The Appeal of Crank: Jason Statham says he chose to star in Crank because it breaks through boundaries. “We ain’t spending hundreds of millions of dollars to do something that people are going to like. This is like pure action. This is almost like an old-school action movie where the stunts are real stunts and that’s what excites me. You can swing people on wires on green screens and so what? It’s just a case of money that can make that authentic, but for me that doesn’t excite me. What excites me is the creative side of action movies.”
Statham added, “It’s completely realistic because it’s all shot in the camera. There’s no getting away from that. You can see it. I mean, I can tell every time I see it, a cheap attempt at something that doesn’t work.”
Jason Statham Just Keeps on Running and Running and Running: “Run, run, f**king run. I do not stop. Well, that’s what the movie’s about. If you stop, you die. And so directors Brian [Taylor] and Mark [Neveldine] did a very good job of poking me with a very sharp stick and saying, ‘Don’t you dare stop running.’ I mean, I worked 30 days. The shoot was a 30-day shoot and, you know, I didn’t get one day off. In fact, no, I think I did, the only day I got off was a Sunday and that was everybody’s day off so it was a very frenetic shoot for me. It was non-stop craziness.”
To say Crank was a grueling experience is putting it mildly, especially when you consider scenes aren’t done in just one take. “As long as they didn’t have to revive me with oxygen,” says Statham, “they considered me in a state to shoot one more. We just kept going.” Statham’s in great shape but even he was tested physically with this shoot. “I went green several times and nearly ended up in a pile of my own puke. That was just par for the course with this kind of film.”
Crank Action Versus The Transporter Films: Statham says Crank was more difficult. “Yeah, I think it was because it was certainly more dangerous. We’d push the boundaries. We risked ourselves, not just me but the two directors, many times. It just sort of lent itself to the way the movie had to be shot. We didn’t want to shoot anything green screen style. Everything was shot in camera, and if you see the movie, you’ll see that because of that there’s no way you can get away from the dangerous aspects of what we did.”
Jason Statham joked about his unlikely stunt double. “Brian [Taylor] did a few because we look very similar (laughter). But I did the ones that Brian didn’t want to do, so in other words, all of them.”
What Audiences Can Expect from Crank: Statham remains very close-mouthed about actual scenes in Crank but did say, “There’s a lot of things that I do and there might be a lot of rumors, and most of them might be true and most aren’t. You’ve just got to go see the film. I don’t want to spoil any surprises.” Asked if he gets greased up in this one, Statham said, “I do get greased up. And my word, aren’t you going to be surprised when you see it? In fact, that was one of the things about the screenplay was some of the scenes I was reading and I was going, ‘How the hell are they going to shoot this? That’ll come out. There’s no way that’s gonna stay in. That’s not gonna stay in.’ I mean, there’s a sex scene I had no idea on how they were going to shoot it.”
Jason Statham on What Drew Him to the Action Genre: “Luc Besson basically gave me a chance to sort of play a leading man, and it was just an opportunity. It wasn’t like, you know, I’d made big intentions of doing it. Usually what you want to do is restricted in many different ways. You can’t go up to some producer and say, ‘By the way, I’m going to be in an action film.’ There’s a lot more complicated things you have to get through first. So it was just a lucky shot that Luc gave me. We kind of did okay with it and it allowed me to do another one. I’ve had a ton of experience in the physical world. I’ve done a lot of sports and martial arts and fighting as a kid, so that just came very naturally to me.”
Page 2: Jason Statham on the Transporter Movies and The Brazilian Job
