Category Archives: Interviews

Wood Harris is breaking the law in “Dredd 3D”

Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) and Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) in "Dredd 3D" (Photo by Joe Alblas)

Based on the pulpy British comic strip (and the 1995 Sylvester Stallone-starring film adaptation) Judge Dredd, Dredd 3D is a dystopian action thriller that jumps off the screen thanks to its ambitious use of 3-D technology. But for a film so focused on the sights and sounds of the judges, who act as police, judge, jury and, if needed, executioner, the film is often just as much about what’s not being seen or heard. And Wood Harris’ character Kay is the perfect example of this point. A member of drug lord Ma-Ma’s (Lena Headey) clan, Kay is a street thug taken into custody by Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) and his clairvoyant trainee (Olivia Thirlby). Best known for his own role as a drug lord on The Wire, Harris’ character exercises his right to remain silent for a good portion of Dredd as Ma-Ma and her goons hunt down the very officers who have taken Kay into custody. But with a mind-reading rookie largely in charge of his fate, Kay eventually gets in on the action, verbally and physically. Judgment is out now that the movie is in theaters, and Harris talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about Dredd‘s filming process and the similarities between the ruthlessness of the criminals and the judges.

For a movie that’s as visually ambitious as this one is, what was the filming process like?

We shot for six months in Africa. I had a driver each day and it took about 40 minutes to get to the set each day. On the drive, we would go from the swanky area I stayed in through the underdeveloped African society. It was so underdeveloped that I thought it was a wasteland. After three or four weeks, I said to my driver, “There’s a lot of garbage.” He was like, “No, those are people’s homes. I must take you to see.”

I had never experienced anything like that. There were brothers and sisters there that dress like me and you, have cell phones and no plumbing. Imagine a whole community with no infrastructure and five Porta-Potties within two or three miles. It really raises your eyebrows to what’s going on politically. If you were born over there and lived over there, the land you stood on you could build a house on and you’re not going to pay rent or tax or anything. But you don’t have any resources. And there are beautiful women there, but you meet them and go back to the crib and there is no crib.

So that environment parallels what’s going on in the movie where the people with money have more control.

Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) is the law in "Dredd 3D" (photo by Joe Alblas)

Yeah, it’s definitely like that. They have gangs over there that are very ruthless, and they’re named after American cities. There’s a gang called New York and they wear Yankees hats twisted on their heads and act like Americans. When I say ruthless, I’m talking about cutting heads off and leaving them at grandma’s house. At the same time, the homicide rate there is lower than most American cities. So it’s still more peaceful there. Over here, if black people and white people play basketball, you always see the black dude win the game. We just dominate most sports. Not over there. You can turn on the TV and see brothers losing at sports all the time. It was just unbelievable. So they have a fondness for American black culture because 50 years before they stood up and said, “No more apartheid,” we were already civil activists. They just stopped being the way we were in the ’40s and ’50s in 1996. In 1996, you would need a dummy pass to go from a black area to a white part of town. It would last ten hours – eight hours to work and two hours for the commute. They would do sweeps every day, so if they caught a brother walking down the street after a certain time, he went to jail. I just realized a lot from that experience. We still have residue, but at least it’s smoke. They’re dealing with fire still. It made me realize that the sacrifices and struggles that people are going through over here are not to be taken for granted.

For a movie that is as focused on the sights and sounds of 3-D as Dredd is, it’s interesting that you never see Judge Dredd’s face and your character doesn’t even speak until pretty far into the film. And even then, you don’t have a lot of lines since so much of it is action and psychology. What was it like working in an environment where it’s often just as much about what you’re not seeing and hearing?

That was a challenge, but I liked that challenge. I didn’t have to memorize a lot, but I still had to figure out what they were saying and if I was giving the right responses and I still had to be in the moment. It might seem easier, of course, but at the same time it’s not because you could easily get lost in what’s going on because you don’t have to say anything. But the good thing about not having a lot of lines was that I didn’t have to do a lot of memorizing.

I would imagine that it was even harder in a movie like this where so much of the action isn’t actually happening in front of you.

Wood Harris plays the thuggish Kay in "Dredd 3D" (photo by Joe Alblas)

There’s lots of action happening in the film. There’s one scene where we’re against this wall and Judge comes running down the hall and they’re shooting at him and the wall gets blown out. That was a squibbed wall with real explosives and we had to be in front of it when it was blowing up for real. So a lot of the effects were right there in front of us. I had a stuntman in that same scene and when the wall gets blown out, Dredd, his partner and myself jump out of this rooftop. It was about a one-story drop and my stuntman broke his femur bone because they had him handcuffed and he just didn’t have any hands to land on.

You play the villain, but there seem to be some parallels between the criminal you play and Judge Dredd, who has the authority to do some of the same things you do because of his badge.

What I hope people will think about after seeing this film is if you really consider a judge to be a judge, jury, cop and executioner all in one person, that’s pretty terrible. And it’s possible. If there is a police state, it could be like that. With these guys, there’s no court date. They catch you, you did it wrong, the sentence happens and if an execution happens, it happens where you stand. That helped fortify me in the role of Kay because when you play a bad guy, you really have to just try to be a normal person who does bad things. With Kay, I didn’t have room to do that because this is a comic book-based film where the villains have to be villainous and they can’t be based on the real stuff that I would like to base it on. But when I considered Dredd being an executioner, a judge and a law enforcement person, he’s not a good guy. He’s a hero because they say so, because he’s a cop.

For more information, go to www.dreddthemovie.com.

Author Matt Bondurant’s family legend is brought to bootlegging life in “Lawless”

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Howard (Jason Clarke), Forrest (Tom Hardy) and Jack (Shia LaBeouf) are the immortal Bondurant Boys in "Lawless"

When one uncovers some dark secret from his family’s past, the common inclination is to want to find out more. Even if the people involved were long gone before you were born, there’s still a sense that the actions of these people so many years ago might help define who you are today. Just as the new Southern bootleg film Lawless is derived from Matt Bondurant‘s 2008 novel The Wettest County in the World, Bondurant himself has created a story rooted in historical events involving his grandfather Jack and uncles Forrest and Howard. These Bondurant Brothers were the stuff of legend in Franklin County, Va. for staving off authorities to create a thriving moonshine business during the Prohibition. While Lawless graphically recounts the conniving violence and brutality that naturally came along with such successful criminal activities, it also delves into the nuances of the personal struggles of everyone involved. As his fictional portrayal of his family’s own part in bootlegging business hits theaters today (with Shia LaBeouf playing the author’s grandfather), Matt talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about the differences between the novel and the film, the research that went into his book and how it feels to have discovered these notorious tales that preceded him.

At what point did you realize that this story needed to be told?

I had a general sense that my grandfather was involved in moonshine when I was younger, but it wasn’t something we discussed within the family. It wasn’t until 15 years ago, when my father started doing some research and uncovered some newspaper articles and showed them to me. We came across this article describing this incident at a place called the Maggodee Creek Bridge in December of 1930, which is the climactic scene in the film. The news version described my grandfather Jack and his two brothers as the Bondurant Boys. Some of the things that were said there made it clear they weren’t just simple moonshiners, they were a known entity that was somewhat notorious. This was a revelation to my father and me, so I wanted to know more about this. I was intrigued about it for the family story aspect, it seemed cool. It wasn’t until I published my first novel in 2005, The Third Translation, that I had the confidence to attack a project like this.

In the early stages I was thinking of it as a non-fiction piece, but it became clear that there wasn’t enough material to work with. There’s no diaries or letters and very little to account for these men’s lives day to day, month to month or year to year. Around 2004, I decided I was going to do a novelization. So I took what information I did have and worked a dramatic narrative to connect it.

Why did you decide to use Jack as your focal point?

He’s kind of the most transformative figure. Maybe it’s because he was my grandfather and is closest to me, and I knew my grandfather as a young boy. From what we do know, Forrest was clearly the acknowledged leader of the group and was a tough character. Jack was the one that seemed like the most obvious transformative figure that I think the reader would more closely align themselves with as somebody who’s trying to enter into this world and these activities with his brothers. He’s also the one who is striving to change himself and his situation. He wants to get out, he has bigger dreams of other things, so I think that’s naturally who the reader would gravitate towards. It may be because he’s the youngest I just felt closer to him in some way.

Jack (Shia LaBeouf) awkwardly woos Bertha (Mia Wasikowska) in "Lawless"

In the book, Sherwood Anderson, who is not in the movie at all, gets a lot of time. And I think in the book the three brothers get closer to equal treatment. Howard gets hardly any time at all in the movie, but in the book there’s a whole thing with Howard and his backstory, his wife and all the things going on in Howard’s life. There’s a bit more with Forrest and Maggie in the book as well, which was unfortunately shortened in the film. I know there are some scenes with Howard that were cut out of the film just for time. So I think that emphasis is more pointed in the film than the book.

Speaking of the differences between the book and the film, Nick Cave wrote the screenplay for the movie. Did he ask you for input at all?

No, he didn’t. At the press conference from Cannes, somebody asked him that directly and his answer was, “Nope.” But I understand it totally because my vision is there in black and white. He needed to take that and come up with his own vision for it, so consulting with me would be like me getting my stuff in there again. If I was in his shoes, I wouldn’t have consulted with the author either because everything that I have to say is in the book. The way that I think anything should be done with the story is in the book, so he could come up with his own take on it and to include me might be kind of strange. I have great respect for him and I think he did a good job with the script. I saw a couple of different iterations of the script about a year before the movie was made and I could tell he had condensed things in a way that made sense, which is a difficult process, and had some sharp scenes in there. The way he adapted some of the scenes in the book, I thought he did a good job. I’ve read one of his novels and he’s a good writer. I was kind of surprised to find out he wrote screenplays, but then it kind of makes sense if you listen to his lyrics.

What was the process of bringing your story to life as a film like for you?

Most of it was happening at a great distance. Agents were doing things in L.A. and New York and they were notifying me of things occasionally. When we sold the rights for the film to Columbia Pictures, that was a pretty big deal and I just happened to be in New York at the time with my agent having dinner with my wife. He actually concluded the deal over the phone while we were having dinner. You don’t really think that someone’s going to make the film because lots of rights get sold all the time and I know lots of writers who have had film rights bought and it just doesn’t get made. Very quickly, though, [director John] Hillcoat, Cave and Shia were attached. My understanding of it is that the three of them were the ones who liked it from the very beginning and were the ones who caused the producers to buy it.

We sold it in 2008, then there was a strange period in 2010 when all these other actors started becoming attached to it. I knew none of it means anything until somebody puts money down and they start building a set. Then in 2011 everything fell into place really quickly, and I think a lot of that had to do with Tom Hardy becoming involved. I think everybody wanted to work with John Hillcoat and they really wanted to work with Nick Cave, they thought the screenplay was good, and Shia, of course, is interesting and is a draw. But it’s a mid-to-low budget indie film and the funding was weird for a while. When they finally went to green light it into production, they said Tom Hardy was on board and all of a sudden everybody else just piled on there. Then Jessica Chastain gets in there and everybody wants to work with her, and Gary Oldman, and everybody was trying to get in.

Forrest (Tom Hardy) is the unkillable leader of the Bondurant Brothers in "Lawless"

Then they started production and they did invite me down to the set, so my dad and I came down for a couple of days. The producers kept me really involved, Hillcoat called me and we had several phone conversations and email exchanges, some of the actors called me and emailed me, and they did, out of their own generosity, keep me involved quite a bit. They didn’t have to, there was no contractual obligation, but they consulted with me on a few points for accuracy. They wanted to stay true to the spirit of the book and maintain the spirit of the characters, and to some small degree they wanted me to be happy with the product. They weren’t setting out to please me, but maybe my opinion mattered just a tiny bit.

Were there any scenes from the book you would have liked to have seen in the movie that were omitted?

The film doesn’t really go into the background of Howard [Jason Clarke] and how he came to be the way he is. That’s not a fault of the film, I’m just saying that that kind of character development is difficult to do. There are a lot of scenes with Howard and his wife exploring his impulsiveness, his drinking problem and he has kind of a rage issue. That comes from his experiences in World War I, which is not in the film at all.

The film opens up with the same scene that the book opens with, which is a pig slaughtering scene, although it’s done slightly different in the book. Forrest actually straddles the pig and cuts its throat, which is what you’d normally do. It’s a really bloody, gory sort of scene and Hillcoat told me they tried to do that with a pig cadaver, but they just couldn’t make it look right so they just had to shoot the pig. But there’s a whole series of stuff about them as boys surviving the Spanish flu epidemic, there’s a whole thing about their grandfather, who was a Civil War veteran who carved these little wooden figures of Civil War soldiers with missing limbs and suffering and stuff, and Forrest liked to play with them as a child. So, yeah, I wish the film could have been 45 hours long and thrown all that in there, too.

Were you pretty confident in Hillcoat’s direction of this movie following his adaptation of The Road?

Absolutely. I’m a huge fan of The Road. It was just out when I found out he was attached to this film. His first film was The Proposition, and Nick Cave wrote that one. After I saw those two films, I was like, “Awesome! This is great.” At first I was envisioning the book in the style of The Road, which is really dark. But they went in a different direction with this film. It’s more like The Proposition. Just to have the person that adapted the Cormac McCarthy book adapt mine is a great honor, and I think he’s highly skilled.

One of the things that I most admire about Hillcoat, and this is reflected in Lawless, is that he’s not afraid to look directly at things. That’s what a lot of novelists try to do because when you’re writing, you want to look at the most horrible thing directly. And I don’t mean horrible as in the grossest, bloodiest thing. It could be, also, the look on somebody’s face when some terrible thing happens. When we see something horrible, we get this instinctual urge to not look at it straight on and stare at it for a few seconds. And if you’re confronting the viewer or the reader with something they have trouble with, it’s challenging us in a way that’s really unique and interesting. And he’s able to do that, especially with this film, in a way that’s sort of packaged within a film that has some conventional gangster genre things going on, so there’s mass market appeal, too. But at the same time, it bears a stamp or quality and I think he has a signature style. I think he’s one of the real up-and-coming directors and I’m excited to see what he does next. I think he’s going to have a good career and I hope this film furthers that and is appreciated in that way, which I think it will.

If you were to write another book that was appropriate for optioning, would you want to be more involved? Do you see yourself getting into screenwriting or being more creatively involved, or do you appreciate that distance?

I do like film a lot, I’m a fan of film. My third novel came out in January. It’s called The Night Swimmer and it’s being shopped around for film rights. Nobody’s bought it yet, and I don’t think it will be bought. It’s about a young couple who moves to the coast of Ireland and it’s more of a love story. People aren’t getting their throats cut and shit. It’s also not based on a true story, which is a big deal for this film. I think my first and third books don’t seem to be too translatable to film, and the fourth book that I’m starting now, I can’t really even think about that yet. I think it’s such a distant art form, and I have great respect for the art form of screenplays. But I don’t really know anything about it. I don’t really know how to do it, I don’t think I’d be very good at it, I think I would have trouble condensing and keeping it short and direct. That’s not my natural inclination, so when I’m writing I’m anticipating that none of these will be made into films. If somebody decides they want to buy the rights, obviously that’s great. But I don’t think I’d want to be involved. I like the position I was in now where they kind of include me, but I’m not responsible for anything. I think I’d rather receive a nice check for it and hopefully sell some more copies of the book that will allow me to write another book. All I hope to gain out of this whole process is the ability to write another book. That’s what selling the film rights means to me is it increases my chances of being able to write my next book by increasing my notoriety so that some publisher wants to publish my next book.

What’s the relationship between Guy Pearce’ s special agent character in the movie and the same character in the book?

Guy Pearce gives Charlies Rakes a shot of eccentricity in "Lawless"

That’s the largest departure from the book is the characterization of Charlie Rakes. Charlie Rakes was a real guy, he was a real deputy, but he was a Franklin County resident. He did really want to kill my grandfather and his brothers for some reason. In the book I try to give a more complex, nuanced depiction of Charlie Rakes as a real person who had come to this point because of plausible scenarios that would cause these men to intersect in 1930 where he really wants to kill them. Hillcoat told me this was going to be a big departure and he ran it by me. But it was to sort of accentuate the outsider quality of Rakes to make him from Chicago, bring in somebody from the outside. It just helped translate him into a villain faster since there’s no backstory of Charlie Rakes in the film. He’s just a lunatic that shows up and is immediately crazy. I knot that Guy Pearce had a fair amount to do with the depiction and the way that he played him. And that’s what films have to do. The medium of film is limited in ways that novels are not, so that was the biggest departure.

The character of Maggie was the second one. In the film she’s from Chicago and in real life she was also a Virginia resident. But she was mysterious, she wore nice clothes and fancy dresses and things. We don’t even know the last name of the real Maggie. After Forrest died, they found out he was secretly married to her, and they lived a strange life. They lived together at the service station and they never had any children.

How did you go about doing most of your research, aside from going off the stories of your relatives?

A couple of the articles about these incidents are kind of helpful because they talk about Jack Bondurant saying things to the deputy and stuff like that. But a big part of the character stuff came from photos. There’s only two or three of my grandfather from this period and in all of them he’s sitting on top of his car wearing these nice clothes with a cigar in his mouth and his hat cocked, really trying to look tough. And I depicted those scenes in the book. Same thing with Bertha, my grandmother. So, Jack was clearly someone who wanted to have some flash and wanted to look like a character or gangster, to some degree. Also, the court transcripts from the Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935 relate some of these incidents, like the shooting at Maggodee Creek and other run-ins between deputies like Charlie Rakes and the brothers. So we had lines where we’d hear things that they said, which are in the book and the film. They had a reputation and he clearly had a thing against them. Forrest supposedly had his throat cut and walked nine miles to the hospital, which is a pretty sketchy story. So I came up with the plausible explanation for that was that Maggie was there, and they play that pretty straight in the film to the way I wrote it. We also know that he … lived through all these things, so he’s kind of like this Rasputin figure because you couldn’t kill him.

My dad says he remembers Forrest as this tough character and nobody wanted to mess with him, but they don’t seem like the type of guys who were running around slapping people around in order to scare them. So why were they scared of them? They were scared of them because you couldn’t seem to kill this guy, Forrest. The film really took this and jacked this up, it’s one of the principal elements, this immortal thing. It’s natural that this is what made them scary … and Forrest understands this to some degree.

How does your father feel about the way his father has been characterized in the book and the film?

He seemed to like the book. He was a little concerned about the violence. He and my mother hadn’t seen a film in 30 years, so they were a little bit shocked. The only thing he feels strange about is having his mother portrayed in the midst of this bloodiness, even though the real Bertha Minnix married a known criminal. My father’s not a particularly talkative individual, so it’s hard to get much of a complex response out of him. I know he’s really proud of what I’ve accomplished, and of the notoriety, to some degree, of his family being known now. He’s 80 years old and I think he’s proud that our family has some sort of pointed history, even it is a little bit negative.

Lawless. Directed by John Hillcoat. Starring Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke and Guy Pearce. Rated R. www.lawless-film.com.

MMA fighter and long-time dancer flash mob their way to the big screen in “Step Up Revolution”

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Sean (Ryan Guzman) and Emily (Kathryn McCormick) invade each other's personal space in "Step Up Revolution" (photo by Sam Emerson, SMPSP)

Featuring triumphant love stories told just as much through spontaneous (yet intricately choreographed) dance routines, the Step Up films have helped popularize flash mobs and Channing Tatum. The fourth installment in the series, Step Up Revolution jumps into theaters today and features two new leads dancing their way to love on the streets of Miami. Ryan Guzman, who plays Sean, parlays his mixed martial arts fighting background into a new form of physicality while his female counterpart Kathryn McCormick, who plays Emily, has already shown off her dance skills on the small screen in So You Think You Can Dance. With the help of famed choreographer Jamal Sims, whose most recent work can be seen on Cirque du Soleil‘s Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour, the two were able to learn how to mesh their talents as the stars of this latest Step Up movie. As they await moviegoers’ responses to their hard work, Guzman, McCormick and Sims take a moment to talk to Wrestling with Pop Culture about the challenges of going from one form or entertainment to another.

What is it about this franchise that has kept you coming back for each film?

Sims: When we started the first one, we didn’t know the success it was going to have or how many people it was going to touch. To see it grow each time, it just always keeps me coming back because I want to make better movies and get better dancing in there. It’s always a challenge because you never know how you’re going to be able to top the last one, being that everybody’s expecting you to. I live on challenges, I love it. So every time we make another, it’s like, “Here we go! Are we going to be able to do it?”

Coming from physical worlds, did you have any fears about acting? If so, how did you overcome those fears?

Guzman: I had been training in acting for about two months, which isn’t long at all. It was cool, though, because I had been through a lot of life experiences with fighting and college and a lot of personal stuff. As I learned from my acting coach, it was a way to vent things that you normally wouldn’t vent. There are intimate scenes, crying scenes, angry scenes, and I just had a blast. For me it was more than just acting and it just felt so right.

Emily (Kathryn McCormick) causes a scene in "Step Up Revolution" (photo by Sam Emerson, SMPSP)

McCormick: I had gone to maybe three improv classes, just for fun. I had a choreographer whose husband teaches improv, so I’d just go sometimes. But for the most part, I had never really dipped my fingers in that and it was something that people were like, “You should take classes.” But I never took time away from dancing classes to go to acting classes. But I’ve realized that being on a show like So You Think You Can Dance, where you’re constantly put in a position to tell a story through your body is still telling a story. I feel like that has prepared me, in a way, to be able to connect my mind and my life experiences, like he was saying, to what I’m actually doing and realizing that telling a story is greater than yourself because sometimes it’s the other people around you that need to hear it. Whether you’ve gone through it or not, they have and you are the one who gets the gift and the opportunity to share that. Knowing there’s an importance in that draws me to acting. Acting’s a little bit more vulnerable, it shows a lot more about the person that you are. I think one of the scariest things as a dancer is hearing your own voice for the first time, because you’re so physical. So to be not as physical and let your voice come first can be really intimidating. But once you drop that and remember that you have this story that is way greater than being so self-conscious, the fear kind of goes away. But it was definitely intimidating. And just the pressure of realizing this is my first time doing it and it’s going to be put on screen where the whole world’s going to see it is very intimidating to think, “Are we going to pull this off?”

Guzman: I think if you think about acting, you’re not going to be able to act. It’s a feeling. you definitely have to feel it, then it just comes naturally. So you can’t be letting outside factors influence what you’re going to do.

You each have unique athletic backgrounds. How would you say those skills helped prepare you for your roles in this movie?

Sean (Ryan Guzman, red belt) leads a dramatic flash mob in "Step Up Revolution" (photo by Sam Emerson, SMPSP)

Guzman: I fought in the octagon for about a year and a half and trained for about eight years. I think that was, without me knowing it, training my body into knowing what my body can do and making my body aware. That’s what helped me the most, I think, with the choreography I did. As far as acting, I would say the life experiences helped us out so much. And having the support group that we did, whether it be the choreographers that were helping us out or my co-star, we literally became a family. We still talk and I’m sure after this movie’s done we’ll still be best friends.

McCormick: For me, physical contact and connection as a dancer and as a partner with someone, you can’t be afraid to look them in the eyes. You can’t be afraid to just hold their hand and connect with them and be as close as possible. There’s no personal space in dancing, so you have to get really comfortable really fast. Through experiences with that coming into it, I think I’m very open to becoming close and trusting new people. Dance is a double trust thing, so just looking people in the eye and not being afraid to open up a little bit and just kind of be like, “I trust you. Do you trust me? Here we go. We’re diving in this together.”

Sims: He’s a fighter, so when you have that kind of spirit, I knew that he would connect to that part of his life with moves. I never really worried about it. If I could see him doing it even a little bit, I was like, “Oh, he’s going to fight for it. It’s going to be done.” As a boxer and a fighter, he knows how his body works in every way. Dancing is another extension of that and that’s what he did really well. He keeps saying, “I’m not a dancer.” Well, he turned into a dancer! I know some people that weren’t dancers and they still ain’t dancers.

How did your work with Cirque du Soleil help you with this movie, if at all?

Sims: I choreographed the Michael Jackson Cirque show. There were eight choreographers and I did three numbers on it. I did “Dancing Machine,” “Jam” and the finale, which is “Black or White.” We rehearsed it last year in Montreal in June, then I left there and went straight to Miami to shoot this movie. So it’s so funny that it’s all going on right now and people are finally getting to see what we did last year. That show’s out on tour now, so my part is done.

Now that you’ve gotten into acting with this movie, are you still dancing and fighting as you were before?

McCormick: I’m still dancing and training, doing yoga and ballet. I’m in acting classes as well, so I’m just trying to train and be prepared for any opportunity. I want to keep dancing and start acting more, so I’m kind of riding with it.

Guzman: Dance is a new love of mine. As soon as I got into the movie and started figuring it out, I just engulfed myself with it and took it home with me. So know I dance almost every single day. But my main love outside of acting is MMA. I still train, but my license went up two years ago. So I can’t technically compete any more. But my last fight was a loss, and it was for my Welterweight belt, so I’ve got to get back in the octagon at least once before I die.

Step Up Revolution. Directed by Scott Speer. Starring Ryan Guzman, Kathryn McCormick, Misha Gabriel, Stephen “tWitch” Boss, Adam Sevani and Peter Gallagher. Rated PG-13. www.summit-ent.com.

Tumbler Tour offers a close-up look at Batman’s vehicles

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Unfortunately we still have to wait a few weeks before we see Batman take on Bane and Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. But in the meantime you can see the intricate details of the actual vehicles you’ve seen in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight as they visit cities across the country on the Tumbler Tour. And given the technologically-advanced nature of the Tumbler (the tank-like vehicle commonly known to fans as the Batmobile) and the Bat-Pod (the Tumbler’s motorcycle-like escape pod), it takes a special person to operate these vehicles. Wrestling with Pop Culture caught up with Jim Johnson, the transportation manager for Wayne Enterprises, on a recent tour stop. But as you might expect from someone who works for a reclusive billionaire like Bruce Wayne, Johnson wasn’t willing to reveal too much about the vehicles, the new movie or any possible connections between Bruce Wayne and Batman.

As the only authorized driver of the Tumbler and the Bat-Pod on the Tumbler Tour, how did you become qualified for such a job?

I work in the transportation department of Wayne Enterprises. The vehicles were built by Wayne Enterprises and Batman uses them for fighting crime.

That implies that there may be a connection between Batman and Bruce Wayne, and there’s already some speculation as to who Batman is. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Nobody knows who Batman is.

These vehicles appear to be military in nature, which means operating them probably isn’t very simple. What was your background prior to being hired by Wayne Enterprises that led to you being chosen to operate these vehicles?

I’ve always been in the transportation field. I drive everything and we’re just taking them on tour to promote the new movie.

I understand the original intended use of the Tumbler was for bridging for military purposes…

Yeah, it was originally designed for the military to bridge open areas and to cross large distances. It’ll jump about four feet high.

As we saw in The Dark Knight, the Bat-Pod was originally inside the Tumbler for use as an escape pod. Since they are being displayed as individual vehicles, does that mean we will see both of them used separately in The Dark Knight Rises?

We just want to show them both on the Tumbler Tour. He uses the Bat-Pod to escape from the Tumbler when he needs to. It’s more agile for moving around the city. But I have not seen anything about the new movie and I’m very limited about what I’m allowed to say.

How often do you actually talk to Bruce Wayne? What is he like?

I’ve never talked to him. Wayne Enterprises is a big company and he’s a very busy man.

For more information, go to www.tumblertour.com.

“Repo!” creators return with new macabre musical “The Devil’s Carnival”

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When director Darren Lynn Bousman (best known for his work on Saw II–IV) and writer Terrance Zdunich took the dystopian musical stage show they had been working on and put it to film, the result was 2008’s Repo! The Genetic Opera. With an unlikely ensemble cast including Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Anthony Head, Skinny Puppy‘s Nivek Ogre, opera singer Sarah Brightman, Goodfellas‘ Paul Sorvino, The Devil’s Rejects‘ Bill Moseley, Paris Hilton and Zdunich as the GraveRobber, Repo! became a cult hit despite lack of support from Lionsgate. The film’s success was due in large part to the touring road shows Bousman and Zdunich put together, encouraging fans to arrive in costume, sing along Rocky Horror Picture Show style and expect more than just a movie screening.

Bousman and Zdunich are taking a similar approach with their new film The Devil’s Carnival, a surreal story that follows a repentant father (The Boondock Saints‘ Sean Patrick Flanery), a kleptomaniac (Briana Evigan) and a naive teenager (Canadian songstress Jessica Lowndes) to hell. But the hell Bousman and Zdunich have created is a surreal Fellini-esque carnival with Zdunich himself presiding as Lucifer. Though some of the Repo! cast has returned (Sorvino plays God, J. LaRose is The Major, Moseley is a Magician and Ogre is The Twin, for example), it also features a new eccentric ensemble that includes theatrical songstress Emilie Autumn, Slipknot percussionist M. Shawn “Clown” Crahan (who, ironically, does not play a clown), Five Finger Death Punch‘s Ivan Moody (who does play a clown) and a dwarf named Mighty Mike from the MiniKiss dwarf tribute band.

In true sideshow fashion, The Devil’s Carnival hit the road last month to help spread the devil’s morality tales (based on famous fables). Eschewing the typical Hollywood formula, Bousman and Zdunich are funding most of the film and tour themselves, which is a risky, yet confident move. With a week left on the tour, Zdunich talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about the differences between making Repo! and The Devil’s Carnival, what fans can expect from the live experience and his self-published comic book The Molting.

Ivan Moody as The Hobo Clown

With Repo! you did road shows like this one out of necessity since the studio wasn’t doing much to promote that film. Did you just decide to bypass a studio altogether with The Devil’s Carnival when planning this tour?

With Repo! it was reactive whereas with this it’s proactive. With Repo! we had no idea that was the road we’d be taking until we got some horrible reviews and Lionsgate said it was going to go straight to the bottom of DVD bins. We knew that it was meant to be seen live with a crowd, so we just decided on a whim to do a small tour. With this we decided to just lead with what worked, get it in front of the audience we think will enjoy, but do it much more ambitiously this time. We’re doing 33 cities in five-and-a-half weeks. Our shows end around 1 a.m., then we hop in a van and drive straight to the next city. It’s crazy, it’s nonstop and we haven’t really had a day off yet. It’s starting to show with my voice. I’m glad I don’t have to sing every night and I just have to speak.

The Devil’s Carnival is a musical like Repo…

Yeah. I hate that word just because I think it conjures up something that we’re kind of not. But, yes, there is music and people are singing. But it’s not an opera. With Repo, a majority of it was music and songs. This is about a 50/50 mix of spoken dialogue and songs. Unlike traditional musicals, in this people aren’t singing their emotions, they’re not suddenly having a feeling and bursting into song. The characters are carnies, so all the songs are in the context of a performance. They’re either barking down attendees to play a game or what have you, but all the songs function as actual performances. It helps you buy into that world a little easier than “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” or something like that.

Terrence Zdunich as Lucifer

You worked with a lot of the same people on Repo and The Devil’s Carnival, yet there are also a lot of new faces such as Emilie Autumn, Slipknot’s Clown and others in this film. How did you go about casting this film?

It’s a mix. Some of it is you want to work with your friends, especially if they’re talented and right for the roles. With some of the Repo alumni that was certainly the case. But Darren and I are fanboys at heart, so we want to work with people that we dig. Emilie Autumn, for example. I’m a huge fan of her work, so I still have to pinch myself a little bit and not be a fanboy when I’m trying to work with her and be professional. But we’ve been very fortunate with everyone that’s gotten involved. You mentioned Slipknot, that dude sells out gigantic amphitheaters and he’s willing to do our little indie horror musical. And not just do it, but he’s been on the road with us for a couple of stops, he came out in Iowa and it really does feel like a family affair. I think, or I like to believe at least, that’s because the project is cool and we’ve created an environment where people feel like we’re doing art. So they’re responding to that instead of what is typical in Hollywood, which is a paycheck or career-launching opportunity or something like that. I think the point here is that they feel creative about it and I think it shows in the final product. The entire film and the road tour was done for $300, 000. But when you watch it, no one would ever assume that. It looks like $10 million. That’s because everyone involved felt passionate about it and really went way beyond what should be expect for what we were paying them. From the makeup to the costumes, the production value is humongous and I’m very proud of it.

You have about a week left on the tour. How has the reception been so far?

So far it’s been a success. Every night has been a great performance and some have been greater than others in terms of audience attendance. But we haven’t had a night where people haven’t come out and acted like lunatics and that’s what we want to be a part of.

Emilie Autumn as The Painted Doll

Aside from showing the film, what else is going on on this tour?

Every stop is a little different. But the basic lineup is we have some sort of local performer open up with either burlesque or we’ve had knife jugglers, glass eaters and other sideshow carnie stuff. We have a live MC that travels with us and she sort of narrates a portion of the evening, which includes a ten-minute featurette of Repo stuff no one’s seen. It kind of shows how we, at least, make dark musical films. It’s a look behind the process which, of course, leads into The Devil’s Carnival. Then Darren and I do a Q&A at the end, then we hang out and meet some of our fans. Every night is an event, not just a film, which is what we aim to do.

Do you plan on releasing this on DVD or will you just keep touring small theaters with it?

Eventually, yes. We’ve had a lot of discussions about that the future really is dependent on how this tour goes. Right now it’s going well. We’re trying to create an event that can’t be downloaded, not just because we don’t want people stealing our shit, but because it’s something you want to be here for. You wouldn’t want to just watch it on your phone or however you choose to listen to music and watch movies now. So we’re trying to create an event that makes you want to go to the theater. As such, right now we’re keeping it very exclusive. Ultimately, of course we’re going to have some other form where people that aren’t here can see it. But we’re trying to figure out some way to package the event. I don’t know if that’s going to resemble something like the Blue Man Group, where this thing goes on, or if it’s going to be a DVD experience that somehow tries to be as unorthodox as what we’re doing. I think “here’s the disc, go spend 20 bucks on the DVD” would sort of be missing the point of what we’re doing with it. Once we have it figured out, we’ll let people know.

Is there a studio involved with it at all at this point?

It’s completely independent. We have Darren’s production company and some investors in Florida called the Film Funding Alliance who are responsible for financing. This thing is conceived as a series, sort of our anti-Glee, but I’d like that to be a Glee that’s on the road where we come out maybe a couple of times a year and the story continues. I haven’t seen anything like that, so not only as an artist, but as a fanboy, that’s something I want to see. So that’s what we’re working and if some more formal Hollywood-type system gets behind it, we’re not opposed to that. But I think they wouldn’t know what to do with this.

When you refer to it as a series, do you mean you have plans to do sequels or do you mean the live experience will change with the same film being shown?

Sean Patrick Flanery as John, a grieving father

This is actually part one and it’s a mythology that centers around Aesop’s Fables. So it has that sort of Tales from the Crypt-esque element where the universe is set up in such a way that you can keep using music to explore more than 600 fables, with the heaven-and-hell mythologies wrapped around it. It’s one part film series, one part rock concert.

In between this and Repo you’ve been doing a comic book series called The Molting. What are your plans for that story?

I’m through issue 7, but there’s been a bit of a hiatus because of The Devil’s Carnival. It’s an independent project and I’m not only writing it, but illustrating it. It’s a gigantic undertaking. Right now I think I’m about 350 pages into what will ultimately be a 600-page graphic novel. I’m going to continue doing that. The releasing of issues might be a tad sporadic, but unless my hands get chopped off I’m going to keep plugging away at that.

I’ve been doing it my way and there are pros and cons to that. The biggest con is money and outreach, of course. I’m actually printing it as opposed to making it an online comic because there’s something about reading something tangible and smelling the ink that I suppose gets me off, so I’ve been resisting letting it go a different way. But I’ll probably look into finding a distributor to bind it and help me deal with that larger format because it really is written as one complete work.

The Devil’s Carnival. Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman. Starring Sean Patrick Flanery, Briana Evigan, Jessica Lowndes, Terrance Zdunich, Emilie Autumn, Ivan Moody, Marc Senter, Bill Moseley, Nivek Ogre, Dayton Callie and Paul Sorvino. Not rated. www.thedevilscarnival.com.

New Zealand hit comedy “Boy” comes to U.S. theaters

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Though he is likely best known to United States audiences for his work on Flight of the Conchords, Taika Waititi is becoming a comic legend in his native New Zealand. Following the success of his 2007 romantic comedy Eagle vs Shark, Waititi had even more success with Boy, a nostalgic childhood comedy that has won pretty much every award in New Zealand. As the most celebrated and successful local film in New Zealand history, Boy has finally reached American audiences, opening in more and more theaters each week.

Set in 1984, Boy is about an 11-year-old boy named Boy (James Rolleston), who balances the responsibility of taking care of his peers while applying lingering childlike fantasies onto the real world. His obsessions with pop cultural trends of the time such as Michael Jackson‘s Thriller and E.T., coupled with his innocent stories about his estranged father Alamein (played by Waititi) being a war hero and his brother’s magical powers, make for some comical moments. Though Boy is initially delighted when his father randomly returns, it quickly becomes apparent that Alamein is as deluded about his own heroism as Boy is. While this situation would normally be a sad one, the absurdity of it all is very comical in Boy.

As the film opens in more U.S. cities today, Wititi takes a moment to talk to Wrestling with Pop Culture about Boy‘s influences and success.

Boy deals a lot with how a child’s imagination is projected onto reality. As a result, many situations that might be sad and depressing become absurdly comical.

Yeah. One of the hardest things with this type of film is trying to find a balance between the drama and the comedy. New Zealand is known more for films that are darker in content. With a lot of the films we’ve made before, in a film like this one of the kids would be dead by the end. We always tend to hone in on the more depressing elements of kids looking after themselves and parent/child relationships.

I wanted to kind of move away from that and make an entertaining film that has light moments. And those light moments, I think, really shine out against the dark moments. The fantasy thing was very important to me with the three Boy characters: Boy, Rocky and the dad. They’re all trying to deal with what’s going on in their world surrounding the death of this woman and all of them are projecting fantasy onto reality to try and deal with what happened, to justify what happened, to cope with the feeling of abandonment or just to move away from the guilt. Rocky’s fantasies manifest in the drawings and the very simple ways he sees what’s going on in the real world. Boy is a little bit more advanced, so he has live-action cutaways and flashbacks, some of them are real, some are not, so it’s a blur. Alamein’s fantasies show themselves in the real world and the physical way he presents himself – changing his hair and his jacket, the way he looks, changing his name. He’s constantly trying to remove himself from who he really is, to absolve himself in some sort of way.

I like his throne with the antlers strategically placed directly behind his head so they appear to be coming out of his head.

Boy (James Rolleston) aspires to be like his father.

Yeah, exactly. It’s like, “I’m going to be a king now.” It’s this lunatic loser way of elevating your status by surrounding yourself with very low status and weak people.

The story was inspired somewhat by your own childhood experiences and it was actually filmed in the house where you grew up.

Yeah. That was my house it was shot in and I went to that school, so I grew up with a lot of kids. There was a certain degree of freedom, in the ’80s especially, that you don’t see kids getting these days. These days people are organizing play dates for their kids and it’s very regimented and scripted: Wednesday, 2-4, you have a play date with Tommy. When I grew up it was like: Wednesday, bye bye, I don’t want to see you until dark. It was a very different time and growing up there was a very cool upbringing, something I feel not many people really experience, especially not here. It’s a new thing to see on film.

There were gangs around us and there was dope and pot and stuff, but the actual conventions of the narrative were made up and draped against the backdrop of a very authentic setting.

Boy has a lot of responsibility amongst the other kids. Did he assume those responsibilities or were they assigned to him in some way? Was it a common thing in New Zealand at that time for one kid to assume leadership of a group of unsupervised kids?

Yeah, we used to look after each other. When I was probably, like, 6, my older cousin, who was probably 9 or 10, used to make my lunch for me in the mornings. All the kids would walk to school together and look after each other. Kids had a lot more responsibility for themselves. I think socially that makes you a little bit stronger because you learn how to deal with situations and you’re less scared of conflict.

You play Alamein, the father. Why did you choose to take on that role yourself?

I just thought he needed to be incredibly good looking.

I actually auditioned a lot of people and I did about six callbacks with actors that I wanted. The problem was, I was spending so much time trying to work with them to get this character right. I wanted to move away from how we are traditionally typecast in movies in New Zealand, which is like the Jake character in Once Were Warriors, who’s basically an alcoholic killer. There’s that kind of character, or there’s this sort of stoic warrior Dances with Wolves type of guy. There’s more to us than that. We have geeky, dorky guys who are essentially weaklings who pretend to be tough. You can have characters that have slightly more layers to them and that’s what I wanted. I wanted a degree of comedy in there as well.

Alamein (Taika Waititi) lives out one of his fantasies.

For me the most important factor in the film is the kids. The film is nothing without them, so I couldn’t be on set spending all my energy with an adult trying to work through problems. It was just easier for me to play him because I knew exactly what I wanted because the character’s based on a lot of guys that I knew. It just made sense for me to do it. My background’s comedy. I’ve done a lot of acting in the past and I wanted a certain amount of humor within the role, as well as some dramatic stuff. And being able to work with the kids directly in the scene was a huge benefit. I was in the scene directing them to their faces instead of being a voice from across the set. In the end, it made the job easier.

You mentioned your comedy background, which is probably what you’re best known for to many American audiences from your work on Flight of the Conchords. But you also have a background in visual art. How would you say that experience informed you as a director?

That’s what I was doing the longest until I started making films in 2004. My thing was painting and illustration and I still do illustration because it’s something I can do while traveling, since I travel quite a lot.

Composition-wise, the way I try and make things look, the art direction of having certain colors and certain things that I wanted within a frame, it certainly helps. I’ve also done a lot of photography, so that also plays into it. Really, film became the perfect medium for me because it was a mixture of all the things I was doing anyway. It allows me to address them all and be satisfied all in one project.

Boy was very successful in New Zealand. Now that it’s been opening in different cities around the U.S., what have the reactions been like here?

Fantastic. The reviews have been insanely great and the audiences have been fantastic. Because we’re doing self distribution, we’re doing roll-outs of ten new cities a week. In the next month, we’re opening in, like, another 40 cities. It’s really cool that the audiences get to see it, but it takes longer since we don’t have the budget of something like John Carter driving it. So we’re putting more effort into it with Q&As and stuff like that, and having physical presence with the film.

Speaking of big budget films, you were also in Green Lantern. What was that experience like in comparison with working on your own film?

Yeah. I played the best friend of the Green Lantern, who is this computer geek with glasses and stuff. It was weird. It wasn’t as much fun. Boy was filmed in a cool environment because I was in my hometown and it felt like a family affair. With Green Lantern it was like going to a new city. The set had hundreds and hundreds of people where our crew was, like, 40. There’s a certain disconnect within that kind of filmmaking. Not many people know each other. It was obviously fun to do the acting part of it, but at the end of the day I think anyone could have done that role. I’d rather do something a little more fun and a little more meaningful to me.

Boy. Written and directed by Taika Waititi. Starring James Rolleston, Te Aho Aho Eketone-Whitu and Taika Waititi. Not rated. www.boythefilm.com.

“The Booker” takes an inside look at Platinum Championship Wrestling’s beginnings

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When the Platinum Championship Wrestling documentary The Booker screens at the Midtown Art Cinema at 7:15 tonight as part of the Atlanta Film Festival, it will be the world premiere of a movie that was four years in the making. In the film, director Michael Perkins of Beast OA Films and Studio 5 begins in 2008, when Stephen Platinum began his quest to make PCW an alternative to what passes for pro wrestling today. The movie concludes with 2010’s Sacred Ground: Chapter One, an event held at the Kennesaw State University Convocation Center and featuring some of wrestling’s top independent stars taking on PCW’s top talents. What’s most interesting, however, is the struggles that take place for Platinum and other PCW members as they try to make their dream a reality.

Though PCW still has a long way to go before becoming a viable alternative to mainstream wrestling, it has definitely established itself as one of the top promotions in Georgia, and one of the most active promotions in the country. Perkins and the PCW crew have plenty of reason to celebrate tonight, which is exactly what they will be doing when they head over to the Wrestling with Pop Culture Anniversary Party, which is the official Atlanta Film Festival afterparty for the screening of The Booker. A limited number of autographed copies of the film will be available on DVD, but the challenges PCW faces in the film will pale in comparison to what these guys will face at the Masquerade tonight with Monstrosity Championship Wrestling. Before you go see the movie or head to the afterparty, here’s an interview Matt Hankins, dany only and I did with Perkins on the March 19 edition of Georgia Wrestling Now about tonight’s screening and afterparty.

You’ve made some other documentaries about Motocross and other subjects. What attracted you to professional wrestling and specifically to Stephen Platinum and Platinum Championship Wrestling?

I grew up in the South and watched Joe Pedicino and Boni Blackstone every Saturday night, so I’ve always been a fan of professional wrestling. I knew Steve because he had done some voiceover work for me. I met him through some friends at Dad’s Garage and I really didn’t now about his professional wrestling background. I just knew he had a great voice and after working with him a little bit I found out more about PCW and the timing was perfect because I was really looking for something I could spend a couple of years on. Steve said, “Yeah, I’m getting my wrestling school back together” one day and I said, “Hey, I could make a documentary about that.” He was probably just humoring me at that point, thinking, “Tthere’s no way this guy’s going to stick around.” We were filming for about four years, but he was really good about keeping a dialogue and letting me know what was happening. It just kept rolling until I decided that Sacred Ground: Chapter One would be a good stop for us to cap our story. I really think about the movie itself as an origin story of PCW and Steve chasing his dream of being a big wrestling promoter and actually doing something that’s good.

Stepehen Platinum reaches his breaking point in "The Booker"

The Booker was shot entirely in black and white. Why did you decide to shoot it that way?

The decision to go with black and white for the movie was made about a year into filming. The way we shot the film was a very fly-on-the-wall style. We couldn’t set up a lot of lights because the camera was moving around all the time and a light on the top of the camera was deemed to be too invasive to get the wrestlers to forget about the camera. With so much of the action in our film being in dark or under-lit rooms, we knew that we were going to have to bump up the light in post. This can be done with color footage, but after doing a few tests in black and white we were really blown away by the contrast and grain that we could achieve. That, coupled with the fact that pro wrestling is a seedy business made even more evident in black and white, helped us really hone in on the look that we wanted for the film.

You recently returned to Academy Theatre after an absence of a few months. Now that Empire Wrestling is in charge, how do you think things have changed since you finished the movie?

I saw a lot of new faces. There’s a constant turnover of people coming in and out, people getting injured. That’s the biggest thing I’ve noticed, especially since Empire, but even since Sacred Ground: Chapter One. I go in and I’m like, “Hey, who’s this guy. Wow. I wish you had been around a few years ago.” And there are people that aren’t there anymore that I miss seeing. Overall, it’s just getting better. It’s grown a lot, the stories get more complex and when you add in the Surrealists, you’re not getting anything like that in any other wrestling promotion. I think it’s going in the right direction and one day the right guy is going to see that promotion and go, “You know what? With a couple of dollars, this thing could be huge.” The content is there, the ideas are there and, I don’t know about you, but I love seeing these tiny dudes wrestle, I love to see the big tubby guys wrestle. That’s what it was when you go back to the NWA and the World Championship Wrestling that I watched in the ’80s. Now everything is just big musclebound guys with spray-on tans that use their real names. But in PCW you never know what you’re going to get.

There are scenes in The Booker that really give you an unprecedented look backstage. Have you had any negative feedback from the wrestling community seeing that some people are still very protective of what goes on backstage?

Again, I think you’ve got to go back to PCW being a unique atmosphere. I don’t think I would have gotten that level of access at another promotion because of … the idea of carrying a story all the way through to the parking lot when you’re getting in your car. But I haven’t really gotten any blow-back from that. Most of the wrestling journalists I’ve talked to have been very positive. I think that barrier had been broken already with Beyond the Mat, where they spent a lot of time with Jake Roberts and Mick Foley. That wall had kind of been broken, people knew what was going, so there hasn’t really been any kind of push-back. At least none voiced to me. I’ve had many other critiques and criticisms about the movie, but none of it has been anyone saying, “How could you let the public in on our secret?” Everybody knows it’s a show, but that doesn’t take away from the physicality and theatrics that are involved.

Why is Jay Fury wearing a Warhorse outfit? I guess he just does that when he plays chess with Geter.

That was one of the things that was really nice about working with the folks at PCW was that I explained to them what I was trying to do. I’m not Michael Moore, I don’t want to make you look dumb, I want to talk about this as an art form. I think once they saw that, and saw that I kept coming back show after show, they realized, “OK. This guy’s for real. This isn’t ‘gotcha’ journalism.” But it took nine months to a year of being around before the wrestlers really started to open up to me. And that was a watershed moment. I remember coming back from a shoot at Sam Stone Studios and my wife was like, “How’d it go?” And I said, “People actually opened up to me tonight.” After people really started interacting with me, it became a lot more fun and a lot more enlightening.

You were there so often you must have had a ton of footage that wasn’t used. Will we see any of that in an extended DVD release?

I think we had 63 hours of footage that had to be cut down to an hour and a half. During that process, me and my editor, Alex Williams, said, “Let’s just put the movie together however we want to put it together, then we’ll cut back.” After our first round of editing, we were at about an hour and 57 minutes. So entire sections of the movie were cut out because we’re trying to appeal to as wide an audience as possible and get it down to a reasonable amount of time. The hope is that when we sell it to a distributor, we can put some of that on as extras. And if in five years this movie has a cult following, I can come out with all the extra footage. But starting out, we wanted to make it where pro wrestling fans would like it and appreciate it, but also where my mom could watch it and go, “Oh, this is an interesting story about an interesting guy.”

The title of the movie is rather striking, especially to wrestling fans. How did you decide on that name?

My editor and I were just kind of looking at each other going, “What the hell are we going to call this thing?” We had been going with the working title of PCW Movie, but that doesn’t sell. So we brainstormed for a couple of weeks and I happened to be cleaning up the office one day and[came across] the second tape I ever shot at Steve’s house. It was labeled “The Booker” and I thought, “Wait a second. That’s a great idea!” But it just goes to further prove the point that we started out with “This is going to be about Steve and about booking wrestling,” then it morphs into people who are doing wrestling, then when you finally get into editing everything down, it’s back to what it originally was.