Wick Is Pain

You want to try one?

-What do you say? - Let's do it. Yes.

- Let's shoot. - Yep. Shoot.

John, shoot.

Let's go.

Roll Keanu back up. Let's shoot.

Okay, let's mount up.

Here we go.

Keep the charge. Go time.

All right. And let's roll.

Quiet, please.

And let's roll.

Rolling. Very quiet all around, please.

- B. - Victory 88 Charlie, Take 1. A-mark.

Guys doing the shell casing, it will come this direction.

What's a good eyeline here to look at them?

Let's see. That's good.

Here to here to here?

No, uh, bring it around a little bit.

That's good.

That's better. You like that?

So, I'll start here. Three, two, one, and I'll just be like, "Fuck."

- Stand by. - Standing by. Here we go.

Yeah, let's see what comes. But if we can get the pull and--

Quiet, please. All right, very good.

And thank you. Okay. Ready and action.

- Good. Cut. - Cut.

- There you go. - You like that?

A little bit of anger is good.

When we say, "John Wick is pain,"

it's kind of like a "Fuck yeah," you know?

It's like a "Fuck yeah. Wick is pain."

It's like, "It's so good, it hurts."

Or, "It hurts so good."

Um...

And I think...

I think that's why the audiences like it, too.

I think you can see it on the screen,

and there's a kind of B movie, B-action genre to it,

taken to, like, a super high artsy level in a way.

But there is the joy of people getting hit by cars

and falling from impossible... Like, "You can't survive that."

And-- And then John Wick kind of getting back up or struggling.

It's like an invitation, you know?

And it kind of takes care of you, and it feels authentic.

I believe that that's in the movies,

and that when you watch them, you're like, "Yeah, this is like..."

As John Wick says in John Wick,

"It's personal."

[upbeat electronic music playing]

You know, I always looked at it with, like, art envy,

with, you know, Scorsese and De Niro.

You know, like, De Niro had his director, you know?

And so, when I think of that, then that's what I think of.

Like, with the John Wick role, I had-- I had my director there.

This is 87eleven.

I try to start my day here every morning at 6:00 a.m.

before I go into the office.

This is where all the stunt performers come to train.

We've trained for all the John Wicks here.

It's also where I have to come and try to keep the joints working.

Yeah, a lot of miles on the body.

The wear and tear of not just stunt work,

but of all the martial art and the physicality that I've done.

I've broken my hands, both ankles, both knees, both hips, both shoulders,

both elbows, both arms, several concussions.

But if you're passionate about something, pain's part of it.

I don't think you can have one without the other.

It's really about choice.

What you're willing to do to achieve what you want to achieve.

Nice.

Growing up, my dad was very athletic. Mom was very athletic.

Everybody in the house got up at 6:00.

Before we went to school, we did laps with Mom in the pool,

or we went for a jog, we went for a run with the dogs or something like that.

They had that discipline of get up, go do something physical.

It was already instilled in me way back then.

I-I remember Chad goes, "What are you doing? You wanna train?"

I go, "It's Christmas Eve." And he's like, "Christmas evening."

"You can train in the morning." Like that kind of shit.

I, for some reason, never gravitated towards team sports.

I was a shy kid.

But when I was probably only like ten years old,

I saw a Bruce Lee movie. I'm like, "I wanna do that."

So I started doing judo when I was like ten or 11.

That kind of led to the martial art career

that I started when I was in California to go to USC.

In college, I had met a student who was one of the associate instructors

at the Inosanto Academy in Marina Del Rey.

Dan Inosanto trained with Bruce Lee,

and he was one of the greatest martial art instructors of the time.

The Inosanto Academy had almost a collegiate setting.

It wasn't one martial art.

He'd bring in instructors from all over the world.

Amazing instructors.

Literally, if I wasn't going to school, I would either jog the four miles

or take the city bus down to Marina Del Rey from Downtown LA

and take classes or spend my weekends down there.

I would sleep on the floor or whatever.

Chad was probably the best kickboxer in that school.

I used to watch this guy just beat the crap out of everybody.

I just remember, if we were training kickboxing,

he would try to come up with the best training drills,

the best kickboxing drills.

Everything to just be the best at what we were doing.

That's always been his thing.

My last year in college, I had met a few stuntmen through the Inosanto Academy,

like Jeff Imada and Brandon Lee.

Brandon was working on his acting career,

trying to, you know, follow in his father's steps.

Super motivated guy.

Had the best laugh on the planet. Really talented martial art guy.

Every weekend, we'd get together,

and we'd do what we thought, hopefully, was martial art choreography,

but it was a bunch of us just trying to figure out how to sell a punch

and learn how to be stuntmen.

We'd have our old, big VHS camera, trying to figure out the angles.

I still have some of the tapes.

I go back and look at them going, "How did we not kill each other?"

I remember Brandon coming into the gym one night before a workout,

going, you know, "I fucking got it."

We're like, "What you get?" and he's like, "Look, they're gonna make The Crow.

I got the job being Eric Draven."

It was really, really cool. Like, we were so happy for him.

It was a big deal. Big deal for Brandon to get that.

And that's, um, that's kind of how I got my first big gig in Hollywood.

I was still competing at the time and getting ready for a big bout in Japan,

and Brandon had just gone off to North Carolina to Carolco Studios,

where they were shooting The Crow.

And we got a call saying there was an accident.

We're like, "He'll be fine. It's Brandon."

You know, we didn't think anything of it.

And he died, I think, 14 hours later.

And then the show shut down. They were still a couple weeks from finishing.

Between Alex Proyas, the director, the studio, and Linda Lee, Brandon's mom,

they decided to finish the film.

Jeff Imada had contacted me, and he knew how close we were to Brandon.

He knew I was already doing some stunt work at the time.

And Brandon and I had very similar body types.

You don't know what to think.

Selfishly, one part of me is like, "Wow, this could be really cool to finish, man."

The other thing is like, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

You're like, "Your friend's dead."

I-I can't recall what my actual head or mindset was at the time,

but I decided to do the job.

And Alex brought me down to a little basement in the studio there,

and we watched for like two days straight every daily we could of Brandon.

And he'd make me mimic walking, talking, sitting,

just every mannerism Brandon had.

And since I had known him for a couple years,

it was one of the most surreal experiences you'll ever go through.

Your career starts because of that.

Chad, when I first met him,

had, like, this long, beautiful hair down to here.

Insane. It was incredible.

He looked like Daniel Day-Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans.

We actually met through a mutual friend at one of the first UFC fights.

Somebody was watching it at home, and we all met at somebody's house,

and Chad and I just met, and we started talking about martial arts.

Totally hit it off.

And I said, "Hey, I'm up to do the sequel to Bloodsport."

He was like, "I love Bloodsport. I'd love to be involved."

So he came onboard.

He became one of the fighters. He did one of the fights with me.

And Chad actually choreographed that fight.

And at the time, Chad was really into trapping.

We did a lot of trapping.

Chad used all my kicking. I'm a Tae Kwon Do guy.

And it turned out to be my best fight in the movie.

So when Bloodsport III came around,

I ask him, "Would you like to be the fight coordinator?"

So he came onboard.

This time, it's my turn.

And I actually think the fights Chad did at the time were incredible.

Even if you watch it now,

it's still a little bit like, you know, '90s, like...

But the techniques are already great.

Then I did a movie called Perfect Target.

It was a smaller movie. We shot it in Mexico.

So, Chad tells me, "Hey, listen. I have this buddy

who's gonna come and visit and wanna hang out and maybe do some stunts."

I'm like, "Absolutely."

And I meet David Leitch.

I started training at a martial arts school in college

called the Minnesota Kali Group,

and they were affiliated with Dan Inosanto.

Once I was exposed to those martial arts

and that sort of martial art community, I was, like, obsessed.

And that's where I met a lot of my friends for the first time

who are still my friends today. And one of them was Chad.

He was just saying one day that he really wanted to go into acting.

And I was like, "Well, hey, if you wanna be cast, why don't you come out?

We'll put you in the movie. We'll teach you how to be a stunt guy."

You know, I was gonna go to LA for holiday.

And he's like, "Why don't you just come to Mexico and get on a movie set?"

And I'm like, "Well, I'm not gonna be working. It's gonna be weird."

And he's like, "Just come. It'll be cool. You'll get to see it."

So, yeah, I took my money that I was gonna spend on that trip, and I flew to Mexico.

It was an awesome experience.

We just put him to work as little background extras