The Big Picture · Interview · Discussion
May 17, 2019/ 76 min/ Sean Fennessey · Shea Serrano
Sean Fennessey interviews John Wick director Chad Stahelski on getting from stunt work to the chair, then breaks down (and spoils) John Wick 3 with Shea Serrano.
25 films across 2 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
Making itSean Fennessey with the director
The reason for the sit-down. Stahelski says he deliberately went over the top to make you feel Wick's fatigue, and that he cut whole sequences that played great alone but stalled the movie. The two hardest set pieces to stage were the animal ones: the dog attacks are real dogs biting, trained over a year with Andrew Simpson (the Game of Thrones wolves) and five Belgian Malinois, with Halle Berry starting five months early.
The pitch nobody in Hollywood would buy: ex-assassin kills 80 people because a puppy dies. It got made independently with Thunder Road after Stahelski and David Leitch took a massive pay cut. They assumed it would flop quietly and had already lined up second-unit jobs, sure they'd never direct again.
Contained by comparison: Rome and back to New York. Stahelski notes the long fights sometimes run past where you'd cut just to land the gag at the end.
The film that flipped the switch. Stahelski came on as Keanu Reeves's stunt double after Reeves's neck surgery; he turned the job down twice before taking it. He credits the Wachowskis and Yuen Woo-ping, and the shared 'Wachowski school' that binds him, Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, and Leitch.
One of the early shoots he calls formative to how his corner of the action world thinks about staging, citing Alex Proyas and Brandon Lee.
Cited alongside The Matrix and The Crow as a pre-Marvel action shoot that reset what the industry expected. Stahelski worked it with Zack Snyder.
The Burt Reynolds stuntman movie he saw around age 10, and his marker for the Hal Needham stuntman-to-filmmaker lineage he later walked himself.
Early low-budget work for Albert Pyun, the director who Stahelski says helped discover Jean-Claude Van Damme. The million-dollar movies where he learned the trade.
Another of the Albert Pyun pictures from his stunt-performer beginnings.
Reeves's under-the-radar stretch right before John Wick: a box-office miss that meant nobody was watching Keanu, which is partly why they could try something strange.
David Leitch's post-Wick run (he's Stahelski's John Wick co-director and longtime partner), name-checked with Deadpool 2 and Hobbs & Shaw.
Leitch again; proof the two 'goofy stunt guys' did well for themselves.
Leitch was finishing it as Stahelski wrapped Wick 3.
Stahelski's model for structure: Kurosawa dropping you into a day in the life of someone funky rather than a tidy three-act plot.
Named alongside Yojimbo and Leone's Man With No Name films as the lineage he applies to Wick.
Watching itSean Fennessey and Shea Serrano, with spoilers
Serrano's favorite Mark Dacascos movie, part of his case that the John Wick team finally used Dacascos (as the assassin Zero) better than anyone ever had.
Dacascos as the main villain Jet Li fights at the end, one of his few near-big movies before Wick.
The first Dacascos movie Serrano ever saw, and where he fell for him.
The Dacascos film Serrano loves: he plays a bionic super-fighter with an engine in his chest. Not the 2011 Refn movie.
Serrano's reference for the slow knife kill in Wick 3's opening: the Mellish death, the most intense slow-stab he'd seen until this.
The close-range fighting style the John Wick films openly admire; the two shinobi Wick fights at the end, Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahman, both appear in the Raid movies.
Serrano keeps waiting through the finale for the Raid alum to throw down, the way he'd wait for Rama's kitchen fight.
Serrano's example of Hollywood wasting Iko Uwais, cutting away from the one thing he does best. Sean was not a fan; Serrano liked it.
Uwais working his way through fight-heavy Hollywood properties: the Dave Bautista action comedy coming later that summer.
Keanu Reeves's directorial debut, which Uwais appeared in: fuel for Serrano's dream of a Rama-versus-Wick showdown in a fourth movie.
Also mentioned raised along the way
In passing Lawrence of ArabiaThe Bridge on the River KwaiThe Fast and the Furious: Tokyo DriftThe Karate KidRomaBooksmart
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV Cobra KaiGame of ThronesBarryBillionsIron Chef America
Podcasts With a Pencil
Music Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life (Jay-Z album)808s & Heartbreak (Kanye West album)
Ads The Ringer's 2019 NBA Draft Guide