Mike Lowery
Stuntman turned filmmaker Nick Powell (“Outcast”) reunites with Nicolas Cage on “Primal”, a Richard Leder-penned thriller about a hunter and collector who goes up against two predators : a cat and a political assassin, both out of their cages.
The pulse-pounding thriller, which offers up superb turns from Cage and co-stars Famke Janssen and, in particular, LaMonica Garrett, is one of the more unique offerings for Cage – – and definitely a show-stopper as far as the goes. Most of which can be attributed to industry vet, Powell.
Like several other greats before you, you started out in stunts, I believe? Why do you think stuntmen go on to make fantastic filmmakers?
Well, I actually started out as an actor before I became a stuntman. And I think the thing with stunt guys–men, obviously, I like to think men–maybe it’s just me, but I like to think that having had the dramatic training and sort of being an actor and working for a while as an actor before I became a stuntman. The stuntman has the technical side. You know, everything’s about hitting the marks and being in the right place at the right time and this has be done form this angle, and you have to be on the 24 milenz over here 70 over there or 75 over there…and the technical side basically of the stunt side and the dramatic side of the actor I think combine really well, from a visual and then sort of the dramatic side in terms of getting performance from an actor, etc. I think the thing that stuntwork helps a lot with is basically being very prepared, very technical, because most stunt guys you know have to be really prepared before you start filming any of the stuff that you’re filming, partly because of the danger and partly because you know, stunts generally cost a lot of money and you can’t keep doing them over and over again and it going wrong so the preparation is a very big part of it which I think that’s generally the same with filmmaking and directing, so it helps on both sides, I think.
And before we get onto PRIMAL, what film – that you’ve done stunt work on – are you most proud of? Anything that you like to put atop of the showreel?
I think that basically my best work as a stunt coordinator stroke fight choreographer etc was probably on The Last Samurai. I think it’s probably the one I’m most proud of, although I–look, I honestly– I did Born Identity, I did Cinderella Men, I did Gladiator and Braveheart and 28 Days Later and it’s difficult to say because all of them have got great things in them I’m very proud of. But the one thing about The Last Samurai was I had a lot of time to prep everybody. I choreographed pretty much every fight in the whole movie as well as put everything together, the whole schism. We trained our own horses ‘causes there were no stunt or film horses in New Zealand at the time. I brought in a team from 9 different countries to train the horses, and you know, to fall, to do everything. It was such a large scale grand production and I was very proud of pretty much everything that we did on that movie. Just from an action point of view, overall, I think that’s probably the most successful in terms of what I think of how it was shot, how it was put together, so I mean, Last Samurai, if I had to choose one.
When and how did “Primal” come about?
Primal came about a couple years ago when I was sent a script from a producer who basically said “Take a read, and if you like it let’s see if we can get it made.” I read the script, I said “How do we get it made,” I liked the script. He said “Well, we need one of these actors,” and he gave me a list of actors and funnily enough one of the actors on there was an actor that I knew and had worked with and I actually envisioned when I was reading the script he’d be perfect for the role even without being prompted. And when I saw the name of the thing, on the list of names, and my sort of vision that I already had that he would be perfect for it, I said “Okay, I’ll reach out to him,” which I did, and three days later Nic Cage basically says “Yes,” he would do it with me. So that’s how it kind of came about.
You had worked with Nic Cage before on Outcast and obviously enjoyed it. What does Nic bring to the role of Frank Walsh?
As I said in the previous answer, I think that when I read Primal, I read it and I was like “You know, Nic could play either of these roles,” you know he could play Luffle he could play Frank. But I think Frank is the hero of this story and to me that’s Nic in terms of the work he’s done before. He’s done some great work, I mean Nic’s iconic you know, you look back at his career and everyone can name Nic Cage movies, he’s one of those guys. And I think, when you, when I said to him I thought it was perfect for him and he read the script and he agreed, I think he just brings this sort of, there’s a…weirdly enough I know that people sort of think of Nic as being just sort of loud and everything else, but there’s a real quiet intensity when he wants it to be. And I think that’s the thing with Frank, I think that Nic has done a really nice–he’s done a really great performance in this movie in terms of you know, none of it’s this sort of a historianic aspect to some of the things that Nic has done. And this I think he’s tempered it exactly right. I thought he was right for the role and I think the performance he’s done proves he’s exactly right for the role.
I imagine, with your background, that a lot of those stunts were finely tuned- and likely performed by your team. How keen is Cage though to get in there and do them himself? Is he a go-getter?
Funnily enough, yes I ended up fine tuning the fights and things with a local stunt team in Puerto Rico who I think did an amazing job, but Nic and Kevin I think aside from one thing where we had to throw Nic onto concrete and where we had to sort of hook Kevin up and basically lift him up into the air at rapid speed where he could have hit his head on the ground, they did everything themselves. I mean we trained them, we went through rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, Nic was fully, you know, he’s fully committed to these things. He’d come in, he was basically sweating, dripping sweat, throwing the punches throwing the…”let’s do it again let’s do it again” he was right there, you know, occasionally needed a minute or two just sort of rest and get his breath back and then straighten out again. for someone who’s been doing this as long as Nick has he’s got such a sense of enthusiasm and professionalism wanting to do a great job, and wanting it to be him rather than the double. Nick was really really enthusiastic about this.
Can you talk about working with animals? I imagine, like the stunts, this was all handled very precisely.
Yeah, obviously there was a number of CG animals like monkeys when they attacked the cook in the ally, and the white jaguar was obviously a CG animal. all the other animals the parrots, the other animals seen in cages, there were real monkeys there were real birds there was lots of different kinds of animals that we had on set that we didn’t have to do a lot of work with. But the parrot was the one that took a lot of work in terms of getting the performance the way we needed it. I mean there’s nothing you can…you can’t turn around and give the parrot a note and try to do it a different way or anything else. it’s basically it either works or it doesn’t. And it’s even more frustrating from an actor’s point of view, like when when Nic was interacting with the parrot and we’d just roll and basically we knew the parrot would lift his wings at some point and then you know we’d try to use that as a cue to get back to Nic, and Nic had to…so he’d be saying the line, and then basically if the parrot didn’t do the right thing he’d start again saying the same line and they’d try to get the parrot to do the move and that didn’t work so he would say it again and we would keep going and keep going, and obviously from an acting point of view it’s not very conducive to giving a great performance because you feel like an automotive trying to just basically say the same line over and over again while you’re rolling. But he did an amazing job and it was hard working with the parrot of course, but at the same time it’s also hard interacting with cg animals bc you got actors interacting with animals that aren’t there and those things take a lot of time on a tight schedule you’re sort of trained to track animals moving through the air that aren’t actually in the shot. So there’s an awful lot of work that goes on while you’re filming just to add the cg animals and everything else. you’re doing 3 or 4 passes for lighting, for reference, for everything to make sure everything works. so you know everything takes a lot longer when you have cg animals or real animals. Either one, I mean I know I can make the cg animal do what I want it to do in post, but it takes about the same amount of time to shoot it, maybe a little less depending on how the pre-madonna-ish the actor’s feeling that day, but it’s hard to work with both.
And finally, you worked a favorite of ours here, ”Robin Hood : Prince of Thieves”. Having just watched it recently, I was gobsmacked by how incredibly well it holds up – particularly in the stunts and action department. Do you attribute that largely to the fact that so much was done practically and, again, by some of the best in the biz?
On Robin Hood : Prince of Thieves I was just a performer. It was one of my…I wouldn’t say my first movies I think my first movie was either Judge Dredd or Batman, the Jack Nicholson one, as a performer, but it was one of my first movies around that time and I was running around doing sword work and shooting bows and arrows running through trees and things, so I didn’t have a lot to do with the success of it. but I think a lot of these things are, you know even today with the technology we have with things like fast and furious and all the superhero movies there’s so much CG in them, and we know that you know everybody knows it’s CG. If you can try to interact the cg with what’s there everything feels more real. and I think in the, let’s say, in the old days, in the days before cg became basically, it’s all cg, I think there was so much done practically. and because there’s real people there there’s sort of differentiation in the movement in the way things have gotten and the way things are achieved. just by the nature of the being real people there it feels more real i believe. so, actually I haven’t seen it in such a long time I don’t know how well it holds up but when you see some of these other movies, I mean even something like gladiator which was done pretty much all practically as far as the action goes I think that holds up really well, and likewise, The Last Samurai and those movies I think they hold up really well battle wise and everything else. Braveheart is a perfect example that was one of those things before, yes there were cg elements but it was really just to multiply the real elements. And so most of it was done real and the brutality and the visceral-ness of something like Braveheart was, i think changed the way people looked at that kind of thing at that point.
Lionsgate will release Primal in theaters and on demand on November 8th.
