Caffeinated Clint
Seems to be plenty of work for anyone with a proclivity for kicking right now, with a slew of new projects in the works – starring (or aided by) Martial Artists.
Firstly, MMA champs Randy Couture and Frank Shamrock are teaming for a new action pic called “No Rules”. “I’m, of course, a no-rules fighter in the movie”, Shamrock tells Blackbelt Magazine, via Blitz. Shamrock’s character is interested in getting into the brotherhood and earning his badge of honour by killing someone in a fight.
Couture says of his part, “It’s a bad fight school where guys wear robes and there’s chanting and it’s got this Cultish flavour”.
Ray Anthony, from the Australian Film Fighting Academy, did some work recently on “Son of the Mask” and told the magazine about it. “I had to work with them (Jamie Kennedy and Alan Cumming) closely for two months, training and teaching them how to dight and look like pro fighters”, says Ray. “I developed a training circuit for each of them to do while they were on the set and also between filming”.
Ray spent two hours a day with the actors. “It was very difficult because neither [actor] had ever had fighting skills or training. To try to teach someone how to fight in two months was very hard”, he explains. “We would train and rehearse anywhere we were filming – at Fox Studios or in the middle of Sydney, in Martin Place at 9pm at night, it didn’t matter as long as I had them ready in time”.
After about a month, Ray showed the director some of the moves he’d put together for Kennedy, but the director thought Kennedy looked too soft and wanted to toughen him up even more.
“He took me aside quietly and said that he wanted me to hit him in the stomach hard, so he could experience the feeling of pain first-hand and not try to act it”, Ray recalls. “I laughed at first, thinking he was joking. But he wasn’t, so I said ‘Okay, but if he gets hurt it’s not my responsibility’.
“…I ducked under a right-cross from Jamie and whacked him hard in the stomach. He bent over, breathing hard, and the whole set stopped in shock. Thinking I’d just bashed the lead actor on an $80 million production, I said ‘Are you okay?’”
When Jamie began swearing, Ray pointed at the director and yelled, “He told me to do it!” – Kennedy chased the director around the set with his gloves still on.
