Arcade Pictures

Dave Bautista on Playing Brass Body in ‘The Man with the Iron Fists’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

WRITER’S NOTE: This interview took place back in 2012.

David Bautista has made a big name for himself during his time in World Wrestling Entertainment where he became a six-time world champion. Like many major athletes, he has since turned his attention to acting, and he gets one of his biggest roles in RZA’s “The Man with the Iron Fists” in which he plays Brass Body, one of the main antagonists and a mercenary who can turn his body into metal. This makes him almost completely invulnerable; much like Bautista seemed like whenever he was in the ring.

While at a press conference for “The Man with the Iron Fists” which took place at the House of Blues in Los Angeles, Bautista talked about what it was like making the movie. Co-starring alongside him was Cung Le who plays Bronze Lion and was also at one point a major kickboxing champion. Bautista was asked what it was like working with Le and if he had ever fought with him “in the cage.”

Dave Bautista: I never fought with him, but we actually trained a lot together in China (where the movie was made). I wish we had some scenes together. I’m determined in my life to do a movie with Cung Le just so I can get that fight scene with him just because he’s so dynamic and so intense. So, we never fought together but I picked up a lot of good things from him.

Bautista said he accepted the role of Brass Body without even reading the script and that the character originally only had one or two lines as it was more of a physical role. This soon changed once he was cast. The biggest challenge for him, however, was filming the fight scene between Brass Body and Blacksmith who is played by star and director RZA.

Dave Bautista: The fight scene itself took days and days and it was just a pain in the ass. It was cold, it was brutal, and RZA had those damn iron fists on and they were just killing my arms because he was hitting me. I had scratches and I was bleeding. We actually started the fight scene a few days after I arrived in China, and then we had to go back to it at the end and finish it because it was so drawn out. The two characters (the Blacksmith and Brass Body) were so strong and kind of invincible that we really didn’t know where to go with the fight scene. We really went without a plan and thought we could wing it and ad-lib and come up with stuff here and there, so that was really a challenge in itself.

One of Brass Body’s other big scenes comes when he viciously attacks one of the female characters, and Bautista said shooting it was “awkward.” He described himself as a “passive” person especially when it comes to women, and since this was essentially a “rape and murder scene,” it became very uncomfortable for him to do.

Dave Bautista: I kept coming out of character because my first instinct was to tell the actress, are you okay? But she actually made it a lot of fun for me because I had this little thong on and I was freezing because the set wasn’t heated. Even when I picked her up, I didn’t know where to touch her, so I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder and I’m trying not to grope her because I don’t want to make her uncomfortable. Then RZA stepped in and said ‘you gotta make it look more real. Grab her over her ass because it’ll help her out because it will cover some of her stuff up.

The actress Bautista was working with thanked him for doing her that favor.

In addition to wrestling, Bautista is also a skilled mixed martial arts fighter. The first martial art he learned was Kali which comes from the Philippines and emphasizes weapons-based fighting with sticks, knives and other weapons. When asked if he tried to influence his fighting style in this movie, Bautista replied he did to a certain extent but that it only went so far.

Dave Bautista: The stuff that we were doing just didn’t translate as well as we thought it would on film, so we had to switch it up a lot and bring Corey Yuen (the movie’s fight choreographer) in to help us through this. We wanted this to look like a traditional kung fu fight movie especially with the characters being so strong, but I did utilize a little bit of my Kali.

Those who have seen “The Man with the Iron Fists” can agree Bautista is perfectly cast as Brass Body as he truly comes off as a badass who cannot easily be defeated. When asked if he shares any similarities to his character and if he could offer advice to those of us who are not as athletically inclined as he is, Bautista’s response was actually quite surprising.

Dave Bautista: I never felt like I was invincible. Throughout my whole life I always felt like I was an underdog. It’s kind of hard to relate to a kung fu action hero. I was trying to stay in character to where he (Brass Body) would always feel invincible and how he would react when he realized he wasn’t invincible and started to break down. I tried to get that in my head and I tried to make it come out on film, but not being the best actor made it kind of a challenge for me. I wouldn’t be the best person to give advice on how to be invincible because I’ve never felt that way. Everything’s a challenge for me, but I’m a hard worker.

Before he concluded his time with us, Bautista was asked what his dream role is.

Dave Bautista: I hate to sound cliché but I’ve always wanted to do a vampire movie. Any kind of superhero stuff, that’s what I’m a fan of. I wouldn’t mind doing that, I just don’t see myself as a leading man type character. I like the drama; I just don’t know if I fit that type of role. But that’s the kind of stuff I like to watch though.

Ti West and Gene Jones on Preparing for ‘The Sacrament’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

The Sacrament movie poster

You may not know who Gene Jones is, but odds are you have seen him in at least one movie he has co-starred in. Many know him best for his role as the gas station owner who is subjected to one of Anton Chigurh’s terrifying coin tosses in “No Country for Old Men,” and he also appeared as Wild West Barker in “Oz the Great and Powerful” and co-starred in “The Odd Life of Timothy Green.” But after watching him in Ti West’s “The Sacrament,” it will be impossible to forget who Jones is as he gives us a character who seems sweet on the surface but is really a vicious devil in disguise.

“The Sacrament” follows a couple of reporters as they travel out to a commune located out in the middle of nowhere to find one of a long lost relative. Upon their arrival, they discover the commune is a technology-free zone called Eden Parish, and they meet Father (played by Jones) who is the leader and treats his loyal followers with tremendous warmth and care. But when these outsiders arrive, he quickly sees them as a threat and eventually convinces his followers to take a sinister course of action which leads to an unspeakable tragedy.

The press day for “The Sacrament” was held at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, California, and many who worked on this movie, be it in front of or behind the camera, participated in an informative press conference. Among those there was West who told us he wanted to audition Jones after seeing him play a pharmacist on “Louie.”

Ti West: There’s a scene where there is a woman waiting in line and asking all these inane questions to the pharmacist who’s not paying attention, and Louie (C.K.’s) waiting behind her and he’s getting bored. And then Gene eventually turns to her and is like, “Have you had a bowel movement today and was it soft?” And then she gets uncomfortable and then that’s the scene, and I was like, “That’s the guy.” So, what we did was that we tracked him down and then I asked him to do a quick audition. Most of the reason I asked him to do the audition wasn’t so much to see if it would be any good. I just wanted to see if he would not be into the material. So I knew that if he did the second audition that he wasn’t going to be uncomfortable with the subject matter like that because you never know if you don’t know people. Gene likes to say that the first audition wasn’t very good and that’s why I asked him to do a second one which is not true. But there was enough from those, just seeing him do it, to know what I had thought was going to happen was going to happen.

The plot of “The Sacrament” was largely inspired by the 1978 Jonestown Massacre when Jim Jones made the followers of the Peoples Temple commit mass suicide. When Jones first appears onscreen as Father, you can’t help but be reminded of Jim, especially with those sunglasses he’s wearing. But in describing his preparation to play Father, Jones shot down our assumptions of what he did to prepare for this role.

Gene Jones: It’s less than one day in Father’s life, and not a typical day. So, I didn’t do any Jim Jones research about what he read and how he interacted with people on a daily basis. What I tried to do was be a guy who was so nice, you would leave your family and you would leave your country and go with this guy. I never met Ti until I stepped onto the set. I did audition for it, but it was a video audition. Actually it was two auditions and Ti commented on those, and those comments gave me the freedom to go where I wanted to go which was in the direction of being so damn trustworthy and so avuncular and nice. A phrase that popped into my head a few weeks ago when I was doing one of these (press conferences) was I wanted to show you somebody who was evil but not mean. Somebody who believed absolutely poisonous things but was the nicest fellow you ever met.

West said when he first met Jones in the flesh was when he arrived at the movie’s set located in Savannah, Georgia. Jones’ first big scene was when he does the interview with the two reporters, and it involved a lot of work and memorization on his part. West was more than prepared for things to go wrong as he described this scene as a “massive undertaking,” but we all felt his astonishment at how things actually turned out.

Ti West: It’s the kind of production day that you dread because it’s a night shoot, there’s 200 extras, it’s 12 pages which is like six times more than anyone wants to shoot in a day and there’s just so many moving parts, and it was cued up to be a disaster. I remember on the very first take I hadn’t told the extras what to do yet, and you’ve got to keep in mind that the extras are just there for one night to be in a movie. They don’t know what the movie is about and they haven’t read the script. They are just like, “Yeah we’re in a movie!” They’re all seated and you figure that some of them aren’t going to be good and will have to move them around, but before we do any of that let’s just wing it. Let’s just try one where Gene comes in and we’ll tell them to cheer. He can come in and then start talking to A.J. (Bowen), and its 12 pages so if the lines get screwed up we’ll stop and then we’ll do it in chunks, and this is how we are going to get through this night. Well on the very first take, Gene came in everybody went crazy. He sat down, did a 17-minute unbroken take without dropping a line, got up, everybody cheered and he walked out, and all of the reactions from the extras were their genuine reactions. They weren’t me feeding them things to do because I just wanted to assess the situation, but the assessment of the situation was we don’t need to do anything because Gene nailed that so effortlessly, and then all the extras chimed in perfectly. Gene had figured out how he was going to do it, and all I had to do was just capture it.

Jones’ comment on how the extras fueled his performance was great because he made it sound like he was doing a play more than making a movie.

Gene Jones: I loved, loved the congregation, and there’s little variations each time you shoot. They were tuned to that and I didn’t have to say, “Give me an amen somebody.” They would give me an amen. They would just give it to me and they would nod, and it was just alive. It was like talking to a group of friends. They all chimed in and they were great.

In a business which can be so ridiculously youth-oriented, it is nice to see an actor like Gene Jones defy the odds. If this were a studio movie, executives would have probably forced Ti West to cast a young adult who was more demographically desirable. But in the end, there are certain parts only actors of a certain age can pull off, and this is one of them. Jones succeeds in giving us a villain for the ages as Father draws people in with ease and then destroys their lives for the most selfish of reasons.

“The Sacrament” is now available to own and rent on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital.

Click on the video below to check out the interviews I did with Ti West, A.J. Bowen, Joe Swanberg and Amy Seimetz about “The Sacrament” for We Got This Covered.