Speaker 1: Oh he is boot it show died.
Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie.
Speaker 1: When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 3: They want cloth, sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in
Speaker 3: the protection booths.
Speaker 4: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 3: Eight attacks from the last week, and all of this
Speaker 3: is in the name of God. Every religion out there
Speaker 3: shows a fighter, train them, and whoever is left standing
Speaker 3: at the end, that is the religion that we worship.
Speaker 5: This is the final opportunity for fighters who aren't rant
Speaker 5: to qualify for the battle for absolute dominion.
Speaker 2: Since when did we even talk about Bruno?
Speaker 5: He's from the Institute of Humanism and Science and that
Speaker 5: makes him a story.
Speaker 2: How come we've never seen one of their fighters before?
Speaker 2: They dig what scientists do engineering for?
Speaker 4: Are you fighting to end God?
Speaker 2: He cannot win this tournament. Fighter, I don't care what
Speaker 2: the odds are.
Speaker 4: We need to make sure he doesn't make it into.
Speaker 1: The top fifty. Is he going to be safe?
Speaker 2: I don't know how far they'll go to stop him
Speaker 2: from qualifying.
Speaker 5: This wild card tournament has just become more thrilling than
Speaker 5: the past ten ranking tournaments together.
Speaker 1: What do you do when you get it?
Speaker 4: You are what all the fuss is about.
Speaker 5: And we don't need to put this idea of a
Speaker 5: potential godless outcome into people's minds any more than it
Speaker 5: already is.
Speaker 1: You don't really think they're trying to kill them too,
Speaker 1: That's why they did it. Profits man, I tradeful. That's
Speaker 1: my whole life.
Speaker 4: You'll make me for the sole purpose of winning this tournament.
Speaker 3: This then, is getting crazier by the day.
Speaker 4: Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
Speaker 4: I'm you host Mike White. On this episode, I am
Speaker 4: talking with Lexi Alexander. We had her on the show
Speaker 4: a few years ago talking about Punisher war Zone. She
Speaker 4: is back and she is talking about her latest film,
Speaker 4: Absolute Dominion.
Speaker 6: It is a.
Speaker 4: Future set fighting film when we have folks trying to
Speaker 4: save humanity from a global holy war by having a
Speaker 4: fierce martial arts tournament. Had a great time talking with
Speaker 4: Ms Alexander. I hope you have a great time listening.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, and definitely check out Absolute Dominion,
Speaker 4: opening May ninth, twenty twenty five, hopefully at a theater
Speaker 4: near you. How did Absolute Dominion come about for you?
Speaker 2: That was really interesting because people have always reached out
Speaker 2: to me and asked when am I going to do
Speaker 2: a martial arts movie, because they knew me as a
Speaker 2: martial artist who became a stun woman who became a director,
Speaker 2: and they saw a little bit of fighting in Green
Speaker 2: Street and a little bit of martial arts and punish up,
Speaker 2: but nothing was ever a real martial arts movie. And
Speaker 2: I kept trying to explain to people that genre doesn't
Speaker 2: exist anymore, not as a regular genre in the US,
Speaker 2: at least in the nineties. When I arrived in the US,
Speaker 2: that was a big genre. You had on the track
Speaker 2: in Wilson, and you had twenty guys who were like
Speaker 2: The poor Man's Fandath and you remember, though, so all
Speaker 2: those movies. But as soon as I arrived in the
Speaker 2: US and wanted to get into that, it stucked. And
Speaker 2: then the show Brothers. Even then China stopped making movies,
Speaker 2: and so really was a dying genre and I didn't
Speaker 2: really think I would get the opportunity to do it.
Speaker 2: And then I remember I got a call one day
Speaker 2: from the head of Netflix International, who happened to be
Speaker 2: the distributor of Green Street in the UK, and he said, hey,
Speaker 2: I just got this job and I'm reaching out to
Speaker 2: all the multicultural directors I know, do you have something
Speaker 2: you want to pitch? And I said, yeah, kept this
Speaker 2: movie that I've always wanted to do. And Netflix was
Speaker 2: the place that if there was any place where you
Speaker 2: could actually pitch the martial arts movie, it was Netflix.
Speaker 2: And it's from the time I pitched this movie to
Speaker 2: the time it was finished, Netflix went through ten changes
Speaker 2: of executives and departments and future plans and manifestos. It's
Speaker 2: just one of those things where you started the company
Speaker 2: that does one thing with a person that knows you,
Speaker 2: and you end up with a company that wants the opposite,
Speaker 2: and not with the person who hired you. Originally, this
Speaker 2: movie was bought as a three picture deal in a
Speaker 2: big futuristic world, probably one hundred and fifty million dollar
Speaker 2: kind of thing. Now I knew when I sold that
Speaker 2: teach with the three movies and this big world, that
Speaker 2: most likeliness will be reduced. I'm not an idiot. I thought,
Speaker 2: there's no way they're gonna let a woman who hasn't
Speaker 2: had a massive success in the studio world keep that
Speaker 2: kind of budget and that kind of project. And of
Speaker 2: course I was correct. It became smaller, and it became
Speaker 2: one lobe, and it became a smaller budget, and at
Speaker 2: one point it was canceled completely and I basically beg
Speaker 2: to get it back, and I said, can you do
Speaker 2: it for very little money? So I said, yes, These
Speaker 2: are now unique problems to me. These are problems all
Speaker 2: filmmakers have, and so you just struggle your way to
Speaker 2: a creen light and then you know, COVID happened. So
Speaker 2: you had to work through that because that at the
Speaker 2: time when I made that movie, it ate half of
Speaker 2: your budget because you had these massive crews that had
Speaker 2: to test. I couldn't have any extras because you couldn't
Speaker 2: have massive groups. But then also I didn't have the
Speaker 2: VSX to create the extras. But it was definitely a challenge,
Speaker 2: but I'm very glad that I ended up making it.
Speaker 2: And then we got basically we walked as a film
Speaker 2: industry into this space where studios discovered that it would
Speaker 2: be smarter for them to shelve movies who are text
Speaker 2: writer right off, rather than to get behind them if
Speaker 2: they're not really standing behind them. And I had a
Speaker 2: great fear of watching the two directors from Bad Girl,
Speaker 2: and there was a bunch of others this happened to.
Speaker 2: Watching that happened, I was like, oh my god, this
Speaker 2: is happening. This is happening to me for sure, and
Speaker 2: to my great surprise. And I feel like it may
Speaker 2: have slightly to do with the fact that I have
Speaker 2: a big mouth on the internet. They instead of shelving it,
Speaker 2: just gave me the movie and said here you take.
Speaker 2: And I feel very blessed because I feel this is
Speaker 2: my last Hollywood movie. I definitely think it's my last
Speaker 2: Hollywood movie. Whether I work in Ireland, where I live now,
Speaker 2: that might be the case, but I don't think Hollywood.
Speaker 2: There's a future for me there. And so I'm glad
Speaker 2: I got this done and I'm plaid coming out now
Speaker 2: and it has a fantastic cast. I try not to
Speaker 2: think what it could have been in somebody would have
Speaker 2: actually given me the original budget. I tried to just think, Hey,
Speaker 2: we worked ourselves through an incredibly challenging situation and we
Speaker 2: ended up with a movie.
Speaker 4: So where did the idea for this come from?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this idea I honestly have had for I think
Speaker 2: maybe fifty twenty years. I think I remember it started
Speaker 2: at the time. I think when the first Matrix came out,
Speaker 2: and I thought, well, that was a really great idea
Speaker 2: to implement in a script and then make a great
Speaker 2: martial arts movie, make a great fight movie. I don't
Speaker 2: think all people look at The Matrix as a martial
Speaker 2: arts movie. I certainly did. Though people probably remember.
Speaker 7: The slow more bullets and stuff like that and bullet
Speaker 7: time and all of that, and all of that too,
Speaker 7: But there was great fighting in that movie and it
Speaker 7: was an incredible.
Speaker 2: See because what I think people don't realize is that
Speaker 2: martial arts has a huge issue where you cannot make
Speaker 2: a movie like Rocky without some idiotic plots that you
Speaker 2: have to fight because your brother has leukemia and you
Speaker 2: have to raise fun. If you think about all the
Speaker 2: martial arts movies like, for example, Warrior, there's a blood
Speaker 2: like that in there. For some reason, we can't look
Speaker 2: at it like we look at boxing like a kind
Speaker 2: of honorable sport where people get into the ring and fight.
Speaker 2: We have to create some kind of reality. My wife
Speaker 2: has been kidnapped and if I don't join this underground
Speaker 2: fighting thing, they're going to kill her and everybody and everything.
Speaker 2: Single martial arts movies like this, every single one. When
Speaker 2: people ask me, when are you going to make this
Speaker 2: martial arts movie? I resold, I'm never going to make
Speaker 2: one of those movies that has a silly plot like
Speaker 2: this guy's fighting to get his brother or the revenge
Speaker 2: his dead brother or something like that. So how am
Speaker 2: I going to do that? And that's when I started
Speaker 2: coming up with this idea because the other passion and
Speaker 2: obsession I have is with everything in religion, all the
Speaker 2: world religions, and I think that comes a little bit
Speaker 2: from my family ground. I grew up with a Catholic
Speaker 2: mother and a Muslim father who had a little bit
Speaker 2: of a private battle about which religion I should join,
Speaker 2: and that kind of motivated me to find out more
Speaker 2: about religion to the point where I read a lot
Speaker 2: and then even ended up studying theology. And what I
Speaker 2: didn't realize and only it was told once I was
Speaker 2: already studying theology, is that's the best way to become
Speaker 2: an agnostic or atheist. The more you learn about all
Speaker 2: the world religions, the more you realize there really can
Speaker 2: be one single true there is a mythology in all
Speaker 2: of them. But it fascinated me to this day how
Speaker 2: it's religion is used and abused and changed. It is
Speaker 2: a great community tool and a great way for people
Speaker 2: to hold on to their culture, and at the same
Speaker 2: time it is a great tool to abuse people. Use
Speaker 2: them for you are politics and your own objective. It's
Speaker 2: a fascinating subject and most studios don't want to touch
Speaker 2: it at all. And I think essentially that's what happened
Speaker 2: here is there was a lot of fear of where
Speaker 2: I could flash come from, even though I was very careful.
Speaker 2: And also nobody's saying that one religion is going to
Speaker 2: win this termam so I thought we were extremely careful,
Speaker 2: but you know, a studio will always air on the
Speaker 2: inside of let's not take the risk.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's be safe rather than take a chance on
Speaker 4: being controversial.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 4: And I know you have no fear of being controversial.
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 4: Or I used to follow you on X but I
Speaker 4: quit the platform after they let jump back on it.
Speaker 2: They suspended me. I'm not allowed back on really. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: they suspended me in a manner that is because we
Speaker 2: have a few friends that work there and they try
Speaker 2: to get my account back on and they said we
Speaker 2: are not even allowed to touch it. We are all
Speaker 2: clogged from letting you back up. I've been suspected on
Speaker 2: a level that is, who knows what I said, But
Speaker 2: I feel like it's an honor to be suspended by
Speaker 2: such a fascist. And also it's an interesting thing because
Speaker 2: on the one hand, x still has more information than
Speaker 2: any other blood form. But on the other hand, it
Speaker 2: is very you know, like fascists and racist is not
Speaker 2: even the proper word, because it's like abusive on a
Speaker 2: manner that the stuff that I'm reading on there is
Speaker 2: just horrific. Four Chan didn't have that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Agent didn't have the stuff like it really bad underground
Speaker 2: black Wall where you used to read the worst things,
Speaker 2: didn't have what Eggs has. Overly, you know, I think
Speaker 2: I can live without that free speech. It's a shame
Speaker 2: that some of the good people have stuck there, although
Speaker 2: I do understand why that is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, as soon as I started watching Absolute Dominion and
Speaker 4: I realized there's going to be about religion and martial arts,
Speaker 4: I was like, Wow, this is the perfect marriage for
Speaker 4: Lexi Alexander. I was so happy when I realized what
Speaker 4: the film was going to be. You mentioned the cast.
Speaker 4: Please tell me a little bit more about the cast,
Speaker 4: especially your main character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was such a lucky I don't want to
Speaker 2: say coincidents, because he works hard and so not a coincident.
Speaker 2: But you have just the right casting director who understands
Speaker 2: that I didn't just want to have anybody this character
Speaker 2: really needed to be as this is somebody who needs
Speaker 2: to be as the future. Suddenly I have disappointment with
Speaker 2: this kid who she I was a casting director won't
Speaker 2: show a director and actor that they haven't had the soul.
Speaker 2: I'm already aware that he can't be a complete beginner,
Speaker 2: but I didn't know much about him. I did know
Speaker 2: that he's never worked in either TV or film, so
Speaker 2: that was slightly surprising. But in come he immediately starts
Speaker 2: speaking in three languages flown German, French, English switches up
Speaker 2: like that, and I said, wow, he has a big
Speaker 2: mixed cultural right right, So I think he is German French.
Speaker 2: I know the Terman in in every language now except English.
Speaker 2: Ivory Ireland, Ivory from the Ivory coast, Yes, Ivory coast.
Speaker 4: Quota or something, yes.
Speaker 2: Exact cut yea. And in German it's called it erstenbin Cristas.
Speaker 2: So that's a long work. But then anyway, so he
Speaker 2: is mixed race, mixed culture, multiple languages, and in my heart,
Speaker 2: that was exactly what I was looking for, and that
Speaker 2: had a specific reason because the character was basically genetically
Speaker 2: engineered once the idea for that tournament came about. So
Speaker 2: the idea is that somebody says, yes, okay, we are
Speaker 2: going with this idea before we kill the entire world.
Speaker 2: We are going to actually prepare for this tournament. But
Speaker 2: it's not going to be a short term negotiation about
Speaker 2: the regard. This will be years of negotiating. And so
Speaker 2: the basically croup of humanists who really wanted to avoid
Speaker 2: having one religion follow that who are really the group
Speaker 2: of scientists and academics who think they're better than anybody
Speaker 2: else because they are atheists that don't follow these superstitious things.
Speaker 2: They ended up genetically engineering this fighter because there is
Speaker 2: no fighter usually in that group. And that is really true.
Speaker 2: If you think about who does martial.
Speaker 8: Arts, it's usually the Global South will have a lot
Speaker 8: of martial arts by its when you think more of
Speaker 8: the Global North, especially the richer the country gets, the
Speaker 8: more they play tennis and.
Speaker 2: Golf, but not necessarily martial arts. And that's a big
Speaker 2: part of martial arts is you walk into a good
Speaker 2: dose that wins a lot of fights. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of people of color, not usually for a white femaine,
Speaker 2: So that was an aspect of it. I thought, if
Speaker 2: you're engineering a fighter, you have to really make it
Speaker 2: a fighter of the world, and make it a fight
Speaker 2: of the future world, and it would be somebody who
Speaker 2: is from different backgrounds and also not really of one nation,
Speaker 2: really of the world. And I felt like he was.
Speaker 2: He did a perfect audition, much better than some of
Speaker 2: the hits I read were on big TV shows. That's
Speaker 2: a part that when you have a park for a
Speaker 2: young guy where the young I can fight, every young
Speaker 2: actor in town will come in on the sheep boy.
Speaker 2: I already had that experience with Green Street. It was
Speaker 2: a movie that everybody wanted to play, that Elijah Wood world,
Speaker 2: and it happened again here web agent calling like do
Speaker 2: you I still see people? And it was interesting because
Speaker 2: for me to go with somebody who had never acted before.
Speaker 2: This is a very successful model. He is like an
Speaker 2: Arbery cost model. If you look at his Instagram, it's
Speaker 2: like you see him do these amazing shoots and he's
Speaker 2: very beautiful. But his acting is amazing, like he auditioned
Speaker 2: other than most people. And it probably also had to
Speaker 2: do with the fact that I really saw him as
Speaker 2: the character, so that was incredibly lucky. And then I
Speaker 2: had to find I had to be very careful because
Speaker 2: the religions. It's set in the future, and the religions
Speaker 2: are fictitious. You should get a hint of what it
Speaker 2: is you know, but I'm not saying what it is.
Speaker 2: You probably understand it. In any case, I needed to
Speaker 2: find an Arab actor, which was challenging, much more challenging
Speaker 2: than I thought. I always thought there's a lot of
Speaker 2: Arab actors at that age groupment that needed work, a
Speaker 2: lot of them. I think, first of all, it's not
Speaker 2: part of our culture, like we Arabs want to become doctors,
Speaker 2: lawyers or engineers. And for years I struggled with this
Speaker 2: and bought the family members that we should not ignore
Speaker 2: the arts. It's good to have good artists an industry,
Speaker 2: and also the film industry influences a lot of the world,
Speaker 2: and it's a big mistake and has been for us
Speaker 2: a big mistake to not have any representation at all,
Speaker 2: because now the world basically knows Arabs only from twenty
Speaker 2: four and from the Libyans and back to the future,
Speaker 2: like we're always terrorists, never the doctors, even though every
Speaker 2: family has three doctors in the family. I thought it
Speaker 2: was a mistake, and I still think it's a mistake
Speaker 2: that we nick collected this industry. But here I was
Speaker 2: trying to find the young Arab that couldly this part,
Speaker 2: and it was Walth And then thank god, I ended
Speaker 2: up actually doing bad research myself and really reaching out
Speaker 2: and asking everybody I know, and the suggestion that came
Speaker 2: in for this young guy named Jun Sauti, who is
Speaker 2: Moroccan American but has this all the really interesting backstory
Speaker 2: of first moving to Germany and living there and he
Speaker 2: a Racists in Germany burned their house and they almost
Speaker 2: him and his siblings and his mother almost got killed.
Speaker 2: It was a big story in the paper there. I
Speaker 2: couldn't believe it. It was like you sit there with
Speaker 2: these people who basically have your own life story, which
Speaker 2: was somebody like me is very rare. I've never really
Speaker 2: seen anybody like me on the screen. And I also
Speaker 2: really don't meet people like me who grew up in
Speaker 2: one place but their culture is really from somewhere else
Speaker 2: and now they're living in the US. That was very unique,
Speaker 2: and then I feeled obviously, I asked Patrin Oswald because
Speaker 2: he's a great friend and supporter and he's always up
Speaker 2: to help, which is always a great compliment. And Alex
Speaker 2: Wnda turned out to be I really reached out doing
Speaker 2: because I saw I this character I had in mind
Speaker 2: for the Leed's father is basically a very lettice Jewish
Speaker 2: academic who is against occupation, against abusing religion, against all
Speaker 2: of that. And I said, who can I actually find
Speaker 2: to get play this and not get feedback or did
Speaker 2: that say help to this is?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 2: I mean, that is important? And so I reached out
Speaker 2: to Alex, which was such a blessing because when we
Speaker 2: ended up getting the movie handed back to us, it
Speaker 2: wasn't finished. It was still in post and they said,
Speaker 2: you have to finish it, and I had no production
Speaker 2: company in Blaze at all, but he did. He makes
Speaker 2: one movie after another. He has a whole team, so
Speaker 2: he became a producer on the movie, and truly, honestly,
Speaker 2: without him, this movie would not exist now. So another
Speaker 2: great again, coincidence is not the right word, but I
Speaker 2: feel like the universe had my on this movie, definitely
Speaker 2: with Alex and then I have two fantastic transactors, one
Speaker 2: non binary actor, and that was part of it. Was like,
Speaker 2: I'm definitely going to be the most inclusive movie. It
Speaker 2: was part of a future world that I think should
Speaker 2: exist that way. And there was also a little bit
Speaker 2: of a challenge I had because I didn't want to
Speaker 2: do a mixed tournament, and that comes from me being
Speaker 2: a fighter myself. I barely managed to once in a
Speaker 2: while I won against the super flight and the national team.
Speaker 2: When I was in the German national team, we had
Speaker 2: to fight each other and if I fought the super
Speaker 2: flight weight, I was even and it's once ale I won.
Speaker 2: But the truth is, if I fight a fighter who
Speaker 2: is a middleweight, dude, I'm not gonna wait. That's just
Speaker 2: this and I don't think it really has as much
Speaker 2: to do with gender. The fact that it's hard to
Speaker 2: get somebody the super flight weight also is not going
Speaker 2: to win against the heavyweight. I wasn't going to just
Speaker 2: for some kind of inclusive or diversity purpose make a
Speaker 2: mixed tournament to feature women fighters who, if they win,
Speaker 2: I myself would look at this and go, yeah, she
Speaker 2: wouldn't have won. Yeah, I know, I know what it
Speaker 2: takes to kick a guy in the head. Do you
Speaker 2: not moving somebody who's twenty pounds heavier than you? I tried.
Speaker 2: This is just physics. Does that mean in an emergency situation,
Speaker 2: if somebody attacks me, I couldn't get away from somebody
Speaker 2: if I'm smart, if I smash an am straight in
Speaker 2: his face, if by pigive me in the box, I
Speaker 2: have to do one thing that takes him out for
Speaker 2: a couple of seconds and then get the bug out there.
Speaker 2: I'm not challenging somebody who's heavier and bigger than me.
Speaker 2: I'm not certainly not going to go into a twelve
Speaker 2: round bite. And that's just I had to be honest
Speaker 2: with myself because there are TV shows who do this
Speaker 2: thing where this little girl kicks five guys in the
Speaker 2: head and they all fall, and I'm like, that is
Speaker 2: actually not possible, it's not realistic, and people tune out
Speaker 2: because it's silly, and so I didn't want that, and
Speaker 2: I thought, what am I going to do? Am I'm
Speaker 2: really gonna do this thing where all the dudes are
Speaker 2: fighting because they're the only one we're interested in fighting,
Speaker 2: And so I really had to create this. Look at
Speaker 2: this is, how do I create this world? And I said, okay,
Speaker 2: what if this is really happening in real life? And
Speaker 2: I came up with this world where everybody who identifies
Speaker 2: as men can participate in the tournament, and everybody who
Speaker 2: a woman can work in any law enforcement and have weapons,
Speaker 2: while the men from that point on cannot be allowed
Speaker 2: to have weapons, which, if you think about it, in
Speaker 2: a three picture deal, that of course had consequences. And essentially,
Speaker 2: if I would have made those three movies, it would
Speaker 2: have turned out that the women were quite smart, because
Speaker 2: if you're the ones with the finger on the button
Speaker 2: and if you're the ones carrying the weapons, it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter how And I think the guys in the yeah,
Speaker 2: we're going to be the ones who's going to do
Speaker 2: the fighting miss set and I was always looking forward
Speaker 2: to that conclusion. So now people get to say, see
Speaker 2: this one firm. They don't really know why this world
Speaker 2: is like that, but what they will see is that
Speaker 2: all the bodyguards of the famous fighters are women. Everybody
Speaker 2: who has any kind of machine gun anytime is it
Speaker 2: all women? And then I have to think about, okay,
Speaker 2: this is still me thinking very binary. And but there's
Speaker 2: also something to be said about casting treans actors and
Speaker 2: not making a big deal about them being trends. They
Speaker 2: are activists for their cause and obviously now the Trump
Speaker 2: that has become a bigger issue, so they are talking
Speaker 2: about it. So I don't necessarily don't want to say
Speaker 2: who they are. But in the movie that doesn't matter
Speaker 2: is one is a fighter and one is a guard,
Speaker 2: and we don't ever mention it, because the truth is,
Speaker 2: when somebody transitions, you don't have to mention what they
Speaker 2: were before, right, you just go over there. But then
Speaker 2: we also have a world where people don't necessarily fit
Speaker 2: in to those two genders that we make up. By
Speaker 2: the way that historically there was a much more open world,
Speaker 2: even in Islamic nations, there was a bigger world for
Speaker 2: multi genders. There's actually an entire in Indonesia, there's an
Speaker 2: entire sect where kind of there's these multi gender priests, right,
Speaker 2: and they're very famous and very honored, and it's we've
Speaker 2: almost eradicated them as well. There's still some less but
Speaker 2: if you go back and history, notice that gender, really
Speaker 2: we made it important. The more progressive, the more Westerns
Speaker 2: it became the more it became all viewer men and
Speaker 2: you this, and then we had to fight for gay rights,
Speaker 2: and now we have to fight for trans rights, and
Speaker 2: it's just something we're making up because it was like
Speaker 2: that in the old dayst So again, I had just
Speaker 2: now figured out this whole the man of fighting the
Speaker 2: women at this if you identify as either, you go
Speaker 2: sign up. But then there's a world of non binary people,
Speaker 2: and I thought, okay, let's just say that in forty
Speaker 2: fifty years, we're still not a perfect society, so there's
Speaker 2: probably still something to be blessed with. Let's say we're
Speaker 2: at the place where we we like them and we
Speaker 2: hire them and we accept them. We're very well aware
Speaker 2: that they don't fit in either world, so we're making
Speaker 2: them the artists and the top show hosts and the
Speaker 2: and so I was likely to meet Aluke bait Man,
Speaker 2: who is a very big personality online and almost a
Speaker 2: young sage who speaks about the history of being non binary,
Speaker 2: and just always I always felt like I had dawn
Speaker 2: set when they were around. I'm not necessarily saying that's
Speaker 2: how the world should because that's and we talked about it.
Speaker 2: That was part of the world that we still hasn't
Speaker 2: figured it quite out, because they also shouldn't have any limits,
Speaker 2: and making them the hosts and artists is not quite
Speaker 2: right because then we're just saying, okay, they can only
Speaker 2: be the basically the dark and ponent showed that art
Speaker 2: is the clown. We're not taking them seriously. But it
Speaker 2: was okay, and we spoke about this, and I obviously
Speaker 2: get a lot of inputs. We talked about the fact
Speaker 2: that we are allowed to show a world that has
Speaker 2: still not managed that may have progressed, but it still
Speaker 2: hasn't managed to get it right perfectly.
Speaker 4: Obviously, there's way more to this film than just the fighting.
Speaker 4: But I have to ask who did your fight choreography?
Speaker 2: My white choreographer is a man named Field ten and
Speaker 2: with his part that Arnold John and they've been around
Speaker 2: in the business forever. I'm friends with phil Son Lewis
Speaker 2: Tan who you may know. He's been in a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of TV shows and movies and really rising kind
Speaker 2: of star in this world of really good looking martial artists.
Speaker 2: And again, I think we're suffering a little bit from
Speaker 2: the fact that we don't make this show enough anymore.
Speaker 2: Louis isn't as big of the star as he should
Speaker 2: be in our world. We know who he is, and
Speaker 2: I met his father and so I hired them, and
Speaker 2: then they reached out and hired all the martial artists,
Speaker 2: and yeah, that was fun because I think I was
Speaker 2: probably I didn't know how I would react and how
Speaker 2: I would be directing martial arts for the first time
Speaker 2: in a big boby. I know that. For example, Supergirl
Speaker 2: was a show that hired me specifically because for an
Speaker 2: episode where she had a big fight and they wanted
Speaker 2: to establish a fighting star, and they thought it'd be
Speaker 2: cool to hire me for that particular episode. And it's
Speaker 2: nice to come in somewhere and establish somebody's silence. So
Speaker 2: I am slightly I would say, probably a little bit
Speaker 2: more controlling of that department than anything else. I don't
Speaker 2: boss around my custom designer or my production design that
Speaker 2: as much as I'm very in about the martial arts,
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure that always it's rough because you
Speaker 2: have a head of the department and you really want
Speaker 2: to trust them and let them do it. But I
Speaker 2: changed a lot and I hoped that they got over it.
Speaker 2: But it was just an important part of the movie.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't want to go down too much of
Speaker 4: a rabbit hole, but it's very interesting to think about
Speaker 4: a Kryptonian versus a human who We've got all these
Speaker 4: different styles of martial arts here on Earth, but did
Speaker 4: you have to come up with something different for Kryptonian
Speaker 4: fighting style?
Speaker 2: Well, I wouldn't call him Kryptonian. When I talk about
Speaker 2: genetic engineering, there's a very soft version of that. I
Speaker 2: think I'm making it sound more sci fi than it is.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you've for of what did they call it.
Speaker 2: There's a way you can decide what gender your baby is,
Speaker 2: and then in the process of that, you can also
Speaker 2: if you have a sperm donor, for example, you can
Speaker 2: also basically choose the aspects. Do you want them to
Speaker 2: be a math genius or do you want them to
Speaker 2: be six foot eight or stuff. They're obviously very many
Speaker 2: ethical debates about this because should we really do that?
Speaker 2: But it's happening, and our lead was just a version
Speaker 2: from that. It was basically an engineering that involved finding
Speaker 2: somebody who has a high shue and was athletic on
Speaker 2: the mother's side, and then finding the kind of same
Speaker 2: version from the father's side, and also looking at That's
Speaker 2: why he was such a perfect choice, because you have
Speaker 2: this really tall, young black man who wasn't necessarily muscular,
Speaker 2: but you could see that he's athletic, but he has
Speaker 2: more of a dance kind of figure, and you instantly
Speaker 2: realize that he has a photogenic memory. He has a
Speaker 2: high cue. At some point there, it's a scene where
Speaker 2: the bodyguart makes it clear that I know that you
Speaker 2: can remember everything in the minute you look at it,
Speaker 2: and so becomes very clear that he is He's not
Speaker 2: of this world. It's just the way to create him
Speaker 2: was there was a little bit of silent in hire.
Speaker 2: So the stile I wanted to have for him was
Speaker 2: had a lot to do with the last style that
Speaker 2: I trained in, which was a stema. It was an
Speaker 2: interesting It was an interesting situation because the stemma is
Speaker 2: my favorite martial arts I've ever done. I think it
Speaker 2: is the smartest martial art, and I think that if
Speaker 2: I would find myself in a situation where I have
Speaker 2: to fight for life and that I would definitely try
Speaker 2: to use that. It's the smartest thing anybody ever teaching,
Speaker 2: and I practiced all of them. Isn't the martial arts
Speaker 2: that I haven't tried at some point. The problem with
Speaker 2: SYSTEMA is that it's very Russian. And when this movie
Speaker 2: first get creen its people were at the moment in
Speaker 2: time where they what is that drink that is called
Speaker 2: Russian Russian something?
Speaker 4: Geez, there's a white Russian. There's Moscow mule.
Speaker 2: Yeah, white Russian Americans said that we're not drinking them.
Speaker 2: Then it's literally it was like freedom Price, remember Freedom Price,
Speaker 2: when we couldn't say anymore. It was ridiculous, but it
Speaker 2: was that bad. And I also had to remember that
Speaker 2: just the year before in Germany there was this accusation
Speaker 2: that every SYSTEMA studio is like a Russian underground Spicy,
Speaker 2: which is really ridiculous because it's just martial arts who
Speaker 2: are obsessed with martial arts. There's no spy anywhere. Originally
Speaker 2: the best fighters in this that is true, and I
Speaker 2: think that's where the suspicion comes from. Where in the
Speaker 2: KGB and it's further on and whatever the security services
Speaker 2: that took over from the KGP. It's incredibly effective martial arts.
Speaker 2: It's not surprising, but it's also thousands of years old
Speaker 2: and actually really relates to a religion, the Orthodox Christians
Speaker 2: in Russia. So it wasn't even like a communist kind
Speaker 2: of thing. There wasn't any way I could and I
Speaker 2: was very clearly told I couldn't say anything about SYSTEMA.
Speaker 2: You have to figure out something. So I came up
Speaker 2: with I can't even remember, I should look this up
Speaker 2: what I called it. I gave it some fictitious name.
Speaker 2: But I wanted the style be that intelligence style, which
Speaker 2: is very much you know about. I would say, I
Speaker 2: kdo has a little bit of that, where you take
Speaker 2: somebody's energy and convert it. SYSTEMA goes a little bit
Speaker 2: further because it's also about your own body. One of
Speaker 2: the greatest exercises is there would be people stabbing you.
Speaker 2: You would fight multiple people and people stabbing you with
Speaker 2: these plastic knives, but they were not the soft on
Speaker 2: step back. It actually hurt you, you know. And the
Speaker 2: idea behind was is how can you make your body
Speaker 2: move your body in a way that the blade basically
Speaker 2: hits the least, gets the least. Instead of standing flat forward,
Speaker 2: you just like a like a jelly, like an octopus,
Speaker 2: like moving with it so that the other person has
Speaker 2: a tough time getting anything to actually make contact with.
Speaker 2: And so you're constantly moving things out of the way,
Speaker 2: and it looks when you look it up online. People
Speaker 2: always make fun of this when they want you to
Speaker 2: videos or system of it because it looks stupid. It
Speaker 2: looks like these people are idiots. But it is one
Speaker 2: of the most effective martial arts ever done. It because
Speaker 2: it makes complete sense. It comes. It's a rock ticker
Speaker 2: martial arts you constantly. It has a lot to do
Speaker 2: with breath, and I wanted him to be that kind
Speaker 2: of smart fighter, so I mixed ichto the fictitious name
Speaker 2: and that's what we did, and I think it turned
Speaker 2: out really good.
Speaker 4: LEXI thank you so much for talking to me about
Speaker 4: Absolute Dominion. It was so pleasurable to be able to
Speaker 4: connect again. And I am so excited for more people
Speaker 4: to be able to see this film.
Speaker 2: Me to me too, and let's connect. I am not
Speaker 2: on X anymore like you, but I am on Blue Skuy,
Speaker 2: so find Miday so that we stay in touch. And
Speaker 2: I loved the first time I was on your podcast,
Speaker 2: and I love that you made another episode about my friends.
Speaker 2: So I'm coming back anytime you want me to come back.
Speaker 4: Oh, I would love that.
Speaker 2: And if you want to have any other guests for
Speaker 2: your interesting episodes. Just contact me anytime.
Speaker 4: No, I would really love that. I always have such
Speaker 4: a nice time talking with you. This was wonderful.
Speaker 9: Thank you so much, Amy, Thank you.
Speaker 6: No suffounciates you more than a passage of every day
Speaker 6: events and asolation.
Speaker 2: Is he as a gymnast making children.
Speaker 4: Freevents you sub.
Speaker 6: Slid so up, good slide, sill up, get.
Speaker 2: My share.
Speaker 6: One away, welcome, she just crouse your friends.
Speaker 1: Show away a man.
Speaker 4: Elsky, I should.
Speaker 6: Never clump to be a big rockstar.
Speaker 5: Celebrated PI.
Speaker 6: Some of your face just cut off wrist like sheep
Speaker 6: cue fo to say that death was on said to zay.
Speaker 2: You just cause your eyes.
Speaker 1: Show away A man.
Speaker 2: S got.
Speaker 1: Si Si Si Si.
Speaker 6: Shatsa a one as a shaty that do not fun
Speaker 6: as a shot a shadow as a shot.
Speaker 2: I shot down sad sad.
Speaker 1: Story. So I jo I like said.
Speaker 6: Side. So it's ship ship stie so I job said si.
Speaker 6: So's telling Share