Did you do your own stunts?
“I did a lot of them. I mean I did as much of – my feeling about stunts is if I can do it I’ll do it. I don’t like to push it for two reasons: one is that I am a father and I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stick around. And the other is that I don’t want to get injured so that we shut down and the movie takes nine months as opposed to two. But that being said, I like to try to get in there if I can and make it look good. It’s always a discussion and a balancing act about how much they let me do, basically.”
What’s it like as a parent approaching a movie like this. Is it a hard place to go?
“Yeah. Definitely. I mean that’s the worst thing you could possibly imagine is something happening to your kids, or someone doing something to your kids. And so yeah, I mean when I look at just my face in this film, there’s a tremendous amount of stress I think on this character and that all has to do with putting those feelings that you have for your kids in your gut and hoping that it comes out through your face.”
Did that challenge draw you to the picture?
“It did. I think that I certainly felt like I could relate to that piece of it. I mean I pick it up and it says Death Sentence. You think about that title and you go, ‘Death Sentence?’ And you start to read it and I’m sort of thinking, ‘Well I’ll read it but I don’t know if it’s really like …’ I didn’t know if there was going to be enough from a character’s standpoint for me because while I really like horror and I really like action and I really like genre movies as a filmgoer, sometimes I feel like the actual character – they’re a little bit light on character development. They just kind of say, ‘Well he’s the guy,’ you know? Whatever. And as I started to read Death Sentence I felt like, ‘Wow. This is really, even if you took the action out of it, this is really a compelling kind of drama.’ So that’s what really drew me to it.”
Have you been looking for a revenge film because weren’t you supposed to do Dolan’s Cadillac?
“Well Dolan’s was quite some time ago and I did like that script a lot. I wasn’t so much looking for a ‘revenge’ film but I was looking for a film where I could kick some ass. I felt like, you know, after these very emotional movies, Mystic River and Woodsman and Where the Truth Lies, again just very kind of emotional drama, I was looking for something to, I don’t know, just to kind of get a little bit more kind of physical. And also while I’ve been in thriller kind of things before with Trapped and River Wild, I was bad guys in both of them, so it’s kind of nice to not be the bad guy.”
Is it also important to kind of broaden your appeal because those other movies you mentioned in a lot of ways are smallish films that get a limited release?
“Yeah, ‘One for the meal, one for the reel.’ You know, you can say that but it’s always a roll of the dice about whether people are going to see it or not. There’s no guarantees even if you say, ‘Well I think maybe this movie feels more commercial/less commercial.’ Who knows? It’s the same thing with the small movies. Sometimes they break out and based on how much they cost, they have a tremendous upside that you don’t really expect. So it’s not so much the reason to do it.”
Do you find it strange that they’re remaking Footloose?
“No. I mean I think I’m right about this. What they’re remaking is the musical that was made from the movie.”
Like Hairspray.
“Exactly. I think it feels like the same kind of idea of Hairspray. You know, John Waters makes a movie which – is it a musical? I forget. No. Then they do a Broadway musical of it and then they remake the movie as well. And so I think it’s a similar kind of thing. So it sort of feels like it’s one degree of separation, if you will.”
There’s a great Footloose montage in the upcoming movie Hot Rod.
“Yeah, somebody’s told me that. I look forward to that”
Hot Rod star Andy Samberg said a lot of babies were born because of Footloose.
“Oh yeah? Cool. I was very disappointed… I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. There’s a YouTube video, one that’s gotten maybe the most hits of almost any YouTube video ever, which is called something like ‘The Evolution of Dance’. It’s just a guy who dances and they skipped Footloose and I was heartbroken. Because I mean I really felt like sending this guy a letter because he went right from Saturday Night Fever then jumped to Michael Jackson – Billy Jean. And it hurt.”
Will you be directing again?
“I’d like to do it, yeah. There’s a script that I really like that I keep reading and we keep talking about looking for a director. I keep thinking, ‘Mmm, maybe I should bite the bullet.’ But, you know, it’s like I would be in every scene and it’s kind of the next wackiest challenge, would be to do that. To try to do what Clint [Eastwood] did so seamlessly all those times. It’s almost impossible to imagine, you know, having directed a film, what it would be like to take on all that and take on a role but I don’t know. We’ll see. Having worked with James [Wan] I got really kind of excited about the idea of directing something with a little bit of action in it just because it was so much fun to see the way that he would put those pieces together.
I know that the next time that I direct a film that I want it to be a more guy-oriented film because I’ve done a couple of things that are very, very female driven. But I just did another episode this year of The Closer. I did one last year and they gave me a chance to do another one. It was great because it actually had an action sequence in it and I was coming off of Death Sentence and I was like, ‘Great!’ ‘You know, whatever – think about ways to shoot this,’ and I was really inspired to do that.”
