The Art of Action - Daniel Bernhardt - Episode 7

daniel bernhardt how are you mate i'm great how you doing it's just got your name right you did that at the end that confuses me it does it's like do i pronounce the t or do i not you do burn heart burn heart okay yeah i think i guess whatever you like i don't know i never you know what actually i never even thought about it but now that you're saying it no it's a t burn well thanks for doing this i think i'm very lucky that you're interviewing me so i think i'm the lucky one here i know we're all lucky because we're going to get to hear some great stories about your career in action movies which has uh been over 20 years right it's been more 95 was my first film so more 25 you know a long time can you tell us what your martial art background is you know um i started out as a young boy i was probably 15. um actually i was a soccer player my sport when i was a teen was soccer i was like the biggest soccer player you can imagine that was my thing you know you you as a fellow european you know how it is in switzerland yeah switzerland born and raised but i i just knew i was never that good and uh with 15 i kind of stopped and i met a guy a buddy of mine uh who was a martial artist and he just kind of started showing me some stuff and i was like it was really bizarre whatever he did i just did and i could pick it up and i learned it really fast and i became this crazy i got this crazy passion for martial arts and i started training every day and whatever i would do was martial arts and then i just kept training huge bruce lee fan of course same for everyone and that sort of isn't it isn't it the same and you know it's really funny uh still today my favorite weapon the nunchucks it's everyone's favorite weapon who are you trying to kill my favorite ourselves in the balls in the head many times with a pair of nunchucks i know i know so um so that's how i started and then i just continued doing it and i just felt a very strong love for it never thought about movies never thought it's going to take me where it takes me which is kind of crazy you know where if you think about where you started and now where you're at it's it's insane what were the specific styles that you were training in when you were a kid going into your 20s you know what it was really funny you know back home in switzerland there really wasn't any martial arts around there were very few people and the first guy i met he kind of had a mix of kung fu uh little wushu and jkd but i think my feeling is they just learned on tv to be honest i think they just learned as they went along i swear to god and i and i will never forget this the guy who first taught me i swear to god after like three four months i started to beat him he showed me what he was doing and it was all this kind of like bruce lee stuff and i'm sure he just read the book and learned how to do it and then when i was when i was about 16 17 i met a guy who was a kicker and he started to teach me how to kick and i realized that my talent wasn't kicking just because of my size i'm 6'3 got long legs and i just started to kick but you you are you naturally flexible because you are very flexible i was it's something that i was very very lucky i never really had to like force stretching it just happened my mother was a dancer my father was a boxer so it just kind of came naturally and i just started to kick and i that was my thing and then i would say in my teens it was kind of like kung fu jkd a little bit of kicking but then interestingly enough in my 20s i got into the fashion world i became a model lived in paris london milan new york and wherever i went i went to a school and i just start to learn different styles when i was in paris um i learned savate with a french guy and kickboxing when i went to new york i learned kyokushinkai and boxing when i went to miami i just boxed and then um which was one of my most fun things i've ever done in my late 20s when i got the opportunity to come to la and and got picked for bloodsport too um our producer put me together with grandmaster hill joe so it was actually the first time that i got a chance with 27 to study with a master i studied under him for many years i became a black belt with him and that was i was reading his books i had well you were yeah because one of my main things you know i had all these the volumes you do i swear to god master cho became a very very close friend he was a mentor to me um without him i'm not sure if i would have stayed in la but he kind of gave me you know how it is you know how the business is it's crazy it's very very tough i came here when i was 27 people offered me a movie they said oh we're going to make you the next guy you get bloodsport too and i'm like oh what's the catch here something is not right right yeah and then it just and then it didn't happen for like two years so i'm sitting in l.a waiting for this movie to happen you were offered blood sport too and then it didn't happen for for a couple years didn't happen for two years because um when i had discovered for that then was there an audition what was the no you know it is it was it it's really funny what happened i mean you gotta laugh if you hear how i got the job that's come on then i want to hear it now it's really it's crazy so think about this i was uh in my mid-20s huge martial arts fan biggest martial arts fan you can imagine loved van damme love bruce lee i got a job for johnny versace to do a commercial that bruce weber was a very famous photographer shot in new york and i was cast to fight opposite jean-claude all right okay you didn't know that did you for a commercial for commercial so they were looking for from models who could fight and there were not many so i remember i will never forget this we were in new york at bruce weber's loft and sean claude comes in and that was the blood spur 2 time kickboxer time and we all were just like oh my god this is sean claude van damme yeah he was super cool he was the nicest guy you can imagine and he came in he was like hey guys what's going on and he looked at us and he goes hey who can who can kick and i went like then he goes show me and i go shh and he goes all right i'll take you last so that was my first experience to actually fight in front of the camera never done it before didn't know about anything no angles nothing so him and i did a little fight took a reaction i kicked he kicked i died whatever and i just at that moment in life i had an epiphany i just knew this is what i have to do i get a phone call somebody calls hey listen uh this is the producer of bloodsport2 we want to we want to offer you the part and i'm like yeah that's really funny and i hung up the phone i thought it was for real i swear to god i hung up the phone they called back and they said no no i'm serious that we want you to want you come on to la talk to us see if there's an interest ironically i had a job back in miami flew to l.a met with the producer went to his house and it was so funny i will never forget i walked i walked into the backyard he was laying out there by the pool like a typical producer you know tan the gold chain the hawaiian shirt it was funny and then uh he basically offered me blood spur too and uh i signed a five picture deal and but you know how that is it was all kind of there is a similarity between you and jean-claude of course because you know i pick out his confidence and you know what we're talking about yeah you know when i was younger actually if you look at my brother my brother looks even more like him than i do but if if if if i see pictures of him i go oh i can see it but if you see us next to each other we don't look anything alike no but it's like you're you're built you're you've got the the good looks and you know so did you ask well i think i've been told that i'm uh a stereotypical good-looking white martial arts guy as well i love it i love it and you are you are you're not the only one that's um gone on the coattails i know i know i know yeah [Music] later on i got the chance to meet vandam again and it was really really funny i actually found out that he was kind of putting everything on hold but he was telling everybody that he will do it so they kind of had me on hold and wanted him to do it but then in the end he couldn't do it and then i did it and that's just life you know how that's smart business yeah it is and you know look i i mean he's the man you know he was so or still is so amazing uh what he did in bloodsport and kickboxer and yeah i mean it completely blew the doors wide open didn't it i mean before him there was like i suppose chuck norris and then bang the new the new goal seagal after chuck norris there was segal well they they were at the same time though him and vanda really i that's the way i remember it late 88 above maybe right i kind of remember seagal because oh you know what you're right i think actually i think cigal was even after vandam maybe yeah i think it was first mandate because i remember it was first van damme and then i remember seagal and it was so unique what he did with this aikido i thought it was very very cool we'd never seen anything like that had we it was incredible to see the first four or five movies that seagal did were like incredible and i personally loved how violent they were i mean out of that i mean it was cool breaking the bones yeah seeing it in all this gory detail in england they were always cut chopped up the violence so you try and get like a copy from somewhere else that had all the violence used to love it man oh they cut it oh in england yes now daniel i'm going to show you something okay and i just want you to go down memory lane just a little bit oh my god see this that's so funny god i'm like god look how young you know what's really funny you you look at this stuff and it kind of still holds up it's a little bit cha cha cha it's a little bit like that but it's a product of its time but it is it is i mean if you look at bloodsport now it's it's you know it doesn't compare to what we do these days but you know this is the way it was back in the early late 80s [Music] [Applause] when i look at the bloodsport fights it looks like it was filmed in that sort of basic american way of filming fights with the master and the cove one side always and at the time uh do you remember philip tan yes yeah philip tam was the flight coordinator stunt coordinator and um you know there were so many fights and it was pretty s like you said kind of standard cover we always had three cameras on one side three cameras on the other side do one white master and we shot full masters and did you film the whole fight sequence from beginning to end uh you know what i don't remember exactly but i do think we already did sections okay we're just watching from this point to this bit and then we'll we'll do the next bit and combination one two seven cover cover the crap out of it move up move eight to twelve cover the crap out of it i pulled my um so ass and uh floating ribs and just got wrecked and you know how it is when you do these fights you just go all day you go yeah and you know you know it's actually and i know it happened to you it happens to everybody the one time i got really badly hurt was actually fighting with chad and um do you remember chad had long hair do you remember him no i've seen some footage she was in one of the blood spores right he was actually this is actually a good story in baltimore too yeah we're talking about chad stehalski for people who don't know chad sterling is the director of the john wick movies and one of the most gifted martial artists you've ever seen in your life i've never have you had a chance to train with him i've had him teach me and take me through some drills at eighty seven eleven but i've not had then you know so you know yeah i've never i know a lot of incredible martial artists i've never seen anybody in my life who can show you ten different martial arts and he's an expert at everything it's crazy it's insane it's really crazy but anyhow so we were um philip tan was our fight coordinator but he had so much work i think we had like 40 fights in the movie so he gave chad one fight to do which was the fight against me and in the end it turned out that the the fight that chat choreographed in bloodsport 2 me against him was actually my best fight in the whole movie because there's a lot of trapping a lot of kicks i don't know if you remember it was really cool it was actually a very very very cool fight and chad had long hair and he was wearing his stretchy pants incredible and i remember um we're doing the fight scene and i was working already like 14 15 hours and i'm just kicking all day and i would just not stop i was like a terminator i'll just go go go and i remember i'm really tired and i'm doing this going through roundhouse kick and i come back with a hook kick and i go through and i go oh man i'm dead i can't breathe and i'm trying to bring it back and i just rip my body and i just hear pop here was it right there yeah i've done that i've done i did it on my last film debt collectors actually i didn't it wasn't that bad but i heard something oh it's the floating ribs you're basically screwed there's nothing you can do it took a long time to heal for sure well i they gave me about four days off then i just put a brace on it and i did and my left leg is my good leg so the rest of them youtube yeah oh i didn't know that yeah for you why is that for you um which is very very strange i'm actually right-handed but i'm left-footed so if you were playing soccer would you would you favor your right foot no left foot oh i kicked myself oh you're just weird then daniel i'm i know what that's you're not so funny that's exactly what chad says it's really strange i'm like crooked my left leg is best because my left leg is flexible my right leg is not because i've got one leg my left leg is longer than my right so that's why i favored the left because it was more flexible but um i've got some lower back problems because of it yeah not here yet anyway what was amazing is i remember i'm throwing the kick i'm coming back and i hear it pop and i go ah and he goes are you all right i said no i'm fine so we continue and i have to do a front kick and i remember i'm throwing the front kick and i just hear like pop again and i literally collapsed into his arms and he just grabbed me he goes you got to stop you got to stop and he put me on the ground and he goes put ice on it and i remember i was in thailand immediately they brought me to the hospital and we just did cortisone and like i had three four days off and then i just put a brace on and then i finished the rest of the movie i can't believe they gave you days off they did i would just back myself up on films and i got no day off yeah i actually it was impossible i mean we did all the stuff we do do acting and walking and talking we just switched the schedule around i mean i literally i couldn't move i was like i was like i couldn't even move this is the thing i mean when you do a lot of martial arts films a lot of action films the the odds are in some of the movies you're going to be injured or always not even a question yeah i mean but then there's some movies where you've got a serious injury and that sucks and you just got to deal with it and keep going right well i mean that happened to me many times to happen on the matrix happen on the escape plan every movie you get somehow hurt but it's usually i mean look it's like a pro fighter you never they never go into a fight 100 i would say you and me we probably go into a film what 70 80 maybe 80 go in injured right yeah from like 10 films ago exactly so you just do what you do you be as careful as you can but you know after the film you do rehab and that's what i do i just thank you these days my going to the gym is uh the first part of it is is all rehab yeah me too and then maybe i'll try and build some muscle yeah but you know i gotta make you a compliment i have to be very honest um when i when i saw you first um i remember uh i know isaac and he invited me to a screening and i remember i forgot which movie it was you were on a motorcycle oh yeah special forces special forces i remember you came up with that motorcycle damn who is that must kill him no listen let me tell you something i was so naive when i did that film that i thought to myself okay i'm going to be i'm an sas guy i'm living out in the wilderness i'm on a mission i wouldn't have cut my hair so i let my hair grow a little bit and then i thought well maybe i should cut it i'll tell you what i'll let the makeup just sort it out you know they're professionals they know what to do and then i get there and nobody like does anything with my hair and they say no you look great you look great and then throughout the whole film i've got this stupid bouffant and that very first shot where i take the helmet off all i saw was the complete mess with terrible hair so i'm glad to hear that you thought it looked like that you know that you see it for me it was the exact opposite it kind of reminded me of remember marlon brando and steve mcqueen when they came on the bike so funny you worried about the hair and we were going like yeah we might see the insecurities of the actor were all the same isn't it funny but what i wanted to say is um i remember it was probably i want to say did isaac direct in undisputed yes so then it was undisputed i think i went to another screening and i saw you kick for the first time i don't remember specialist forces really but i remember when i saw undisputed and you start and i saw you kick i was like holy crap now i really have to kill him now we have to get rid of him too big of a threat i'm just kidding um no but it was like it was really insane like i'm a pretty good kicker but i could never do those kicks you did it's impossible well this is the thing i mean you know i'm the generation before you so i was inspired greatly by of course bruce lee and then and then van damme and yourself and you know like laura and avadon at the same time and then we begin where you guys leave off and now you've got you know someone like jeremy marinas which i look at the kicks he does and i'm like jesus christ how does that how is that big which is insane yeah the trick is you work with him right yeah in close range right and he was phenomenal but what i'm saying is the next generation are gonna begin where the generation before finished you know they're gonna it's always gonna go like this isn't it but let me ask you this what was your background where you learned all those crazy kicks well taekwondo was the main martial art when i was a teenager and then i went into kickboxing okay um but you know i would just watch movies hong kong movies and i would see a new kick and i'd be like oh i want to do that and you know you would just go and you would train and he would practice and and just keep going until he could do it and i i went to wu shu i did some wushu to try and get we did wood chill yeah to try and get more of the giant you know the 360 butterfly kicks i mean you know back then no one you didn't know we didn't know much about wushu it was a kind of new thing in england the first time i ever saw a 360 butterfly kick was mark de caskas in only the strong where he's meant to be doing capoeira i couldn't understand what this kick was he did but you know i just watched movies and copied jackie chan films and that's amazing 1996. it's actually uh chad always tells me daniel that's one of your best moves chad sahelsky was the fight coordinator and brad martin who's that guy was actually the stunt coordinator they did it together and you know back then um true vengeance to us was kind of like an oman that's brad martin uh true vengeance was an homage to the hong kong movies like hard-boiled and the killer and uh we just loved and we shot this movie in 24 days we did sometimes 120 setups a day wow and you know what look i mean still it's this was fun this was so much fun i remember it was awesome so how many days did you have to shoot this fight here was just a day oh not a day it's probably a day but the whole truth was 24 hours at 24 days but you know what was always so fun to me i i would always bring my guys my buddies and we were like a little team back then it was chad sahelsky myself brad martin and um and tim uh tim rigby who doubled me and we would just be a little team and do all these movies together and then they became massive they became superstars and then i kind of lost them [Music] how old were you when we did matrix in two thousand order was i i was just get getting into the business i my first job was 99 so 2000 and i don't know oh okay 2003 yeah no 2001. came out 2003. i was jealous you were yeah because i wanted to be in the matrix come on yeah but you know what look i wanted anything at that point i was just getting started you know but i'm actually surprised that you should have been in the matrix i mean you really should have been i should have been in matrix four [Laughter] where is my phone call where you're not no i'm joking you should be i'm not in it though there's a lot of things that should have been you know us actors think we should be in everything right interesting to hear about because you've had um a different career path to a lot of people because you started off bam bloodsport 2 the sequels and you know you're thrust into the limelight as the star of these you know um very famous martial arts yeah and then i guess there was maybe a dip in the career and then you found you you went into the stunts and just talked about if you if you don't mind please don't okay you know this is actually really funny if you think about it i started out being an athlete martial artist who learned how to act that's what i was i was never an actor i never came to hollywood to be an actor i always all i wanted to do is martial art movies that's all i was interested in but i knew hey listen if you want to get into the business you got to learn how to act so once i got the job to do bloodsport 2 immediately i went to acting class immediately i met with grandmaster hill chose started training and prepped myself for two years for the movie once bloodsport happened and there was kind of a career happening i did a lot of lower budget independent movies and but immediately no i stick with the acting i i did my training but i always saw myself as like a martial arts actor i never said hey i'm an actor i felt more like a martial arts guy who gets a chance to act but i took the acting very seriously i went to drama school for 10 years and i just what i did then like you said i after all these lower lower budget action movies blood spread 2 blood for 3 what sport 4 we don't talk about true vengeance perfect target a whole bunch more um in 2000 and in 2000 the casting happened for matrix and i remember uh sahelsky called me and he said hey daniel i want you to go right away call your agent they're looking for parts in matrix reloaded and i called my agent i went in and i thought oh my god this is it this is like very secret nobody knows i show up everybody was there everybody who knew how to kick who had a certain height you had to be six feet just because of keanu six one you had to be six feet and you had to have a certain look there were like hundreds of guys lucky enough i got the part i did matrix and then um you know matrix came out everybody was everybody was like oh my god this is the big break for you not really quite a big part in the movie you know it was a good fight it was a good part but i don't think it was big enough to make a splash where there were too many stars in this movie so i even took a publicist and all of that but it didn't really but anyhow so like you said earlier the career like the low budget movies kind of went away in the early 2000s they just disappeared yeah i was very lucky they just disappeared i was very lucky i got a tv show called mortal kombat which kind of which was amazing that was one of the most fun fun times i had and i didn't know how many seasons of that did you do one season 24 episodes oh okay yeah we got canned unfortunately it was very sad then i remember i did another tv show in 2003 kind of like a soap but then it got a little bit businessman counted down you know nobody did the low budget action movies anymore and i couldn't really jump over into just acting and uh and i went like hmm what do i do and i called chad and dave and i said hey guys look i want to do your world and they were like no you're an actor i'm like i'm not on that what are you talking about i'm not an actor i'm a i'm an action guy in chat goes yeah you're actually you're an action actor that's what he said to me so i went to 87 11 and i just start training with the guys and i just put myself on the same level like everybody i'm i'm cleaning mats i'm cleaning the floor i'm training all day and i got into the world of more action acting and that's when movies happened like parker john wick atomic blonde which was probably one of the smartest things i could have done it was one of the most amazing things imagine being on the top of the truck being in matrix fighting lawrence fishburne who is a legend who is just incredible the most amazing guy and he did most of his own stuff that was i got a bloody lip right here is it all all green screen this all green screen we're probably 20 feet up and there was there were there was nothing around there were just lights around us that was what was the experience like for you working with young ping and his team they're tough and you've worked with them you know how they are they're messed up stronger harder yeah you won't get a pat on the back when you do a good oh you do not do that they'll definitely let you know about it oh why oh my god you cannot screw up and but you know they were great i learned a lot and uh it was probably one of the most fun things i've ever done i mean look at this look look at the business we're in it's insane this was such a huge movie and this sequence is fantastic how many days to shoot this fight it was a long time because we did everything we did green screen we did motion capture we did um we did a little bit of everything i would say i mean i don't really remember but i would say probably a week in fact i could guess yeah probably a week he was getting fully stuck in lawrence fishburne is it and he's doing he's look good and that's all him i mean that's really all him except like of course the hard hits but it's all him he's good at remembering the choreography did you feel so 100 he was and you know what he was an absolute gentleman i remember when chad stahlski did the first matrix he did it somewhere in 1998 i think yeah eight or six at 99 it came out so i saw a lot like 97ish maybe so i remember i worked with him the whole time on all the movies we did we did like five movies together then his career just blew up he started doubling keanu he went with him to do matrix and he came back and i remember he told me you got to see this movie when i saw the first matrix movie i tell you i was in the movie theater i i was literally shell shock i sat me too absolutely it's one of the best action films ever i was sitting in the movie theater like i couldn't move i was fascinated i was blown i actually sat to i watched it again i watched it twice back tomorrow yeah well i remember vividly being in the cinema and that moment when neo um he's getting kicked out of him by uh agent smith and he looks at the stairs as if to think i better get out of here and then he just looks back and he says i'm gonna take him on at that moment i remember that in the cinema being like come on that film will get you like that is brilliant and for me as a hong kong movie fan of all the martial arts to see a hollywood movie take that hong kong way and show it and all its glory was like wow this is what we've all been waiting for now hollywood's doing it the right way right that's the way i felt and then there's those shots where you know keanu reeves is gonna hold the helicopter and then she's swinging towards camera you don't know that there's a window there and the glass breaks shots like that just it's just amazing i i and that was probably the first time when i saw that movie i was like damn i really wanted to be in this movie tell people that don't know about what it's like to be a part of 87 11 who are now the greatest um fight team in hollywood so you know i always say 87-11 is my home away from home and i'm absolutely blessed that i can go there every day i mean i go to 87 every day that's what i do when i'm not working we're there by 7 30 we train with chad we do our judo we do our jiu jitsu we do our kicking or boxing and when i'm not working i'll i'll probably spend about four hours there training just training just learning i'm very jealous of this to be honest because i know that if i was living in la i would be there all the time because you know the amount of talent and yeah you were talking about chad stehalski earlier and how many martial arts disciplines he's learnt and is aware of and if you're part of 8711 you are required to train in all these different styles right right of course and um the great thing is like everybody has something to give like for an example um right now we're into knife fighting we're doing a lot of sword fighting we're doing uh chad is really into jiu-jitsu so we're doing a lot of jiu-jitsu and this is something and i tell you this and this is something chad we you know every day we talk about movies it's something he talks about very vividly as well he says all of this doesn't really matter it doesn't really matter what people remember is remember bruce lee going like that doing this they remember moments the in the in between all of this is great but nobody really remembers you know but they remember the moments when you stop when you turn around when you look at somebody people will remember that the acting yes those little touches like that [Laughter] it's very true because the general public you know punches a punch you kick as a kick yeah i've done a 720 with a kick on the end it might as well have been a 360 as far as they're concerned nobody knows i mean i have to say to me who knows the arts i'm like holy crap whoa yeah what just happened well look at the wires on the flip side of that when you think about something like john wick you know you can be a legitimate judo player and you're watching john wick can you see legitimate moves going on and you know perfectly executed techniques and so you can enjoy it on that level but then if you don't know anything about it you're just going to enjoy it because you know you know what's going well yeah that's actually what chad did he brought in a whole new game chad and david leach they both brought in this new game for for uh john wick like this whole new way of fighting nobody else did before and people kind of went like oh my god that's so they called they called it gun fu you know a whole new new world yeah i'm fighting with judo and kicking and punching it's very difficult to create something new everything's been done all right so when you can do that i mean that's a testament to how inventive and creative you are to be able to i mean you know we've kind of all seen it before anyway but it was changed and wrapped up in a different way there is something that we'd never seen before and that's very difficult to do i call it being you know that's why i really enjoyed um i really really really enjoyed your live your last movie arrangement because in the past i've seen you kick a lot which is great but in avengement and i actually had this conversation with jesse i just loved that you didn't kick you threw like one kick i saw one or two kicks more of a brawler actually even those kicks to me i was like i don't want to see any kicks i just loved you were just like this crazy guy throwing punches grabbing guy head butting it was so good and that to me i always try to form my mark the way i fight around the character so i try for every guy a little bit of a different style you know i'll always do the same that's what i'm trying to do yeah no exactly you've got to tell the story first and you've got to portray the character the way the character should be portrayed i mean for me it's like i have a fan base that want to see a certain thing sometimes i'll get a script and it's like okay we need to add a bit more action and sometime some opportunity for me to have fist fights because i know that you know i'm not stupid that's what people want to see but i will do it around you know who's the character and what type of fighter is he and you know you can have a great fight that's well like your fight that you have in parker is a brilliant fight sequence and it's very rough and very um you know realistic there's no like fantasy cooks or anything fancy really but it's a great fight because it's so intense yeah jason is awesome you you did a fight with him right oh that was oh yeah it's fantastic to work with he's so yeah it's just great here that was a fight scene actually second in the director by david leach he brought me on had to audition for the part was very tough very big director um this we went at it like crazy i think we shot this fight in about two or three days very very very cool fight um jason absolute stud did almost everything himself he's so gifted so talented um i mean he goes for it i mean we were knocking the crap out of each other i mean look at that i threw that guy oh it was just great yeah it's hot charcoal fight sequence that's a version like these little gags here like using the environment around you making it really messy yeah we went from the living room to the bathroom back onto the balcony um and there was actually a very interesting uh little story about this where taylor hackford who directed this movie i don't know if you're familiar with him huge director was nominated for uh ray um i had an audition for him and he i read and he goes i like what you did i really like you but um i have one i have one request i said you need to do all your own stunts and i said of course i always do it's no problem he goes well you're going out a window and i said sure okay what do you need me to do he goes well i need you to go out of the window and i need you to go down 300 feet and i'm like okay he goes can you do it i'm like and i'm like absolutely no problem yeah give me the job and then i'll think about it i'm like of course i'll do it no problem boss um i went to see david and david goes yeah he really wants you to do everything i said all right i'll do it no problem i mean you know how hard can it be i'll be on a descender i go down 300 feet no problem um so david leach comes up to me he goes hey you sure you want to do this i said uh he goes look i'll get you double if you want to and i said i promised he goes you sure okay they hooked me up i go how hard can it be i'm going backwards like this i'm not even going nowhere i'm going the stunt coordinator mike masso is a very good friend of mine mike goes all right daniel for the first time i want you to go ahead first and i just i just remember my heart kind of like just dropped a little bit and i'm like okay so they they harnessed me up and i hold this massive setup all these rakes on top of the building it was like a 27 28 story building and i was like okay i thought i'm going to go up and they just dropped me and i'm like no no we pull you from the bottom i'm like okay oh [ __ ] so they hooked me in so i'm like right up i'm like this here i am like this and uh they hook me up and they put you on kind of like a v they they pick you here in the neck and they pick you on the bottom so you don't break your back it's like this and they they pick me up they pull me up and you're hanging there and you go like all right it's five feet 15. 30 50. you're kind of going okay and you're on a wire this thing like this yeah 100 feet 300 feet you're looking down the wind is just blowing you over like this and it was in boca raton and i just remembered the boats were like this like big sailing boats like this tiny yeah and i wasn't really scared i was just more kind of excited and then i remember david leech came up and he goes um he's on top of the building and he looks over this big grin on his face so you still want to do it and i'm like yeah he goes well here's your chance i can take i'm already doing that and i'm like i'm up here and he goes all right three two and i just heard the countdown two one and i just remember this i'm dropping and i just felt my stomach kind of going like and it took one second and then i'm like holy crap this is unbelievable and i'm going down playing superman and just flying and screaming and i just remember david screaming down going don't have so much fun god damn it [Laughter] did you have to do it again i did it probably 20 times so the last part was where he just kicks me in the head and i just drop like from 300 feet to like 250 only a little part and then i remember that was actually i got a little bit unlucky on that one because i took too much of a head reaction i went like this and my whole body tilted so imagine i i tilt like this but my legs went that way my knees and i get dropped and there was a little bit in the building the building was like this and there was a little bit of a ledge like that and my knees just went bomb right on that ledge oh my god that's a bad one i'll tell you and thank god i had hard knees on it would have completely shattered my knees but i got very very my knees were this big that's a good story what happened the next day well the fight in the apartment of course that way wouldn't it we did first of all and then we did the fight so i showed up with bad knees yeah what are your memories of this day that was that was really fun i love keanu he is such a flying armbar we just learned all judah all jojitsu um i'm a huge keanu fan i just love that man he is such an awesome that was really cool he's that was cool he did all of that um he's just such a wonderful man and he works harder than anyone you can imagine he i worked pretty hard he works hard that was pretty rough here huh he works harder than me he will do it 50 times if he has to he will not give up till it's perfect such a dedicated man so talented such a great actor he really created this incredible franchise with chat together and david and look at that i mean he does everything it's amazing because you know we know how difficult all this stuff is and uh he could certainly take the easy route as the actor and uh call in the stunt double i mean i know that's not the way chad would want to do it this is a funny moment right here um where he's choking me i'm telling you i'm leaning in look at my eyes my eyes are popping out i really wanted him to choke me and he did and it was great and i have a funny story about this i keep going back to chat and i go hey chat so uh i'm coming back right and he goes you're dead i said yeah why i mean he just choked me he goes you're dead i'm like no but you know what i mean i have this idea you know i could come back i'm not really dead and i you're dead you died what really impresses me about john wick i mean obviously all the gun play and everything but um the idea to take what is really a very basic simple martial arts style judo i mean it was the first style i did as a kid yeah i was 10 years old judo was the first martial i did but you know you wouldn't necessarily look at judo and go oh that's cinema that is very cinematic but that's what they've done the fight scene we did in the um in the club do you remember that fight i haven't done masters in a very very long time but we had no time to shoot this fight we probably had four hours daddy dave come up to me they go daniel pad up you're gonna do two masters i'm like what whole fight we did the whole fight twice from the beginning to the end every move i swear i thought a bloody heart attack strategically placed camera angles and just they knew exactly what they wanted we just didn't have time we just needed to get what we could it's not rocket science is it it's not pretty simple but i think the the difference is you know obviously guys like you and me we've been training martial arts all of our lives we can perform and do something that only needs to be just captured from a wide and we're going to make it look good because that's what we're trained to do and i think that's what the matrix changed about things in hollywood where it said the way keanu reeves and the rest of them trained for the matrix so that they could do it in a wide and make it look good like they would in hong kong really i think that's what started this whole movement of 8711 bringing in actors and saying look we're going to teach you to do this for real we're going to train you until you're good enough and we're going to compute it in nice wide shots that show the action and all of its beauty yeah you watch keanu i mean i i see him all the time he trains hours and hours and hours to become who he is and and that's what it is but i think in the end it's really about just capturing you know if you really think about it it's my it's not much more different than an acting scene you know you want to you don't want to start doing all of this cuts and acting see if if the editing distracts you from the fight it's not good you want to just kind of sit back and see what's happening and if you have to cut you cut but don't do it too much yeah it's much better to be have a slow push in yeah base as you recognize the emotion building in his eyes and we see what he's going through than just you know a load of nonsense and it depends on the style of the scene i suppose but 100 and every you know every director has a little bit of a different style ah by the way you and i are up against each other oh yes should we talk about that it's been postponed when are we going to find out so what what what we up against each other with dan we're actually both nominated for best fight um first underwater's award and um which i think your fight is fantastic uh the one i did with jason and um that was directed by david leach and uh greg greg ramenter um if you look at this fight now in that fight they would like more cuts it's just a different style and it was fine but it was more the style of the movie they wanted it a little bit more cutty and i think jason likes that as well in parker we went with longer shots which i kind of like but it's depending on what movie you're making what style you know i prefer less cuts well the edit should be in the right place is what i like but yeah i'm bringing up the uh this tourist stunt award i'm very happy to be involved in that because you know there's uh hobson shore and there's uh captain marvel and all these big movies with 150 million dollar budgets or whatever you're amazing my little movie that we made on a shoestring budget and for this for the stunt community to recognize one of my friends i'm very proud of that that means a lot to me about who wins but just to be recognized in that way it never matters who wins yeah trust me to be nominated the year of the covet tell us about fetch then daniel um assure that you direct it yes sir um fetch is something that's very very close to me in 2006 i had a little bit of an injury you know like how it is we get injured i had to take off for about four months and i just wanted to do something productive i went up to chad and dave and i said hey guys i'm really thinking about trying to direct something got the support chatter dave just opened 87 11. um dave helped me finance it chad helped me with the second unit of directing david came in and said hey i'll start and i wrote the script i wrote a director produced it and it was probably i have to say one of the most fun times i've ever had in my life it was amazing and and i really and the great thing is if you do a film and you direct something and even though it's just short it's all in your hands everything in that movie you see is exactly what i wanted it's a vision i had and everybody supported me and of course i was very lucky that i had talented guys like chad say hells and david leach supporting me it's kind of like um a private eye almost film noir type thing isn't it that's exactly what i wanted and i at the time i was really really inspired by a guy richie i was a huge fan of lock talking to make smoking barrels huge fan of get shorty so i wanted to do something that was a little bit more fun funny enough i started out writing it just as like a hardcore action movie and the more i wrote i was like oh no i want to make this fun and i have to give a lot of credit to david and that's actually that's chad sahelsky that's david leitch so these are the two directors of the first john wick for people that don't know the big stars in the world right now directing look at that yeah well he knows how to sell a punch that guy and he knows how to deliver a punch that that's surprising and you know and actually the driver here was tim tim rigby one of the best stunt drivers that is a blatant look at me i'm actually doing this stunt and he did it i wanted it i mean he wanted to do it himself and i always thought it would be really fun because in every film you see this but then everybody goes oh my god it's it's not the it's not the it's a stunt double yeah and i freeze frame on him so we know it's him hey listen if it's good enough for jackie chan it's good enough for the rest of us exactly i remember david leach calling me and saying hey daniel i want you to play a guy i want you to play the soldier on you know atomic blonde i was like oh wonderful charlize theron i was like damn i mean charlize that's unbelievable i mean she is incredible yeah what uh have you got have you met her i haven't but i was impressed with the work she put in for that oh my god she is the most amazing lady you can imagine just absolute down to earth works really hard and she would train with us at 87 11 and i would see her every day that was you know what that was one of the most incredible things i've done in my career so here i'm working with an oscar winning actress who is six feet tall she's not scared to get dirty and go and fight i mean we were we were beating the crap out of each other and she was not worried she wanted me to go after her of course safely but i went after her i i mean i didn't pull punch i went after her and i will never forget there was there was one part in the film at the very end when i throw her into the wall and i fall to the ground and we're both completely destroyed so david came up with the idea with sam hargrave to do these long takes and then stitch it together and i remember i'm off camera i'm watching this oscar-winning actress take a hit fall to the ground she plays the pain she crawls across the floor and i'm looking and i go like oh my god this is incredible how good she was and i got so inspired and i went like watch this and i come into camera and i do my thing and i and and that and that's one of my favorite fights ever and if you really and you as an expert martial artist not much martial arts we did it's just very vicious vigorous just dirty and nasty but nobody cares if i kick her punch she was it was more about the acting in that fight this was so incredible and here she hits me with this cooker this hot plate boom wang she is just i mean she is something else i tell you that yeah that is the way actually i mean probably a necessity but you're playing up to the how tired everyone is and no one's a superhero and here she gets me bam and then this is this is one of my favorite moments here i think i have her and she stabs me in the eye bomb she stabs me and now watch this this is so cool from all the films david leech has made this is actually my favorite film great music yeah he's a totally he's a music total music guy he loves the 80s oh it's fabulous amazing sequence yeah that's what it's all about right there now this is fantastic and this was about not editing this this was insane i mean watch this no cuts we have to do a full master and it's what is it about a three-minute fight one master everything no cuts it was so tough and this guy is a very good stunt man yeah and it wasn't gonna he's totally fine about that and that guy was so freaking strong this is real i'm fighting him for real i had to fight this guy but that's why it makes it it's it's this is real i mean there's no acting here we were going at it during the long take you have to make sure that those hits are sinking in don't need to know the body because you see that smack you just did here that was a real smack the director told me from the from the very beginning he said you're absolutely wrong for this part i'm looking for a guy who's short bald and chubby i'm like okay that's not me um he's been casting for like a month couldn't find anybody all my friends already read for the part um and he wanted somebody who really understands about doing nothing and he and he told me goes i want you to do nothing and you know you've been in drama school i understood what that meant yeah and uh and uh a lot of people had a hard time but this was actually really funny he comes crawling out watch i come i grab him and i knock myself out now who came up with that idea is that in the script or that actually that this was actually my idea here oh that's that's perfect that was actually my idea you could imagine that actually happening though couldn't you and then watch this this is one of my finally i could do the nunchucks and then it was 25 years i swear to god nobody ever lets me do nunchucks and i remember i get the call from wade and he goes hey daniel they really like you but let me just ask you a question do you know how to do nunchucks by any chance and i'm like um give me five minutes i was at 87 11. i'm doing a video with two nunchucks and i send him the video and i go well this is what i can do but it's hilarious that you're you you know you're showing your skills to this hitman look at what i can do i'm going to do it oh this is funny how did you come across this how did you see this in english oh you have that show back in england oh yeah yeah yeah it's such a good show huh so i want to talk about a fight scene now down that you admire that doesn't feature me or you and uh that's hero right one of my favorite martial art action movies just absolutely love that film i think the director did a fantastic job with how he tells the story in this fight yeah so look at this beautifully he's seeing the fight in his head how the the many different ways it can go that's what i'm taking from this and you had the pleasure you had the pleasure fighting him right i thought both of these chaps uh donnie and hitman4 but also gently wow i'm actually almost jealous this isn't i didn't realize you fought gently but this isn't i've fought them all down except for you oh my god we've got to make it happen me too it's okay we'll do old style let me ask you a question what do you think do you think they shot this 22-23 frames or do you think it was shot 24 i think with weapons it automatically looks pretty fast um when you're twirling these weapons around you don't really want to make that look quicker than it is sometimes um so i think they'll they'll decide depending on the shot whether they need to go under crank it or overcrack it yeah that's interesting you know my goal is that i can just keep doing this and i train i'm trying to be as safe as i can try to make sure my body will keep up but hopefully i want to do fights since my goal is to do fight scenes with 60. you know but do fight scenes that matter done some fantastic stuff over the years daniel and uh right back at you oh yeah yeah yeah now i appreciate you doing this and um you keep it up mate we've got plenty of stuff to come i'm sure yeah there's a lot to come there's a lot of good stuff is happening so i'm very excited okay thanks then daniel [Music] you

Channel: Scott Adkins

Views: 283,103

Keywords: scott adkins, Boyka, Undisputed, Martial Arts, daniel bernhardt, the matrix, atomic blonde, barry, bloodsport, jean claude van damme

Id: d_jEf4zv-RE

Length: 57min 32sec (3452 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/LupinThe8th]

The MST3K actor with the most fascinating life has to go to Michael Ray, who played Bud in Space Children.

Born in the UK to a Brazillian diplomat, took up skiing in Switzerland which got him cast in a movie, acted in about a dozen other things before quitting to focus on school, went to Harvard, competed in the Olympics three times, and married a childhood friend who just happened to be the heir to the Heineken beer fortune, giving him a net worth of about $4 billion.

Dude's life story would be a way better movie than Space Children.

[u/xiaxian1]

I beg you to check out Rifftrax‘s Santa’s Summer House which stars 90s action stars like him, Cynthia Rothrock and others. It’s from the makers of A Talking Cat?! so you know it’s extra terrible.

https://www.rifftrax.com/santas-summer-house

You can also watch it for free on Tubi.

[u/ChainsawSuperman]

Been seeing him in a car commercial lately.

[u/NonMagicBrian]

The episode of Barry that he’s in is incredible. Outstanding fights and actually a really funny performance from him as well.