Film Courage: The film American Fighter you're the co-writer Shaun? Is that right?
Shaun Paul Piccinino, Filmmaker: Yes I co-wrote it and directed it.
Film Courage: Great and it has martial arts elements to it?
Shaun: Yep oh yeah yep there's martial arts so definitely drew from some of that experience and
it's interesting because it takes place in 1981 so it's kind of pre-MMA in that
whole thing so it deals with kind of illegal underground fighting. So certainly martial
arts involved but there's also this kind of street fighting/brawling thing that happens as well and
wrestling and so it integrates a lot of different fighting styles.
Film Courage: if we take a look at the first page for the screenplay that you
co-wrote American fighter our protagonist is Reza and you see kind of his life
it seems like it jumps back to different parts can you talk about that?
Shaun: Yeah so the main character actually Ali he the opening of the film which which I felt was was
important was to kind of tell this story kind of jumping back and forth and it opens with him
in kind of the fight of his life the movie starts with this you see some images some
flashes and pieces of this fight and where he's kind of going to be at the lowest point as well
and then we take a step back and the film is then going to lead up to that moment again
and the reason for that was it wasn't originally written that way this was
a you know the later and then to the shooting draft we decided that it was important to have
show that element right away number one to kind of it's that big impactful start like get audiences
interested and curious like wait a minute why is this happening why are these two people fighting
and there's a huge crowd around them and and you know what is it all about we see our hero fall
right like right in this the end of this beginning fight he gets almost knocked unconscious and so we
go from there to him waking up in his college dorm room and that's you know several weeks earlier or
months earlier he's worried about his his family's supposed to be flying because he's
from Iran and he's worried about and this is 1981. So the setting is the Iraq/Iran war had
just started and it was a terrible time in that area and just like two years earlier was the Iran
hostage crisis that happened and so in America at that time it was not a great time to be Iranian
and so he had to face those kinds of issues but so he wakes up this college dorm room
he's got a roommate who's a good friend and but he's really afraid for his parents he wants
them to make it over from Iran safely to the U.S. and so and his roommate's trying to assure
him that he's going to be fine and they've got wrestling practice and so the idea the concept
is he is there for like a wrestling scholarship and that's part of what helped get him out of Iran
Iran I should say not Iran but Iran helped get him out of Iran because of his wrestling prowess
and so he's now trying to help his parents get over because his mom is sick she has cancer
and so he's trying to get her to to some more western medicine and that's kind of what jumps off
the the story so in the first page if I remember correctly there's is like a sort of these
different flashes so he's getting beat up then you see like a happy moment where he's running
and saying mom I'm coming to America look at the letter or something there's a flash of the picture
of the Ayatollah and then there's the mother being hooked up to tubes so all these like sort
of things are coming at you yeah that's when he gets knocked unconscious he flashes back to his
childhood when he was back in Iran and he's kind of flashing to the moment that he found out that
his mother that something was wrong with his mom so that's kind of that's what's happening there
he's not running excited that he's going to to America what's happening is actually his father is
telling him he's going to send him there because he'll be safer oh okay sorry so he's going to go
live with his uncle in America and he's actually disappointed like he's he's scared about this
prospect of having to leave his family but they you know recognize that he has the opportunity
there he's obviously really good at wrestling and that can that's what's creating this opportunity
for him to get out of the really bad situation that was happening at that time and so
it's almost a nightmare of what he's experiencing and that leads him into waking up in his dorm room
and so yes he hears a new news broadcast you know he's he's that's it's maybe a little bit
different in the actual film versus what's on the page but basically there's news broadcasts
happening talking about the events that are that are happening during that time and that kind of
crosses with what his father is telling him about I need to send you to America and and then him
rushing to see his mother and I always had this like kind of haunting image of following him
kind of in you know a slower motion as he's making his way down this hallway to this door
that's cracked open and as he as he pushes the door open he sees his mother and she
looks at him smiling and as she tries to stand up to talk to him she collapses and
that's the the terror he's he's having in that moment it's actually based on something that
really happened to me so that was that was a moment directly ripped from my own childhood
and my mother is still here so I'll preface it that way but she had an aneurysm so it wasn't
cancer but it was an aneurysm and she collapsed in a very similar way and it was that terrifying
you know and I had my own kind of fevered nightmares for years and years about it and so
that's a little piece of me that made it into the the script there that's melded with other kind of
memories from Ali as well Ali Afshar because he produced it and this character is actually based
on him now this story has some real elements but other ones are you know we fabricated for for for
the movie but the character himself is based on Ali and his because he's also a wrestler and all
of that stuff and he did come over from Iran and and all that have some similar experiences there
so you really see the stakes are high so it's not just he's being pulled from his homeland
leaving his family there's government turmoil his mother is sick so everything's kind of thrown in
that first page all stakes are like you know what he's dealing with yep right there okay yep okay
did page one did it evolve did it change was it definitely did yeah it definitely evolved and at
first we didn't see that fight happening and right away it did always kind of start with that dream
so that was there from the beginning but yeah it evolved there was many many different drafts of
it and we we experimented with different ways to open it and ultimately that's what we settled on
was kind of yeah throwing all the all the and I there is a kind of a funny story to as to why
we ended up going that direction and within the movie because the time it was it was the summer
what was the school year after the summer that Star Wars empire strikes back came out
and so within the script that was all the rage at the time like everybody was talking about
especially obviously the first Star Wars was such a huge success and then this follow up
with Yoda and everything and the controversial ending of empire strikes back sorry spoilers but
Darth Vader is Luke's father that's like all anybody talked about at that time and
so we worked that into the script I'm a huge Star Wars nerd myself I love Star Wars and so
a lot of that my personality was coming out through the script in that way too so we have
Ali's roommates characters really into Star Wars and he can't believe that Ali has never seen
Star Wars so that is a running joke through the whole script and he's doing Yoda impressions very
terribly by the way but doing them nonetheless and and so I thought that was a really fun thing to to
help set the tone and time place that this movie was set but the other thing that I thought about
was looking at great movies like that like the original Star Wars how does it open
it opens with such a bang I mean it's just right off the bat action is happening spaceships are
flying overhead lasers are going you know you just get all this all the stakes are set right there
and so that influenced how the opening pages of our movie happened it was like obviously we don't
have spaceships and all that fun stuff but we want to throw it in your face right away like start it
with a bang and hopefully get the audience hooked right there right from the first flash you see on
screen and like whoa what's happening oh my gosh it's a fight you know and oh look at this kick
and this punch and oh he's oh no he's he's down already you know is is directly kind of influenced
from Star Wars and like how the rebels immediately their ship gets captured by the bad guys and all
hope looks lost right away you know so yeah with American fighter are we establishing I'm sorry is
it Reza is it is he is he the main character or not Ali oh sorry for some reason I may have sent
you I may have sent you a draft that had the wrong name like oh okay we did play with it not being
Ali at one point so that's probably the draft you got no problem I was searching
for those drafts and I couldn't find because again a different computer three years ago
so I think I must have sent you the wrong one on accident in page one of American fighter are we
establishing Ali's kind of personality or we're just more seeing the stakes that he's against
I think yeah it's more about the stakes that he's against because in the first page we don't get to
see maybe a ton of his personality but that does come out right kind of in this in the
the subsequent pages you get to know him a little bit more and and comes out in some of the playful
banter with him and his roommate and and but the the story does get very serious very quick for
Ali so unfortunately he doesn't get uh a lot of lighthearted time in this in this particular film
is this first page still the opening of the movie more or less yeah there were some tweaks that that
in some stylistic choices that we played with but it's not exactly but yeah there's a lot of
it is still there so what was the log line for American Fighter did you or like if you were
going to do your elevator pitch what was it sort of oh my gosh it's been so long fight club meets
wrestlers yeah it really is it's like got equal parts Rocky and and Karate Kid I mean those are
those it's got a lot of heart and and and blood sport I don't know how many people know bloodsport
but it's kind of an amalgamation of all those things but again like I said the the heart and
the reason why he fights is to try and save his mother so that's kind of at the core of it
and that kind of sets it apart from those movies in a way but yeah it's the it's the journey for
this character Ali like how far is he willing to go for for love you know for family and it's
a love story about his there is a love interest in it and played by the awesome
Allison Paige she's amazing but the the core of the love story is actually that for his
his mother you know and he's willing to do anything to help save her and including
fighting in underground bare-knuckle brawls putting his you know life at risk
if it means he can save her because the story is actually very tragic his father is killed
when they try and leave the country and it has to deal with the with the the the events that were
going on at that time so how many drafts did you have of the script oh my gosh lots lots probably
too many to count like official drafts you know we go through the different colors once we we
started pre-production probably good six or seven or something like that that's like from initial
like breaking maybe more like five but yeah all in at least a dozen yeah at least probably more.