Film Courage: When did you realize you could make a living doing action films in Mexico?
R. Ellis Frazier, Director, Producer, CEO at BADHOUSE Studios: The first film was a
relatively larger film. I kind of knew right away. I knew that as long as we could come in
with the lower budget and provide the look that people wanted there would be constant work there.
I recognized that relatively early. Where I was not convinced was when I was trying
to be a writer/producer in Los Angeles and this thing comes up and somebody says Hey I’ve got a
project and I’ve got some guy with money and you have these meetings and that never works out.
When I got to Mexico I realized this is absolutely something that people need. We
can blow up a car in the street. We can do chases through the streets without much problem at all
and I know that you can't do that in LA. I realize that
as far as buyers and what it takes to sell a film they want action. A lot of the time it's the
easiest thing to sell for distributors and if we can give relatively high quality action films that
have a nice big production value at a very, very low cost with kind of lower risk, less permits,
less all that stuff, then there would pretty much always be work for us. We've had dry spells
but there's always somebody calling and saying Hey I’ve got a film, it's based in Mexico,
what do you think? We always usually say let's read the script and we'll see how we think we can
work it out but we usually try to say yes. We're not really afraid of any of the film
challenges or budgetary challenges. We try to say yes on most things unless we feel that it's
not a good fit as far as dynamic wise, unless we feel like these people might be problematic
or maybe they want too much, or they don't have enough things of that sort but if things work out
we try to we try to do as much, as we can stay working just keep it going, that's what we do
and a lot of people are trying to find the work there every day. They're on the phone there are
coffee shops they're making taking meetings and we just kind of keep just chugging along and so
yeah it would have been kind of toward the beginning I always felt like this is something
that because I know enough about Hollywood to know that this is something that's absolutely needed
to be able to make a film for the a lower price and get a bigger production value go 360. Get the
filmmaker if it's not me and give this filmmaker a 360 view at something because you can't do that
on Hollywood Boulevard without but I can do it in Revolution Boulevard and TJ [Tijuana].
Film Courage: Can you explain why the movie business isn't pure art?
Frazier: No it's not at all. I mean if you learn that one you learn that quick too
in fact move your business and certainly directing is not art directing is and I don't know
how the scholars look at it but I consider it craft
more than it is art you're putting people together and things together to create an outcome a product
the the film business is truly a business because you learn this and one of the things
you learn when you get your first film into the market is especially an independent film is
all the bad news that you get about how the film's not selling like it was supposed to
it wasn't we're supposed to sell this much that they tell you on this
this sheet that you think I'm going to be rich and it didn't sell that amount
and of course it's always our fault the filmmaker's fault but you realize that
in order to make the films the films have to be collateralized it's like any other product
anything is collateralized so and so what is the film Colorado's bias collateralized by its
unsold territories and it's it's so they think it's worth a million dollars they'll give you
$500,000 I think it's worth five million they'll give you 2 million so forth and so on and so
when you approach that side of it the more about that the better because if you go in there blind
about that like oh what this is going to be the next Tarantino movie or something and people
really don't care about that they really care about how can I collateralize it how can I make
sure that if I put in 2 million I'm going to get out this much money what collateralizes it and
it collateralized obviously by the subject matter but that's minimal these days it's about the actor
that's how you collateralize it so you realize it's it's it's a business of collateralization
and if you can collateralize you come to them with the collateral we can do this
movie with this person for this much they do their calculus and you can keep working
if you go and say hey I wrote this amazing script and my friends from acting class are
going to be in it and they're the they're the best pure art well if you have a rich uncle maybe
but if you take it into where the money is because the money is in finance and banks and things like
that and they'll collateralize any if I mean if it's collateralized they'll finance anything
so if you can show that you learn in the process to show that you understand that
and it doesn't you always don't even have to have the collateral if they know that it
as a filmmaker they trust you more because you're not just out there on cloud nine trying to make
Some Kind of Wonderful piece of art that everybody can look at but no one can figure out a way to
get any kind of return on so so that probably doesn't happen with the first or second film
correct no not that I know from I mean my first film was going to be this big piece of art
and it was written that way I think now we could have commercialized it a little bit more we had
some pretty artistic themes in it but I liked art too I would love to get to the point where
it was art for me and I could step back a little bit from the business and just say
hey let's just do something that's just really really good we have this saying like because
any anytime you do action films that are not X-Men or fast and furious or Die Hard
they dog them it's the the in the in because people aren't forgiving about that they say
look an action scene is an action scene they have 30 days and 15 million dollars to do it you have
before lunch and five thousand dollars to do it they don't care they just want the action
scene to be right but I always say if you ever really want to get great reviews just take the
action out student talking in art films and and just have people talking to each other and and
make it interesting and and people will love it it's the it's the action that has to sell
and and it's very hard to do that on low budgets you learn that and and you have to take your hits
in in your in the reviews and things like that I don't really look at reviews but
you but you realize 's what it is that it's it's not if people don't forgive they don't they it's
just like a comedy you can make any kind of comedy you want but are you is it funny that's all people
care about is it funny it do a film they don't they could do a film in a small room a small
house but is it scary and so at the end of the day it's art and it's a mixture of Art and commerce
but my goal is to get to the more artistic stuff and step back from the business because it
definitely colors the way that you film it colors the way you shoot and it colors the way that you
approach your filmmaking Journey I'd rather it be more art
say that producers want more action and the director wants less
That's a good question I would say the producers all meaning the the financiers
distributors want more action that's for sure as far as the producer's side they just want to
bring it in on budget and get it done as efficiently as possible and get it out and get it
do their job distributors and sales agents want more action for sure as far as me as
a director for example I would prefer to have less action unless it's super motivated
meaning it it has to mean something I don't want to if I'm if I'm trying to get to the door
if I'm trying to get out the door and there's a guy in front of me I have to do this this that
to get to the door that's the kind of action I don't want to sit in here and fight just to
fight and just break things and everything it has to be motivated so as long as it has
a motive that's motivated within the larger story then action is great but action for the
sake of action unless it's done in this huge way that's so interesting to look at like in
X-Men and things like that where it's just so interesting to sit back and just enjoy it
I would prefer to have less action as a director but even let's say Sicario if I
think back to it there were quiet moments there was stillness and that's what made
some of the action even even greater that's correct Sicario, Man on Fire movies like that
it's much more about the story it's much more about the characters and the relationships
and the action then is more intense when you care about the people as and so it
when the story stakes are high when the character stakes are high then that one punch is a lot more
impactful than it would be is if you don't care about the character or if they just show up an
old Hong Kong movies people just rotated and out to beat the guy up so so we have a lot of
different ways to skin that cat as far as making sure that it's motivated but I do absolutely
want to make sure that it's motivated and if given the opportunity I would love to make films that
have less action in them but people come to Mexico they they want to do explosions and things like
that so we we do them as much as possible and try to make it interesting and keep it within
the story as a distributor ever said we can't pre-sell this territory unless there's this this
and this type of fighting or scene or absolutely oh okay yeah tell me that all the time they say
it needs to have this much action in it and page 10 needs to have this happen page 20 needs to
have that happen well so we we write them that way now we just pack them in with action so and then
sometimes we don't shoot everything we we try but I mean you can only shoot what you can what you
can get to but sometimes we do the best we can but if there's just nothing but pure action in
The Script then you have to think well if the guy is going to go from from the coffee shop
to the restaurant maybe he'll just have to kill instead of the eight people that it says in the
script maybe you can kill five stuff like that it still has the same thing but it but you have to
compromise and make sure that you can actually get it done with your resources and make it still make
it good I think the key to being a good action director is understanding your resources you
you can't have no money and then want to do a big car flip it's just not going to look right so you
say well instead of doing a car flip let's make it crash into the tree and it's really the same thing
and but sometimes it's not to the distributors but it but you can get but you just don't have
the money to do the car flip so so you have to make the you have to cut make certain
compromises and as long as you can make it and give it the same energy and give it the same
give it the same punch in the in the in the project in the movie then it usually is okay
but we do try to do is we do try to follow the script as much as possible but sometimes action
can be a little gratuitous too just especially when it's in Mexico there's just cartels coming
at you thug one thug two bad guy one big guy three all these people coming at you and it begins to
look like you're shooting zombies or something so we try to make sure when you get to set
you're looking at it and say if the guy can get from there to there he can take out these three
guys and punch this guy and get out it doesn't have to be 15 guys all the time so we look at it
and make sure that it looks right what about for the opening how is it something immediate you've
got to see something blow up or something happen well I think that in any kind of story structure
which I'm not an expert although I am a writer and I've written the first films that we did
you have to create something that brings people in and it doesn't always have to be an explosion
or an action scene that's sometimes that's nice but it has to create a question that people want
to sit around and wait to find out the answer so sometimes that can be in the form of action it's
all of a sudden you see a guy bam it gets shot he falls down and then he guys and then you've
got to figure out okay why did I get shot and fall down and then that's what our story is about it's
it's telling us and informing us of what may have happened in that first scene but I will tell you
that in script stock structure things do have to happen within the first 10 pages minimum 20 pages
or you will lose people we're in a a era and an age where people scrub three-minute videos
they're like this is too long YouTube so you have to grab people's attention and keep it with
it's but you can do that in a lot of ways with compelling story with the question with a with a
with something but you can't just kind of just float in to the film unless you have some great
actor that you can't take your eyes off you maybe you'll follow them for a little bit longer if
you're doing a kind of a lower budget action film you have to you have to bring them in right away
but there has to be some resting points okay it can't just be all because they're
then then nothing you can't measure anything against you're absolutely right
I'm big on that because the film has to breathe you got to be able to sit back and
take in what you're seeing and see where it means in the overall story
you can't just have this thing where you're where you're just constantly being bombarded with with
different things that are like action-based things you have to take a minute to sit
back and let the character sit back and reflect and contemplate and figure out
whatever way that they're getting into whatever they got into they have to figure out a way out
of it I always tell an actor it's interesting it's it's pretty much universal they'll go right into
they'll be told something or they'll they'll hear a gunshot and then they'll go do something
I said always allow yourself to react to it like it's foreign to you bam gunshot
take a second this bam gunshot and they run you'd say no just take a minute and let it register
what's happened then run let register what they just told you then respond to it because they've
been reading the script and doing it on coverage 10 times so they just can react but let it
let it sink in and I think you can do that with the with the storyline in total you
have to let things sink in a little bit so it gives people time to care gives people time to
in time and space and emotional space too to to to make their decision on whether they like
the character who they want to win who they hate how much they hate them and figure out
go along with you and try to figure out the story themselves and then you can
kind of like kind of get there together with you and the audience at the same time.