Britgeek here.
THE RAID, starring new action hero on the block Iko Uwais, was one of the most talked-about films at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, where it had its world premiere as part of Midnight Madness. Not only did the high-octane Indonesian action movie go down a storm and secure worldwide distribution deals, it also scooped the People's Choice Award.
The man behind the film, Welsh writer/director Gareth Evans, made waves with his hard-hitting 2009 effort MERANTAU, which showcased Silat, the little known martial art mastered by star Uwais, who made his acting debut in the movie. MERANTAU quite simply blew me away and I am greatly looking forward to THE RAID, more so now than ever before thanks to my interview with Evans, where he discussed the film at length. I recently put my own questions to the film-maker, as well as a select few sent it by readers.
From David Hunt:
When I was growing up, most screen fights were Mr. T taking turns with a bad guy to punch each other. Then one fateful night, I caught Jonathan Ross' THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE FILM SHOW about Jackie Chan and my mind was *blown*! Later, Channel 4 went on to show a series of Chan films one Christmas, and Chinese ghost stories another year.
I read that you were shown the spectrum of action movies by your dad on VHS, but I was wondering if you also watched any of these series on Channel 4 too?
There doesn't seem to be any outlet for unusual films on terrestrial television any more. Channel 4 used to show martial arts films, anime and cult films. Gareth Edwards, director of MONSTERS, was influenced by GODZILLA films on their Creature Feature season and is now going on to direct the new GODZILLA film.
How should younger viewers just getting into action cinema go about discovering films outside the mainstream?
Keep up the good work and I look forward to seeing your film with Jackie, Sammo and Yuen!
GARETH EVANS: Great question. This will sound like bullshit but I absolutely remember that Jonathan Ross show with Jackie Chan. At that time I was already obsessed with ARMOUR OF GOD, the PROJECT A films and POLICE STORY and I came home from a weekend school trip to find out that the episode had already aired. I was beyond pissed that I'd missed it until I found out my dad had taped it for me and I ended up watching that episode religiously. Being able to see little clips for films that hadn't been released yet in the UK was just the best, so that show in particular was like a holy grail to me at the time and I wore that VHS thin. Similarly we had all those films play on S4C (the Welsh version of Channel 4 at the time) and it was great to be able to see those classics in widescreen [in their] original language and English subtitles for the first time. Uncut too! That was when I first got exposed to Jet Li in the FONG SAI YUK and ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA films.
I think it is a shame that these films don't seem to get a proper outlet on television any more, but it seems to be a result of the landscape of distribution changing so much. Back then to find a Jackie Chan film on the shelves at HMV was a rarity, even at rental stores it was a very select collection of titles that made it to my village. This made every title something special, I'd turn a blind eye to any missteps and just be grateful that this was a new martial arts film that I could see. So even something like THE LEGEND OF THE GOLDEN PEARL and SAKURA KILLERS became must see films (I fucking love SAKURA KILLERS by the way). Now we're all spoilt for choice. We can get access to films from all over the world with ease. It's an incredible thing to be able to get such a wide range of films so easily, but some of that magic you get from discovering a film has been lost along the way.
As for younger viewers getting into action cinema, I think there are certain key moments in Asian cinema that stood out when they were initially released and continue to stand the test of time. Those seminal titles are revered for a reason. My introduction to martial arts cinema started with ENTER THE DRAGON. Like most people, that first time seeing Bruce Lee move was like seeing a superhero. His agility and speed was unreal. It had a lasting effect and just opened up a world of cinema that I had to explore.
This may sound like the guy who knows nothing about music recommending a “Best of” album, but I genuinely recommend those old compilation documentaries that showcased Asian action cinema, films like CINEMA OF VENGEANCE or THE BEST OF MARTIAL ARTS FILMS gave me a laundry list of titles that I simply had to track down. Films like TRAGIC HERO, THE CLUB and MY HEART IS THAT ETERNAL ROSE. I would never have heard of those titles without documentaries like that, they are an excellent resource. After that, go and scour the net for the filmography of Hong Kong Legends or the fantastic VHS label Made in Hong Kong. You get all those and you're on the right track.
From Jas:
How did working with Mike Shinoda come about?
GE: Sony had picked up the rights to the film back in the Cannes Film Market. I was actually still shooting the film at that time when my phone started buzzing in my pocket. One of the discussions from the very beginning was their interest to use an artist from their label to make an alternate soundtrack to the film for a US release. Sony then prepared a sizzle reel from the offline edits we had shown them and showed it to Mike. Thankfully he liked what he saw and had been looking for a film to lend his talents to as a composer, so it all came together and right now he's working on ideas ready for the release. I can't wait to hear what he comes up with.
From Axel Foley's SweatJacket:
Mr. Evans, if you could make your own THE EXPENDABLES movie, which action stars would you cast and why?
GE: I genuinely think that it would be hard to top the cast list of THE EXPENDABLES 2. There are not many names left to tick off from that list. Almost everyone that was missing or passed on the first one is in there for the second film. If I had to add anyone... John Saxon and Jim Kelly are well overdue a reunion. Fuck, now that I think of it, Bolo Yeung would be an awesome addition to the cast of any film. I promise you I've seen more than just ENTER THE DRAGON...
I'd say the “Three Brothers”, but I'd rather see Jackie, Sammo and Yuen be given their own big budget shot at a reunion. PROJECT A PART 3 would be the ultimate geek out film for me.
From Chris Newberry:
What led you to Indonesia to make films, and how easy did you find it to break into their film industry when over there?
GE: My wife Maya is Indonesian/Japanese and her family is from Jakarta. How I came to work there is, I had just finished a self-funded feature in the UK that I'd hoped, a bit too naively, would open doors for me. In all honesty, I didn't really make enough of an effort to carve out a career for myself in the UK. I'd found myself in a comfortable job with a steady pay and before I knew it 5 years had passed and I had very little to show for it. Maya had some ties to the industry in Indonesia and had found work for me as a freelance director on a documentary about Pencak Silat. That project offered me a chance to experience living and working in Indonesia, but it also introduced me to silat as a martial arts discipline, a chance to learn about the traditions and culture of the country and finally it also introduced me to Iko, who was a student at one of the schools we filmed. So that 6 months of work on the documentary pretty much informed almost every element that went into the making of MERANTAU. It also made the decision to move a lot easier to make.
Now, setting up MERANTAU didn't happen overnight. After moving to Indonesia I worked for 6 months at a TV company while we set up links and interest from private investors for the film. At first the concept of developing a film to showcase silat was laughed at, all they had to go on was how silat had been represented on TV (which is a joke with bullshit mystical elements like flying, throwing fireballs and transformation). Silat has been ridiculed in TV for so long that it took a while to get investors confident enough to support what we saw as an opportunity to do something different and reclaim silat as a valid discipline for the genre. Thankfully, we were shown enough faith to get that first film up off the ground and luckily for us it was a success.
BRITGEEK: What do you think of the current state of the UK film industry?
GE: I'm horribly out of touch with everything lately, I just came out of over a year of my life being completely consumed by the making of THE RAID and that tends to put up blinkers around me. But I did get to see and absolutely fall in love with Joe Cornish's ATTACK THE BLOCK, and while at Midnight Madness I got to see KILL LIST by Ben Wheatley, which beat the shit out of me and still has me feeling haunted weeks later. Prior to the festival I watched his first film DOWN TERRACE, so I'll say with absolute confidence that the UK film industry (so long as it continues to support these types of filmmakers) is in great hands. The closing of the UK Film Council was a huge knock, sure, but I'm hopeful for audiences and filmmakers to continue to embrace more genre films being made in the UK, something to step away from the social-realist style that has been the mainstay for so long. We need something that is a shot in the arm but still uniquely British, something that can travel but still has a distinct identity.
BG: Sony Screen Gems is rumoured to already be preparing for an English-language remake of THE RAID. What are your thoughts, and has it been discussed with you?
GE: Everything regarding the remake is up in the air. I've not heard anything about any negotiations or people being involved, so it's all rumourville at the moment … My personal take is that I'm not interested to direct it myself, but at the same time I'm not against the remake happening. I've only just got done telling that story so for me there's not much I could do to make it fresh. Sure, a bigger budget would give me more toys to play with and allow me to achieve some of the concepts I wanted to be able to execute, but my moment with that film has passed and I'm content to know that the best reactions we got from the audience came from things that didn't cost much to shoot. An idea for a small sharp movement or kill can be more impressive than a huge explosion and fireworks.
I am excited though to see how another director will interpret the basic concept of the film and what they will bring to it to make it their own. THE RAID is a pretty streamlined, stripped down concept, so hopefully that will lend itself well to multiple approaches and action disciplines.
BG: How does the Indonesian film industry compare to the UK's?
GE: I'll sheepishly bypass that question by acknowledging that I've not yet worked professionally within the UK film industry, so I can't really say. Through my experiences of working in Indonesia though, I feel privileged in all honesty. I didn't come to the industry with any formal training on how to run a film set. I pretty much learned how things operated through the shoot of MERANTAU, and I've been blessed by having not only a committed crew, but a supportive team that have put in as much passion as they have hours. This may come across as cringeworthy gushing, but fuck it, they're my team and we genuinely go through a lot to get these films made. Spending so much time together makes you become a family, and while I'm sure this is much the same across the board for every country, it's something I've found here in Indonesia. And it's something I feel very proud to be a part of.
BG: What's next for you?
GE: Prior to writing THE RAID, I was working on raising funds to do a different movie, “BERANDAL”. I spent a year and a half in endless dead end conversations with investors that couldn't commit due to the size of the budget – it's minuscule compared to US budgets, but in Indonesia it's pretty high. After spending so long trying to get BERANDAL off the ground and without a [second] movie for Iko after MERANTAU, I decided enough was enough and that we needed to back up a project we could easily bankroll. We needed a new movie to cement Iko's reputation and that's pretty much how THE RAID came about. I picked up an old concept, dusted it off and worked really fast to get both the script and the choreography ready for production.
While developing THE RAID I started to like the idea of linking it with BERANDAL and toyed with making BERANDAL a sequel. The more I explored this concept the more I liked it, it helped fix some of the weaker aspects of the BERANDAL script and ramped up the tension a lot more which was missing from initial drafts. So that's a pretty long winded way of saying that on the back of the success of THE RAID, I'm hopeful that I can finally go back and scratch that itch I've had for BERANDAL for the past 2 years. Fingers crossed we start production in the summer of 2012 with a view to release in 2013.
I'm also looking at some projects that would be set outside of Indonesia, so I can finally direct something in the English language again either in Europe or the US. But even if that happens, I'll always go back and make more films in Indonesia. It's my home, it gifted me my career and I've also got a stack of different concepts for ways I can get Iko to beat the shit out of people.
BG: What was your immediate reaction to winning the People's Choice Award at TIFF Midnight Madness?
GE: The whole TIFF Midnight Madness experience was just the most incredible 2 weeks imaginable. Opening the slot was pretty intense, I'd never experienced a midnight screening before so had no clue how the audience would respond. Going in with it being my film I went in pessimistic but the crowd just responded to the movie from the beginning and continued to do so, elevating the experience beyond anything we could have imagined. I went along to almost all the midnights after ours. Colin Geddes really established a sense of community and camaraderie amongst the filmmakers being showcased in that slot, so we were like one big family supporting each other's films. The award was completely unexpected and has made us feel incredibly proud, but for us it was never about being “in competition” but more the honour of being able to be a part of such an incredible alumni of films and filmmakers. I got to sit down and talk with Katushito Ishii. The man signed my SHARKSKIN MAN AND PEACH HIP GIRL DVD. Now that was fucking cool.
BG: The writing process versus directing. Do you have a preference? I imagine it's fluid and fun to write such explosive action scenes, but long and arduous to shoot them.
GE: I love writing, it's the control freak inside of me that gets to have at least one version of the film that will play perfectly in my head. It's just me and a piece of paper and I can shape it and force it into anything I want.
When it comes to writing action scenes, I tend to keep things pretty vague in the script. I just give a very general feeling of tone, atmosphere and pace while also giving details on opponents faced and the location. The reasons are simple – if I spend days writing down choreography then I'm taking away the job of my choreography team; a group of guys that know way more about fighting than me. And finally, you can write pages and pages of movements and locks and it may feel like “this is the best action scene ever written” to you, but to a reader without the same precise vision in mind it will read as a confused jumble of moves and ideas that just goes on and on endlessly. You want to convey just enough for the reader to understand the basic intention of your set piece, then deliver a video storyboard from the choreographers to literally show them what your team have in store. This isn't an industry standard technique, it's just what works for me and is something we continue to practice with each project.
Production, of course, is a little different from writing. On good days I really love directing: working with an actor that brings way more to a role than is written on the page is just the most amazing thing. It gives the crew an adrenaline shot and when it works well you can't help but be swept up in the excitement, same as when you execute a difficult shot perfectly. But then yes, as a counter-point, a ton of shit fucks up along the way. Imagine the frustration of not getting a line of dialogue delivered right in a drama, now add choreography, gunplay, pyrotechnics and a need for split-second timing to the mix. Production on an action film is a high-stress period of time that threatens to bring everything crashing down every day with schedule changes, budget reports and compromises. The fact that about a week after we wrapped from one nightmare shoot, I couldn't wait to go back into production on something new just shows how fucked in the head you have to be to do this. If you don't love and appreciate that you get to call this a “job”, then I can't see why anyone else would want to do it. For me, there's nothing I'd rather do.
Many thanks to Gareth for his time!
Are you looking forward to THE RAID?
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