Good morning ladies and gentlemen, Muldoon here with an interesting chat with Director Daniel Zirili. While the latest CAPTAIN AMERICA film completely blew me away last night, it's not the only film coming to theaters this Friday. Last week I posted a clip from CROSSING POINT and today I've got a brief chat with the gentlemen behind the film. In full sincerity, I just love talking with passionate filmmakers as they each have their own tastes, styles, and stories from a given project. So while I don't typically seek out films like CROSSING POINT, it was a pleasure to catch nonetheless and a sincere pleasure to speak with Zirilli about the project. Below is our talk, and if you're curious about filming in Tijuana or how the man locked in his cast, well you won't be dissapointed. The film hits theaters tomorrow and as of this past Tuesday, is also available on VOD.
Hi, Daniel. First off, thank you for talking with me so early in the morning. It’s around eight where you are, right?
I’m actually in the airport on the way to Thailand right now to work on another film, so I was up already.
Sounds like you’re a busy guy, and in that case let’s jump right on in to it then! I just saw the movie late last night, so it’s still fresh in my head. Before the initial credits roll, the title card pops up that these are “based on true events.” How did you first hear about these events and more importantly, what about it made you want to sign on to direct? Why did you choose to make this movie?
Sure. Well actually, Shawn Locke wrote the original story and he, coincidentally or not coincidentally actually, is the lead in the movie. He’s the guy that’s on the run while trying to save his girlfriend. He had had some experience or heard of some experience in Mexico close to this and he came to me through another producer, because I’ve spent a ton of time in Baja, Mexico… I actually grew up in San Diego, so I’d been to Baja and Tijuana at least fifty times. I’ve shot Baja and Tijuana before, so I’m super well versed filming in Mexico and it’s a subject that I’m very familiar with as I’ve also directed hundreds of rap videos… The “street credibility” aspect of this movie was very important to me and I wanted to make things very, very legit. Of course we didn’t use the names of actual cartel. (Laughs) In the first draft there were a lot of cartels mentioned and I’m like “Hell no, let’s change a few of these…” It’s all reality based, but not specific to any cartel. You saw the movie, the guy that’s sort of the bad guy, played by Rudy Youngblood, kind of goes off on his own, so he’s an individual with his own little click.
Yeah, maybe it’s best not to mention any cartels by name. You never know…
Yeah, especially when I live in Southern California and I love Mexico. That being said, and kind of reminds me of another aspect of it is I very consciously wanted to make sure that the Mexican cop, played by Jacob Vargas, was really the good guy in the movie as well, so it’s not just like an exploitation film where “all Latinos are bad,” which they’re not. I love Latinos. I love Mexico. I’ve traveled throughout Mexico and wanted to tell a balanced story, so really the hero, aside from the Caucasian lead is the Mexican cop who is following and trying to help him along the way.
It’s interesting that Shawn Lock wrote the script and played the main character. From your perspective as the Director, how is that… directing the guy who wrote the character “No, no I think you should do it this way…” I mean what was that relationship like?
What’s interesting about that is that Shawn did not want to play the lead. I mean he literally was like… I know on the outside it must look like a guy who wrote the screenplay that insists on playing the main character and I just had to put up with it, but the fact is that I met and developed the script with Shawn after the first couple of drafts and after being around him I just always remember going through revisions and stuff… I always pictured him as “Michael,” the lead, and I kind of had to convince him to do it. We auditioned and looked at other people and we looked at name actors and stuff, but I felt it really needed to be organic and it needed to be like a guy, sort of like a character to the audience that you don’t really know, that’s not “really famous.” It made it more believable and I knew he could pull it off, so although there’s always difficulties working with someone who wrote the script, I think, they let me do a polish of the draft, a punch up on the dialog with the whole script, so they trusted my instincts. I’m think he took my direction well and of course we surrounded him with more experienced actors, like Tom Sizemore and…
Yeah, which actually how did your cast come together? You’ve got Tom Sizemore, Rudy Youngblood and even Paulinia Gaitan. How did you get these guys?
So basically I know Rudy well and I know Tom Sizemore well. Tom is a friend of mine and we had co-written another movie that I just directed in Thailand called THE ASIAN CONNECTION with Steven Seagal and Michael Jai White, which is an interesting story in itself… So I’ve known Tom for about five years and he’s just such a fantastic actor. I know he comes with some baggage and stuff and people think whatever they’re going to think about him, but me dealing directly with Sizemore… He’s kickass. He did a fantastic job. He’s great in everything. He takes direction well, but brings something new, where every take is slightly different. So I just had to call Tom and say, “Tom, dude… You’re going to be in this movie.” He was totally into it, I had a conversation with him, and he was down. So we scheduled it, he came down to Mexico and he did a great job. Rudy Youngblood and I had known each other, same thing, for about five years. I had executive produced a movie that I put him in with Danny Trejo a long time ago called BEATDOWN that we did for Lionsgate. I did a slate of movies for Lionsgate, so I had worked with Rudy previously and I think he’s a really underused actor. Obviously he was the lead in APOCALYPTO, which he barely spoke in that movie, but was still so compelling… If you go back and watch that movie, there’s tons of great acting in it by Rudy. So I thought Rudy was a really interesting choice and he got really into the role. So those were personal sort of friend-favors that I called in as I knew those guys and knew they could deliver.
Yeah, well they both did a great job. It looks like you’ve been involved with quite a bit of movies, produced, directed, written… Just glancing at your IMDB page is a little hard to take in and that’s just looking at it, not actually living it. In terms of this movie specifically, what was your most enjoyable day of the shoot and then what was something you experienced here that you had never experienced before on a movie set?
To go back a little bit, I came up through music videos. I’ve directed hundreds of music videos and then I segued as I wanted to tell full length stories. After doing so many videos like 3 Six Mafia or Redman, you kind of just want to tell stories, but I always liked street credible stories, like CROSSING POINT, that work for the audience, but also for the streets… Films that were “legit.” I’ve people that have seen it, guys who live there, connected guys that are like “This is a fucking legit movie.” So I was drawn to that and then if you look back… Obviously I’ve done a wide variety of movies on my way up, so when I segued it wasn’t a perfect transition into movies… I just feel like recently through what I’ve been able to gain and experience, I’m starting to make the movies that I want to make. These last three movies that I’ve directed are quite solid. I’ve had to do some shit movies on the way up and I’m just being honest. I know when something is good and when something is a shit movie, but THE ASIAN CONNECTION, TIME RUSH, and CROSSIN POINT are all solid movies, so I have three movies coming out, all within six months of each other that I’ve directed and am very proud of. CROSSING POINT I think is my best movie. THE ASIAN CONNECTION is solid and has a little bit more name value, so those two movies particularly I’m really proud of, but THE CROSSING POINT is the type of movie that I’d like to make, the kind of movie that I want to make, regardless if my career gets bigger and I do larger movies with bigger stars, but the Tony Scott, Ridley Scott, Michael Mann, are the types of movies I want to do. They are action movies that have high stakes, high drama, and that are street credible, so I am proud of them.
As far as what I remember from individual days… I did not make the shoot easy for anybody. You’ll notice in the movie that I pushed the limits. We changed locations two or three times a day. I mean some of the segments that I had to do were incredibly complicated just putting things all together. The tunnel, for example, it was a challenge, because I had to shoot it in three locations as I didn’t have “the perfect tunnel.” I had to shoot in the warehouse, where they enter the tunnel. I had to shoot in the bar in Tijuana where there used to be prohibition tunnels where you’d go down into the tunnel… Then I had another actual practical tunnel that was more of a sewer in another day. Then when they come out, they are on another place on the beach. So some of these creative challenges faking the movie to make it all work, that’s four different setups for one sequence. It was a hard movie to make and it was legitimately in Tijuana and I was in Mexico for the authenticity of it all. I can’t tell you a particular day that I was most proud or that was fun, but I’m most proud of making it “in the streets.” We were offered much more money to shoot it in Atlanta. “I don’t care what the budget is, it’s not going to be legit in Atlanta… It’s got to be Tijuana. It’s got to be Baja.” That’s probably what I’m happiest about, that I stuck to my guns and made it a legitimate movie in the actual location.
Well it definitely would have been a different movie had you tried to cheat it in Atlanta.
Or Detroit… Somebody said Detroit too, because of the tax incentives. I’m all for tax rebates, but it’s got to be the right place to shoot your movie and this just wasn’t. We did better having a smaller budget and doing it in actual authentic locations.
With a limited budget and the amount of locations you hit up, apparently every day, you really do just fly all over the place in the movie. You show us a lot of stuff and I’m curious about permits. I’m always curious about permits and you can blow this question off or not, but did you stop and get a permit for every location? Or was it a lot of run and gun, EL MARIACHI style, “just get it” going on?
I mean we went through the film board, so everything we did was legit. We got permission for everything. We did a lot of crazy stuff, but it was all very safe and permitted. So we were very cautious and we did cool stuff, but everything we did do, we’d get permits for. It was kind of like a blanket thing where it wasn’t that hard. Once our Location Manager would grab a location, he’d bring it past the film board and they’d approve it. Luckily we didn’t get stopped from shooting. I shot everywhere I wanted to shoot and again, I’m not the kind of director that says, “Let’s make the movie all in one location in a warehouse.” I think that’s tired. There are some examples of great movies that were basically one or two locations, but for the most part I want to have a visual feast. I don’t want to make it easy on production by shooting on a sound stage with green screen. I want it to feel gritty and authentic with all of the textures that you get by shooting in the streets of Tijuana. You just can’t recreate that on the stage. You can’t really recreate that in America. I mean some really big movies I’ve seen that show “Mexico…” There was that Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington movie, I forget the name of it [2 GUNS] where they had a whole section in Mexico and I’m like “That’s bullshit. That is not Mexico. That is so fake.” With the streets and the textures, you just can’t cheat that. I’m at a stage in my life where I’m not getting any younger, so I’m really pushing it with these action movies. I’m trying to make action movies with high stakes drama that are better than the budgets, better than the easy route to make it convenient for everybody. I am pushing when I’m making these movies and I think the last three movies that I directed really showed that, that I’m trying harder by pushing through and trying to make better, more interesting movies than the budgets would normally represent.
I think that’s a healthy goal as opposed to the opposite where you only want to shoot within a five mile radius of your production office. Talking about the richness of the textures of actually shooting in Tijuana, there was a shot or two featuring a zebra in the streets… it was like a “throw away” shot where it wasn’t lingered on at all. What’s the deal with that?
(Laughs) It’s funny. If you’ve been in Mexico, they have those “zebras” everywhere. They are not actual zebras. They are donkeys that are painted for tourists that people take pictures in front of, so yeah it was less “a zebra” and more “a donkey.”
That’s hilarious.
Yeah, if you go down to Revolución, they’re all over the place. But that’s the type of flavor, with mariachi bands and whatnot. We got a release on all of that stuff, but where you see that real Mexico, Tijuana flavor you’ve got to try and shoot that stuff.
“Get it.” You can’t really duplicate it later as you’ve said. Well Daniel, I’ve got one last question that you’ve already hinted at. You standard “last question,” what’s next for you in terms of writing, directing, producing? It sounds like you have a lot of projects on your plate.
Yeah, I’ve done about seven or eight movies in the last two years and three or four of them that I’ve directed. I know that’s a lot of movies, but I am being more careful about what I direct, because I’m on a roll right now. I’ve got these three solid movies that are under my belt, again CROSSING POINT and ASIAN CONNECTION being the best two and I’m trying to get a bigger name actor for my next movie. I’m more the kind of guy that would rather put a dramatic actor in a movie and put him in an action setting, so the acting is better. So I’m looking for that right guy, like for example Wesley Snipes is a good example of a solid action actor who could really act. He’s got the acting chops where you believe him when he says something. It’s guys like that where I’m trying to find that right actor that will elevate my work. I know how to make movies, I just need a little bit more of a budget with more name actors, so that I can get bigger theatrical tone that I’m trying to tell. THE ASIAN CONENCTION and CROSSING POINT, these are types of movies I’d make regardless of how big I ever become or whatever. These are crime dramas with action and featuring interesting locations that feel exotic and deliver on the action and the drama and the high stakes. I have a few plans right now for projects that I want to do, but I haven’t been pushing hard, because I’ve been really focused on “Who is that actor in my next action movie?” I’ve got a movie called INVINCIBLE and another called THE GUN RUNNER that I want to do and I’m waiting for the right name actor.
Okay, well Daniel best of luck grabbing that guy. I’m sure it’s going to be someone you’re probably not even expecting right now. Best of luck with everything you’ve got going on and thanks for chatting with me today.
Thank you for taking the time off to talk with me about the movie.
Have fun in Thailand.
Thanks, buddy. Bye.
Boom! So there we have it, ladies and gents - a little insight into Zirilli's headspace. I'd like to thank hime once more for his time and also Tatum at Katrina Wan PR for setting this up.
- Mike McCutchen
"Muldoon"
Mike@aintitcool.com
