IR Interview: Basil Iwanyk For "John Wick - Chapter 4" (Awards Track) [Lionsgate]
Producer Basil Iwanyk talks to Awards Track about approach, inspiration, logistics, location and humor in regards to his film: “John Wick - Chapter 4”.
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00:00 (screaming)
00:02 - You ready, John?
00:13 - Yeah.
00:19 (dramatic music)
00:23 (gunshots)
00:25 - To modulate it up, but also create something so mythic
00:38 and yet so intimate, and yet it be sort of fun.
00:42 That's the hardest thing to do tonally,
00:45 and also bring in like all the locations
00:47 and the logistics that go into something such as this.
00:49 Can you sort of talk about that and sort of that evolution?
00:53 Which in terms of the John Wick franchise,
00:55 then I'll go into sort of a bigger value with you as producer.
00:58 - You know, I think you hit the nail on the head
01:00 when you talk about tone.
01:01 I don't, on the first film, we really didn't,
01:07 we couldn't articulate the tone we were going for.
01:10 On paper, it sounded ridiculous, right?
01:12 It's, you know, the premise, the fake, you know,
01:16 the hotel, the world, the hit man,
01:18 the formalism between the characters.
01:21 There was a sense of humor about it,
01:23 but it wasn't like self, it wasn't like self-parodying.
01:27 And I know this is gonna sound strange,
01:29 more so than any films I've ever worked on.
01:32 We couldn't figure out what the tone of the movie was
01:34 until we got to the right runtime on John Wick One.
01:37 Because when those movies run too long,
01:40 I don't mean like, but like, it feels repetitive.
01:43 People start going, they started checking out,
01:45 and people are like, what, like they didn't understand
01:48 they were supposed to have fun.
01:49 Once we give the audience permission to that,
01:53 the guys, we know what we're doing is kind of,
01:56 silly is the wrong word, but what we know we're doing is,
01:59 we're making movies, we're telling stories,
02:01 we're having fun here.
02:02 Audience, it's okay to have fun with us,
02:04 even though it's like death and violence and craziness.
02:07 That is what kind of, I think,
02:10 is the underappreciated like trick of the four movies.
02:15 As big as we've gotten,
02:18 and I think that also embodies Keanu, right?
02:20 Keanu doesn't wink at the audience,
02:23 but Keanu, it seems like I'm hoping that people think,
02:27 no, that we're all in on the joke.
02:28 And the joke is, we're doing something crazy and nuts,
02:33 and we're here to entertain you,
02:34 and hopefully they're gonna move you.
02:35 I mean, that's why, you know, you look at the overshot,
02:39 the top shot of John Wick Four,
02:41 and the people getting hit by all the cars
02:44 in the Champs-Elysees,
02:45 and Keanu pulling out of windows, like, we get it.
02:48 We know what we're doing is nuts.
02:50 And so I think that,
02:53 but that all started from that first movie,
02:56 where the audience,
02:58 and I'm sorry if I'm talking too much,
03:00 but there was this- - No, no, no, no, no.
03:01 I appreciate it.
03:02 - The one moment, if there was a moment that, to me,
03:06 was the most important moment of all the John Wick franchise,
03:08 of all the films from TV shows, games,
03:11 whatever the hell we do,
03:12 was we showed that it was the first screening,
03:15 the audience didn't know what to make of the movie,
03:17 because they meet Keanu, he's beat up,
03:20 they kill his dog, they steal his car.
03:22 Everyone's like, "What is this?"
03:24 And then no one had any idea.
03:26 And then there's a scene where Michael Nyquist calls
03:29 John Wick Wazamo and says, "I heard you struck my son."
03:32 And he goes, "He stole John Wick's car and killed his dog."
03:37 And Michael Nyquist just goes, "Oh,"
03:40 and hangs up the phone.
03:42 The entire audience started laughing,
03:43 and we knew they were like, "Okay, they get it.
03:45 This is here to have fun."
03:47 And I think that's what kind of kicked
03:51 this whole nut crazy franchise off for us.
03:55 - Saying goodbyes?
03:57 - Saying hello.
03:59 - You think your wife can hear you?
04:03 - No.
04:04 - Then why bother?
04:06 - Maybe I'm wrong.
04:09 - You're going to die.
04:15 - Maybe not.
04:17 ♪ Goodbye to you, my trusted friend ♪
04:22 - A new day is dawning.
04:23 New ideas, new rules, new management.
04:28 ♪ We'd worn each other since we were nine or ten ♪
04:33 - Who is this?
04:35 - The Marquis de Gramont.
04:37 - Challenge him to single combat.
04:39 Win or lose, it's a way out.
04:44 - I don't sit at the table.
04:46 - Your family does.
04:47 - I mean, Chad, what he was saying the other day,
04:49 and he and I have talked about this too,
04:51 is the aspect of like, he's like,
04:53 "Okay, everybody, even John Wick,
04:54 he doesn't know that the laugh is there.
04:56 It's about playing it straight."
04:58 This is true of Sicario too.
05:00 Sicario has as dark as it is.
05:03 When Benicio does certain things,
05:05 you can tell that even though the character
05:07 is not in on the joke, we are.
05:10 And that's sort of the thing.
05:11 I mean, could you talk about, you know,
05:13 'cause that's a development thing.
05:14 I mean, when you're going through,
05:15 you do these set pieces, but again,
05:17 these small little intimate moments,
05:19 like at the card table here in four,
05:21 or in even, you know, those quiet moments
05:24 where Donnie Yen's sitting on the steps.
05:27 There is that inherent sort of gallows humor,
05:30 and that makes it work as well.
05:32 Could you talk about that,
05:32 looking at that through the development of the script
05:34 versus what like Chad and Keanu were trying to come up with
05:38 to up the game, and you were as well?
05:41 - We, a touch point of all the Wick movies
05:46 have been the Sergio Leone movies.
05:49 You know, for a few, you know,
05:51 "Once Upon a Time in the West," you know,
05:54 "A Few Dollars More," and all the,
05:55 "Good, Bad, and the Ugly," obviously.
05:57 If you look at all those movies,
05:58 put aside like what people are,
06:00 what they're famous for, like the composition and stuff,
06:03 they all have humor.
06:04 They all have crazy, weird, screwed up humor.
06:07 And whether it's, you know,
06:10 Charles Bronson at the beginning of
06:12 "Once Upon a Time in the West," which is like, you know,
06:15 well, we're short a horse,
06:18 no, you're about three too many, and he shoots up.
06:20 Like there is humor there, you know?
06:22 And so, but the stakes are there.
06:25 The emotional stakes are there.
06:28 It does, it's supposed to feel kind of operatic.
06:30 You know, it's supposed to feel like these are,
06:33 you know, these are knights and this samurai
06:35 and all this stuff, so it feels real,
06:37 and it feels important.
06:39 But if you don't have that visual or that character humor,
06:44 you know, whether that's when you first see
06:46 Lafayette, Donnie Yen in the kitchen,
06:48 and he's eating soup, like, again, that's that fine line.
06:53 And oftentimes, we've gone over the line,
06:57 and we had to pull back.
06:58 Were you watching and like, "Okay, we went too far.
06:59 "It's a little goofy."
07:01 And, but no, but I think that's a,
07:04 that that kind of, you know,
07:08 nobody has to, everybody's playing this straight, right?
07:12 I mean, and it's funny you say about Sicario.
07:14 You know, the Josh Brolin character is really funny,
07:19 and he makes crazy jokes, and he,
07:21 but at the end of the day,
07:22 he's (beep) Josh Brolin in that movie.
07:24 He's Matt Graver.
07:24 He's a killer.
07:25 He's tough.
07:26 'Cause that's the thing.
07:27 It's, you talk to soldiers, you talk to cops.
07:32 They're often the funniest people you'll ever meet
07:34 because to undercut the fear, the rage, the intensity,
07:37 it's humor, right?
07:38 And so I think we've kind of applied that a lot
07:42 onto the Wick movies.
07:44 And again, I think that embodies,
07:47 that's embodied in Keanu Reeves as Josh.
07:50 You know, there's something about when you watch him.
07:53 He sells it all, but he just has to have a slight look,
07:56 and you're like, "Okay, this is, that's, he's,
08:00 "it's a grin."
08:01 Like, you know, I think he only smiled maybe once
08:03 in all four movies,
08:04 other than the beginning with his wife.
08:07 And that's in four, but still, you have fun with him.
08:11 (car engine roaring)
08:14 (gunshot)
08:17 (car engine roaring)
08:27 (car engine roaring)
08:30 - It's also about environment and location.
08:46 Obviously starting it off from the desert.
08:49 Was that in Jordan or was that in Saudi or?
08:51 - Jordan.
08:52 - Okay.
08:53 You know, using the different environments.
08:55 And now obviously as, you know,
08:57 you've evolved as producer, you know,
08:59 you get access to all the different things,
09:01 depending like where you're doing,
09:02 Greenland or Sicario or whatever.
09:03 But doing this, I mean, getting these iconic spots,
09:08 that keys into the environment
09:09 'cause you can build things around that.
09:11 Can you talk about looking at environment,
09:14 looking at, because that's a logistical thing too,
09:16 because you have to shut down these places,
09:18 you have to go there.
09:19 Can you talk about how that sort of
09:21 imbued the character of John Wick?
09:23 Or is it a reflective element of John Wick?
09:26 - It's really an evolution of it.
09:29 When we originally put Rome in John Wick 2,
09:32 we wanted to break,
09:34 I don't know, listen, we love shooting in New York.
09:37 New York's great, it's grand.
09:38 But we wanted a, we thought, okay,
09:41 there's two movies in New York,
09:42 the audience is gonna wanna see
09:43 just a set piece somewhere else.
09:44 We also couldn't afford it.
09:46 We picked Rome because we wanted to give,
09:48 it was a story, no, really,
09:50 that we wanted the audience to know
09:52 that the high table and these hotels
09:54 have been around since the Roman times.
09:56 So we went, let's go for one of the oldest cities
09:59 in the world and get a sense that
10:01 this has been going on for a really long time.
10:03 It's not just New York in 1910.
10:06 Same choice for Morocco in John Wick 3.
10:10 Our idea was, originally we wanted Jerusalem.
10:13 We wanted to go a sense that this has been going on
10:17 for centuries, that this world and this battle
10:20 has been eternal.
10:22 On John Wick 4, it was more of like,
10:26 okay, it was like the playground.
10:27 It's like, how do we, we're gonna be out of New York.
10:31 How do we not make it feel like it's a travelogue,
10:36 like some of the, like the old Bond movies
10:39 where every five minutes they'd be somewhere different.
10:42 But where do we get a sense of texture and tone
10:47 of not just the locale, but also the music,
10:50 the sound, what people are wearing, the bad guys,
10:53 the characters that come in.
10:55 Who are the characters that would be in Berlin?
10:56 Who are the characters that would come in in Jordan?
10:58 Who are the characters that would come in in Paris?
11:01 So it was kind of this holistic idea of like,
11:03 not just, it wouldn't be cool to be by the Eiffel Tower,
11:07 but it's like, no, we wanna have that music.
11:10 We wanna have really cool, interesting French bad guy.
11:13 So it isn't just like a, let's go to a fun location,
11:17 although that is a part of it, I'm not gonna lie.
11:19 We do sit around going, where do we wanna go?
11:22 Like, where can be cool?
11:23 And, but it's definitely part of the,
11:29 and also just kind of the expansion of the world, of course,
11:33 that we wanna give a sense that this is a global thing.
11:35 And we talked a lot about John Wick 5,
11:38 where do we go from there?
11:40 Do we go to Asia?
11:41 Do we go to Africa?
11:42 There are other things that we wanna expand
11:44 that we haven't gotten to yet.
11:45 But yeah, it's not, again, not just location.
11:48 It's also what it means for story, character,
11:52 music, everything.
11:54 - Have you given any thought to where this ends?
11:59 - The table will never stop.
12:03 - You know this.
12:05 - No one, not even you,
12:18 can kill everyone.
12:20 (gunshots)
12:23 (roaring)
12:26 (dramatic music)
12:28 (explosion)
12:32 (gunshots)
12:34 (dramatic music)
12:37 [gunshots]
12:40 (whooshing)