Aug 29, 2011
Director sees 'Warrior' film as 'intervention in a cage'
By Sergio Non, USA TODAY 7:31 PM
Don't think of Warrior as a mixed martial arts movie just because its main characters fight in an MMA tournament.
"The MMA part of the film was tertiary to many other things going on in my life," director and co-writer Gavin O'Connor says. "Clearly, it's not about the sport. It's a drama, and then there's even drama within the sport while they're actually fighting."
Make no mistake -- MMA has a central role in the production. Warrior revolves around two brothers, Brendan and Tommy, in a tournament reminiscent of the grand-prix events that were staples of Pride Fighting Championships from 2000 to 2006.
The tourney's cast includes a dominant Russian, Koba, played by Olympic champion and pro wrestler Kurt Angle but based on former Pride titleholder Fedor Emelianenko. One of the fights ends with a moment inspired by one of Pride's most famous knockouts.
But for all the grittiness of the action, it's the acting that has generated most of the positive early reactions from Hollywood trade publications and magazines such as Vanity Fair, which calls Warrior "a riveting and complex character study."
USA TODAY spoke to O'Connor recently about the movie, which is scheduled for a Sept. 9 release. Excerpts from the conversation:
Q: What's the genesis of the film?
O'Connor: The film was born out of many different personal things going on in my life. The MMA part of the film was tertiary to many other things going on in my life; the MMA just came out of my love of the sport.
But the idea of forgiveness and things that happened to me in my childhood growing up -- I think I needed to explore (that) and express myself through my art, which is filmmaking and writing and directing.
And balancing that with being able to get money to make a movie, so it's not so personal that no one's going to finance what I do. The trick to these things, for me anyway, is to make things personal and delve into my own heart, yet also tell stories that hopefully are accessible and people can relate to in their own lives.
For example, we had a screening recently, and a woman came up to me afterward and said, "I haven't spoken to my brother in over 20 years, and I'm going to go call him tonight." I got a chill when she told me that. That, to me, is the gift of what art can do.
As I was watching, it struck me not as an MMA movie, but as a drama that happens to have MMA in it.
Yeah, very much so. It's all driving toward what I call an intervention in a cage.
One brother, Brendan, saves the other brother's life metaphorically by destroying him, by killing him. Tommy needs to die at the hands of his brother to be reborn. That's what I was driving toward.
Clearly, it's not about the sport. It's a drama, and then there's even drama within the sport while they're actually fighting. Those five rounds allow those two brothers to (grapple) with their past.
They were taught to communicate through violence with their dad. That's how they learned to communicate, and that's how they are communicating. Every punch, every kick, every strike is a word.
The Tommy character reminded me in some ways of Mark Kerr, who was the subject of one of your documentaries, The Smashing Machine. How much did your experience from that production inform the sensibility of Warrior?
Smashing Machine was my introduction to the sport and the fighters in the sport. But since that film, I've met so many fighters and have been to so many fights and watched so many fights that that was just part of the DNA of what I was doing. I'm sure there's a page out of a lot of even boxers' lives, and people I know, that have sort of infiltrated the script.
If you're referring to the pills ... now that you mention it, probably unconsciously. The whole intent with Tommy was, he was coming home to see his father -- but he was coming home to see the father that he knew when he left, which was a man who was a drunk.
Tommy's intention gets turned upside down when his father's sober. In essence, he spends the rest of the movie trying to get the guy to drink.
It wasn't just the pills that made think of Kerr, but also the way Tommy dominates. Kerr was destroying guys when he first came up in UFC.
That's a good reference. I can't deny it. To be totally honest, it wasn't a conscious thing, but I'm sure that seeped into it.
In terms of their fighting styles, Tommy simply wrecks opponents with his punching power, while Brendan is a more technical guy and a submission ****. How did you decide on the ways they would fight?
The decision came for several reasons.
I knew that I wanted Brendan's character to endure great hardships in the cage. I wanted his fights to go longer and I wanted his fights to be more brutal in regards to the punishment that he takes.
There are so many things in fighting that you can measure: height; weight; reach. There are certain statistical things you can measure.
But you can't measure a man's heart. That's an immeasurable thing that one cannot see. So the thing that I was always aiming for with Brendan was -- on paper, he was not a guy that looks like he could fight, but you can't measure his heart.
And as you know with MMA, anybody can win and anybody can lose. On a given night, someone makes the wrong move, and if you wait them out -- I learned that a lot from Greg Jackson.
Greg Jackson was my technical advisor and he was with us all the time, and that's the thing he would always preach to me: If you can wait someone out and you wait for someone to make a mistake, if you have the opportunity, you can exploit it and you can win. Especially in these grand prix tournaments, where it's very different than preparing for one fight.
So I knew for Brendan, I wanted the fights to go longer. For Tommy, because he's a freight train, I wanted them to end quickly.
So it just felt like those styles were appropriate for the application of that in the movie.
I can see why you'd want Brendan's character to struggle in his wins. But why is it so important for Tommy to be so dominant?
Because Tommy's living in so much rage and so much anger. He's got so much rage toward himself, he's destroying himself. He's raging at God -- that's the whole point.
He's got so much internal anger and rage. He's like a guy who hit a crack pipe. It's that immediate kind of soulless, godless drug that gives you this high that also destroys you. And for Tommy, it's just unleashing him and then it's over.
Warrior's fights are far less cartooonish than the action of most martial arts movies and even many boxing films. How important was it to keep things relatively realistic, for the most part?
It was crucial. The thing I said to all my mixed martial arts guys when I started hiring my coordinators and choreographers is, "I don't want Hong Kong-style fighting. I want this to be grounded in abject reality."
We had written the fights a certain way, but I said to all my guys, "Throw out what I wrote -- Anthony (Tambakis), my co-writer and I. We know that this has to happen in this fight, but maybe there's a better way to accomplish that."
We went through hundreds of fights. If it didn't really happen, I didn't want it to be in the movie. Every single thing in the movie has really happened. I've seen it, I've found it or they found it and showed it to me. Then it was a matter of, "I want to use that for this fight."
You know, in Pride, (Wanderlei Silva) knocked out "Rampage" (Quinton Jackson) and he went hanging through the ropes. I'm like, "I want to use that. That knockout's going to be for Tommy with Mad Dog."
You have Brendan fight the recognizable UFC fighters, Nate "The Great" Marquardt and Anthony "Rumble" Johnson. How come you decided on those matchups for him?
That wasn't intentional. We were in Pittsburgh, I was trying to get guys for each different part. I didn't want really, really famous fighters.
We were just dealing with people's schedules. We had other guys, and then they got a fight and then they couldn't do it.
So that wasn't intentional. It just ended up that way.
Did you try them out at all to see if the Brendan actor, Joel Edgerton, worked better with Nate and Johnson? How did that shake out?
I was just casting each role. We had written the specific characters. Nate was one of several guys that I wanted for that particular fighter, and we got Nate. Greg (Jackson, who helps coach Marquardt) helped with that one, because Greg is a friend and he was my technical advisor.
How'd you wind up with Kurt Angle as Koba?
I was limited to casting out of Pittsburgh, most of these fighters. I honestly wanted to get someone from Russia to come over to Pittsburgh and live with us and have to be there for the amount of time that I needed them, but it was a hard thing to do. It just came down to, in the end, making a decision based on what my options were at the time.
I was concerned about casting Kurt because of his WWE background. I was really bumping up against putting him in the movie because of that. ... and in the end, I was actually really happy with Kurt. I thought he did a great job.
Incidentally, Edgerton bears quite a resemblance to UFC middleweight Chael Sonnen. Were you looking for that?
I wasn't casting him to do Chael Sonnen, that's for sure. Someone had brought that to my attention, actually. ... but that's a coincidence.
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Originally Posted by doug maverick
