I have with me, of course, the
directors of The Gray Man.
The Russo Brothers, Joe and Anthony.
Hello, guys.
Hey, man. How are you?
Good. How are y'all doing today?
Good.
So I wanted to start off
with telling you guys that we
actually had you on last year,
but over Zoom, it was like the first
week of our show.
I think it was like March 5th of
like last year we had you on
the show, you were coming remote and
we were treated to some pixelation.
So that's that's Joe on the left.
He's slightly more clear today.
Yeah, I was eating so I just hit
my pixel eight, but.
Yeah.
Oh, I'm so sorry, guys.
I don't know what's going on.
My pizza was fresh, I had to eat it while it was hot.
Oh, yeah. You know, that's always a
dilemma that I have.
So I had the it's called the pizza
pixelate button.
The Pizza Pixelation.
Yeah, I'm familiar with it.
Yes. You were actually filming The
Gray Man at that period of time.
Is that true?
Yeah, probably through
during the pandemic, yeah.
Yeah.
It was not easy to execute during
the pandemic.
I mean, it was.
I feel like like we've always been shooting
The Gray Man.
We shot that, but we got to
France the day it opened.
After a year we got to Prague the
day it opened after a year.
When did this get started?
When did you first see a script?
When did you first get looped in to
kind of the project?
How'd you get involved?
Ten year project?
Yeah. Wow. Ten year.
Wow. Yeah. We're working on Winter
Soldier, and we got a phone
call from a gentleman named Palak
Patel who had just read the
book, loved it, said, I think you
guys will really dig this, take a
look at it. Maybe we could do it
after Winter Soldier.
Yeah.
So I started adapting it while
we were shooting Winter Soldier.
They're companion pieces in a way,
there's some similar thematics.
They're both espionage.
You know, Six is obviously
not a superhero or
borderline superhero, but
and then we had to put the script
aside because we ended up taking
Civil War and then Infinity War and
then end game.
And then came back around.
From Cherry and Infinity War and
Endgame and all those movies.
What did you want to do differently
with The Gray Man and kind of what
made this a fun project for you
guys?
Well, this look at we've never
done a movie that this purely
action, you know, Joe and I have
been action freaks since we've been
very young and we've
played with action in various forms,
too, through some of our
storytelling. But we really wanted
to make a movie that was just
a gantlet, you know, and that we
could really chase some
of our favorite action movies of all
times.
In terms of the feelings those
movies gave us.
Yeah. What did you guys do to expand
on the action genre?
Because I noticed a lot of
uniqueness in it as compared to a
lot of other action movies that have
come before.
But with this particular movie, how
did you kind of try to push the
action genre?
A couple of things that we did.
One is that the lead character is
very different than Bond.
He's like the anti Bond.
You know, this is a proletariat
hero.
You know, it's for very working
class.
You know, tough guy who came
from an abusive family was in
prison. The only reason he's in
the CIA is that they pulled him out
of prison and conscripted him to
work for the CIA.
He's never known freedom his
whole life. He just traded one set
of bars for another.
So really unique character in that
regard. We also felt a very current
character is in existential
crisis and you know, but
doesn't indulge any of the glamor of
the craft. He's purely an assassin.
And ultimately, you know, this is
like a pugilistic parable between
two characters who are the same, you
know, different sides of the same
coin. Yeah.
And the Chris Evans character
in the Ryan Gosling character,
one Ryan Gosling, his character
leans towards humanity.
There's someone he cares about in
the film that he wants to protect.
It pulls him out of the gray and
into the light he's forced to
commit.
And Evan's character, who is an
agent of chaos, who,
you know, just,
you know, just wants to kill people.
There's a lot of camera techniques
that we use in the movie.
Yeah, yeah, it's. And I keep using
the word chaos, but we like
controlled chaos in our action.
We wanted pure kinetic energy.
So we're using what we call the
speed. It's a speed drone.
It's a very small drone, probably
not much bigger than like these
water bottles here.
And it could travel at 60, 70
miles an hour.
It can pass very close to actors
without hurting anyone.
It'll go through small spaces so
it gives you shots
that you've never seen before.
How was it for the actors to work
with something like that?
Something so advanced and new,
and especially like flying around.
It took a couple of takes...
It was actually pretty intimidating
because it moves so fast.
And here's the thing it's operated
by like a 20 year old with a VR
headset. I was just like standing
there zone that.
With a joystick.
And it's whipping by people.
It's like it is scary.
And you can hear it coming and it
goes past you like a Ferrari.
But here's the thing.
The good news is it's light enough
where even if it does hit you, it's
not going to do serious damage.
So, you know, that's it.
But it's still it takes you a while
to understand that.
Sure.
Yeah. Not to get off topic for a
second, but I do have some questions
coming in from our viewers right
now. But I would love to ask you
something I think comes up a lot, is
that you guys often dip your hands
in a lot of different genres.
Someone asks, Would you ever
consider doing a horror movie?
Sure. We love it.
I mean, Evil Dead, you know, is
I don't know. We feel like we talk
about movies constantly, but it's
because we're film fans.
We grew up loving movies and we
watched a lot of damn movies when we
were younger.
And, you know, a couple of
classic horror films are, you
know, were a main staple of our
diet. Phantasm.
I'd love to do a Phantasm movie.
What about a musical?
That, too, would love to do a
musical. In fact, we've been talking
to a few contemporary
artists, including the Weeknd,
about, you know, trying to get a
musical off the ground.
I'd love to work with someone who
wants to do an experimental musical
that, you know, I thought what he
did at the
during a Super Bowl show was
awesome. I'd love to see that
as a movie.
I want to focus also on the
characters in The Gray Man, too,
especially the casting.
What, in your mind, made Chris
Evans and Ryan Gosling such good
positions for foils?
Gosling's great because, you know,
The Gray Man doesn't
doesn't talk much throughout the
film.
And you need someone that can convey
an interior life in quiet moments.
Nobody better than Gosling than
that. I mean, he's fantastic at it.
He's incredibly sublime that
way.
But Gosling also has great
physicality.
He comes across like a complete
badass on screen, but he has
a very quirky sense of humor.
In a lot of ways, this movie is a
comedy.
Ultimately, the biggest priority of
the film was like, How much fucking
fun are you having?
And Are you laughing and
entertained?
And there's very few guys that that
have that combination of elements
the way that Gosling did.
And Evans
is, you know, a,
you know, a through and through
movie star. He did a Decade of
Marvel.
He's got incredible range as an
actor. We knew that from working
with him. He's nothing like Captain
America. And I don't mean that in
some disparaging way.
I just mean he's very charismatic,
he's very funny. He's high energy.
You know, cap is low key, stoic.
You know, it's so hard to find
somebody like Evans to want to play
a villain.
Yeah, it's true.
Because. And play it so well.
And so, I mean, the
comedic chops on him were actually
pretty crazy because it's not
something that I feel like most
people would know.
I guess from his trajectory
of being Captain America for ten
years.
Yeah, he started as the Human Torch
was more of a quip guy, you know,
but that's part of it. It's very
funny that way.
Hanging out with them on set.
I mean, just getting to know him
through the years.
He has a delivery style in his
conversation that's very rat
a tat tat. He's a great storyteller.
He's very funny, you
know, and it just we we were looking
for something for him that led some
to let him use those muscles.
Yeah.
I remember Evans saying, you know,
you know, it's gonna be a pain in
the ass, but I want to do a
mustache. We're like, Why is it a
pain in the ass? He goes, I'm going
to have to hide this for months
because people see me in a mustache
and see me all over Twitter.
It's going to become this big
conversation.
And you got to start making bald
caps for mustaches.
Now, I think that's everything you
gotta be doing.
So kind of going off that comedy
aspect, right? This movie has so
much comedy in it.
I feel like you guys like your
career as Arrested Development,
Community all over, I feel like
you've been able to trickle some
comedy in.
How how do you direct comedy
and how do you go about injecting
that into everything you do?
You know, we're very in general.
Joe and I are very performer
oriented. I love actors.
Joe even trained as an actor.
So we...
Badly.
We're very tuned into it.
And it's something that
like in order to be funny, you have
to be comfortable, you know, like to
really get the best out of comedic
performers, you have to sort of
get them in their space, in their
zone and let them do their thing
because it's very ephemeral comedy.
It's not something you can sort of
dial up.
Yeah, you know, because you can't
take anything too seriously.
And I think that's, that's in
everything that we do.
Yeah, that's a great outlook.
And you can see it in all the movies
too, because, you know, you go to
the movies, you want to have a good
time, right?
Right. And of course, you could be
introspective. You can do all these
other things, but at the end of the
day, you're going to the movies to
have a good time.
You don't want to walk in traffic
when it's over.
Right. And also can like, I
don't know, the world seems to be
getting more complicated by the day.
So do you really want to
you know, you're depressed in your
daily life.
Do you want to walk in the theater
and get even more depressed to walk
back out into the Depression?
You know, our job is to make
something that gives you a
little bit of a release, allows you
to go to a movie theater where it's
easier to address some issues.
There are some thematics in this
that are challenging and things like
that. If you want to embrace those
kinds of things, there are things
that are relevant going on in our
our world that are in the movie,
but it's done in a way where it's
at arm's length.
You can laugh about it, you can let
off steam, you can have some
therapy, and then you
can go confront the
crazy fucking world.
I think your point though, about
like the movies that are
entertaining, it's like when you
when Joe and I grew up, we watched
everything. We watched a lot of
really obscure stuff,
all the popular stuff, etc..
But I think somewhere along the way.
You know, you start to learn that
like.
The obscure stuff that you're into
the darkest of the non entertaining
stuff. You can't really talk about
it with anybody because nobody else
is watching it. Right.
But the stuff that's entertaining,
everybody else is watching.
So you can dialog with everybody you
know about it.
And there's just something about
that energy.
Community building.
It's binds people together.
Doesn't matter. Race, creed, color,
whether you're red, red state, blue
state doesn't matter.
Right. You watch it all the same and
everyone reacts to it in different
ways and then you can engage in a
dialog about it.
Every time I hear about you guys, I
hear about your success and I hear
about how great you're doing and how
many movies that you're behind.
I would just like to know a time in
your lives where you maybe felt more
defeated.
Or maybe a time where you felt not
exactly at your best
when being in this position, in this
job.
Wow you know...
This morning.
Look, just tired.
It's true.
It's like, look at it is
look at moviemaking.
It's hard. It's funny.
It's a 25 year overnight success
story.
Yeah, well, that's why I was going
to go.
It's like I've dyed all the gray
out. I mean, this is not, you
know.
Looking good.
Thank you.
I mean, there was a lot of time
early in the career, especially
where, you know,
nobody was interested in what we
were doing. You know, Joe and I were
basically...
Nobody.
Reiterate, literally nobody, no
matter how hard we tried, you know.
So we we were sort of no budget
filmmakers. We'd make a movie.
That a lot of people walked out of
yeah. At a film festival.
The only one who didn't walk out was
Steven Soderbergh.
We have to be a very influential
filmmaker, so this
is a shoestring
Cinderella story that took 25
years to play out because we
then went from working with
Soderbergh to make a movie called
Welcome to Collinwood, that the
budget was 8 million and it made
300,000 movie theaters.
So that should have been the end of
our career right there.
We got lucky that made a TV show
that only lasted one season.
It was called Lucky.
The show was called Lucky.
But Ron Howard loved
Lucky and asked us to do Arrested
Development. We then made Arrested
Development where we were told every
week we were working on that show
that was going to get canceled.
Then it happened to win the Emmy.
It saved the show, turned into
Community. I mean, it's just a it's
a long series of
of, you know, bottom
of the ninth comebacks.
Yeah. But we
could feel like.
As every everybody says, failure is
important, right? You learn from
your failures and you may learn more
from your failures than you do your
successes. So, look, it's
it's you got to do it because you
love it, right?
And like, hopefully you find a way
to make a living doing it.
Well, Anthony, Joe, thank you guys
so much for joining me.
Such a pleasure to talk to you.
Thanks man, great questions.
Really appreciate it.
Oh, thank you. Thanks for being here
you guys.