Vance
04-07-2007, 08:24 AM
Credit: ign.com
"The Condemned, stunts vs. bumps, and the Stone Cold fans.
by Jon Robinson
April 5, 2007 - Payback.
Want to know the difference between wrestling someone in the ring and fighting another actor on a movie set? To the star of The Condemned, former Hollywood Blonde turned Stunning Steve turned Ringmaster turned Stone Cold turned movie star (full circle back to Hollywood), Steve Austin talks payback, or in wrestling terms, cashing in a receipt.
"We're doing this one fight, it's early on in the movie, I've got some chains on, and this guy, we're going over this fight really quick. It's this real simple, three or four stage fight, and this guy is supposed to hit me in the stomach first." Austin pauses for a second, then switches gears. "In the ring, if someone hits you too hard, you can only take so many of those and you have to send back a receipt, meaning hey, settle down. If a guy has a bad night at the office and catches you in the chin, you pop him so he knows what's going on. So in this fight scene, the guy is supposed to hit me in the stomach first, but he doesn't. He hits me in the eye and gives me a black eye. So I said OK, and we covered it up with makeup and we kept shooting. We didn't want to waste any time or my eye would swell up. I really wanted to give that guy a receipt but I couldn't because I didn't need to give him a black eye and close his eye up. But I really wanted to give that guy a receipt, and I still haven't given it to him, but maybe one of these days I will."
Funny thing is, during filming of Austin's new movie countless people told him how the stunt work would be easy because he already performed choreographed fighting for a living. Austin took exception to the repeated assumptions. "I didn't do choreographed fighting for a living. I was a professional wrestler for 15 years, there's a big difference. When you're at the level that I was at, and many of the great people before me, and some people who are currently still in the ring, you go out there and you adlib and you work so many years in the ring that you just kind of know what's going on. Things are bigger also when you're in the ring. Say the average arena is 20,000 people, you're in the very center of that arena and you're playing to the worst seat in the house up there. So everything is very big, very large. It's like a very violent form of Broadway in a 20x20 ring. So when I went to Australia 3 weeks early to work on the fight training, I had a guy named Richard Norton who is a fight choreographer and a guy named Sam Greco who is a K-1 World Kickboxing Champion who was my stunt double, my fight double, and these guys are absolute killers as far as their skills, just the best of the best. What I learned from those guys is that technical fighting is a lot different than what I do, I'm putting on a show. Everything is so tight and so technical and then also translating that for the screen and the way we do hits across for the camera, it's a big difference because we actually make contact in the ring. It's not full-blown contact, but we make a lot of contact, so that was very frustrating. Also, because I've never memorized a match in my life, so I certainly never imagined a fight. A one-minute, two-minute, three-minute fight, so that was actually kind of hard. As far as the stunt work goes, I did all my stunts except for the three major stunts which were pretty dangerous and they wouldn't let me do. There was one of them that I would've volunteered to do, but the other ones were so extreme that they wouldn't let me do them, and obviously, I wouldn't have wanted to do them. Those guys are too good at what they do."
If you've seen the trailer, you've seen the fall Austin's character takes out of a helicopter. How far did Austin really jump? "About 20 feet of it…not the other 300," Austin says with a laugh, obviously already comfortable in his Hollywood skin. A Hollywood skin that simply bills him as Steve Austin, as the Stone Cold nickname is being left on the canvas.
"In this business, at the end of a Raw, we never roll credits. So people think I'm Stone Cold Steve Austin, it's not Steve Austin playing Stone Cold Steve Austin, it's Stone Cold Steve Austin. So, we're rolling credits here, it's Steve Austin as Jack Conrad." Adds Austin: "When you see me on TV as Stone Cold Steve Austin, that's definitely a part of my personality. When you see this movie, it's a way, way toned down version, not of Stone Cold Steve Austin, but of Steve Austin. It's just a different side of me."
The Jack Conrad character is man who must survive a wicked game of murderers and mayhem on an island surrounded by cameras…anything for ratings. The concept is to bring 10 killers to an island and let them battle it out. When nine die, the tenth will be freed.
The villain in the movie is a wealthy TV mogul who many might see as a character along the lines of Mr. McMahon, but Austin says that the similarities, while there, are only a coincidence.
"I think there are a lot of parallels there. But some people who have seen this movie already automatically think that character is based on Vince because WWE Films funded the movie. But that's not true. This script found me in Los Angeles, California about two years ago, and then we started talking about it and when Vince read it, he thought it was a neat concept. We got the guy to rewrite it two more times, but then he couldn't take it any further, so we got a new writer/director, Scott Wiper, who rewrote the thing eight times to get it to the final shooting script, and he did an unbelievable job on it and was also an unbelievable director. So those parallels were there from the beginning, not just because it's a WWE project."
And like Mr. McMahon's character on Raw, the heel character in The Condemned doesn't care who gets in his way of success. "He's running the show, he's calling the shots, it's all about the big finish driving ratings up, and you know, numbers, numbers, numbers equal success."
I saw The Condemned, and I have to say, it's one of the most violent action films I've ever seen (you should have seen The Coach jump out of his seat when the first body exploded), and it's no surprise coming from Austin, a man whose favorite flicks include Death Hunt, Shawshank Redemption, and Cool Hand Luke.
What might be a surprise to fans is that there's no beer on the island. No Stunners, no toasts, but bullets are served to just about everybody who gets airtime.
"For so long in my time here with WWE, I got here in 1995, people have seen me do what I do, and that's be loud, drink beer, cuss people out, drink more beer and beat people up. I entertain. I was a professional wrestler, and sometimes I think people think that's all that I am. But I'm actually a lot more than that and this movie will prove that."
I met with Austin about four hours before his movie premiered at the famous Fox Theatre in Detroit. This is the city that saw Stone Cold crash a Zamboni into the ring (taking out a lamp on the way) and fight The Rock on the "Roodeepoo Bridge" (Rockspeak). Over 4,000 fans were already gathering in line downtown as Austin broke down his experiences in Hollywood (while also calling Randy Orton, Mr. Kennedy and MVP the wrestlers to look out for in WWE).
"It's very slow. It's almost too slow," Austin says as he describes the process of getting The Condemned to the big screen. "We've been working on this thing for more than two years and what we do when we show up on Monday Night Raw, we work on being very time efficient. We're filming stuff backstage and we're fixing to go live, live. So we're used to making things happen very, very quickly."
Why so much slowdown in the movie business? "There's a lot of bureaucratic red tape, there's some B.S. and some other stuff. It's a very interesting ballgame," Austin says with a grin. A ballgame the former wrestler will continue to play. "I had so much fun making this movie and I think it shows on screen. It's a hard movie, but we had a lot of fun. There weren't any egos on the set, we didn't let that happen. There are some good folks out there. It was so much fun. I wrestled for 15 years. I got the most out of my body I could, and I achieved things, some things that no one else has, and maybe they never will. I'm very thankful to WWE and our fan base, the Stone Cold fan base on top of the WWE fan base, for allowing that to happen. I want to keep working, I love to work, I love being productive, and when you've been down the road that I have with professional wrestling and sports entertainment, whatever you want to call it, when I look back at what my job qualifications are: I dropped out of college with 17 hours left to graduate. I was working on a freight dock, loading and unloading trucks driving a forklift. I'm qualified to be in the entertainment business. I have a lot to learn about the entertainment business, but that's what I'm about to do."
Did wrestling help prepare Austin for life in Hollywood? "I would say so. Now you're going to get people who have been in the movie business their entire lives and they are going to say 'Jesus Christ that guy's full of sh*t, but that's how I feel. They haven't been in the ring, I have, and now I've done this movie."
The first in a three picture deal with WWE Films. And if Austin's confidence about his first movie is any indication, he hopes to take the movie business by storm.
"I knew we had a good movie when we were shooting it, but then we started showing people. We screened it for people at WWE, we screened it for Lionsgate, then we started testing it and everybody kept saying that they really enjoyed the movie," Austin said. "At first I'm thinking, Jesus Christ, are these people just trying to be gentle with me because they think that the movie sucks? I wanted a straight answer and sometimes it's hard to get a straight answer in show business. They were being for real."
I asked him if he was more nervous for the movie premiere or walking out in front of 80,000 fans at Wrestlemania, and the choice was easy for Austin (although it was the opposite of what I thought). "I'm so proud of this movie that I'm not nervous whatsoever. Anything you do, you can never have 100%, guarantee you we're going to have 99. I have more confidence about this movie than some of the matches I've gone into. Sometimes when you go to the ring, you can't control everything that goes on in the ring and sometimes you're going to make the wrong decisions and things happen. This is a controlled environment. It's a killer setup, a killer atmosphere, killer movie."
During the filming of The Condemned along the beautiful Australian coast, Austin was anything but Hollywood, even living on his bus for days at a time instead of at the high-rise apartments they rented for him downtown.
"I would always sleep in my bus and sometimes I'd stay out there for three-four-five days at a time," Austin laughs. "People would come up to me and say: 'I heard you're sleeping in your bus", like "won't you go home?' Well, I've been camping and hunting my whole life, so to me, that's like a day off, not driving back to the apartment. They had me in a high rise, and it was a very nice apartment, but to me, one of the funnest things about the movie was being able to camp out the whole time I was out there. One of the girls on the set, she goes: 'Steve, you're sleeping in your camper?' I said yeah, and she says 'You don't have a life, do you?' I was like, you don't get it, I've got a great life, I'm camping."
What's next for Austin once his film drops? Hopefully for him, another movie in the great outdoors, but WWE Films is taking their time to find the right script for everyone involved.
"I'm so proud of this movie. I think it was a great selection picking this movie, picking the sophomore effort is extremely important to follow this thing up. I think the next one we do will not be quite so much of an ensemble cast type thing, but a little bit more focus on me, I will carry more weight. As you see how this thing unfolds, I end up carrying a lot of weight throughout the movie. We haven't found anything yet, but we're really, really trying to pick the right thing. We could've picked anything just to start shooting, but long term decisions are what we want to make. Smart, long term decisions."
Austin wants to continue to do right by his fans, whether that means stunning Donald Trump in the middle of the ring or shooting the bad guy on screen.
"The WWE fans are extremely, extremely loyal, and the Stone Cold fans are even crazier and more loyal. I've worked really hard for that, and they've always stood by me," says Austin. "You cannot exist in this business, in wrestling, in the movie business, in the entertainment business without a fan base. I know that better than anybody. That's why I always try to be hands-on with the fans 24/7. I've seen people, and they treat people bad. I don't believe in that. If you get tired of the limelight or if you get tired of people bothering you, then you got in the wrong business."
And Austin credits WWE with building him into the star that he is (and the man you bug for autographs between Steveweisers). "I always will have a home here in WWE. I love this place. If it wasn't for this place I obviously wouldn't be at this table right now, and I'm very thankful for the opportunities that I've been given here. Every opportunity that they've given me, I've tried to knock it out of the park. You only go around once, so when you do something you gotta do it to the up most of your ability, that's just how I was brought up. I never was the biggest or most talented, best looking, best wrestler…best nothing! When I got here, I did enough things well enough and I worked hard enough and I did what I did. I'll always be a part of this place. I have a three picture deal with WWE Films and I'll work with anybody. I'd like to make 20 movies with WWE Films. It was a first-class experience."
The inevitable comparison to The Rock came up during conversation, but Austin doesn't see the similarities.
"I never looked at anything, in my life, in wrestling, now going into movies, where I'm following in anybody's footsteps. I figure you gotta make your own way. Obviously there are people who do things before you. Maybe his goal was he wanted to be an actor his whole life. My goal in my life was to be a professional wrestler. Once that ended, then came the movies. If I still felt that I could be in the ring and I could be at 110% rather than about 99%, I would still be wrestling. But that small of a difference to me is a real big difference in my eyes. And so movies are the next step. I didn't get into wrestling to get into the movies. By getting into wrestling, it has opened up the door to get into movies. As far as anyone else goes, I follow nobody, I just try to do the absolute best Steve Austin can do and let the chips fall where they do."
Even if that means that he has to take a black eye or two without the ability for payback.
Then again, if The Condemned is as big of a success as Austin thinks, I'm sure he'll trade those black eye receipts for profit checks any day."
"The Condemned, stunts vs. bumps, and the Stone Cold fans.
by Jon Robinson
April 5, 2007 - Payback.
Want to know the difference between wrestling someone in the ring and fighting another actor on a movie set? To the star of The Condemned, former Hollywood Blonde turned Stunning Steve turned Ringmaster turned Stone Cold turned movie star (full circle back to Hollywood), Steve Austin talks payback, or in wrestling terms, cashing in a receipt.
"We're doing this one fight, it's early on in the movie, I've got some chains on, and this guy, we're going over this fight really quick. It's this real simple, three or four stage fight, and this guy is supposed to hit me in the stomach first." Austin pauses for a second, then switches gears. "In the ring, if someone hits you too hard, you can only take so many of those and you have to send back a receipt, meaning hey, settle down. If a guy has a bad night at the office and catches you in the chin, you pop him so he knows what's going on. So in this fight scene, the guy is supposed to hit me in the stomach first, but he doesn't. He hits me in the eye and gives me a black eye. So I said OK, and we covered it up with makeup and we kept shooting. We didn't want to waste any time or my eye would swell up. I really wanted to give that guy a receipt but I couldn't because I didn't need to give him a black eye and close his eye up. But I really wanted to give that guy a receipt, and I still haven't given it to him, but maybe one of these days I will."
Funny thing is, during filming of Austin's new movie countless people told him how the stunt work would be easy because he already performed choreographed fighting for a living. Austin took exception to the repeated assumptions. "I didn't do choreographed fighting for a living. I was a professional wrestler for 15 years, there's a big difference. When you're at the level that I was at, and many of the great people before me, and some people who are currently still in the ring, you go out there and you adlib and you work so many years in the ring that you just kind of know what's going on. Things are bigger also when you're in the ring. Say the average arena is 20,000 people, you're in the very center of that arena and you're playing to the worst seat in the house up there. So everything is very big, very large. It's like a very violent form of Broadway in a 20x20 ring. So when I went to Australia 3 weeks early to work on the fight training, I had a guy named Richard Norton who is a fight choreographer and a guy named Sam Greco who is a K-1 World Kickboxing Champion who was my stunt double, my fight double, and these guys are absolute killers as far as their skills, just the best of the best. What I learned from those guys is that technical fighting is a lot different than what I do, I'm putting on a show. Everything is so tight and so technical and then also translating that for the screen and the way we do hits across for the camera, it's a big difference because we actually make contact in the ring. It's not full-blown contact, but we make a lot of contact, so that was very frustrating. Also, because I've never memorized a match in my life, so I certainly never imagined a fight. A one-minute, two-minute, three-minute fight, so that was actually kind of hard. As far as the stunt work goes, I did all my stunts except for the three major stunts which were pretty dangerous and they wouldn't let me do. There was one of them that I would've volunteered to do, but the other ones were so extreme that they wouldn't let me do them, and obviously, I wouldn't have wanted to do them. Those guys are too good at what they do."
If you've seen the trailer, you've seen the fall Austin's character takes out of a helicopter. How far did Austin really jump? "About 20 feet of it…not the other 300," Austin says with a laugh, obviously already comfortable in his Hollywood skin. A Hollywood skin that simply bills him as Steve Austin, as the Stone Cold nickname is being left on the canvas.
"In this business, at the end of a Raw, we never roll credits. So people think I'm Stone Cold Steve Austin, it's not Steve Austin playing Stone Cold Steve Austin, it's Stone Cold Steve Austin. So, we're rolling credits here, it's Steve Austin as Jack Conrad." Adds Austin: "When you see me on TV as Stone Cold Steve Austin, that's definitely a part of my personality. When you see this movie, it's a way, way toned down version, not of Stone Cold Steve Austin, but of Steve Austin. It's just a different side of me."
The Jack Conrad character is man who must survive a wicked game of murderers and mayhem on an island surrounded by cameras…anything for ratings. The concept is to bring 10 killers to an island and let them battle it out. When nine die, the tenth will be freed.
The villain in the movie is a wealthy TV mogul who many might see as a character along the lines of Mr. McMahon, but Austin says that the similarities, while there, are only a coincidence.
"I think there are a lot of parallels there. But some people who have seen this movie already automatically think that character is based on Vince because WWE Films funded the movie. But that's not true. This script found me in Los Angeles, California about two years ago, and then we started talking about it and when Vince read it, he thought it was a neat concept. We got the guy to rewrite it two more times, but then he couldn't take it any further, so we got a new writer/director, Scott Wiper, who rewrote the thing eight times to get it to the final shooting script, and he did an unbelievable job on it and was also an unbelievable director. So those parallels were there from the beginning, not just because it's a WWE project."
And like Mr. McMahon's character on Raw, the heel character in The Condemned doesn't care who gets in his way of success. "He's running the show, he's calling the shots, it's all about the big finish driving ratings up, and you know, numbers, numbers, numbers equal success."
I saw The Condemned, and I have to say, it's one of the most violent action films I've ever seen (you should have seen The Coach jump out of his seat when the first body exploded), and it's no surprise coming from Austin, a man whose favorite flicks include Death Hunt, Shawshank Redemption, and Cool Hand Luke.
What might be a surprise to fans is that there's no beer on the island. No Stunners, no toasts, but bullets are served to just about everybody who gets airtime.
"For so long in my time here with WWE, I got here in 1995, people have seen me do what I do, and that's be loud, drink beer, cuss people out, drink more beer and beat people up. I entertain. I was a professional wrestler, and sometimes I think people think that's all that I am. But I'm actually a lot more than that and this movie will prove that."
I met with Austin about four hours before his movie premiered at the famous Fox Theatre in Detroit. This is the city that saw Stone Cold crash a Zamboni into the ring (taking out a lamp on the way) and fight The Rock on the "Roodeepoo Bridge" (Rockspeak). Over 4,000 fans were already gathering in line downtown as Austin broke down his experiences in Hollywood (while also calling Randy Orton, Mr. Kennedy and MVP the wrestlers to look out for in WWE).
"It's very slow. It's almost too slow," Austin says as he describes the process of getting The Condemned to the big screen. "We've been working on this thing for more than two years and what we do when we show up on Monday Night Raw, we work on being very time efficient. We're filming stuff backstage and we're fixing to go live, live. So we're used to making things happen very, very quickly."
Why so much slowdown in the movie business? "There's a lot of bureaucratic red tape, there's some B.S. and some other stuff. It's a very interesting ballgame," Austin says with a grin. A ballgame the former wrestler will continue to play. "I had so much fun making this movie and I think it shows on screen. It's a hard movie, but we had a lot of fun. There weren't any egos on the set, we didn't let that happen. There are some good folks out there. It was so much fun. I wrestled for 15 years. I got the most out of my body I could, and I achieved things, some things that no one else has, and maybe they never will. I'm very thankful to WWE and our fan base, the Stone Cold fan base on top of the WWE fan base, for allowing that to happen. I want to keep working, I love to work, I love being productive, and when you've been down the road that I have with professional wrestling and sports entertainment, whatever you want to call it, when I look back at what my job qualifications are: I dropped out of college with 17 hours left to graduate. I was working on a freight dock, loading and unloading trucks driving a forklift. I'm qualified to be in the entertainment business. I have a lot to learn about the entertainment business, but that's what I'm about to do."
Did wrestling help prepare Austin for life in Hollywood? "I would say so. Now you're going to get people who have been in the movie business their entire lives and they are going to say 'Jesus Christ that guy's full of sh*t, but that's how I feel. They haven't been in the ring, I have, and now I've done this movie."
The first in a three picture deal with WWE Films. And if Austin's confidence about his first movie is any indication, he hopes to take the movie business by storm.
"I knew we had a good movie when we were shooting it, but then we started showing people. We screened it for people at WWE, we screened it for Lionsgate, then we started testing it and everybody kept saying that they really enjoyed the movie," Austin said. "At first I'm thinking, Jesus Christ, are these people just trying to be gentle with me because they think that the movie sucks? I wanted a straight answer and sometimes it's hard to get a straight answer in show business. They were being for real."
I asked him if he was more nervous for the movie premiere or walking out in front of 80,000 fans at Wrestlemania, and the choice was easy for Austin (although it was the opposite of what I thought). "I'm so proud of this movie that I'm not nervous whatsoever. Anything you do, you can never have 100%, guarantee you we're going to have 99. I have more confidence about this movie than some of the matches I've gone into. Sometimes when you go to the ring, you can't control everything that goes on in the ring and sometimes you're going to make the wrong decisions and things happen. This is a controlled environment. It's a killer setup, a killer atmosphere, killer movie."
During the filming of The Condemned along the beautiful Australian coast, Austin was anything but Hollywood, even living on his bus for days at a time instead of at the high-rise apartments they rented for him downtown.
"I would always sleep in my bus and sometimes I'd stay out there for three-four-five days at a time," Austin laughs. "People would come up to me and say: 'I heard you're sleeping in your bus", like "won't you go home?' Well, I've been camping and hunting my whole life, so to me, that's like a day off, not driving back to the apartment. They had me in a high rise, and it was a very nice apartment, but to me, one of the funnest things about the movie was being able to camp out the whole time I was out there. One of the girls on the set, she goes: 'Steve, you're sleeping in your camper?' I said yeah, and she says 'You don't have a life, do you?' I was like, you don't get it, I've got a great life, I'm camping."
What's next for Austin once his film drops? Hopefully for him, another movie in the great outdoors, but WWE Films is taking their time to find the right script for everyone involved.
"I'm so proud of this movie. I think it was a great selection picking this movie, picking the sophomore effort is extremely important to follow this thing up. I think the next one we do will not be quite so much of an ensemble cast type thing, but a little bit more focus on me, I will carry more weight. As you see how this thing unfolds, I end up carrying a lot of weight throughout the movie. We haven't found anything yet, but we're really, really trying to pick the right thing. We could've picked anything just to start shooting, but long term decisions are what we want to make. Smart, long term decisions."
Austin wants to continue to do right by his fans, whether that means stunning Donald Trump in the middle of the ring or shooting the bad guy on screen.
"The WWE fans are extremely, extremely loyal, and the Stone Cold fans are even crazier and more loyal. I've worked really hard for that, and they've always stood by me," says Austin. "You cannot exist in this business, in wrestling, in the movie business, in the entertainment business without a fan base. I know that better than anybody. That's why I always try to be hands-on with the fans 24/7. I've seen people, and they treat people bad. I don't believe in that. If you get tired of the limelight or if you get tired of people bothering you, then you got in the wrong business."
And Austin credits WWE with building him into the star that he is (and the man you bug for autographs between Steveweisers). "I always will have a home here in WWE. I love this place. If it wasn't for this place I obviously wouldn't be at this table right now, and I'm very thankful for the opportunities that I've been given here. Every opportunity that they've given me, I've tried to knock it out of the park. You only go around once, so when you do something you gotta do it to the up most of your ability, that's just how I was brought up. I never was the biggest or most talented, best looking, best wrestler…best nothing! When I got here, I did enough things well enough and I worked hard enough and I did what I did. I'll always be a part of this place. I have a three picture deal with WWE Films and I'll work with anybody. I'd like to make 20 movies with WWE Films. It was a first-class experience."
The inevitable comparison to The Rock came up during conversation, but Austin doesn't see the similarities.
"I never looked at anything, in my life, in wrestling, now going into movies, where I'm following in anybody's footsteps. I figure you gotta make your own way. Obviously there are people who do things before you. Maybe his goal was he wanted to be an actor his whole life. My goal in my life was to be a professional wrestler. Once that ended, then came the movies. If I still felt that I could be in the ring and I could be at 110% rather than about 99%, I would still be wrestling. But that small of a difference to me is a real big difference in my eyes. And so movies are the next step. I didn't get into wrestling to get into the movies. By getting into wrestling, it has opened up the door to get into movies. As far as anyone else goes, I follow nobody, I just try to do the absolute best Steve Austin can do and let the chips fall where they do."
Even if that means that he has to take a black eye or two without the ability for payback.
Then again, if The Condemned is as big of a success as Austin thinks, I'm sure he'll trade those black eye receipts for profit checks any day."