you never even thought would work. It was written by Gary Scott Thompson who wrote the Fast and Furious multibillion-dollar franchise. I started working on this four years ago. I finally got it together. The boys who are in this film as Luke's family are so terrific. They're also terrific actors. The core itself, there's a lot of heart there. Then I brought my action team out from Thailand where I started with the first kickboxer remake, Kickboxer Vengeance, and then they did Kickboxer Retaliation with me. They did jiu-jitsu with Nick Cage. Since then they've worked on Extraction, they worked on Grey Man for Netflix, they worked on a number of huge films. This action team is a completely different action team because their Thai and the Thais approach action and martial arts action in a completely different way. It's very unique to the

Alexia Melocchi: 28:04

I have to say congratulations because, by Thais. I hope that everybody sees what I see in the film. Hollywood standards, setting up a project from the moment you Luke Hemsworth has to buy your heart and get you to want him to win and recover his kids. pick a script to seeing it produced in four years, that's pretty fast.

Dimitris Logothetis: 28:36

If COVID hadn't gotten in the way I would have been making it two years ago.

Alexia Melocchi: 28:42

That's interesting because that was not your own script. That was somebody else's script. It came from a very major studio writer. If somebody were to send you something, pitch you something, get ahold of you, they say I have something wonderful. What is your criteria? Are you necessarily always looking at known writers? Are you open to unknown writers? What makes you say yes, because we all know that producer's journey could be a very long one. We have to work very hard to get stuff done. One may say, You know what, I am going to dedicate the next year, two years, three years, however long it takes, of my life to see this through. Is there something you're looking for?

Dimitris Logothetis: 29:23

I don't really know. I don't know the answer to that question. For the most part, I don't take anybody's projects. I write all my own stuff. With Gary, there was a manager who I know who manages him who brought me this story, and I didn't want to do it. I don't like working on other people's material because at any time they can decide they don't want to do this anymore. I've changed my mind and time is the only thing that you'll never recover. With my own material, I know that if I'm going to put in a year, two, or three, I'm not going to look at myself and say you can't work on this anymore. You can't explain to anybody how difficult it is to put a picture together unless they've done it themselves, and they'll tend to think that you're not really doing this, you're not paying attention to it, which isn't the case. It doesn't behoove any of us not to make a movie. We're at the behest of putting the talent together, putting the money together, putting whatever together. I always tell everybody that films have their own lifecycle. Pick any project. They can be around for a long, long time before they finally get made because they have their own life cycle. Suddenly you attach somebody that you don't think would ever get something made and it gets made. You should always try to do the best you can and deliver the best project you can. I work on one or two things at a time. I'm not one of those filmmakers who can work on 10 things at a time.

Alexia Melocchi: 31:10

It's so hard to multitask. I can tell you from my own personal experience, that with a job, podcast, buying films from distributors, selling my own films, producing my clients' films, and doing my own, it's a lot to handle. I envy you in some way because I feel that your martial arts background together with your Greek roots has brought you a sense of peace. You are looking at life with a little bit of a different lens than a lot of people who are very frantic. If you were to encapsulate it all into one, is there a life mantra? Is there something that you go by in whatever moment you feel you're a little stuck to sort of remind you what's it all about? And why is it worth it?

Dimitris Logothetis: 32:17

First of all, Gunner is not a martial arts film. It's an action film. It's not in martial arts-centric at all. There's a little bit but it's not what the other films were. One of the very first things I ever did was Champions Forever. It was at the end of the careers of Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, and George Foreman. I put all those boxers together and I did this documentary that ended up winning awards and was the number one documentary in the world at the time. Never intended it to be, I just wanted to put together these guys because I wanted to hear from these guys. What it was like to start with nothing and then end up with something. Whatever you consider to be a success in your life, everybody equates success with money. If you get a little older you understand that that money has very, very little to do with success. Family is really more about success than anything else. Love is really more about success than anything else. Being able to be fortunate enough to do what we do is a huge success in and of itself because most people are forced to do things just to get through life and we're not. No matter how hard things are, we're blessed to be able to do what we do. What I found out from working with all these people, who were some of the sweetest people, you would think that fighters are mean and angry and so on, even Mike Tyson, who I worked with on Kickboxer Retaliation. They're real sweethearts deep down inside. The one winning thing that I learned from them is when they got knocked down, they'd get up off the mat. Get up, you're not going to lay there, you're not going to quit. It hurt. Get yourself together, take a deep breath, and get up and get back in the ring. That's the thing that I can tell everybody. It ain't perfect. Nothing is. If you're looking for perfection buy a grave. Guarantee you that you'll end up there. All the people that we've looked up to in our lives, where you see the Elon Musk's of the world, where you see these people that have achieved all of these things that are just overwhelming and huge, they never quit. They've had many failures. Everybody has failures, you fail. As a matter of fact, people who succeed have more failures than successes. All they need is one success. But you recover, you learn and you keep moving forward. That's what I would say to people. Get up off the mat, get back in the ring and start swinging again.

Alexia Melocchi: 35:26

I love those life nuggets because it just going full circle with you wanting to do underdog stories. If we think about it, most of the great ones, in every area, whether it's science, whether it's the Elon Musks of the word, or the great filmmakers, they are underdog stories. Look at Stallone. He got his own Rocky movie made. They're underdog stories. It only makes sense that you would have a passion for telling a lot of the stories with your production. This has been a total masterclass in producing and filmmaking. I am so honored to have had you on my show, Dimitris, because I can't wait to start doing the show notes on this. There are gonna be so many nuggets for the listeners to just go, Wow, I'm inspired. I'm ready. I'm ready to create something for myself or for my life that is not just about money, as you said. So thank you for coming to my show. Before I close it off, I'm going to ask you what I said I was gonna ask you. You already answered one of the two things, but how would you define yourself in three words?

Dimitris Logothetis: 36:38

I'm grateful to be a storyteller.

Alexia Melocchi: 36:48

That's beautiful. That is so beautiful. From the Heart of Show Business with so much heart, Dimitris Logothetis really symbolizes exactly that. What my show is about, the Heart of Show Business. Thank you Dimitris for coming on my show. Thank you to all the listeners. If you enjoy this specific podcast episode, please subscribe, rate, review, share with your friends, and share with those who need it, when they're feeling down, when they feel like something is not working in their life. It's not just about show business. It's about life. Thank you for coming on my show, Dimitris.

Dimitris Logothetis: 37:24

Have a wonderful day.

Alexia Melocchi: 37:25

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Heart of Showbusiness. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can also subscribe, rate, and review the show on your favorite podcast player. If you have any questions, comments or feedback for us, you can reach me directly at the heartofshowbusiness.com