Writer-director Ben Younger has had a interesting last 10 years or so. After the critical success of his first film, BOILER ROOM, in 2000, and the relative indifference to 2005’s PRIME, Younger took a little time off to do some decidedly non-cinematic things (I’ll let him explain). But after being tapped by one Martin Scorsese (who was a big BOILER ROOM fan) to take a stab at the comeback story of boxer Vinny Pazienza, Younger returned to the fray and made the recent release BLEED FOR THIS, starring Miles Teller as Vinny Paz, who broke his neck in a horrific car accident and made what some call the greatest comeback in sports history. The film co-star Aaron Eckhart as trainer Kevin Rooney, the former Mike Tyson trainer who has a few recovery issues of his own to deal with.
Like most great boxing movies, BLEED FOR THIS isn’t about boxing; it’s about the boxer and the chaotic world that surround him, and Younger has a clear understanding of how to make it work. I spoke him him recently about what intrigued him about Vinny Paz’s story and that fine line between determination and just being crazy. I loved our conversation and the stories he tells. Even if you haven’t seen BLEED FOR THIS, I’m guessing you’ll enjoy this read. Please enjoy my talk with Ben Younger…
Capone: Hi, Ben. How are you?
Ben Younger: I’m good. What’s going on?
Capone: Not much. The immediate response I had to this film was that it’s not a traditional boxing film. It’s more about a man who believes, rightly or not, that if he can’t box, he might as well be dead.
BY: Which makes no sense!
Capone: That’s what I’m saying. Rightly or not, that’s what he feels. Is that what pulled you into Vinny’s story, because not a lot of people feel that way about the job that they do?
BY: Dude, you literally just said what I’ve been saying on the road now for the last few months. That is why. I wasn’t a huge boxing aficionado before this. I liked it, I didn’t quite get it, but then I met Vinny and I learned to love boxing. But still as much as I love it now, like you said, would I risk my life for it? Here’s the thing. I don’t have anything in my life that I’d risk paralysis for. I just don’t. If you tell me that I had to chose between making movies or walking, I’d take walking. There’s not even a question. I’d go paint houses for a living and figure out where I’m going to get my artistic bent off. I think what drew me to it is the fact that I still don’t understand. You’d think spending all this time with him, I’d get it now, but I still don’t exactly know what makes him tick.
Capone: When we first meet him, he’s coasting through his career. As much as it’s his primary thing, at the same time, he’s scrambling to make weight, he’s boxing out of his weight class—he needed a swift kick in the ass to get him on the right path. Maybe not something this severe, but that just happened to be what it was. That part I could understand maybe a little. Did you see it that way too?
BY: That’s very interesting. What you’re saying without the accident, he might have just slipped into obscurity. He might have just kept losing. I’d never considered that. I think you’re probably right. Because he lost to Mayweather, like you said he was in the wrong class, maybe this thing was the kick in the pants that he needed to realize how lucky he was, and how much more he had in the tanks.
Capone: How did you first hear about this story? Did you think he was insane, and therefore you had to tell this story?
BY: Yeah. I definitely thought he was insane. I still do, that hasn’t changed. His story was brought to me by a childhood friend of his, Chad Verdi, who’s also a producer on the film, and I think he’d been trying to make the movie for a decade prior, but he just couldn’t find the right collaborators, and he told me the story, and I thought that’s cinema worthy. I’d never heard of anyone coming back from something like that. The last time someone got hurt that badly in a boxing movie, they died at the end. It was MILLION DOLLAR BABY.
Capone: I noticed Martin Scorsese is an executive producer on that. What does that entail exactly? How did he get involved and how did he help out?
BY: How awesome is that, right? Unbelievable.
Capone: From the man who might have made the greatest boxing movie ever committed to film, that’s a stamp of approval as far as I’m concerned.
BY: And I needed that shot of confidence too personally coming off a long break between movies. So yeah, it was great for me. He got involved—he has a thing he does before he starts a new movie where he puts together a bunch of films that were made prior and he makes his crew and sometimes cast watch them as reference material to get people in the right state of mind. So he shows BOILER ROOM as reference material before WOLF OF WALL STREET. So when we sat down together, he was very complimentary about BOILER ROOM. That would have been enough for me. It was a really gratifying moment having my idol telling me that I made a decent movie, and it was good enough for him to use as a reference
So then we continued our conversation, and I told him this story. He had no idea about Vinny, who he was, like most people. And he literally looked at me and said, “Greatest story never told.” “Exactly, yes. I’m glad you see it that way too.” He asked if he could read the script. Two weeks later, he calls me. I’m back down Costa Rica cooking in my buddy’s restaurant, and he calls me and says “I read the script in one car ride from New York to D.C. Get back up here, I’m going to help you make this movie.” It was crazy, dude. It sounds like a fairytale, but that’s actually what happened. I remember where I was standing.
Capone: I’m sorry, you said you were cooking in a restaurant at the time? Had you really given up on filmmaking? It’s been like 10 years since PRIME, I realize.
BY: Yeah, I was really cooking. I can’t say I’d given up, but I was definitely down there and had a life down there. What’d I do? I got my pilot’s license. I’ve got 300 hours now as a pilot. I raced motorcycles for a whole season, and I turned pro, got my expert license. I did a lot of very experiential, hands-on type things, and now I’m coming back to work.
Capone: That’s awesome that you did that.
BY: Yeah, it was good. It was a good 10 years. I didn’t make any money, but it was a good 10 years.
Capone: So what was Vinny’s involvement with the film and with Miles? Was he on the set a lot? What was his more active role in this, if he had one?
BY: His most active role was actually with me prior to even Miles or anyone being attached to the movie. It was during the writing process. I went up to Rhode Island, to Cranston, and I sat down with Vinny on a number of occasions and watched tons of home videos of his family and stuff around the house. You expect to see the fights and the pay-per-view-type stuff, but what he had was this treasure trove of familial gatherings and celebrations that were key for me. And then just talking to him, hearing all the stories. The guy remembers everything.
Capone: Shooting scenes with Miles in that halo device, were there any unexpected complications for you shooting that? I can imagine the lighting would have been a bitch.
BY: Yeah. The biggest issue is, we made the movie with $6 million and we shot it in 24 days. If this were a big film, we would have had a proper fitting, we would have had a custom-made halo for him and we didn’t. My props person had to go to a medical supply store and get a halo. So it didn’t fit perfectly, and the bigger issue was, if it moved, because obviously we didn’t screw it into his skull, but we had these little silicone pads to take place of the bolts. So if it moved at all, we had to scrap the whole take, because you can’t suspend belief anymore if you see that thing move. The hardest part for Miles is, he’s doing very physical things in this halo, and the trick was not having the halo slide while he did those things.
Capone: The other interesting thing about the film involves Aaron Eckhart’s character. He’s dealing with the rejection of Mike Tyson, and he’s drinking a lot. He’s a bit crippled himself. The movie really is about watching the two of these guys bring each other up. It’s not just about Vinny; it’s about both of them rehabbing each other to varying degrees together.
BY: You just pointed out a very key aspect to their real-life story that’s in the movie. We didn’t have a ton of room to explore all of it, but I think it came across. Certainly, you’ve seen it. You got the message. But in real life, trainers and boxers are always close, but they’re not so close that they’re moving into each other’s homes. This was unusual, the arrangement they had, and I think it’s because of what you said. They were both on the outs and they both knew this was their last shot, and so they made it count. I think that’s where that closeness came from, because it really was unusual.
Capone: I didn’t recognize Eckhart for the first 15 minutes he was on the screen. I’m sure that was by design.
BY: Yeah, I mean I wanted to get there, but it’s easy for me to say “I want you unrecognizable.” What’s hard is for Aaron Eckhart to do the work of gaining 40 pounds and shaving his head. It was not fun for him at all. We made him unfuckable.
Capone: Was that the stated goal? Was that in his contract?
BY: [laughs] No, but if you know what Aaron Eckhart looks like…
Capone: Of course. The dude is matinee-idol good looking. What made Miles Teller right for this role? What had you seen him in?
BY: It was a mostly about watching THE SPECTACULAR NOW. WHIPLASH hadn’t come out when I hired him. I hired him without having seen that movie. It was a mixture of his previous work, and then him in the room. When he walked into the room…he’s played boys up until this point pretty much, or adolescents, teenagers, but not a man, a straight-up man. When he walked in to meet me at my house, I just thought “This is not a boy, this is a man.” He’s got a lot of swagger. He’s very physical. Even when he comes up and says hello to you, he gets right in your mug, and I like that. Being a New Yorker, that’s a comfortable place for me. But I liked how direct he was. It was a combo of that, his previous work, seeing who he’d become physically in the room, and also his face. He’s not a typical pretty boy. We were shooting in Cranston with real locations and real people. I couldn’t have someone who stood out as being a pretty boy. He looks like a real dude. He looks like he’s lived a life.
Capone: I read this somewhere, but I couldn’t spot it, that you cut between actual footage of Vinny fighting and footage you shot of Miles fighting. How were you able to do that?
BY: We can all thank Miles for that. That was not scripted. Miles turned in the performance that he did and got as close to Vinny’s likeness as he did, and when I got in the editing room, I was just like “Why am I holding all this [real footage] for the credits? The kid pulled it off. Let’s see if we can get something.” So we broke the forth wall; we threw a bunch of archival footage right into the middle of the movie, which could have been either docudrama or could have read as so shocking that it just takes you out of the movie. And it did neither. Either people get it who understand it’s not Miles, they love it because it just reminds them A) that it’s a true story, B) how close Miles got. And then other people don’t even know that I did it. That’s the best.
Capone: That’s me. I’ve got to imagine the dinner scenes were especially enjoyable just to get the whole core cast together. Talk about shooting those and pulling together the cast that makes up the family, because those are some of my favorite scenes.
BY: It’s interesting that people are drawn to those. I just did “The Treatment” today with Elvis Mitchell, and he said to me—you know the way he always like finds a thorough line in your movie—“You always have families at dinner tables.” And I didn’t even realize that. BOILER ROOM and PRIME and BLEED all have prominent dinner tables. So he basically asked me the same question you did, and the answer that I gave him and I’ll tell you, growing up as like observant Jews that keep the Sabbath, there was no TV on, there was no getting in the car. We were like basically stuck with each other for 24 hours every week on Saturday. So those tables, those meals, were always where we would get into it. We would talk politics, we would talk current events, we would debate, and it was always loud, and it was always an argument. Some of my fondest memories are fighting with my family.
Capone: Had Vinny seen it before Toronto?
BY: Yes. He wasn’t in Toronto. He was in Savannah this week. That was the first time he watched it with an audience, but he’d seen it once before about a year ago. The movie has been done for a long time. We were waiting for the smoke to clear that SOUTHPAW created. But yeah, he saw it a year ago with me in New York.
Capone: What was that experience like, showing him for the first time? What was his reaction?
BY: Intense. He cried. He held my hand, we sat next to each other. He was shocked at the level of detail that we presented, as far as his family went. He was moved by these very small, familial moments. It wasn’t the car crash that made him emotional or the win. It was his father bathing him with his halo on, or his mom praying at the altar. Those were the moments that he didn’t imagine we would get that close to, but he gave me all those photos, he gave me all those videos. We were able to get really close, so it was nice. When he cried, I knew we achieved something, because he’s a tough guy.
Capone: Do you believe everyone should go through a certain amount of hardship to help them grow and to see what they become on the other side?
BY: I do. I feel strongly about it, actually. The people I know who haven’t had hard knocks, they exhibit behaviors from lacking empathy to a lack of gratitude for their own lives If all they know is ease and no hardships, how are you supposed to…you need contrast, that’s all. That’s really what it is. If everything’s the same, whether it’s good or bad, you just get used to it. That’s what we do as human beings. We acclimate so well. You’ve got to have the ups and downs to sort of realize how high that high was, and when you come back how low that low was. You need both.
Capone: Who picked the title, and what does it mean to you?
BY: I’m the writer of the movie as well, so I picked the title. I’ve never allowed anyone to title a movie for me, although they tried on PRIME. MOTHER’S HELPER, or whatever—it was never going to happen. I picked it, and I picked it off a story Vinny told me. By the way, Vinny wanted the movie to be called PAZ and fought me for a year on it. He was like, “Come on, Ben. Just call it PAZ, or PAZ MAN. That’s great. Like a superhero.”
Capone: It really isn’t.
BY: “Just stop talking, Vinny.” But it’s Vinny’s fault, because he told me the story that was the inspiration for the title, which is his father at one point found out just how much Vinny was gambling and that he wouldn’t stop, and he was appealing to Vinny by saying, “Look, Vinny. You have to stop gambling, because you bleed for this money.” I was like, “Wait, what did he say? That you bleed for this money?” “Yeah, he’s talking about my gambling. I’m bleeding in the ring, I get the money, then I go and gamble it away. He’s like you bleed for this money.” I was like, “Thanks, buddy. That’s my title.” Do you like the title? It’s pretty evocative, right?
Capone: I think it’s great, because it actually like hurts a little to hear it, because it’s so direct. I’ve got to ask, as much as the boxing scenes are really cool, what I really was drawn into were the training scenes. From what I know about Rooney, he has like a real unique way of training his boxers. How did you make your version of the training montage a little different?
BY: Specifically, he had that number system, so each type of punch corresponded to a single numeral, so he could call out combinations to his boxers, but I don’t think that’s what really differentiates it. Look, a boxing montage is a boxing montage. I had to put one in. Thank god that’s all I needed. I got away with just one. My friend Scott Silver, who wrote THE FIGHTER, I first showed him the script and I think there were two or three montages in it, and he just basically tore me apart. I mean, really. It was just like, “Another montage, are you kidding me? Get rid of this.”
But all I did on this movie was to try to avoid cliches and tropes, because the genre is full of them. So I would say sound and music were a big one, even in the montage. There’s no fade out. The music stops in the middle when he gets smacked by the clock, you know, that thing, that hitting device. Then it stops when Roony’s like, “Ok, stop. Stop! Stop Vinny!” Then boom, the music cuts out. There’s not a fade out anywhere. But is there an obligatory jogging shot next to a reservoir? Yup. Sure is [laughs]. You know what? You think you don’t want that, but a part of you wants it. You’ve got to give in a little bit.
Capone: I have a friend who just the other day was telling me they were really excited to see this movie because they love boxing movies. And I said, “That’s good, but this isn’t like the other boxing movies you’ve seen. Some of it’s there, but it’s a little different.”
BY: That’s the nicest compliment you could pay us or the movie. That’s what we set out to do. I didn’t set out to make a boxing movie.
Capone: What do you hope people are thinking about as they leave this film?
BY: It’s funny because when I wrote it, I can’t think about it in those very big, theoretical, inspirational terms, because—speaking of staying away from cliche—you just have to make a movie that’s completely honest. Then it’s funny, even with all my best efforts, the movie is very inspirational [laughs]. That’s what it is. There’s not getting around it. And I realize why that is. Vinny’s life is really inspiring.
So I guess to answer your question, I hope that people leave with a a better sense of just how difficult the obstacles in their lives really are. That maybe challenges they thought were insurmountable, maybe they’re not. That’s certainly how I felt in these years of not making a film. I felt like maybe it was over. Maybe it was done. Then I met Vinny and I was like wait a second, if this guy came back from that, short of anyone dying, there’s really no problem that can’t be overcome. So I really hope people feel that. I hope they feel a sense of opportunity and wonder, especially in this political climate. Things are so down right now. I want people to leave feeling good.
Capone: So are you back for good, or is it going to take another Scorsese intervention to bring you back?
BY: Yeah, the next movie is already set up. No, no. No more of this Terrence Malick bullshit. The next one gets shot in June.
Capone: Can you say anything about it?
BY: Yeah, yeah. It’s about motorcycle racing on the Isle of Man. It’s the oldest motor race on earth. It’s called the TT. You can google it. I’m making a film about an American who goes there to race.
Capone: Ben, it was really great to talk to you, and best of luck with it.
BY: It means a lot to hear that from you. Thank you. Bye.
