Speaker 1: Hey, folks, welcome to a bonus interview for the episode
Speaker 1: on The Brave. The day that we put The Brave out,
Speaker 1: I got contacted by Charles Evans Junior. He was one
Speaker 1: of the producers of the film. Wanted to come on
Speaker 1: the air and talk a little bit about his experience
Speaker 1: working on The Brave. So sat down with them two
Speaker 1: days after that recorded this interview. I'll have this available
Speaker 1: for folks to listen to here, or I'll go ahead
Speaker 1: and cut this back into the episode as well, so
Speaker 1: people have a full experience of listening about The Brave.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, and I hope you enjoyed this bonus interview.
Speaker 1: So I've been doing a little digging. It looks like
Speaker 1: you were kind of destined for show business. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that you had a famous family.
Speaker 2: I do everybody in my family or filmmakers, my mom,
Speaker 2: my dad, my cousins, my uncle and uncle being the
Speaker 2: most known of them, Robert Evans.
Speaker 3: Were you interested in that as a child or were
Speaker 3: you just like, no, no, I'm going to do my
Speaker 3: own thing.
Speaker 2: Well, it's the only thing I ever thought of doing,
Speaker 2: so yeah, and mostly because my mom let me spend
Speaker 2: time with her while she was editing her documentaries and
Speaker 2: all and on sixteen millimeter film, and she do it
Speaker 2: in the like all night long, and it was our thing,
Speaker 2: and it was very special and subversive because I could
Speaker 2: stay away from school the next day and it was
Speaker 2: kind of great. Yeah, that's all I ever thought of doing.
Speaker 3: Did you go to school for it?
Speaker 2: Undergrad short story writing, Berkeley grad a USC film school.
Speaker 2: After I graduated, I got several writing jobs, low budget,
Speaker 2: kind of made. I was determined to write a serial
Speaker 2: killer script kind of in the early nineties, just after
Speaker 2: I finished film school and made my short film that
Speaker 2: won a bunch of rewards, and so ended up getting
Speaker 2: a couple of writing jobs. I don't even remember the
Speaker 2: name of the company. This was a low budget movie
Speaker 2: for it was going to be sowd in twenty six
Speaker 2: days and called Bungalow nine. I'm sure it wasn't probably
Speaker 2: ever made. But and then what adaptation for my uncle
Speaker 2: at Paramount A project called this since that Paul Gallo
Speaker 2: ended up rewriting and I don't think was made. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure. I don't think it was made. And then
Speaker 2: I had to take care of my drug addiction at
Speaker 2: the time, so I had to just focus on that
Speaker 2: for a little bit. Worked at Disney as a development executive.
Speaker 2: I went to work from a friend of mine as
Speaker 2: a director, Randall Kleiser, and tried to get people. He
Speaker 2: was at the time doing Honey, I blew up the
Speaker 2: Kid and a Touchdown, And when I left his company
Speaker 2: to start my own, he was signed up to do
Speaker 2: a right to life thriller. So that seemed like a
Speaker 2: big success. And then we found out that the fellow
Speaker 2: who sold the project and got financing for a tailor
Speaker 2: hacker draft kind of scavenged his own story from the
Speaker 2: sixties and it was based on something else. So it
Speaker 2: just all fell apart. But I started my company in
Speaker 2: ninety two and then The Brave was one of my
Speaker 2: first projects.
Speaker 3: So how did that come to you?
Speaker 2: Touchstone had a in house competition with their executives. They
Speaker 2: gave them each a fund of money to do with
Speaker 2: what they would like to do and kind of let
Speaker 2: the cream rise to the top sort of idea, and
Speaker 2: my company got two of those projects. One of them
Speaker 2: was a documentary on comedy classes where people took a
Speaker 2: comedy class for the first time and performed a stand
Speaker 2: up for the first time. At the end of it,
Speaker 2: and it was pretty funny, and it turned out a
Speaker 2: little too like raunchy and dark for Touchstone but at
Speaker 2: the time and so that wasn't released, but at least
Speaker 2: it got done. And the other one was The Brave,
Speaker 2: and we had an opportunity with all of the kind
Speaker 2: of enthusiasm for Paul mccutton's script that was generated. We
Speaker 2: were kind of the devil whispering and the fellow's ear
Speaker 2: who controlled the project, a fellow named Disease. We were saying,
Speaker 2: you've got to direct this. It'scott it's your project, this
Speaker 2: is your chance, and you know, Updrour directors were really
Speaker 2: pushing for it, and he took meetings with them, and
Speaker 2: you know, it was like Jody Foster and Oliver Stone
Speaker 2: and it was kind of one of those leaving Las
Speaker 2: Vegas paradigm story where you say, what's kind of happen
Speaker 2: and it's so bleak you can't believe that it's going
Speaker 2: to happen, and the surprise is is that it does.
Speaker 2: And I guess sort of the model of it, a
Speaker 2: homeless man who lives in a dump with his wife
Speaker 2: and kid is offered more money than he's ever seen
Speaker 2: in his life to die a week later in the
Speaker 2: snuff film and he takes it and it's and it's
Speaker 2: about his last week on Earth before going through with
Speaker 2: the deal, and it was it was a dark story.
Speaker 2: The scene that really shocked everyone in the beginning is
Speaker 2: the snuff filmmaker walking around the lead subject talking to
Speaker 2: him about how he will be carved up and how,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of like the mechanics of the snuff
Speaker 2: film that will be happening at the end of the
Speaker 2: week and the kind of theater of the mind stuff
Speaker 2: that is left a lot of people shaken, and I
Speaker 2: think was a hook to some people to have this
Speaker 2: hanging over the narrative that follow and Ausis decided I
Speaker 2: need to you know. I came to him and offered
Speaker 2: like four shooting days with a crew with a budget
Speaker 2: like seventy five grand or something to make a like
Speaker 2: like show what you can do with this, you know material.
Speaker 2: And at the time, we had Benicio del Toro cast,
Speaker 2: we were cast crewed, located and it was like five
Speaker 2: days away from shooting when he didn't show up to
Speaker 2: work on a Monday, and we heard that he was
Speaker 2: last seen fleeing his home before it exploded in flames,
Speaker 2: and the bodies of his daughter and wife were found
Speaker 2: bleudgeend inside and he was missing. And so everybody touched
Speaker 2: and you know, graciously or courageously stepped away and said
Speaker 2: let's see something else. And we thought this would just
Speaker 2: go nowhere. And it was a terrible, horrific thing that happened.
Speaker 2: And then Johnny Call he had read the script, he
Speaker 2: responded strongly to it and said he was determined to
Speaker 2: make the film and to can with us. And and
Speaker 2: you know, meeting a bunch of different prospective financiers, he
Speaker 2: wanted to you know, direct, and he said he would star,
Speaker 2: and that was the lure for them, because he would
Speaker 2: forego his acting these so he could star, so he
Speaker 2: could direct. I mean, and Jeremy Thomas, like, I didn't
Speaker 2: know how, you know, brilliant a filmmaker he was, and
Speaker 2: you know who he was until we met with him,
Speaker 2: and he was listed as a critical elementor I forget
Speaker 2: the phrase that financiers use that essential element. That's it.
Speaker 2: And we got financing like five million dollars to make
Speaker 2: this movie and went from there. And Johnny really wanted
Speaker 2: the look and feel of a mere costa Rica that
Speaker 2: he had grown so close with and Arizona Dreams. And
Speaker 2: so we got the production designer and DP brought that film,
Speaker 2: Vilco Fhelock, and I forget the production designer's name at
Speaker 2: this moment, but both brilliant, brilliant men and who had
Speaker 2: a really tight relationship with Johnny and we're going to
Speaker 2: have his back through this whole thing. And I think
Speaker 2: technically they did what no one bargained for. Was Marlon Brando,
Speaker 2: this rogue menace force that called halfway through production the
Speaker 2: last two days, we're going to be the snuff film
Speaker 2: per seen. And he said, Johnny, I hear you gave
Speaker 2: away my part? Said what you you know you that
Speaker 2: that role is mine? This not filmmaker. You know I
Speaker 2: have to play this role. And well, we don't have
Speaker 2: any money for it. You know, we passed it already,
Speaker 2: and if we let this actor go, you know, you'd
Speaker 2: have to be paid Scales. I'll work for Scale. So
Speaker 2: we're starting to think, okay, well, you know, Marlon Brando
Speaker 2: working for Scale. This is pretty exciting and he brings
Speaker 2: something great to the table, and he essentially was a
Speaker 2: roadblock to momentum. He refused to say the lines on
Speaker 2: the page. He wouldn't two script days on this set
Speaker 2: and this downtown La you know it snuff Filmmaker's layer
Speaker 2: turned into eleven days. He never read the lines that
Speaker 2: set up the entire narrative that follows. So it was
Speaker 2: it was awful, and he said, doesn't cut together. I'll
Speaker 2: read it a script and I'll read anything you'd like.
Speaker 2: Just let's let's do this. He's riffing on the nobility
Speaker 2: of death and playing a harmonica and you know, doing
Speaker 2: all kinds of shit in his wheelchair that you know
Speaker 2: that he wrote into the script himself, and you know,
Speaker 2: he made a character, but it had like nothing to
Speaker 2: do with the movie that followed. Really. Jeremy Thomas tells
Speaker 2: us that we got into the can Film Festival without
Speaker 2: anybody seeing the movie, and based on Jeremy's relationship with
Speaker 2: that festival, which had been long lasting, and you know,
Speaker 2: he's one of the handful of in people there that
Speaker 2: have that kind of had that kind of cachet, and
Speaker 2: so we realized this isn't working. You know this, he
Speaker 2: tried to cut around it, and you know it was
Speaker 2: mystifying and moody but cryptic, and suddenly you were wondering
Speaker 2: what the hell's going on, and he said he we
Speaker 2: re rented the space, got Vilco and the production designer
Speaker 2: on a plane coming back, and as they were in
Speaker 2: the air, Marlon on a phone call says to Johnny,
Speaker 2: it's not that I won't say those words, Johnny, I
Speaker 2: can't say those words. I can't help you. So Johnny
Speaker 2: has a decision to make that It didn't really seem
Speaker 2: like he thought about it too hard, but he decided
Speaker 2: he didn't want to be the first director in film
Speaker 2: history to fire, recast, and reshoot Marlon Brando, and we
Speaker 2: rolled with it, and at that point we had gone
Speaker 2: over so Johnny was personally financing the overages, and you know,
Speaker 2: it was very much his story to tell. And what
Speaker 2: resulted is one of the threw stuff off of the
Speaker 2: tracks early on in the story, and we don't know
Speaker 2: really exactly what's going on. I think what happened in
Speaker 2: Can was he got really his first bad reviews, really ever,
Speaker 2: and they were some mean reviews and they are too harsh.
Speaker 2: But I have a feeling that the fact that the
Speaker 2: Film Critics screening, the screening for the Film Critics, which
Speaker 2: is at seven am, after many of them had been
Speaker 2: out very late, and the film broke during that projection,
Speaker 2: and for seventeen minutes they had to sit around and
Speaker 2: wait till the splicer was found, put together and rethread,
Speaker 2: you know, and get it going again. And I have
Speaker 2: a feeling that contributed to the meanness or the edge
Speaker 2: in the reviews. So as a result, it was distributed
Speaker 2: everywhere but in America, which Johnny owned those rights personally
Speaker 2: himself to distribute it, and he never chose to let
Speaker 2: it be seen. You know. All he had to do
Speaker 2: was to call that guy back and shoot that one
Speaker 2: five page scene with him in the location that was
Speaker 2: already reset and ready to go, and he chose not
Speaker 2: to do that breaks my heart.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really sounds like he chose Marlon Brando or
Speaker 3: for the film itself, or.
Speaker 2: Thought it would work. I don't know, he didn't I
Speaker 2: guess fight for the Maybe he thought it was going
Speaker 2: to work. I guess.
Speaker 3: I have to say, what was the period of time,
Speaker 3: And you don't have to be exact, but like after
Speaker 3: the whole incident with disease versus Johnny Depp calling, what
Speaker 3: was that period of time?
Speaker 2: I don't remember exactly, but it was less than a year.
Speaker 2: It was maybe like half the year, it was like
Speaker 2: six months or something. I think really unfortunate missed opportunity
Speaker 2: was a pitch from a fellow named Bill Caine, a
Speaker 2: Jesuit priest who was a brilliant playwright, and I think
Speaker 2: he was doing stuff at Touchtoone at the time. He
Speaker 2: heard the story, read the script, and came back with
Speaker 2: his own approach to the story that was a direct
Speaker 2: christ allegory. It was so it was so moving. I
Speaker 2: remember crying a lot, you know, during the pitch, even
Speaker 2: on the phone. And Sahni at that time had questioned
Speaker 2: himself with Danny and never got to hear any of
Speaker 2: these great ideas. One of them is so unfortunate, but
Speaker 2: because it never was embraced, but was to open the
Speaker 2: film with him learning with our lead learning that he
Speaker 2: has terminal cancer before he's offered all of this money,
Speaker 2: so he knows he's going to die anyway, and so
Speaker 2: all of that is taken off the table. That why
Speaker 2: would you want to kill yourself? Stuff is you know,
Speaker 2: a non issue, and Shahnny never got to hear that idea,
Speaker 2: and I think it would have helped our connection with
Speaker 2: the lead character.
Speaker 3: Where did you guys shoot all this, like where are
Speaker 3: these locations?
Speaker 2: At Randsburg, California an abandoned mine that it was so
Speaker 2: surreally perfect that we went on a three week location scout.
Speaker 2: Our location scout was so dedicated. He was out every
Speaker 2: day for something like I don't know, one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty days or something and came back only on the
Speaker 2: day that his wife was delivering it. And the last
Speaker 2: location that we looked at we were looking at all
Speaker 2: of these dumps and re processing places in you know, Arizona,
Speaker 2: Texas in kind of very arid environments, and the last
Speaker 2: place we found was a place in Randsburg, and it
Speaker 2: like everybody knew right away it was it was it.
Speaker 3: What was kind of your experience working on this? It
Speaker 3: sounds pretty stressful.
Speaker 2: The stressful part was completion. Bond was bitch. I have
Speaker 2: a feeling it always is, but maybe people are used
Speaker 2: to that. Those hurdles and we had, you know, what
Speaker 2: we thought was a start date and then people have
Speaker 2: dedicated their schedules to the project and the who withhold
Speaker 2: that document for as long as they can and you
Speaker 2: have to spend like a lot of your own money,
Speaker 2: like to keep it afloat, you know, until they're a
Speaker 2: criteria or fulfilled. And that was very stressful, you know,
Speaker 2: threading that needle. And then after that things went really,
Speaker 2: really pretty smoothly. A signing star I thought was Iggy
Speaker 2: Pop's score. Peter Gabriel courted Johnny very hard wrote one
Speaker 2: of what for me is one of the best scores ever,
Speaker 2: original scores and lastentation of Christ, and Johnny turned that
Speaker 2: down in favor for Iggy, in deference to Iggy, and
Speaker 2: he turned in something that was They spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time on it. They budgeted a lot of time
Speaker 2: and came up with something moving and unexpected in an
Speaker 2: original sound and really impressed me. He channeled sort of
Speaker 2: that last temptation of Christ's world music sound and quite beautiful.
Speaker 2: You know, I have nothing but like admiring things to
Speaker 2: say about Johnny. He paid dearly for this project. He
Speaker 2: worked hard, more days on this than any other one
Speaker 2: in his life, I imagine, because you know, the free
Speaker 2: production and the production and the post and the can
Speaker 2: and all that, and you know he's usually he can
Speaker 2: go in and out of a project quicker than that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, finally interesting. I was talking on the episode about
Speaker 3: the interviews that I saw from con where he was
Speaker 3: just saying how difficult the shoot was and how tough
Speaker 3: it is being a director. Did that come through on
Speaker 3: the set?
Speaker 2: He had this this thing where he wouldn't write shot
Speaker 2: lists before the day shoot day, and he would I
Speaker 2: think he made it a little harder on himself than
Speaker 2: it had to be. But we had a lot of
Speaker 2: time scheduled. It was like, I think it was like
Speaker 2: a forty day shoot and it was I think we could.
Speaker 2: We had a lot of time to create a really
Speaker 2: vivid world in that in that environment, on that location,
Speaker 2: and things went surprisingly smoothly, and there's such good vibes
Speaker 2: with Bilko and Craik. We called him and you know
Speaker 2: with Philko and Craika, he's so comfortable and they had
Speaker 2: a lot of fun. It was, I thought, really smooth.
Speaker 2: It might have been really stressful or hard for him
Speaker 2: in ways that I didn't see, but filled with admiration for.
Speaker 3: His Ultimately, how does this project affect you?
Speaker 2: It was incredible education And you know, it's sort of
Speaker 2: been around films forever but as far as I can remember,
Speaker 2: but you know, first person having the opportunity to sort
Speaker 2: of walk on the red carpet, you know, with a
Speaker 2: film that you've had a lot to do with getting made,
Speaker 2: and it was a great thrill and something that I
Speaker 2: think is an incentive to try to relive education and
Speaker 2: moving on to other projects that you love.
Speaker 3: Do you think is there a chance that the film
Speaker 3: could ever come out in the US?
Speaker 2: I mean, if Johnny ever changed his mind, I think
Speaker 2: he would. I don't foresee that happening. An academic exercise
Speaker 2: would be to cut out the Marlin shots and cut
Speaker 2: in the casting shots of this guy who read for it.
Speaker 2: And I never did that, but you know, and I
Speaker 2: got the footage and all, but like that, that could
Speaker 2: be a very telling exercise, you know, and how strong
Speaker 2: the film could be without the Marlin intrusion. I've just
Speaker 2: come to learn recently. He's done this with a lot
Speaker 2: of other projects. See that was his sickness, and he
Speaker 2: like fucked up every project that he got involved with
Speaker 2: for a long period of time. And unfortunately, like Johnny
Speaker 2: was a casualty of that. But he wanted me to
Speaker 2: not intervene with Marlon, and he asked me to to
Speaker 2: let it go, and I was deferential to him, or
Speaker 2: that he had paid a great price to tell his story.
Speaker 3: Well, I would love sometime if we could talk about
Speaker 3: the Aviator. That sounds like a fascinating story as well.
Speaker 3: If you were up for it, I.
Speaker 2: Think I'd rather let me all think about it.
Speaker 3: Okay, thank you so much for your time tonight, pleasure Man.
Speaker 4: Jesus was way cool. Everybody liked Jesus. Everybody wanted to
Speaker 4: hang out with him. Anything he wanted to do he did.
Speaker 4: He turned water into wine, and if he wanted to,
Speaker 4: he could have turned wheat into marijuana, or sugar into cocaine,
Speaker 4: or vitamin pills into ampheticins. He walked on the water.
Speaker 2: And swam on the land.
Speaker 4: He would tell these stories and people would listen. He
Speaker 4: was really cool. If you were blind or lame, you
Speaker 4: just went to Jesus and he would put his hands
Speaker 4: on you and you would be healed. That's so cool.
Speaker 4: He could have played guitar better than Hendricks. He could
Speaker 4: have told the future. He could have baked the most
Speaker 4: delicious cake of the world. He could have scored more.
Speaker 2: Goals than Huyne Redsfield.
Speaker 4: He could have danced better than Barishnikov. Jesus could have
Speaker 4: been funnier than any comedian.
Speaker 3: You could think of.
Speaker 4: Jesus was way cool. He told people to eat his
Speaker 4: body and drink his blood. That's so cool. Jesus was
Speaker 4: so cool. But then some people got jealous of how
Speaker 4: clear he was, so they killed him. But then he
Speaker 4: rose from the dead. He rose from the dead, danced around,
Speaker 4: and went up to Heaven. I mean, that's so cool.
Speaker 4: Jesus was way cool. No wonder there are so many
Speaker 4: Christians