How Hollywood Has Changed Since Apocalypse Now
They just dont make movies like that anymore.
CHRISTIAN GUDEGAST: No small task.
Making movies right now is, more of a miracle than it’s ever been.
Image by Zanda Rice
So, what do you think would surprise people to learn about being a writer-director in Hollywood?
GUDEGAST: I would just say how hard it is to make movies these days.
To do something original and to be able to build a franchise is next to impossible.
Image via United Artists
Just getting something to production is by far the hardest thing.
You’re outside, and it’s either hot or it’s freezing.
It’s hard work.
So, that is definitely the hardest part of the whole process.
GUDEGAST: Oh, god.
Well, just to be there,Apocalypse Nowbecause they just don’t make movies like that anymore.
Image via STXfilms
I mean, it’s just it’s insane.
They took over the downtown streets.
I mean, good luck doing that today.
Image via Lionsgate
As a writer, god,Raging Bull.
As director,Road Warrior,Mad Max 2, just because the stunts.
Theyd laugh at you.
Image via Lionsgate
So anyway, God bless those movies.
Especially with the tax rebate system now, and you rarely shoot a movie where its set.
But initially, it’s a little bit depressing.
Image via Lionsgate
It’s sort of like what happens when you watch your assembly cut for the first time.
You’ve been working as a writer in Hollywood for a while.
How long have you been thinking about directing, and how did you getDen of Thievesas your directorial debut?
Image via Lionsgate
GUDEGAST: Well, I actually never really set out to be a writer.
I was a director-writer.
You shoot the damn thing and everything.
That just completely changed the trajectory of my career.
Then, we got this up and running.
So, that’s fun.
Image via STX Entertainment
Then he became attached to this, and then we ended up making this one.
GUDEGAST: I’ve been a photographer my whole life.
Whatever it is, I’ll go photograph them.
Then, when somebody reads the script, Ill say, Do you want to see the movie?
So it becomes very, like, Oh, wow, okay, I can see the movie now.
It becomes very, very clear.
Image via Lionsgate
That was my path, at least.
Who was the financier you had to really convince?
Was there one person that ultimately said, Yeah, you could do this?
Image via STX Entertainment
GUDEGAST: Gerry, really.
Because the reality is that movie stars, right or wrong, get the film financed.
So, it was convincing him, but he was convinced pretty much right away.
In the thrilling sequel, Big Nick pursues Donnie across Europe, entangled in the perilous realm of diamond thieves and the notorious Panther mafia. As tensions rise, they confront the formidable challenges of a colossal heist targeting the world’s largest diamond exchange, setting off an intense battle of wits and resources.
It was a very, very thorough presentation, and then it worked.
GUDEGAST: Not that much, actually.
Not much in terms of what’s on the page.
The changes are really the realities of production, right?
This is the case with everybody.
Where are you going to shoot the damn thing?
And so we shot it in Atlanta.
Everything in Atlanta is brick.
Its the South, they have tornadoes, and things are built with brick.
Very few things out here are built with brick these days because of the earthquakes.
So, I basically rented a car.
This is where we’re going to shoot it.
When just the script existed, people didnt really consider it an action.
We shot some of it, some we didn’t.
Then there’s the studio and the marketing and the running time of the film.
That’s the beauty of streaming now is that you have this long form.
You’re able to explore the characters and world.
I have so many follow-ups.
First of all, awesome.
GUDEGAST: Opening weekend, basically.
Luckily, it performed and performed very, very well.
Even after, our box office was good.
It wasn’t stellar, but it was solid.
I could be wrong, but I think it made $80 million globally.
GUDEGAST: I think it was $88, but yes.
Like I said, I could be wrong.
But the key is you didn’t make it for $88.
It was a much lower budget.
GUDEGAST: Much lower.
So, it was profitable in theaters.
GUDEGAST: Yes, and then after the fact, it was very profitable.
So we were able to make another one.
It’s weird now, like, Whats screen-worthy?
That’s the big question.
I understand for the studios it’s a tough call.
So, it’s a difficult math to figure out for sure.
I have the idea for more, or was it like, This worked.
Now we can figure out the rest?
GUDEGAST: Both because of the realities of it having to perform.
I am very curious about the sequel, jumping into the writing process.
You find out you’re going to be able to make it.
What are you immediately thinking about in terms of, What’s the story I want to tell?
What’s the heist?
Let’s talk to this writer guy about a movie.
That’s kind of exciting, and you don’t really get the real shit when you do that.
I wanted to not be like a tourist in that world.
They were the guys responsible, the lead investigators of the heist, the movie was based on.
I spent about two months with them, and they completely opened up about everything.
I really got to know them.
I went to the actual locations where the heist took place.
They showed me everything, how everything was done, and it just blew me away.
There are so many details we couldnt even put in here.
He was the head of the Diamond Police with the lead investigator on those major heists.
I mean,opened it up.
They told me everything, and I even drove around with them.
Wed go by places, and theyd talked about how they would break in.
Look, truth is stranger than fiction.
Truth is far more fascinating than fiction, always.
If you do the work, it writes itself.I honestly don’t make anything up.I really don’t.
I just go do the research.
I really do the work for alongtime.
It just writes itself.
My notes files are crazy.
They’re, like, 50, 60 pages, and it’s a treasure trove.
Its really that simple.
The company is in Canada.
When you actually see it, you’re like, Damn, this is crazy.
It’s endlessly fascinating.
And again, Ive got so much material.
The next ones going to becrazy.
We took over an international airport.
That’s, like, impossible.
Good luck doing that anywhere here.
I actually wanted to know why you filmed in basically the Canary Islands.
So, literally every hotel was full, every Airbnb was booked.
There was nowhere to house the crew literally nothing.
But really, it was that airport.
I mean, that just doesn’t happen.
What was the second shot?
GUDEGAST: The second thing was the shootout at the end of the tunnel.
Our location manager got a tunnel that was three kilometers long.
It was very elaborate, and we had 40 or 50 seconds, which is great.
Theyre like, You cant shoot guns there.
We found this outthreedays before shooting.
I mean, were in the middle of shooting, I’m working freaking 18 hours a day.
Theyre like, Oh, we can’t shoot in the tunnel on Friday.
Im like, We can’twhat?
So we all had a heart attack.
So the tunnel we shot it in was actually seven seconds…
It was above the city like this and went down, and it was seven seconds.
It was actually not a tunnel, it was anoverpassfor the port.
So it was seven seconds and back up again.
Fuck, weve got to reset and come back again.
Alright guys, sorry.
Weve got seven seconds.
It’s a series of seven seconds, seven seconds, reset, reset.
Reset is a bitch.
Youve got to get the cars to come back again.
It takes 10, 15 minutes every single time.
So, that was crazy challenging, but you make it work.
We changed where we shot it a little bit.
We pulled the cars and pushed the cars.
So, it was a challenge for everybody from the shooting to the editing.
But, you know, itll happen naturally.
I read could be wrong that you basically got lucky with those Porsches in the movie.
GUDEGAST: Well, yes and no.
Porsche was an incredible partner.
By the way, speaking of work companies, they are an unbelievable company.
They are run so well.
They’re just awesome.
They don’t really do much advertising at all, and they fell in love with the script.
We set it off, and then they said, Look, we’ve got five.
It makes very little.
And he’s like, Well, you’re not going to believe it.
I was like, Whats that?
I was like, No, no, no, bring those around.
This tookmonthsfrom the head engineer from North America, Germany, and then all the engineers were there.
The controls were put onto the roof of the car.
So all we do is put the driver on the roof.
When we got out of the tunnel, those roads were gnarly, and we were hauling ass.
It was like, Dude, this is no joke.
The stunt drivers are nuts.
Theyre on the roof the whole time, and thats all because of Porsche.
They’d never done it before.
Theyre like, We’ll figure it out.
GUDEGAST: OShea was like, Bro.
What’s funny is, OShea said, Dude, I’m not going to the ocean.
I’m not getting in the helicopter.
I need a stunt double.
Im like, Dude, you could do it.
Hes like, No, no.
He jumped in the ocean.
By the way, when theyre in the ocean, that was theocean.
There was no tank, there was no nothing, there was no cage.
That was a sharkey, cold-ass ocean, and they were in it for a while.
So me and the DP, we were like, We gotta help out.
So we stripped down to our speedos, and we jumped in the water a few times.
We were like, Were here with you, bro.
But the driving part, the drivers were incredible.
That one crash when we crashed the Porsche into the wall, we did that in one take.
And the dude did it in one take.
It was like we won the Super Bowl.
It was a really cool moment.
I could do a lot of that stuff, but I could never do the ocean.
That’s not for me.
Thats one of the jobs of the director.
You’re reminding everybody, Okay, this is where we are in the story.
This is the tension level.
So that’s laborious.
It takes a long time.
You don’t see the fruits of your labor there at all.
you’re able to only really see it in the edit.
But you trust whats on the page.
That’s part of the craft of it all.
The most fun is definitely shooting the dialogue scenes where actors can perform.
On the day, that’s much more fun, but that’s just part of the craft.
The thieves are back after six years.
So you have a cut of this that you’re happy with.
I do this because I love movies you’re the audience.
You’re watching like, Is it good?
You don’t really know.
It’s tough to say.
You go with your instincts.
Oh, that joke worked.
Oh, they think that’s tense.
What you really learn is that the conventions of cinema work, like tension building.
If you do it right, it works.
Audiences respond to it.
You trust your craft and your instincts.
Did you make any changes as a result of those screenings?
GUDEGAST: Yes, we changed the ordering of scenes.
The director’s cut actually progresses differently.
It’s more propulsive.
The whole challenge was, How do we get Nick to Europe fast?
But we need to calibrate Nick emotionally.
We have a lot to start establishing with Donnie, and we have a lot to establish with Nick.
That takes time to establish that.
There were actually a lot more scenes doing that we ended up cutting.
Down the road, there will be a Blu-ray or a home video release.
Is it the quote-unquote director’s cut or an extended cut?
GUDEGAST: Whatever you want to call it.
Well call it a directors cut.
We just did the directors cut forDen 1in the Dolby mix.
I wanted to ask you about that when you mentioned it.
Did you release a director’s cut on home video for that?
GUDEGAST: We did, but it was half-assed.
I don’t think it was colored or mixed all the way.
Now its the real deal.
Are there more scenes coming that weren’t there originally?
GUDEGAST: Yes, inDen 1.
Is this new version a lot longer than the original home release?
GUDEGAST: Its, like, the 2:27 range.
And how much longer is that than the release before?
GUDEGAST: Fourteen minutes.
GUDEGAST: 50s character, Enson, had a whole prom date scene.
And hes like, Yeah, tell me about it.
Why do you think she likes him?
So that makes the moment when he dies resonate much more.
So then when he dies, youre like, Oh, dude, that’s tough.
It had a much more emotional impact.
When is this new cut going to be available for fans?
It’s really soon.
Its actually before the release of this movie, I think.
So its a digital release?
I’m pretty sure it’s sometime in January.
Dont quote me, but Im pretty sure.
It’s Nick and Donnie when they go meet Jovanna for the first time at that park.
Theyre on the way there, and they get locked in the rental car.
They’re stuck in their car.
It’s fucking classic.
It was arguably my favorite scene in the movie, but I had to cut it.
There’s a lot of stuff that will be in this extended or directors cut.
A lot more stuff with Jovanna, more stuff with Nick and Donnie two more scenes with them.
But it is what it is.
That’s what you have to do to meet runtimes.
I actually understand where studios are coming from.
GUDEGAST: I do, too.
GUDEGAST: Probably 15 minutes longer.
Lets get intoDen 3,4, and5.
And do future installments still have the two of them?
GUDEGAST: Yes and yes.
So again, while researching heists, the research is agnostic to where it takes place in the world.
There are three particular ones that are unreal.
One is in Brazil, one is in Africa, and one is in Southeast Asia.
It will always be about taking these guys into those worlds.
We’re going to introduce a new character inDen 3to hunt them.
I won’t reveal too much, but it’s going to become a little bit more geopolitical.
Do you have a preference in terms of what location youd love forDen 3?
I won’t pressure you anymore.
GUDEGAST: Those few months are already taken.Den 3is all ready to go.
It’s all outlined.
So it’s all outlined for the next two.
Have you told the guys all of this?
GUDEGAST: Oh yeah.
As in the thespians behind us?
GUDEGAST: They’re aware.
We actually talked about it last night.
Before I run out of time, I saw on IMDbMafia X.
What happened with that?
GUDEGAST: Well, it’s happening.
We were going to start in April, and we now can’t because of actors schedules and stuff.
Again, welcome to Hollywood.
It depends on other things.
But that may still happen this summer.
That is a completely different thing.
It’s basically the mafia versus ISIS.
You should tell people what its about because that is an interesting logline.
GUDEGAST: It is about a bombing of a commercial airplane, sort of based on Pan Am 103.
And on that plane happen to be the families of certain powerful Mafiosi, who are obviously completely devastated.
They lose their mothers, their sons, their wives, everything, and they fight each other.
I’m assuming its rated R.
GUDEGAST: Oh yeah.
Have you already been talking to cast?
Do you have your cast?
GUDEGAST: Yes, but I cant say.
Youve heard of em.
So there was a long break betweenDen 1and2.
I’m assuming the studio, in an ideal world, would like to solve that problem.
So it was just one thing after the other.
That’s what happens sometimes.
Nobody’s fault, really.
It just kind of is what it is.
But we did it.
GUDEGAST: Yeah, thats the plan.
Den of Thieves 2: Panterais now playing in theaters.
