New Interview to Lexi Alexander!!! (October 14, 2008)!!!

[Balthus Dire]

If we only could have gotten the one two of Stuart Beattie scripting and Walter Hill directing, I think it could have been perfect. But Beattie got a better offer to do another script and Lions Gate were either really dumb or too cheap to get Hill.

Beattie is good, but he's not a god send. 30 Days of Night was horrible.

 

[S. Grundy]

I put more of the blame on Steve Niles than Beattie for 30 Days of Night.

But I think he could have given a good script and then Hill obviously would have tweaked it to his and Jane's liking.

 

[Balthus Dire]

The script for 30 Days of Night was bad before the movie was even shot. GI Joe, on the other hand, I can probably give you by the time Steven Sommers is done with it.

 

[hero79]

The script for 30 Days of Night was bad before the movie was even shot. GI Joe, on the other hand, I can probably give you by the time Steven Sommers is done with it.

What was so bad about 30 Days of Night script?

I thought movie stuck pretty close to the book overall. There was a subplot cut out from the book but other than that it was pretty much the book.

 

[S. Grundy]

The book isn't all that good though.

One of the problems with the movie, is it lacks the feeling of time passing. It's suppose to be 30 days, but it seems in the movies it's only been a day or two.

 

[Brendan]

What was so bad about 30 Days of Night script?

I thought movie stuck pretty close to the book overall. There was a subplot cut out from the book but other than that it was pretty much the book.

Well the book is pretty basic and gets to the point of things. There's a lot that happens that you never see. The movie tried to fill in some of those blank spots and it wound up being a group of people running around finding new hiding spots for 90 minutes.

I also felt the movie missed out on developing the story of the vampire's further. There was a great interaction between the gang-leader vampire and his Nosferatu-looking superior in the book that the movie completely ignored.

 

[juggalo5050]

Back to the matter at hand,hopefuly lexi won't return....I have a feeling she is gonna **** everything up.I wish we could get a director that has more than a few titles under his belt,scorsese would be AWSOME!
Maybe Hill.....Or maybe Xavier Gens.

 

[Balthus Dire]

The movie tried to fill in some of those blank spots and it wound up being a group of people running around finding new hiding spots for 90 minutes.

That basically sums it up right there. I also found it to be extremely cliche, which I was hoping it wouldn't be from all the trailers. The vampires in the movie were just your regular 90's vampires; tilting their heads to the side and screeching loudly. Lame.

Anyway...I think Lexi Alexander is going to do just fine with this movie.

 

[S. Grundy]

Probably not.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

 

[Balthus Dire]

Well, we'll see on December 5th I guess.

 

[Burn0utCS]

Green Street Hooligans

That's enough evidence for me to give this movie a chance. I mean that movie alone was 20 times more bad ass than the 2004 Punisher. December 5th is the day of Punishment.

 

[grout]

Money will talk with a sequel and Lexi...If the film does well I think they will let Lexi fully run with it. After all the studios are in it to make a buck and money talks. If it works the leash comes off and the director will have more free reign for a 2nd film.

 

[S. Grundy]

Green Street Hooligans

That's enough evidence for me to give this movie a chance. I mean that movie alone was 20 times more bad ass than the 2004 Punisher. December 5th is the day of Punishment.

See that alone, well coupled with a few of her past comments were enough evidence for me to think she was a bad choice.

 

[Space Moose]

I still think the 1989 Punisher is the best. Dolph Ludgren FTW!!!

 

[Balthus Dire]

See that alone, well coupled with a few of her past comments were enough evidence for me to think she was a bad choice.

Blah blah blah....December 5th.

 

[Microchip]

Money will talk with a sequel and Lexi...If the film does well I think they will let Lexi fully run with it. After all the studios are in it to make a buck and money talks. If it works the leash comes off and the director will have more free reign for a 2nd film.

I think she had a fair deal of free reign until post production. And it seems like they didn't really change her film too much, it still seems like a pretty decent length for a ultraviolent action flick.

I really can't comment until I see it, but honestly I think that if we get a sequel to Punisher: War Zone, we'll keep the cast but change directors.

 

[Devil]

From the blog of Lexi Alexander:

"Someone asked me the other day if Frank Castle has a Military history in PWZ. I can’t even believe I haven’t made that clear in any of my blogs or interviews.

Hell yeah he has a f!@#ing Military history!

I have been fond of the Marine Corps for a very long time, way before I ever laid eyes on my first Punisher book. As a matter of fact, one of my first jobs in the US was teaching a Martial Arts seminar at Camp Pendleton. So when I read Castle’s bio and found out that he was a Marine Captain and Force Recon bad ass, I was already sold.
My own Marine buddies keep *****ing at me about the inaccuracy of anything to do with Military in Hollywood movies, so I made sure that wasn’t going to happen on PWZ.

I already spoke about GUNMETAL on my blog, the company who was in charge of training Ray and consulting us during production, but I’d like to introduce them over the next few weeks more in detail and one by one. After all, the US Military is were we find our true nonfiction heroes.

I’d like to start with real-life bad ass number one:

My buddy Sergeant Jonathan Barton or “JB.”

JB was our man on set and trust me when I tell you, there was no shooting going on unless JB was around. I could tell you all the great things he choreographed for us and all the great weapons he suggested we use during production, but JB has an unprecedented knowledge of that stuff and kind of his own language. I usually lose him at “hello”. I thought I’ll ask him a few questions he can answer here, so all you gun experts and fellow Military folk can actually get some real inside.
Peace out
Lexi"

Follow a good interview to Jonathan Barton:

JB, how many tours did you do in Iraq?
Hell, one was plenty, but I did two.

Are you going back?
Doubtful. I left the Marines to work on PWZ. Having said that, I have contacted a PSR (Prior Service Recruiter) about my options if I want to go back in.

How did you come up with the idea to create a company like Gunmetal?
Gunmetal was born out of necessity. After I finished as one of the Military trainers on Jarhead, I once again found myself unemployed. Sitting on my computer during Christmas Hiatus, I decided that the only way to keep working was to invent a way to wrangle in more jobs. I noticed that my competition had neglected television shows, so they became my target media. I came up with a cool name, had my then 16 year old sister draw up a cool logo, and went off into the wild.

How did you like working on PWZ?
Working on the new Punisher, from a Marine’s POV, was a dream come true! The Punisher, as a character, has a huge Marine Corps following. He represents the harder side of the Marine Corps. In Iraq my squad and I would spray paint the SKULL on anything we could find! I’m sure civil affairs lost their **** every time they found one! So having you want me on your crew for the film was an extraordinary moment in my life! BTW, did I ever thank you for hiring me?? I owe you a day shooting!

How well did Ray Stevenson do during training sessions back in LA?
Ray has the most natural God given Military talent than most Marines I know. He took every aspect of his training completely serious, even when it was only air soft guns! The man is a machine. He never tired and did everything that was asked of him, even when he didn’t quite understand why the training team was asking it of him. I hope we can track down that “B” reel footage from his training in Los Angeles. I think people would be shocked to see how the Punisher emerged in LA, but came to life in Montreal.



Seriously though, how ****ing well did your director do in those training sessions?
You missed your calling as well! The fact that you ripped a watermelon sized hole at center mass in a training target with a 40mm Kevlar grenade tip at 40 meters deserves two round of drinks!

We wanted to be very close to Frank Castle's original biography, so I asked you to make him look like he spent some time in every branch of the Military before he became a renown Force Recon/Special Ops instructor. How did you and your Gunmetal colleagues go about achieving that?
Ray’s training team in Los Angeles was comprised of members from all branches of service so that we could give him all the tools from our Nation’s finest. We had Brett Lynch, a former Navy SEAL, Mike Lee, former Marine Recon, Dotan Baer, former Army Ranger, Alex Moore, Air force Para rescue, and myself, Matt Sigloch, Sean Kendall, and Justin Deidolf to give him hardcore USMC Grunt training. Each would take turns instructing so Ray always learned something new.

During rehearsals and production I used to simply tell you: "JB, Castle is shooting those guys over there and killing these bastards here, make it look cool and use some bad ass weapons!" How did you turn those directions into action?
Well, for years I always get asked by Directors and actors, “Here, take this gun, show me what you’d do in this situation.” In the action scenes from PWZ, I walked through the locations and sets and mentally mapped out what I would do in the same situations. I also made notes about weapons systems, rates of fire, types of ammo, and numbers of bad guys so that I could create mission specific weapons and load out. During pre production I would make drawings of the rooms and the most logical actions needed to efficiently neutralize the targets. Then, I would contact the armorer and discuss availability of weapons. Needless to say, in Canada I couldn’t always get what I wanted because of their anti-gun laws. So whatever I could get, I worked with the Armorer and we built them.

Look, in a movie it’s easy to just shoot guns. Per your instructions I wanted to make this a Punisher that actually had to deal with running out of ammo, or transitioning to a different type of gun to shoot through a wall. These are real concerns and the Punisher looks better on screen when he has to do a combat reload as opposed to never running out of ammo, or a combat quick draw with a Smith and Wesson .50 cal custom to blow through a wall to kill a guy because his M-4 isn’t going to penetrate the 9inch cinder.

I took all that information and put blue tape down on the floor of the rehearsal sound stages in Montreal to the dimensions and layout of the different sets. Then I’d have the armorer bring specific kits of weapons for that particular scene and I’d invent the choreography around those parameters. When Ray would come in to rehearsals, I would walk him through the action, hand him the guns, and then we’d rehearse it hour after hour!

How hard was it to keep track with the amount of ammunition he has so that we can realistically portray when he would run out of ammo?
Very! Plus during filming in the freezing cold, the automatic weapons would jam in the middle of a take and Ray would combat reload on the fly, LIKE HE WAS TRAINED TO DO, but afterward I would have to look back at my notes and make adjustments to the scenes that followed. Thank god for the Iphone! I could track the action behind the monitors with you, and at the same time adjust for all the crazy **** that would happen!

(Uh, as a side note JB, some of those reloads might be missing in the final cut because different rules apply in the editing room and authenticity doesn’t always win against pacing, but at least we can say we shot it realisticly)

What did you think when I told you that I want Castle to hang upside down from the chandelier so he can shoot a whole bunch of goons in a short amount of time?
I said, “He’s the Punisher! Of course he could do that!” Look, you and I both know that we were stuck between a rock and a hard place with that scene. Your first idea wasn’t even a chandelier, but a dining room chair. Remember when they showed the chair they had invented?? We both shook our heads and looked at the ground in dismay knowing that it was never going to sell. The spinning chandelier turned out to be much cooler. We need to remember that he did that kind of **** in the comics! IMPROVISE, ADAPT, and OVERCOME.

I noticed that you were one of the only people who didn't complain about the freezing cold and the brutal night shoots during production, I often wondered if in the back of your mind you were thinking: "Hey, at least I'm not being shot at and I don't have to dodge IEDs."Is there any truth to that? Does being a war veteran put all that Hollywood whiny **** into a different perspective?
Oh absolutely. I’ve lived through WAR! Honestly, nothing Hollywood can throw at me will ever compare. In fact, having gone through all the crazy **** in IRAQ just makes me laugh when I hear about people’s “tough” days in the film business.

That’s why I’m always smiling and having a good time on set even when department heads are yelling at me. Don’t sweat the small stuff!!


How do you feel about this Punisher movie?
I think this will finally be a Punisher that connects to the fans. It’s pure Marine. It’s pure gunplay. Everything the Punisher uses exists in real life including all the specialty holsters I covered his body in to actually hold all his weapons! I hate seeing movies where actors just pulls guns out of their ass! I’m always complaining about action movies: “Where did he put that gun, and why is he dropping weapons on the ground! No Military man does that!” I think diehard fans will notice the small things like he never leave one of his weapons behind, and he’s not afraid to reload in the middle of a fire fight.

Honestly, this is the way ALL action movies should be made, and I think it will elevate people’s thinking!

Finally, are we going to the range to shoot some **** next week or what?
You bet your sweet ass we are going to the range! I’ll bring the guns and the beer.

And those grenade thingies please!

And concluded with this photo:

 

[Punisher 04]

From the blog of Lexi Alexander:

"Someone asked me the other day if Frank Castle has a Military history in PWZ. I can’t even believe I haven’t made that clear in any of my blogs or interviews.

Hell yeah he has a f!@#ing Military history!

I have been fond of the Marine Corps for a very long time, way before I ever laid eyes on my first Punisher book. As a matter of fact, one of my first jobs in the US was teaching a Martial Arts seminar at Camp Pendleton. So when I read Castle’s bio and found out that he was a Marine Captain and Force Recon bad ass, I was already sold.
My own Marine buddies keep *****ing at me about the inaccuracy of anything to do with Military in Hollywood movies, so I made sure that wasn’t going to happen on PWZ.

I already spoke about GUNMETAL on my blog, the company who was in charge of training Ray and consulting us during production, but I’d like to introduce them over the next few weeks more in detail and one by one. After all, the US Military is were we find our true nonfiction heroes.

I’d like to start with real-life bad ass number one:

My buddy Sergeant Jonathan Barton or “JB.”

JB was our man on set and trust me when I tell you, there was no shooting going on unless JB was around. I could tell you all the great things he choreographed for us and all the great weapons he suggested we use during production, but JB has an unprecedented knowledge of that stuff and kind of his own language. I usually lose him at “hello”. I thought I’ll ask him a few questions he can answer here, so all you gun experts and fellow Military folk can actually get some real inside.
Peace out
Lexi"

Follow a good interview to Jonathan Barton:

JB, how many tours did you do in Iraq?
Hell, one was plenty, but I did two.

Are you going back?
Doubtful. I left the Marines to work on PWZ. Having said that, I have contacted a PSR (Prior Service Recruiter) about my options if I want to go back in.

How did you come up with the idea to create a company like Gunmetal?
Gunmetal was born out of necessity. After I finished as one of the Military trainers on Jarhead, I once again found myself unemployed. Sitting on my computer during Christmas Hiatus, I decided that the only way to keep working was to invent a way to wrangle in more jobs. I noticed that my competition had neglected television shows, so they became my target media. I came up with a cool name, had my then 16 year old sister draw up a cool logo, and went off into the wild.

How did you like working on PWZ?
Working on the new Punisher, from a Marine’s POV, was a dream come true! The Punisher, as a character, has a huge Marine Corps following. He represents the harder side of the Marine Corps. In Iraq my squad and I would spray paint the SKULL on anything we could find! I’m sure civil affairs lost their **** every time they found one! So having you want me on your crew for the film was an extraordinary moment in my life! BTW, did I ever thank you for hiring me?? I owe you a day shooting!

How well did Ray Stevenson do during training sessions back in LA?
Ray has the most natural God given Military talent than most Marines I know. He took every aspect of his training completely serious, even when it was only air soft guns! The man is a machine. He never tired and did everything that was asked of him, even when he didn’t quite understand why the training team was asking it of him. I hope we can track down that “B” reel footage from his training in Los Angeles. I think people would be shocked to see how the Punisher emerged in LA, but came to life in Montreal.



Seriously though, how ****ing well did your director do in those training sessions?
You missed your calling as well! The fact that you ripped a watermelon sized hole at center mass in a training target with a 40mm Kevlar grenade tip at 40 meters deserves two round of drinks!

We wanted to be very close to Frank Castle's original biography, so I asked you to make him look like he spent some time in every branch of the Military before he became a renown Force Recon/Special Ops instructor. How did you and your Gunmetal colleagues go about achieving that?
Ray’s training team in Los Angeles was comprised of members from all branches of service so that we could give him all the tools from our Nation’s finest. We had Brett Lynch, a former Navy SEAL, Mike Lee, former Marine Recon, Dotan Baer, former Army Ranger, Alex Moore, Air force Para rescue, and myself, Matt Sigloch, Sean Kendall, and Justin Deidolf to give him hardcore USMC Grunt training. Each would take turns instructing so Ray always learned something new.

During rehearsals and production I used to simply tell you: "JB, Castle is shooting those guys over there and killing these bastards here, make it look cool and use some bad ass weapons!" How did you turn those directions into action?
Well, for years I always get asked by Directors and actors, “Here, take this gun, show me what you’d do in this situation.” In the action scenes from PWZ, I walked through the locations and sets and mentally mapped out what I would do in the same situations. I also made notes about weapons systems, rates of fire, types of ammo, and numbers of bad guys so that I could create mission specific weapons and load out. During pre production I would make drawings of the rooms and the most logical actions needed to efficiently neutralize the targets. Then, I would contact the armorer and discuss availability of weapons. Needless to say, in Canada I couldn’t always get what I wanted because of their anti-gun laws. So whatever I could get, I worked with the Armorer and we built them.

Look, in a movie it’s easy to just shoot guns. Per your instructions I wanted to make this a Punisher that actually had to deal with running out of ammo, or transitioning to a different type of gun to shoot through a wall. These are real concerns and the Punisher looks better on screen when he has to do a combat reload as opposed to never running out of ammo, or a combat quick draw with a Smith and Wesson .50 cal custom to blow through a wall to kill a guy because his M-4 isn’t going to penetrate the 9inch cinder.

I took all that information and put blue tape down on the floor of the rehearsal sound stages in Montreal to the dimensions and layout of the different sets. Then I’d have the armorer bring specific kits of weapons for that particular scene and I’d invent the choreography around those parameters. When Ray would come in to rehearsals, I would walk him through the action, hand him the guns, and then we’d rehearse it hour after hour!

How hard was it to keep track with the amount of ammunition he has so that we can realistically portray when he would run out of ammo?
Very! Plus during filming in the freezing cold, the automatic weapons would jam in the middle of a take and Ray would combat reload on the fly, LIKE HE WAS TRAINED TO DO, but afterward I would have to look back at my notes and make adjustments to the scenes that followed. Thank god for the Iphone! I could track the action behind the monitors with you, and at the same time adjust for all the crazy **** that would happen!

(Uh, as a side note JB, some of those reloads might be missing in the final cut because different rules apply in the editing room and authenticity doesn’t always win against pacing, but at least we can say we shot it realisticly)

What did you think when I told you that I want Castle to hang upside down from the chandelier so he can shoot a whole bunch of goons in a short amount of time?
I said, “He’s the Punisher! Of course he could do that!” Look, you and I both know that we were stuck between a rock and a hard place with that scene. Your first idea wasn’t even a chandelier, but a dining room chair. Remember when they showed the chair they had invented?? We both shook our heads and looked at the ground in dismay knowing that it was never going to sell. The spinning chandelier turned out to be much cooler. We need to remember that he did that kind of **** in the comics! IMPROVISE, ADAPT, and OVERCOME.

I noticed that you were one of the only people who didn't complain about the freezing cold and the brutal night shoots during production, I often wondered if in the back of your mind you were thinking: "Hey, at least I'm not being shot at and I don't have to dodge IEDs."Is there any truth to that? Does being a war veteran put all that Hollywood whiny **** into a different perspective?
Oh absolutely. I’ve lived through WAR! Honestly, nothing Hollywood can throw at me will ever compare. In fact, having gone through all the crazy **** in IRAQ just makes me laugh when I hear about people’s “tough” days in the film business.

That’s why I’m always smiling and having a good time on set even when department heads are yelling at me. Don’t sweat the small stuff!!


How do you feel about this Punisher movie?
I think this will finally be a Punisher that connects to the fans. It’s pure Marine. It’s pure gunplay. Everything the Punisher uses exists in real life including all the specialty holsters I covered his body in to actually hold all his weapons! I hate seeing movies where actors just pulls guns out of their ass! I’m always complaining about action movies: “Where did he put that gun, and why is he dropping weapons on the ground! No Military man does that!” I think diehard fans will notice the small things like he never leave one of his weapons behind, and he’s not afraid to reload in the middle of a fire fight.

Honestly, this is the way ALL action movies should be made, and I think it will elevate people’s thinking!

Finally, are we going to the range to shoot some **** next week or what?
You bet your sweet ass we are going to the range! I’ll bring the guns and the beer.

And those grenade thingies please!

And concluded with this photo:

Nice interview, it's going to be cool to watch how the action scenes are pulled off.