The Interviews (ft. Jason Statham & Ric Roman Waugh; Derek Cianfrance; Nia DaCosta)

0:14Hello Pod, I'm Chris Hewitt and welcome to the second episode of a new Empire Podcast regular. Lee Interviews, rounding up our chats with the best and the brightest around. And we start off with Return of the Stath. Yes, Jason Statham himself, former diver, film star, kicker and puncher of faces, on screen, of course, and national bloody treasure. His new movie, Shelter, sees him play a mysterious man, so mysterious, his name isn't revealed until an hour or so into the movie. although Statham just goes ahead and says it right here, right out loud, who has become a recluse on a secluded Scottish island until a young girl comes into his life, and dark threats from his past resurface, forcing him into desperate measures to keep them both alive.

1:03It's a grittier slice of Statham, this one, directed by Rick Roman Waugh. He usually teams up with Jerry Butler on the likes of Angel Has Fallen and Greenland. And when the two of them, Waugh and Statham, came into London last week, I jumped at the chance to chat to them in, yes, a London hotel room. And it was a giggle as the state and I both realised we've been doing this job for a long, long time. He's good at it. What's my excuse? I put in my 10 ,000 hours. Still nothing. Anyway, here we go. Enjoy. It's 25 years. Jesus, can I just have an existential moment? That's literally the start of my career.

1:40He might have been the first interview I did. I don't remember interviewing on Meme Machine. Yeah, that was a good 20 plus years ago. Yeah, that's the Scottish goalkeeper. That's it. The monk. I've done some silly stuff, Rick. I prayed that you never saw any of that stuff, otherwise we wouldn't be doing shelter. Well, this is not silly stuff. This is a shelter. Welcome to the Emperor Podcast. Jason Statham, the man we affectionately call the state. And Rick Roman Waugh, the man we affectionately call the war machine. I was trying to think of a nickname for you. of the car door and I came up with the war machine I had a lot worse trust me Jason you may not remember this but you came with the podcast years ago for Hummingbird and we I think I confessed that the nickname the Stath is something we came up with in Empire but it is something that people call you in your everyday life not everyday no but I don't mind it as a good little moniker I said it's good yeah I've kind of got used to it over the years yes shortening is always better isn't it you know Well, you want just being taken out via the thumb.

2:48It's just going straight for the stick. Yeah, it's got a bit of a ring to it. I'll take that all day long. Absolutely. And Rick, so you're not a nickname guy. The war machine's not anything. The interesting thing about this is Jason is extremely eloquent, the way he speaks. And I didn't want any nicknames. Like, I just called him Jason. And, you know, it's, yeah. This has been a great, respectful kind of journey together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. on this and I'm excited for people to see this movie. This feels like a beautiful friendship that's going on here. When did you guys first meet? Was it specifically to talk about this?

3:21Right before we made the movie. Yeah, literally. We had a couple of phone calls, right, Rick? I was in multi, actually. I was finishing up the film and, yeah, we got on the phone. And, you know, I know about Rick and I know about his films. I know people that work with him and he was always on my radar to try and, you know chloroform him and get him to say yes shine here yeah you know you have people that you want to work with and you know I think it's always you know you throw an arrow at a target and you know hope that hope that you're going to respond to the material and you know that's what happened we Rick saw the same film as I saw and he had a much better version of it that's the one I wanted to make not the one that I came up with what was your version yeah well you know a little bit a little bit less interesting I would say less emotional core so Rick brought out all that stuff and you know it's yeah I don't want to keep speaking for you Rick but the process he has or you have what are you telling me you know that 30 ,000 feet kind of look that we have it really has to grab me in the gut when I read the story I'm a big fan of Jason we've been wanting to work together at least I've been wanting to work with him but as you know of my like body work i'm always trying to find something a little off center for myself right i can do action i come from that world but i'm also trying to find something that emotionally grips me because they're the stories that i love and the movies that i used to watch you know the sit in the met movies and the the old westerns like shane which this story reminded me a lot of yeah they're movies that have an emotional integrity to them they have something to say they're not stump speeches they're not preaching to you they're just they relate to us and jason was really passionate about this um story that he pitched and he's a little wrong we have the same movie in mind and um when i read it i got it i just got about these two lost souls trying to find family you know at the at the core of this and then you wrap that in a big action ride you got something you know and i've just never been a fan of action movies for the sake of action because they become mindless and our eyes glaze over no matter how many hundreds of millions we throw at it.

5:35We want to be gripped. We want emotion to be evoked. So this was right in my wheelhouse. And Jason, in terms of it, it feels slightly outside your wheelhouse in a way. This character, I don't even want to say his name because it's kind of a plot point in the film. But we know nothing about this guy for the first 30, 40 minutes. You barely speak for the first 30, 40 minutes. You're just in that lighthouse being stoic. and shutting the world out. Was that something that appealed to you, that's slightly outside the lines of...? Yeah, you know, in fact, we had a much longer intro. I mean, it was Rick's version.

6:14It was much more condensed. I mean, the whole setup was a very slow burn, which I loved. I really thought we could get in... It's kind of provocative to understand or get the audience to kind of wonder who this guy is, what does he stand for, where's his moral compass, what is he doing isolated. what you know there's a lot of questions get asked when you're not saying much and you're just sort of shuffling around in this house and You know you have to deal with a young girl and it was much more elongated It was a much Longer version that we had to sort of chop down a little bit even though it seems quite lengthy to Most sort of action movie goers and I don't I don't like to sort of frame this as a typical sort of action movie You know a programmer as some people call them that you know, I've been known for doing in my past I feel that this one had a much more deeper soul to the character.

7:06And like I said, the beginning was a much, much slower burn. So I think that when we put these movies in front of audiences, we have to kind of respond to their sort of anticipation on when's the story going to get going, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's a fine line and a balance, and I don't know if you want to speak about that. It's that clickbait mentality we have now with social media where you have to grab everybody in like 10 seconds. That's not what movies are supposed to be, right? Movies are supposed to be stories that unfold in front of our eyes. And a man that is starting as a mystery and playing that mystery and saves a young girl and then finding out her mystery.

7:44And then the wolves that have been hunting him for 10 years that are now coming into play, putting her in jeopardy. These things need time in a way that still... The fine line that I'm always playing as a filmmaker is remembering my commerciality and how a movie plays in a commercial sense. I want you to come to the theater for two hours. I want you to be on the edge of your seat. I want it to be this huge thrill ride. But I want you to maybe have some tears in your eyes a little bit and have some levity and have some laughs. Be emotionally engaged through it. And when you need that core, you need to set it up in a way where we're not doing every movie nowadays, cold opening, shot cut to just big action.

8:25Tell me everything right ahead. Tell me everything about the character right away. Yeah. And then you're just watching things again, you know, just as an action run versus the way that we storytell. You know, we read a book. They don't tell me everything right from the top. And I love that this has a narrative engine that is classic storytelling, but done in a commercial sense of one big action ride. And in fact, I'll just add to that. I mean, we were suggested to do a cold opening, right? Yeah, we were. Yeah, there was conversations about, you know, we need to put something in the beginning that sets Mason up so we know who he is.

9:01Oh, that's his name. But we were quite adamant to kind of stick with the way it sort of unfolds in this provocative way. No, I agree. And I also think that it's I can imagine, you know, those classic stories of, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger only has 26 lines or whatever it is in the first Terminator movie or Mel Gibson or Clint Eastwood going through the line, you know, the scripts of Mad Max or Good, Bad and Ugly and ripping out lines because they don't want to say a lot. They want to communicate everything through body language. I can imagine you did much the same with this. I mean, Mason, now his name's out there, doesn't speak like the words have to be almost grabbed out of him.

9:38Yeah, I mean, he's got this self-imposed sort of isolation and he's not used to communicating. He's a lost soul. He's good at drinking and he's good at burying his past. That's where his head's at. Communication is not a skill set. He's got a blunt tool for that. But it is also, I mean, there are some great action sequences in this. There's an amazing nightclub shootout as well. And Jason, the last time you were on the podcast was with Guy Ritchie for Operation Fortune. And you were talking about how he likes to kind of just stage his action scenes on the day. Yes, he does. He just starts improvising, which seems absolutely wild to me.

10:22It is wild. Was that the case on this? Or Rick, are you a little bit more straight and narrowly? I think that it really gets down to what I love about Jason and working with him is our chemistry. right you can put the most talent not that we're the most talented people but you can put the most talented people into a film we've seen it where we've seen movies put every academy award winner in front of the camera and we're like what went wrong and what went wrong is that there wasn't chemistry you have to have a dna with one another and understand the whole way of working what you're trying to achieve and what i love about jason is i finally met somebody that is more of a juggernaut than myself about coming to set and being prepared for the day.

11:05He has this great energy about him and his preparation is there so that when you do get to the day, you're not winging it, you're elevating it. If you have a foundation of what you want to achieve and everybody's a part of that collaboration, now you're raising the bar. You're not just trying to get to a level. And that's the difference. And that's where I think the action speaks for itself in this movie. It's fantastic. And coming from the stunt world, I'll tell you the BS lines I've heard from people, they do their own stunts. Well, there's no bullshit here because the camera is right here in his face doing the action.

11:38And that's the difference is when you have somebody that can do a performance like this in the middle of doing the action as well. I certainly couldn't do that. Right. I don't know about that. Right. No, maybe do the action, but you'd see the ocean. But you would but what you get with that is then you get performance and you get emotion and what my job is coming from the world that I came from is that That that question I always got was what was it like to do stunts? What they're what they really mean is what did it feel? What was the feeling of the was it the thrill ride? Was it being scared shitless?

12:15Was it the sense of fear? Yeah, and I want to do that with action. I want to put you in the car with this guy I want to put you in the fights with him. I want to, you feel the jeopardy. So that way you're, there's an emotional attachment to the action. And you don't get that without having a guy that can do the action star, but then show you the performance at the same time. Blimey. I'll take my hat to you for the, you know, the car chase stuff can be quite, I don't know. Car chases can be quite boring unless they're really excellent, you know, and it's hard to capture that sort of visceral sort of tension.

12:47Yeah. And, uh, you know, Rick put cameras in there, strapped the cameraman down to the seat. He really wanted this to be in through the lens. We were very, very conscious of not leaning on anything like CG that was just an easy get out. It feels so visceral and real. Yeah, we were really pushing ourselves to make it feel gritty and real. And Jason, we started off by talking about the fact I've been at Empire now for 25 years. We've made you a cake, actually. Please, please. Just be the path. Just be the plunge my face into to try and forget about everything else. But, you know, our paths cross pretty much soon after on Mean Machine.

13:29And, you know, you've been doing this now for 25, 30 years yourself. So how do you keep that energy up for these incredible action sequences? I mean, I'd break a hip. You know, we're doing what you were doing. I love it. You know, if I didn't love it, I wouldn't be able to get excited for it. I love what we do. I love the process. I love the challenge and the reward is there when it's over I mean that's all I've got to say Is it getting tougher though? Huh? Is it getting tougher? Yeah You guessed it Listen you ain't 21 forever Yeah but you have to work harder you have to work harder to maintain what you have it's like there's a lot more sort of dedication that you have to do to keep things from snapping and breaking the best you can yeah you see here's the difference if there was a cake right now I could have that cake you can't right we can have the cake you can have the cake yeah I've got kids you know how much cake I eat a week it's about 8 kilos oh my god and then the hard yards and the gym afterwards brilliant well I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship you know Rick obviously you've made 47 movies with Jerry Butler but you can make 47 now with Jason let's please make it happen the state the wall machine What a pleasure.

14:44Thanks very much. What a pleasure. Thank you, sir.

15:13by living inside a Toys R Us. And as he becomes more brazen about his new temporary life, he even starts a relationship with a Toys R Us employee, played by Kirsten Dunst. Incredibly, this is based on the true life story of one Jeffrey Manchester. And when I spoke to Cien France, we spoke a lot about his contact with Manchester, who is not by the sea, but still in prison. Cien France, of course, is the director of films like The Place Beyond the Pines and Blue Valentine, a film for which he wanted to cast Channy Tatum. And Roofman, although overlooked in the Oscar conversation, is up there with those movies.

15:51It's beautifully bittersweet and Tatum has never been better. Check it out and check out this interview with Cian France as well. Enjoy. Derek Cian France, director of Roofman. Welcome to the Empire Podcast. How are you, sir? I'm doing well. Thank you for having me. No, it's a pleasure to have you here. Or should I say Dr. Derek? Dr. Derek, that's right. Dr. Derek. As Jeff calls me. Yeah, absolutely. When did he start calling you Dr. Derek and why? Maybe, you know, he's in the maximum security prison. He's been in prison for, I guess, around 30 years now. Of those 30 years, he spent nine of those in solitary confinement.

16:27The events of Roofman, after the events of Roofman, they were very mad at him. So solitary confinement is, you know, 23 and a half hours a day alone in a room, eight by six cell, no daylight. Nine years like that. So I think when I started talking to him, the first thing I was impressed by was his optimism, his humor. I was just like blown away by it. And I don't know, maybe after like three, four months of talking to him, he started calling me Dr. Derek. I learned a lot of things. I would ask him, I would say, how are you still so jovial and positive? You know, when you've been in prison for this long, how, you know, nine years in solitary confinement, you still seem, you haven't lost your spark.

17:26And he said, well, in solitary confinement, he built houses in his brain. He said that he would spend six months, all those 23 hours a day, imagining that he had $100 ,000 and he was going to build a house for his family. And that he would know the size of every room. Every one of his children would have their own room. He would know what the fixtures were like on the faucet. He would know what the hinges were like on the door. and after he would live fully in that house for six months, he would give himself a million dollars and then build himself a million dollar house with bigger rooms and maybe a pool.

18:08And I realized, and so the more questions I asked him, the more he would kind of open up his subconscious to me and his imagination to me. And so it was like a really, you know, I have a special relationship with Jeff. My God, that is astonishing. And not to get too much into the U.S. justice system and the penal system, but that seems punitive beyond the extreme. Well, the thing about Jeff is he was offered a seven-year plea deal for the McDonald's robberies. and he said, seven years, my kids will be teenagers by the time I come out of here. He was like, I didn't hurt anyone. He was like, I'm going to fight this.

18:57So he didn't really have any money. He had a public defender. The judge who I've spoken to, she's actually in the film. She plays the prosecutor in the film. But she told me that it was important to her that the kids, because it was some high school students that he put inside the freezers at McDonald's, Even though he made sure they had their jackets, she said she wanted those kids to see justice and to know that you couldn't do this and to feel better. And so they threw the book at him. And he went from seven years to 45 years in like the blink of an eye. Because they threw kidnapping in. Huh?

19:33Because they made it. Yeah. They only got him for one robbery, but I think they gave him 15 years for every person he put inside that freezer. And I can't speak to her judgment. it does seem like a long time to me it seems like people that kill people don't sometimes stay in prison for that long I know Jeff thought it was too long and that's why he broke out and now he's had it on top but it is extraordinary to me Derek you have the judge in your movie not to give things away obviously but we do meet at the end of the film as well we do meet people who were involved in Jeff's story and Jeff's case.

20:19Yeah. And we see the real life people at the end of the movie. And you've studied people I know throughout the film and little cameos here and there as well. Was that important to you in a way to stud the movie with people who have been exposed to A, Jeff and B, the real thing? But also I have people from all over the map in terms of how they felt about him. Yeah. Yeah, it was important to me because, you know, after I spent like probably 400 hours on the phone with Jeff in the Dr. Derek phase. And it was midway through that process, I started to think to myself, is this guy just telling me a tall tale?

20:58Yeah. Is this true? And so I had to talk to other people just to validate it, to validate a couple of things, to validate one, the story that I was hearing. And so I talked to the police and talked to the judge and talked to the dentist whose office he burned down to understand, oh, all these things did happen that he was telling me about. But then I also had to talk to the people in his life that he had relationships with. Not everyone would talk to me, but the people who would talk to me, I had to talk to them to validate the feelings I had for Jeff. Because I was like, is he, am I just... Am I just being manipulated by him?

21:42Yeah. And am I being, because I did like him as a person too. And so I talked to Lee and to Pastor Ron, who, and both of them, I expected them to be angry at him, feel betrayed, but they both spoke about him as if he was like this unicorn that entered their lives. And they had lived long lives. They're both in their 50s and 60s, and they talked about him as like this jewel of their experience. Lee said he was the greatest adventure of her life. And so I thought that the movie should feel like that. It should feel like what it was like at that moment for them to be together. And there's a flip side to that coin, too, because there's a lot of pain and a lot of tragedy that happens because of that.

22:33So it's, you know, the roller coaster of this movie is, you know, the hills are high. You know, the slopes are pretty steep. And yeah. And so I wanted to shoot it then down in Charlotte where the events took place in twofold then because I wanted to be surrounded because it was so crazy. Like the key to movies is suspension of disbelief. And I felt like I needed to shoot in Charlotte to suspend my disbelief. because I, and I had to shoot it in the actual church where Lee and Jeff met because that it needed to be in the place to just kind of experience the ghosts of that history to, you know, just for my own, for my own, so I could believe it.

23:18And then I wanted to have all those people in the movie because I wanted this to be a positive experience for everyone involved. And I wanted to make sure that they could come into the movie and sometimes play themselves, but sometimes play other people and see things from a slightly different perspective on the scene. And, you know, it's intense telling a story about a real person and real people that are still alive. And what I just didn't want to do is be the Hollywood film that came to town and pushed everyone out of the way. You know, it was like a very expensive choice to shoot in North Carolina.

23:55Yeah. I had a lot of people say you should shoot this movie in South Africa or Bulgaria because you'll be able to build everything. You can do everything you want. And I was like, yeah, but the people are there. And I didn't want to just run roughshod over the story and the people and the feelings. So I did it there just for authenticity and for home. You know, this movie is about a guy trying to make a home. And I felt like I had to go to the place where it happened. And I'll tell you one thing. I'm sorry, I'm going all over the place. But I was my first scout down in North Carolina. I was looking for a fast food restaurant because all the McDonald's had changed over the years, right?

24:39Of course, yes. Modern structures in McDonald's are different than they were 20 years ago. Yeah. So I was in a Popeye's restaurant, and there was the manager of the Popeye's fried chicken place. And within five minutes, this manager, she had invited me to her home for dinner. And I realized that this was the type of community that would welcome a stranger in off the street. And you can't fake that. That's beautiful. Yeah. I love that. I want to get into the tonal tightrope in a way that you have to walk with this movie in a second. But just hear what you were saying there about Jeff and Jeff and his story and the fact that he's in solitary environment for 23 and a half hours a day.

25:20He obviously hasn't seen the film. No. I'm guessing he hasn't seen any of your work. Has he? Or has he been able to? He hasn't because they're not playing Blue Valentine in prison, it turns out. They're not going, oh, they're making a movie of your life, Jeff. Here's a place beyond the pines so you can see what Derek's done. No. They're not doing that. No, he had to trust me as just a person. He told me at one point, he was like, Derek, this is my story, but it's your movie. And I trust you. And I want you to tell it in the way that you see fit. I was like, okay, it's going to be different. I'm not making a documentary, Jeff.

25:54I'm not making a journalistic piece. I'm going to make the cinematic truth here. And he was like, and Jeff loves movies. So he was fine with that. And there were certain people in his life that didn't want to talk to me before the movie, certain family members. And in the time since the movie has come out now in the States, some of those family members have now seen the film and they have gotten in touch with me. And I've heard from a number of them that the movie has brought them closer to him. And Jeff called me last week and he said, Derek, if I could hug you, I would. He was like, I had a call with my sister.

26:37She answered the phone and he said, it was like we were in high school again. And he said there was nothing between us. He was like, I got to thank you so much. And so I think the real connections between him and his world and his family are, you'll kind of make the whole movie worth it to me. because he's, when you go and visit someone in prison, you know, I rode elevators with mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles who are all visiting family members that were locked up in prison, of people that had made huge mistakes, of people that had hurt people. But I realized they all had families on the outside who still loved them and still cared for them and maybe were angry with them for their decisions that they made, but they were still people behind bars.

27:34And my impression of seeing Jeff behind bars was, here was a man, human, who I'd know very well, and he was caged. And, you know, I just felt like he's still a person, still worthy of humanity. And I think especially for Jeff's story, I think it was his humanity that made him a worse criminal. I think if he had been more of a cold-hearted criminal, we wouldn't know his story. And so I thought that made him worthy of this whole process. It's not just the fact that he hid out in a Toys R Us and in real life of Circuit City as well, but that he went out and forged bonds in the community and had a relationship with Lee.

28:23Yeah. And he had a craving, I think, for connection that - 100%. Still, I imagine, is obviously being denied to him to this day. But those connections, I think, are one of the reasons why I love the movie. I think it's such a beautiful, warm human film. But in terms of talking about the emotional, tonal tightrope that you have to walk, you fall in love with these characters. And in the back of your mind, you know tragedy or something bad is going to happen. This is not going to end well. Yeah. Because I know that Jeff Manchester is in prison. Can you talk about traversing that as a director, approaching that?

29:03Ultimately, life doesn't end well for any of us. That's a very good point. Spoiler alert. Yeah. Yeah. It kind of sucks. But it's beautiful. It's like it only sucks because how great it is. Yeah. And I was thinking, my wife's a comedian.

29:23but she's more serious in real life. And me, I usually make tragedies but I'm maybe more fun loving in real life. And I started to realize that comedy and tragedy are flip sides of the same coin. Very much so. And that this movie, maybe I could flip that coin in the air and you could see both faces at once because it was spinning so fast. And it got me thinking like, I've always thought you slip on a banana peel and people laugh, but it hurts. Yeah. And so there's, I used to think looking at the comedy and tragedy faces that the one that was smiling was the tragedy face because that's what you laugh at.