The film also starsMatt Walsh(Veep) andBetty Gabriel(Get Out).
COLLIDER: I had such a blast with this.
It’s just so fun.
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But I want to go backwards.
Where do you think each of you would be if you did not first meet as roommates in college?
Were you assigned by the college?
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DAN BERK: It was.
We were randomly assigned roommates at NYU.
Where do you think you’d be right now if you hadn’t met each other?
Image via Paramount Pictures
ROBERT OLSEN: I mean, I’d be dead in a ditch, probably.
Honestly, I can’t really imagine where I would be.
Its luckily something we don’t have to contend with.
Image via Paramount Pictures
This is your first time working with the studio making a film like this one.
What do you think would surprise people to learn about being a director in, quote-unquote, Hollywood?
you’re able to do whatever you want.
Image via Paramount Pictures
When you’re making a studio movie, you could get fired.
This is your first time making an action film.
It’s like building these dances.
Before we made this movie, we were concerned, We have no idea what that process is.
We were punching so far above our weight class on this movie with our department heads.
And that’s okay.
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We’re happy that they did that.
What’s cool is that they pitch you on visual stunts.
Fight scenes are hard to just shot list because they’re so chaotic.
They make a replica of whatever the set is, let’s say the kitchen fight.
It’s great to see.
Obviously, you shoot it on your iPhone and everything.
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You’re saying, Yeah, this is really cool.
This part when they’re on the ground, maybe there’s a different way we can cover it.
You go back and forth.
Image via Paramount Pictures
You have notes and stuff.
So, that was something we’ll definitely take moving forward is just trusting your department heads.
Again, when you’re making indies really early on, sometimes you have to micromanage a bit more.
You’re piecing together the crew, but this is just bringing together a bunch of super-talented people.
So, we did just as much listening, if not more, than we did talking on this.
You went in and pitched this to land the project.
Am I wrong about this?
BERK: To an extent, yeah.
What is it like the night before you’re going to pitch something?
How much are you in your head about everything you want to say?
Take us behind the scenes.
BERK: Bobby and I have been rejected hundreds and hundreds of times.
We have spent two weeks putting together the best pitch in the world.
It’s like you just have to collect no’s, and then you get to a yes.
For every one, there are dozens that you don’t get.
Not everyone does that.
The Safdies don’t pitch in the same way that we do.
It’s taken many, many pitches to get to that place.
It was just like we were really on fire.
But yeah, we’re not in our heads anymore because we just heard no so many times.
Once you free yourself of that, you could be more loose.
Obviously, the more reps you get and the more comfortable you are, it kind of snowballs.
What if they say that?
What if they don’t like this part?
Having little talking points ready to go.
I also think Zoom made pitching way easier.
It’s like a little teleprompter.
You normally write and direct everything, and you guys directed this.
I know you worked on the script of this, but it wasn’t your original idea.
What was it about this material that said, Yes, we need to make this?
OLSEN: We’ve been wanting to make an action movie for the longest time.
It’s kind of our favorite genre, even though we’ve done a lot of horror and thrillers.
Good luck trying to make an action movie for your first film.
You’re so used to seeing John Wick kicking a bunch of different dudes asses all at once.
That’s what initially drew us in.
Then, the original version of the script was a little more serious.
There’s got to be a scene of him being tortured and pretending he can feel the pain.
So, luckily, they let us do what we wanted there.
They let us take our parts and put everything through our tonal filter.
Someone named Jack gave me a question or two to ask you guys.
BERK: [Laughs] Thanks, Jack.
That’s the contract term.
We have never been there, and for all we know, we’ll never go again.
Everything we heard from everyone was, Youve got to go on safari if you go to Africa!
We turned our phones off and disappeared for four days, and we went on a safari.
I’d say you probably told a lot more than 100 people.
BERK: Oh, that’s right…
This is being streamed.
Well, hopefully, we don’t get in trouble.
There must be a statute of limitations, a kind of double jeopardy thing.
I don’t know.
I’m assuming the safari was amazing.
BERK: It was incredible.
It was, like, the most life-affirming experience of our lives.
We’ve never done anything like it.
We were two feet away from elephants and lions playing with their cubs.
OLSEN: The animals are right there, bro.
They’re right there.
You’re in the thing, and there’s like an elephant, and everyone’s holding their breath.
you’ve got the option to hear the twigs snap and stuff.
Then, the lions are just walking right by.
They can coordinate it so that you always see them.
We’ll see if we get blackballed from the industry for lying about that.
OLSEN: Its a lot like watching a 4DX movie, too.
Actually, I do want to bring up 4DX since we’re in the 4DX theater.
Did you quality-check this in 4DX?
I saw you guys shaking in here, and I was like, Holy fuck.
Was it crazy in here?
What was it like?
OLSEN: It’s nuts.
We checked it in this very theater.
Did you get to pick out the smells and some of the shakes?
BERK: It is cool, though.
I know I’m getting old, but I was like, There should be seatbelts.
I was rocking the fuck around.
I can’t imagine what it’s like for the people.
How Far Did They Want to Take the Injuries in Novocaine?
Nate couldnt feel invincible.
This is from Jack, as well.
What was their line in terms of the believability of Nate’s injuries?
BERK: That was something we talked about a lot because it’s an elevated movie.
It’s not a documentary.
The original script that we were talking about, for example, had a lot more head hits.
So, it’s in the middle.
We wanted it to still be really, really fun and feel like an action movie.
Ive never noticed that in any action film.
BERK: Oh, based on your fight experience?
BERK: [Laughs] Thats what I figured.
so that keep going, you have these little patch-up scenes.
So, we see him at Earl’s patching up a bit and doing the EpiPen.
We see him patching up after the rundown house.
You lose the fun of the concept, which is how far can he push it?
How much can he hold himself together with duct tape just to get to the end of this?
BERK: In a movie like this, the prosthetics are so, so important.
All of the makeup considerations are really, really important.
That was a really, really helpful tool.
That actually brings me to something I wanted to talk about.
That’s an ensemble.
He’s not shooting every single day.
Or if he is, it’s not as much.
On this,we shot 44 days or something, and he shot 43 of them.
He was in there every single day, having to sit in the chair.
You get all this stuff done, and then you go and do really physical stuff.
It’s so much physical work, and you could tell he’s put on some muscle for that.
you might tell when he’s laying there in bed looking at the note or whatever.
We were like, Did he get too jacked?
So, he apologizes.
He wishes he could be here, but he is filming.
BERK: Appreciate that.
He was telling us a little bit about how tight the security is.
He doesn’t even know what he’s shooting until, like, two days before he shoots it.
OLSEN: We ask him shit all the time.
We have a go at get him to slip up, but hes really good.
BERK: We know a few things, but we won’t tell.
I love that show so much.
I don’t want to know a thing.
BERK: No, were upset we do know.
When did you realize Jack and Amber were going to have such great chemistry?
From the first time we Zoomed with Jack, we felt like we knew him for 15 years.
He already felt like our best friend.
He’s so, so likable and charming and kind, so we knew we had that.
So, we had a sense that this would probably work, but still, you never know.
It could be oil and water.
We were all just laughing and laughing, again, like we had been friends forever.
This works really, really well.
That was, like, day two.
We could all feel it.
The crew was coming up to us after and being like, This is really good, guys.
It was almost like they were this old couple that had been together forever.
But it just goes to show that they can crank that dial wherever it needs to be.
BERK: It’s a testament to both of them.
Amber, most people know her from eitherLegionor fromPrey, which is so fucking good.
We just hope that people see that other dimension of her because it’s really, really impressive.
Midthunder revisits her journey from moving to Hollywood to headlining an Emmy-worthy ‘Predator’ movie.
I love talking about editing.
What did you learn from your first friends and family screening?
You finally have a cut you’re happy with, and you show it to them.
Are you jumping out the window, or are you like, Oh, this came together pretty good?
BERK: The first screening that we did was, like, nine people on the Paramount lot.
They were just friends of ours who are filmmakers that we know and also just totally not industry-related people.
We just wanted to get knee-jerk reactions, and the film played really well.
That was in the movie and we thought, Sure, thats obvious.
We were like, No, no, no!
It was just a wide shot of two people that, I guess, looked like Ray and Amber.
But we were like, Oh, fuck, that’s bad.
That was when we, all of a sudden, started to get really excited.
We watched the movie so many times as a director in post that it loses all meaning.
It’s like if you say milk over and over again, it doesn’t make sense anymore.
You’re watching the movie so many times that you just don’t know what to think of it.
Until you hear other people doing that, you don’t know what you have.
Then, once you do, it’s like magic.
We were like, No, it’s supposed to be scary!
Youre supposed to be scared!
We’re establishing a tense tone here.
So, right from the beginning, you’re fucked.
You’re never going to overcome that.
For this, it was so much better because there were just less effects.
That movie has aliens and stuff.
What we were testing was a lot closer to what the final product was.
It was just so heartbreaking.
Like,Annihilationtested awful, and it did great.
It’s an awesome movie.
Whereas this is so much more of, like, just get in here and have fun.
How is it when you guys are on set?
OLSEN: I think I’m more obsessed with, like, craft services.
So, we tried to be a lot better on this movie.
But no, I mean, we’re both generalists.
We both do everything.
The movie has a ton of action.
BERK: It’s a cop-out answer, but this production was so blessed.
None of them in practice were back-breakers.
It didn’t have any shipping containers, so we brought in 60 shipping containers.
[Laughs] But every fight had its complications.
The tattoo parlor, that mirror, we had one.
They don’t manufacture sugar glass in panes large enough, so that was real glass.
We had one mirror, we had one take, and it was just cross your fingers and hope.
Thankfully, it worked out.
In the actual practical shooting of it, Bobby and I are such prep hounds.
Once we’re shooting, it just feels like we’re all executing a plan.
There really were no fires that had to be put out on the set.
Jack pulled his neck right before the kitchen fight in a pretty debilitating way.
That was a little bit hard.
you could’t see it on screen, but he couldn’t really move.
OLSEN: I got one.
When we were shooting the Zeno scene, there was a dead animal in the wall.
We never found it, but we smelled it.
It was the worst smell ever, to the point where people were in bad moods.
We never discovered what it was, but it was the smell of death.
I just don’t know of what.
And then youd get used to it after a while.
The South African crew was just incredible.
Everybody was so enthusiastic, and the schedule wasn’t backbreaking.
We don’t think we went into overtime once in this movie, and it was awesome.
Thank you, South Africa crew.
Novocaineis now playing in theaters.
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