The Johnjay Van Es Podcast

Want Hollywood-Level Scripts? Learn From Director Ric Roman Waugh

• JohnJay Van Es • Season 1 • Episode 30

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What if an action movie could make your heart race and actually hit you in the chest?

We sit down with director Ric Roman Waugh, the stuntman-turned-filmmaker behind Shelter with Jason Statham, to talk about making action feel real.

Ric breaks down the stunts, car chases, and live-action fights that make the thrills land, plus how chemistry—not just star power—drives the story. We dive into his journey from stuntman to director, what he learned from mentors like Tony Scott, and how respect for the crew keeps every chaotic set alive.

If you love heart-pounding, smart action, this is your backstage pass. Hit play, share with a friend, and tell us your all-time favorite car chase.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so welcome to our podcast. This is a little bit different today because this podcast is a spin-off of our radio show. I gotta tell you something. First of all, I'm really great and grateful that you're here for my show, my podcast, right? Um, this movie, I watched this movie a couple days ago with my oldest son and my youngest son. My oldest son's 22, my youngest is 19, and it was freaking fantastic.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

It's fantastic. It's just such a great action movie, you know? It just and and is it okay if I ask you a bunch of dumb questions?

SPEAKER_00:

Fire away.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, first of all, the actress, the girl, whoever I I don't know her name, she was amazing.

SPEAKER_00:

If you saw the spelling of it, you'd butcher it like I did the first time around. But her name is Bodie Ray Brannock.

SPEAKER_02:

Bodie Ray Branick.

SPEAKER_00:

And she is just a sensation. She's in a new movie called Hamnet that's out right now.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, that's the one that won all the awards. She's in that?

SPEAKER_00:

She's the the oldest daughter. She's gonna be in Sense and Sensibility, the new one that's coming out. She's gonna be in at Rot uh uh Rod uh uh Eggers' new movie, Werewolf. You're gonna be seeing her a lot.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so watching your movie, I was like, this woman is fantastic. So it's like you can I I believe that she was gonna have a huge future. So did you discover her?

SPEAKER_00:

I would say that I didn't discover her, but there is something about her that I see why everybody's getting attached to her and and wanting to put her in movies. You know, you can get all the best Academy Award winners, you can put them all together and put them in front of the camera, and that does not mean they're gonna have chemistry. It doesn't mean it's gonna work. We've seen those movies. We're like, how do these movies fail with this kind of firepower? Right. It's about chemistry, it's about DNA. And so they um when I came on to the picture, uh Jason asked me to do it, and and I read the script, and it just if it doesn't emotionally grab me, I'm not doing it. And I probably said no to some movies I shouldn't have. But if I don't really feel it in my gut, well then how are you gonna feel it? How am I gonna convey that to you to have an emotional ride with something where you can do a big action ride but be emotionally gripped in the inside of it? The 70s, right? The movies that that we all remember and love and and and and and revere. And so they had already had about 500 girls that they went through all across Europe and the United Kingdom. And I remember I started going through the tapes, and this little freckled girl, I just stopped and I had to look at her because there was something in her eyes, like this old soul, like there was an energy that was inside of her. And um, so she was one of the five girls, the selects that we were gonna screen test with Jason, and she happened to be the first girl that came in the room, and it was electric.

SPEAKER_02:

And you are you're the guy that goes, She's the one.

SPEAKER_00:

He looked at me after she went toe-to-toe with him, yeah, in tears. It's the fierce scene in the movie where he she knows that he's going to leave her because he has to do it to keep her out of harm's way. Right. And she's not having it.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

And when it was done, we looked at each other, we're like, what do we do now? Because that's Jesse.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, there's so many things I want to ask you about the movie, but I don't want to spoil it, so I'll have to ask you off camera before you leave. But uh I thought it, I just thought it was fan. I thought the villain was the great. There's two the the two villains in the movie for me was the legendary guy from Pirates of the Caribbean. Bill Knight. Bill Knight. Was he in love, actually? He's in one of those movies. He's in everything. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

He's one of those um yeah, legendary British actors, Harriet Walter who played the Prime Minister. Yeah. Have somebody like that come in and play a role of that stature when she's usually carrying entire movies. Yeah. We got great, great people.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, also the other dude reminded me of the uh Terminator 2, uh the way he just was relentless.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's funny because that we said, like Jason represents the T1000, Workman is a T2000. He's the newer version without the moral code, and a guy that said, Hey, you know what? I'm the guy that you send out to do the greater good. But am I now doing the greater good or am I doing your bidding? You know, it's what we live with today about you know, this sense of justice in the world, this moral code, what we're doing around the world. Not trying to answer any questions, I'm not trying to give you my opinion, but I like to push buttons. I like to get in there with social themes and let us all have a discussion about it afterwards.

SPEAKER_02:

So let me ask you this without uh, well, there's uh about another cast member on the show. Um is does is the dog the same dog that's in Fallen or um Fallout? No. Because you've seen Fallout, it's on it's in the you know what they look like.

SPEAKER_00:

Yara very well could be. Um she's an amazing, I'm a big dog person. Yeah, and I mean we all fell in love with Yara.

SPEAKER_02:

My wife and I have a dog, we have a dog rescue.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we we I mean, and the uh Yara's owner and trainer is one of the best I've ever seen. And she, yeah, yeah, we just I got so lucky with this entire cast because again, it wasn't just the rock stars, everybody's chemistry together was just so sensational. You felt it, you know, even with Jason and Yara and then and then Bodie.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, the the thing is there's a show, it's called Fallout, and it's with uh Walton Goggins, and there's a dog named Dog Me based off the video game, and the dog looks exactly like the dog in your movie. And I actually thought the moment when she's with the dog, you know where he's drawing it? I thought that was awesome. I thought that was really awesome. Ah, thank you. Yeah, um, I think your movie is fantastic. Let me ask some stupid questions. You know when you do the intro scene where you have the lighthouse and the camera's coming up? Is that a drone? Is that a helicopter?

SPEAKER_00:

I um I use both. I'm a big fan. I have a drone team that I um use on all my movies.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, because in Greenland, it starts off that way too. You're all over the room.

SPEAKER_00:

And then also um a movie I did in Saudi Arabia called Kandahar, um, you know, we were the first ones to film there since Lawrence of Arabia, and we brought like 25 different countries there um to work, and there was a drone team, one of the best pilots out of South Africa I've ever seen, you know, who just understands how they can make me feel like I'm David Lean or John Ford and give you unbelievable cinematic scope.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So I carry them with me. So though those were drone shots because they don't act like a drone, they're like a mini helicopter. Yeah, you couldn't tell. He understands how helicopters shoot. But what's great is you don't have the downdraft of big rotors and you're not washing out the set. You're able to be a little bit more nimble and get them into tighter situations. So um, yeah, uh, those are definitely parts of my weapons.

SPEAKER_02:

And then when you're shooting a scene like the boat scene, um the weather, are you just waiting for the weather to be like that? Or is any of that CGI stuff?

SPEAKER_00:

We're creating it. We're creating it. Yeah, I'm a big car guy, so I love when we call them the big V8s, and they're literally V8 engines fastened to 10-foot fans, and I mean strapped down because they will knock you over. Okay, so powerful.

SPEAKER_02:

That's all live action. So that's a real car. That's Jason's state of them driving. Okay, because I was like, you know, you can kind of tell sometimes, like, dang, I can't tell.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow. And it's yeah, I think, you know, my I come from the stunt world. That was my upbringing.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I know I was gonna ask you about that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and so I always got this uh this common question what was it like to do stunts? And I realized that what people are really wanting to know is what did it feel like? What was the emotional rush that I had being set on fire, um, going 200 miles an hour in a car, you know, falling off of a building. What is that exhilaration? What is that fear? And I thought, that is really what I want to do with action. I want it to be an IMAX ride. I don't want you to watch action. I want you to participate in it. I want to put you in the car, in the car.

SPEAKER_02:

The car chase scene with the cop, the cop car. That scene was right up there, French connection. You know what I'm talking about? Thank you. That scene was insane. Yeah, it was about booting.

SPEAKER_00:

It was about putting you in the car with Jason, double, driving behind the wheel with him and being bucking Broncos, going down hills and being in there and feeling what it is to not be in like the Fast and the Furious cars where everything sounds like it's a race car, right? Being in a bucket of bolts that scares the crap out of you in the middle of the chase.

SPEAKER_02:

When I so when I we left the movie and my sons were like, this movie's fantastic. My youngest son was 19, was in the backseat. He starts googling the movie. Then he starts googling you. And from the back seat he's like, Dad, he was in Days of Thunder. He was in Tango and Cash. He starts listing off all these movies you're in. I'm like, what? Wait a minute. Like, we how what? I didn't know that you were a stunt guy before that. So what you what were like what was Tango Cash? Who'd you play? Were you Kurt Russell? No.

SPEAKER_00:

When all the big pit fight were uh we were in the no, when we were in the cement quarry. Oh, yeah, the big monster trucks are coming out and everything else. I mean, you know, back then we were blowing real, like real fire, real gasoline fire and everything that you're not really doing nowadays anymore. Let's just say the detach the decontamination unit was probably there for about four or five months after we were done. But we, you know, I feel like we're on the other side of the bell curve in a really good way where my era doing stunts and well before me, we were doing it for real. You just brought up the French Connection or Bullet, and you know, those type of movies, those are real car chases.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, Hooper.

SPEAKER_00:

He's my modern-day Steve McQueen. Oh, 100%, man. He lives and breathes the way that his mantra is in real life, the way that it is for his characters. And there's nothing fake about Jason. So his fight choreography is because he is a martial artist fighter. He's not Steven Segal faking it. I was around Seagall and those guys, they're all full of crap.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

He's the real deal.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_00:

And but he lives that way with that code. And what I loved about the action back then is we were doing it for real. And then we went through this whole era of everything getting really fake. Visual effects came around, everybody started relying on it, everybody started dropping cars a thousand feet from the air, and they just drive off like nothing happened to them. And there's nothing wrong with those big, you know, kind of hyper-real movies. But I'm glad we're getting back into which is my bread and butter, authenticity. Yeah. Getting into grounded stuff where you can still be larger than life and you can still give you a huge action ride. But when you get hit, it freaking hurts. And when cars crash, they crash for real and they don't they don't uh fire back up.

SPEAKER_02:

There's a couple scenes, again, I have to ask you off camera, but because I was like, what? When you a couple things that happened to um uh but what uh my son, when he was listening off some of the stuff, uh he said there was a movie that came out that didn't do so well at the box office back in the day. And I remember when I went to go see it, I remember the theater I went to go see it. I remember thinking it was a fantastic movie. It was uh Last Action Hero with um Schwarzenegger. That was a great movie.

SPEAKER_00:

We all thought that was gonna be the biggest hit to Kingdom Come. We're like actually to go have a kid go into a movie and meet his action hero. Yes, genius. You don't get a better premise than that. Right.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. You should redo that. Who'd you play in that one? Or what who'd you stunt that? I can't remember. I was all over the place. How do you go from being a stunt guy to a director of these massive movies with these massive stars?

SPEAKER_00:

It was tough back then, but to people take you seriously. Hal Needham, who directed Hooper and The Smoking the Bandits, he was the godfather. He was the godfather of the stunt business. He was the first one to really cross over and be a legitimate Hollywood director with his own brand. Um, but nobody was taking us very seriously. But what they didn't realize is us stunt players, we get the seat at the table. We're right there by camera, day in, day out, watching how it's made and being a part of the creative. So we have this great place of firsthand experience. Then you bring that and and hopefully try to be a storyteller, you know, going through commercials and second and directing with action. It was not until I really started writing and then created uh my own material. That's where Felon was born. Felon kind of changed the map for me. It became my calling card of movies that will push buttons. Um, hopefully they'll be emotionally gripping, take you into worlds that will answer or um not answer, but question uh things of morality. What would it like to go to prison? What would you have to do to endure to survive it? What would it do to your psyche? Um and and yet entertain you in a real provocative way. That's where I started understanding where I can take the action world that I come from and then put my own sensibilities, not be which we were talking about before we started, about Dwayne Johnson. You know, Dwayne and I had the uh I had the pleasure of working with him on snitch, and we talked a lot about legacy and where we get typecast in a certain way, where a former wrestler, you know, went for the went through football, the size and scale he is, his the color of him, until he finally had figured out I'm gonna do things mine way. I'm gonna be who I want to be and do my own brand.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, that's why I think he did Smash Machine because it was so it showed his acting chops.

SPEAKER_00:

And I knew he was that. He blew people, he blew my mind and snitch of how committed he was to that role. And it started to show me that we can have our cake in it too in these movies. That's what Shelter does, is it's Jason Statham in his glory as an action star. But you're seeing him in a different lens than you've ever seen him because you're seeing a gifted actor that's giving you vulnerability, giving you real empathy and hope, and showing that here's this lost soul in self-exile, put himself away so that that dark cloud wouldn't follow anybody else, saves a young girl from the sea who's also living in her own exile from trauma, losing parents in her own little um in her own little oblivion. And they find each other and they find family, and now we want them to be together. It's Shane. It's the old classic westerns of the guy that rides a town and people want him to stay, but he knows that dark cloud is following him. So what do you do?

SPEAKER_02:

You know how I knew it was great is when you the movie's over and you don't want it to end. Like, you know, there's all these jokes about Wicked, how long it is, like, when is this thing gonna be over? Especially Wicked Part Two. This ended. I was like, Well, wait a minute, no, give me more. So I'm assuming I'm assuming there's gonna be Shelter 2, Electric Boogaloo.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh man, I you know, the the kiss of death is ever trying to make a movie and think it's the start of a franchise. Just make a good movie.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

And um, if you look at my last few movies, uh, they really kind of speak to what I'm trying to do. One uh between Shock Caller and Greenland.

SPEAKER_02:

Shot Caller with uh Jimmy Lannister.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

That was a kick-ass movie.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you. Yeah. And uh for that movie example, an example, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. I'm not gonna tie it up in a neat little bow. When violence breeds violence and you're become violent to defend yourself, and then you know that that dark cloud is going to follow you. One, he's not gonna get out of prison acting that way. He's not gonna ride off into the sunset. What he's doing is trying to shut his son out of his life to not let that dark cloud follow him. So instead of leaving you on a downer of Jesus, I watched two hours of this and I walk out in a downer. I don't want that. I wouldn't want that as an audience member. I want to give you a glimmer of hope because I think that that's what life is about, right? Life's about hope. And you get that letter from the sun. Thank you, Dad. I understand and I forgive you. So you get that smile on your eye, on your face um, on your face, but you know I didn't sugarcoat it and I didn't tie it up in a neat bow. In Greenland, we told you we were gonna wreck the earth, and we do it. We obliterate.

SPEAKER_02:

I haven't finished it yet. Don't tell me. I was watching, I was watching it two weeks ago before I even I was interviewing you. Oh, really? Yeah, it was on it's on HBO right now.

SPEAKER_00:

We wrecked the earth. I'm trying to. I'm starting to tell you. I'm starting to tell you. You can't have the director of the movie ruin the movie for me. But no, but you'll see what we do at the ending. There's there's a sense of that what is we all want is that that sense of hope and that sense of bittersweet with this of um a guy that has found family and a girl that has found her family and wants to do anything but to lose them. But what is your sense of duty to to your loved ones?

SPEAKER_02:

Wait, let me ask you this about the movie about Greenland one, the first one. And this is a this is again, I'm you gave me your permission to ask you stupid movies. In the beginning of the movie, he comes home and she's on the treadmill running, right? She's running on the treadmill and she's and and the actress, I can't remember her name. Marina back then. Yeah, she was in Homeland, she's in uh Deadpool, she's awesome. Um, she's got sweat coming down her back and her tank top. I was curious how, like, how much did she have to run on the treadmill? How many scenes did you do? That was that real sweat. Do you guys spread the sweat down? Spray the sweat down.

SPEAKER_00:

Morena, like, if you put me and Jerry Butler and Morena in a dark alley, she's probably gonna kick both our asses. Right. Like, she's just no joke, and and she's a very committed actress. I love her to death. Yeah, and no, she's she said, uh, hey, I need to, I'm gonna run on this for about five minutes. I want to be out of breath, I want to do this for real. Yeah, because you said she ran five miles on there, and then she was and I just in the middle of the movie when um she's trying to find her child um and she's running through to the FEMA camp, she all that all night long she was running into physicality. You love that. It's like I'm all in on the movies that I make, and when I get to work with actors that are all in as well and not you know showing up to set and they don't want to work or they're questioning this or that, but they're committed to it. You don't get any more committed to that guy.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, you he comes in it to win it every single day.

SPEAKER_02:

How often do you or how long do you rehearse the fight scenes? And you must get involved as a stunt guy. You must be like, wait, this is how this would happen, or here's how you should land. Do you get that involved?

SPEAKER_00:

No, with Jason, what's great about him is he doesn't want to wing it, he wants it done right. So there was so he'll spend weeks upon weeks with cor choreography and making sure that we really have it mapped out so that when we get there on the day, we're raising the bar, we're making it even better. And yeah, he's hitting the he's crashing into things, he's hitting for real. It's all live action.

SPEAKER_02:

What's the day that you started filming? Like how long ago did this process take? When was the first time you hit record? Was it 2023, 2024?

SPEAKER_00:

No, it was just oh no, we just made this in 2025. Oh, you did? I was filming, I want to say before the end of February.

unknown:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. It was in March. No, I think I think we shot in March, and then yeah, I mean, I I was, yeah, this whole entire movie was finished by Christmas this year.

SPEAKER_02:

With this poster right here, for example, do you are you involved in that? Do you're like, here's this the I approved this poster? Or is that executive producer stuff?

SPEAKER_00:

The the um the company in the studio we made this with with Black Bear have been phenomenal partners. And Jason and I are they know we're both very um passionate about the movie. What I like is that we're all very respectful of one another and and collaborative. So yeah, we're all involved in these decisions and wanting it to be right. It's just it's a great passion project we love. It's like you get to have this big action movie, but there are tearjerker moments in it. Yeah, there are places that you la uh have levity, there are places that you're root, well, hopefully the entire movie, you're rooting for your for your heroes and again emotionally gripped in it.

SPEAKER_02:

You know the part where they they need a car and they go to that house and there's the the dad and the son? That shocked the hell out of me. If you know, I'll tell you off air. Okay, but there was a scene that happened there that I was not expecting. I was like, what? Like I actually said out loud in the theater, what? It was that it's a really, really good movie, man. So what's what's next? Like right now, what do you oh wait wait before you tell me what's next? Um, when you pick a release date, like January 30th, do you look at what other movies are coming out that day? Do you like we don't want to release it here, man? Avatar is coming out, or we don't want to release it here, Wicked or Star Wars.

SPEAKER_00:

It's tough. It's really the calendar is really tough because our business is back, the theatrical experience, people are realizing. I mean, why do you go to live concerts? It's because the live sense of music is different than listening it at home on your stereo. And it's just no different with movies. We go to the cinema to experience things together, to have a different visceral experience. So we're back, and a lot of movies are coming out, and it's tough sledding out there to really attract people. So we are looking at different calendar dates and we're trying to find the right. moments and every weekend you're gonna have competition and at the end of the day you're you know it's it's always a nerve-wracking thing but you're also trying to find a place where you can get the most traction where people are gonna see your your movie and give it um and give it legs and give it um and give it life in a theatrical way and then let it take its course from there.

SPEAKER_02:

Do you get people to compliment your eyes every day? You have beautiful eyes. Only you buddy but I don't mean that I'm just looking at you like when you when you talk I'm just like wow man they're like hypnotizing man I'm gonna come here on every circuit and get interviewed by we're in now you and I. What what is your next like what do you what's your next project?

SPEAKER_00:

There's a few things we're looking at Jason and I want to work together again. There's a project I'm sorry I'm not being quit but I can't talk about but is um based on a true story and it's very close to current events that are going on right now.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

And um that I'm really excited about but like you've already said yes you're gonna do it. Yeah and so we're just trying to figure out schedules and lining things up. You know uh the movie business is a big Rubik's cube. Right. Right? Director, movie star, dates, financing all these things got to go and all the colors got to get to the same and it takes them and it and sometimes it's you know I find it like sometimes they don't go together. You have all these ingredients but the Rubik's Cube doesn't really all match up and we don't get that um things into uh into production and sometimes a movie star calls like this case and 12 weeks later I'm shooting.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow yeah uh I think you should remake Tango and Cash.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah there you go that's a freaking great movie what about your some some movies because I think we're the same age movies that like made an impact like Sharky's Machine right did you see that movie you saw that movie right not only saw Sharky's machine but Dar Robinson who did the big high fall and Sharky's machine who played the albino big man in that you know God rest his soul he was an incredible stunt man but you're speaking to the year I grew up in I grew up around uh a lot of the pioneers in the business a lot of them are dead now a lot of them have passed away including my own father and but there was just an era of growing up you know if we're around the same age you know as a kid in the 70s you know I'd go onto the set and there'd be Clint Eastwood and I didn't care who he was. But your dad was I was looking at the yeah yeah he was um he went back he was in the circus and so Bert Lancaster's circus boy was one of the first things he worked on and then became a professional stunt man he was Spider-Man in the 1970s you know on television oh yeah because the guy that played Spider-Man was the guy from uh um um Sound of Music yeah Peter Parker and I mean uh uh um uh I forgot his name but they didn't like your dad was that Spider-Man stunt guy they used to watch all the time they didn't like the act they didn't like the actor in the suit right so my dad was always in the suit he was always Spider-Man and so it's fun you know grow up with that stuff and so you really your heroes were these guys that were crashing cars and doing things for real what you didn't really understand who the actors were you know they were just really cool people on set and so forth.

SPEAKER_02:

You know my sister she's in your business and when she was coming up she did a documentary called The Secret World of Stunt Men.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh really?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah and she went on the set with Clint Eastwood and she went on the set with Spielberg when he was doing Jurassic Park and I remember it was a it's if you ever find out maybe your dad's in there I I I don't know but it's it was this is like 25 30 years ago it was a great documentary.

SPEAKER_00:

But the stunt man so do you have broken bones you've got you've had it all I did pretty well really yeah I did pretty well I mean yeah I was banged up for sure and I had my share of concussions and super close calls and so forth but I think that the well not think the the person that was really pivotal in my life right because as much as my father was somebody that was really um an idol to me it's always somebody else right somebody else always gives you that spark and Tony Scott was that guy you know oh my uh days of thunder top gun wait no days of yeah days of thunder top gun true romance man on fire true crimson tie great movie man on fire my god Mark Anthony was creepy in that yeah and and so Tony was one of these guys that he allowed you the time of day he allowed you to you know um be that pesky you know rat and always up there asking him questions and what I loved about him is he lived or died by his own sword he didn't try to emulate others he was very bold very original look at the movies we're talking about right they all had their own signature and I was like if I can just have a kernel of what Tony does and not try well it what I'm trying to do is to try to be my own brand and my own my own voice of wanting movies to have emotion to have something to say not beat you over the head with it not trying to give you my opinion but let's have something of substance and then let's put them in a big shiny wrapper and give you a huge ride you know and either scare the crap out of you or make something exhilarating but that that form of escapism that we love about movies that take you somewhere else but you come out and you're like I kind of get who these people are there's some things I relate to in my own life but there I don't need to be a guy that was in former MI6 but I understand what isolation is I understand how we can self-exile ourselves when we think things are are of trauma.

SPEAKER_02:

Live in a lighthouse with your dog eating oatmeal every day? Yeah that's a good I've been there you know what dude in the when he goes and he and he unleashes that boat and jumps in the boat in the beginning to go get her that was sick that was that was that like a one take or was that like a he did he that was him well if I was ever going to be some elite special forces guy I'd have had to have been in Delta um in Delta Force because I would have been a terrible Navy SEAL.

SPEAKER_00:

I am not made for the water I sink like right to the bottom.

SPEAKER_02:

So you weren't in the water when you were shooting those he's phenomenal.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow you know he was a high diver when he was younger and so when you see him rescue swimming that's him rescue swimming her in a storm fully clothed with boots on no cables on it. That's amazing and that young girl would sit there like a rag doll and act like she was unconscious and let him pull her all the way over and get on the boat.

SPEAKER_02:

And it's just like when you have that get the cameras right do it do it right because he's given us all and what else can you ask for when you do another take do you just go hey sorry Jason we gotta do one more take or you like hey let's do it again or is it like no I'm I give him context because I don't ever try to um BS my um my actors that otherwise we're not giving each other respect.

SPEAKER_00:

I'll say like the camera the camera missed it man I need to come back and do this and that he goes okay let's get it you know and and that's what I love about him he understands that everybody's doing their best um if we keep making the same mistake we're gonna we're gonna talk about how do we get that out like this idea of filmmakers that end up with 30 takes I'm like I don't know what you're doing after five okay if something's not working that's what I stop I go what we're doing is not working. So let's decide what what what is going to make this work because for me just to if I don't understand it in five takes I'm not gonna understand in 30 right doing the same thing.

SPEAKER_02:

Wait so real quick you're a stunt man you've seen it all so many times so that's when you're like hey I can do this I can be a director I wrote a movie I can be a director it wasn't like you went to film school at all you just naive I was like I can do this right I read a crappy script and I was like I'll just write my own like that was like the easiest thing in the world.

SPEAKER_00:

Luckily people gave me the time of day not only Tony but there were some really high level studio writers that I went to that I'd worked with and I said hey I'm gonna write a script and if it's crap tell me it's crap but also explain to me why it's crap. And so I started to write and they took me to the working writer's school lucky I was I have a good work ethic and I put in my hours and I you know I uh I put in my my my blood sweat and tears but that way when you do it for real but people are giving you feedback I wrote a script called Hammer Down which became this big getaway driver movie. They never made it but it sold the DreamWorks and it was on my way you know and it's what I try to do with mentorships now with um the younger generation when they come my way is I want to reciprocate that I want to be their Tony Scott that they're their guiding light of it's not working but this is why right hey come to work on time don't be late again and this is why because everybody else is depending on you. You think that little satchel that is supposed to be in the shot didn't matter but now that little satchel that cost us a hundred bucks is going to cost me a hundred thousand because now I have to replace it in all these other shots.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_00:

That's and you explain that the responsibility that we all are together it's a very collaborative effort and we're all in it together. And when you have that people respond right you know they want to do it right.

SPEAKER_02:

Do you uh do the drawings of every scene ahead of time? I forget what that's called you know storyboard?

SPEAKER_00:

Storyboard yeah man I wish I'm the world I I I start I start in fact I've had location managers and even my own sons who are 18 year old twins and they have done three movies with me now they're both interning and their first job I said they go what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? And I was like your name is Manual and your name is labor. Now get in there and you know and it's just go to work and understand but I said but don't be the dummies messing around watch.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

And if it's not for you and it's not for you but if it is start watching everybody does and find your lane.

SPEAKER_01:

Do they like this movie?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah and they had a great and they understood they had a really great time making it were they were there they were there with you or was that Ireland England not only that one they were in this um there the desert of Saudi Arabia doing Kandahar they were in Greenland migration on the beaches of Iceland and where we went and one's in visual effects Braden does visual effects and Jackson's in the camera department and you know they're they're finding their lanes and that's what else can you ask for it's been a great journey to watch them the way that I was with my father and you know our our business is like there is nepotism in a way that if you come from a family of plumbers then you know there's a trade that is that goes in the family. If you come from law enforcement military our business is no different what people forget is the movie business are all tradespeople right right we're all we're all doing it we're all in there just doing our part to to make something make something happen and uh and it's a very blue collar business which I love and I always say that I might be a movie director now but I'm part of the crew. You see me grabbing sandbags and carrying C stands whatever it takes let's just get it done. People be like who's the director that guy over there carrying the bag that's great.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah that's lob and the t-shirt and the shorts yeah yeah I don't know I I left my ascot at home so hey thanks for popping on my podcast I really appreciate it so it's shelter it's in theaters January 30th and it's a kick ass movie. Thanks man thank you man I really appreciate it really and I mean sincerely if it was a bad movie I'd been like hey man thanks for coming you got ugly eyes no okay so welcome to our podcast this is a little bit different today because this podcast is a spin-off of our radio show

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Johnjay Van Es

Host