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Nash: Yeah. I started doing stunts when I was 18. I started making films after meeting another stunt guy, Tony Lynch. We were both trying to get work as stuntmen, and we had this idea that if we shot an action sequence that looked like it was from a movie, and put on our show reels, then people would think that we’d worked on some movies. So we set out to do that. At the time, my brother had just finished drama school and he said, “Oh, well maybe the same thing will work for me.” So I told him to get a friend and write a scene, and we would shoot that as well. Then this thing for our showreels kind of became a short film, which was called, Loaded.LoadedBeing a stuntman was one of my dream careers as a kid.
Oh, really?Yeah, but I think I was too scared of riding on the hood of a speeding car or letting someone set me on fire, so it never really panned out. A lot of your scripts seem to be influenced by your history as a stuntman. Do you ever write scenes with ridiculous action sequences in them just so you’ll be able to do it?
It’s funny, although I love doing stunts and working on action films, when it comes to making them, I only do action that serves the story. If you just do action because you like action, no one really cares, you know? It’s a spectacle, but there’s no kind of emotional engagement to it.
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I do, yeah.What was the most recent thing that you’ve done?
I worked on that film, Knight and Day that just came out—that Tom Cruise thing.SpiderYou have a knack for throwing your audience into the middle of a heated situation--sometimes in a violent way, and sometimes in an emotional way. Do you do that so the audience is forced to actually think and make up a backstory for themselves?
Definitely. The audience’s imagination is always going to be more interesting than anything I try to force on them with back story as long as the situation I set up is relatable to them in some way. With Spider for example--rather than saying what the couple is arguing about, the audience only knows that there was an argument and that there’s tension in the car, then everyone comes up with their own idea of what they fought about or what kind of relationship they have. It’s such a short period of time, you know? It’s better to do that than spend all this time spelling out what their situation is.It's like that arc crap creative writing teachers are always talking about. You have to meet the audience at a certain point. You have to tell them a little bit, but you don’t want to take their intelligence for granted and tell them too much.
For sure. There was a draft of Spider where Jack is explaining himself and what he did wrong, but minutes before we shot it, I was scanning over the script and we just didn’t need it to be in there. It was better to just start with him saying, “It was a joke."
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I just wanted to see if I could build tension. There’s something about Fuel and Spider where you can tell something bad is going to happen. And that anticipation for it--the longer you draw it out, the more intense it gets. So when something does happen, it freaks people out.FuelYeah, even though I had read somewhere what happens in Fuel before I saw it, it still scared the shit out of me and made me pee my pants a little.
Ha! That’s good.Where’d the idea behind Fuel come from?
There was this short story that someone had written, and they were getting six filmmakers to make a film based on the same short story.What was the short story?
It was written for this festival. I think the story was called Push. It was about a couple who were fighting a lot, and the girl was pregnant. She’s a writer, and she's writing a book about the baby or something. Then her computer crashes, and all her work is lost. A computer technician shows up, and he’s dressed like a cowboy. She goes into labor while he's there, so he gives them a ride to the hospital. There’s complications with the birth, and when they give her a cesarean, there’s no baby inside her, there’s a book. A few weeks later the cowboy turns up with her computer. When he turns it on, the printer starts shaking and blood comes out of it. And that’s kind of the end.
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Exactly, I was like, “What the fuck? How am I going to make a film out of that?” I just sort of went to another place with it.You sound kind of depressed. You're talking really slowly, are you stoned right now?
Haha, no I’m not. I’ve been working nights, so this is the morning for me right now.LuckyOK, I guess I just thought, being a stuntman and all, you would be charged with adrenalin all the time. I want to ask you about Lucky. You were saying earlier that you used to make films to show what a badass stuntman you were so you could get work. It seemed like Lucky was just showing off what you can do, but it was made in 2005, when I’m sure you had already established yourself as a stuntman.
Yeah, well Lucky was a dream I had.And that was you on the hood of the speeding car?
That was me, yeah.How big are your balls?
Haha, I don’t know. I haven’t measured themI’ve heard your films referred to as both pulp and noir, but I don’t feel like that’s accurate. How would you describe your films?
I don’t know. I think it’s hard to describe your own films. I think if I knew how to describe them or knew what I was trying to say or anything like that, I wouldn’t really need to make them, if that makes sense.Sure. Action drives a lot of your short films, but the things that happen seem much more plausible than the stuff that happens in big budget action movies. How do you keep your films somewhat rooted in reality, while still being able to put the action in there that makes the audience ready to jump out of their skin?
Me and my brother and our friends always talk about what would really happen in this world that we created. It’s not about how something would look really cool, or this would be really spectacular. It’s about trying to make things look feasible. And I think we’re doing that. As an audience, you can relate to it so much more than if it was something totally unbelievable. As much as you want to do stunts that excite people and that sort of stuff, if you cross that line, then you actually work against yourself.
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Not as much now as when I was younger. When I was a kid I was definitely known for jumping off things all the time. I did some stupid shit when I was younger, like jumping off a speeding train and jumping out of my mom’s car while I was driving it to see if I could run beside it and jump back in.The IF ThingThe If Thing was hilarious, by the way. Obviously it was a faux-documentary, but did you actually use it for the IF awards?
Yes. A lot of it’s true. The people who run the IF Awards approached me and asked if I could make insert material for the awards ceremony. I told them I was open to the idea, but wanted to know the budget. They said 5,000 dollars and I said, “I can’t do much with five thousand dollars, but I’ll do it if you let me do whatever I want and you give me the 5,000 dollars in cash.” At first they said no way, but then they called me back and said they still wanted me to do it, but wanted to know why I wanted the money in cash, so I told them it’s not a lot of money, and I’ll be able to pull a lot more favors if I can pay people in cash.They didn't ask you what the film was going to be about?
They did, and I said, “I’m going to show people what I can do with five grand." That sort of piqued their interest a bit, and then I told them I also wanted to film them giving me the cash.
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Yeah, that was real. But the guy who we traumatized throughout the film, at the time, was the editor of IF magazine. No one knew he and I were friends, but he was in on it, even though I was traumatizing him. When it played at the awards ceremony people thought we had really done that stuff to him and they kept coming up to him and saying “Are you OK after what those guys did to you?” He got offended because everyone thought he was a crybaby, but I told him it just meant he was an amazing actor.Crying is pretty justifiable when you’re about to get thrown off of a boat with a safe tied to you.
Yeah, so a lot of that film was true. I did come in three dollars and 46 cents under budget, or whatever it was. I also really bought those jeans, the Playstation, and the DVDs.Bob Dylan, "Beyond Here Lies Nothing"You’ve also directed a couple of music videos for Bob Dylan. Is Bob a nice guy?
Yeah he’s really lovely.I'm glad.
Yeah, I didn't meet him until the second video, and so it wasn't as scary to meet him, because I knew he liked what I did for him the first time. There was definitely pressure though, because the second one was the first video he’d been in in like 12 years or something.What do you think about making music videos? Do you feel you’re limited in your creative capacity because it’s someone else’s music?
Yes and no, I feel like I’ve been pretty lucky in the kinds of videos I’ve done. I make them like little films. I treat the song like it’s a script, or a soundtrack for a script. So I get to make the film that I imagine from hearing the song.
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We say “mate” in my films a lot?Yeah, I was watching, and there's a lot of "mates."
Yeah, we do say “mate” a lot. You know, I even write it in emails, “Hey mate how are you doing?”Some lying Australian told me recently that you guys don't actually say, "Let's throw another shrimp on the barbie!" every time someone has a cookout.
We never say that.Shutup, really?
Well, for one thing we don’t call them shrimp. We call them prawns.I was also told that’s not even a popular dish over there.
I like barbecued prawns, but no one calls them shrimp. That saying was from a tourism ad that Paul Hogan did in the 80s for you guys. So yeah, we don’t really say that.Well, that's disappointing. At least tell me that you really have a lot of kangaroos over there.
Yeah there’s a lot, but not in the cities. Do you know what they call a group of kangaroos?No.
A mob.That’s pretty awesome.
I like it, it makes them sound like criminals.BloodlockNash's new feature film, The Square, will be out on DVD and Blu-Ray next month.Blue Tongue FilmsJONATHAN SMITH
