Joe Rogan Experience #1995 - Chad Stahelski

Joe Rogan 0:00 (drum roll) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Narrator 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) Get out. Chad, just get ... take ... oh.

Chad Stahelski 0:16 Is that how we're gonna start the show?

Joe Rogan 0:17 Take a hit of that. Take a hit of that. We'll start the show. Just get in there.

Chad Stahelski 0:20 Oh, geez.

Joe Rogan 0:22 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 0:22 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:22 And that's, that's not even a fresh one.

Chad Stahelski 0:25 Okay.

Joe Rogan 0:26 When they're fresh, they's a little-

Chad Stahelski 0:26 I just wanted to do it twice to make sure that was real.

Joe Rogan 0:28 Shout out to, uh, how do you say his name? Pre- Jujimufu?

Chad Stahelski 0:31 Jujimufu.

Joe Rogan 0:31 Jujimufu for his-

Chad Stahelski 0:33 Ugh.

Joe Rogan 0:33 ... smelling salts.

Chad Stahelski 0:34 Because it was fresh. He couldn't do that twice.

Joe Rogan 0:35 Do it, it's fresh. If it's fresh, you get, like, that close. And you're just like ...

Chad Stahelski 0:40 Yeah, no, I'm awake.

Joe Rogan 0:41 That was a good one, though. Whoo!

Chad Stahelski 0:42 Definitely awake.

Joe Rogan 0:43 I'm gonna bring these to the comedy mothership.

Narrator 0:45 All right.

Joe Rogan 0:45 I'm gonna see. I'm gonna see.

Chad Stahelski 0:47 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:47 I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a big blast right before I go on stage. It's supposed to wake up your central nervous system or something.

Chad Stahelski 0:53 Yeah, it sucks.

Joe Rogan 0:53 I don't even know if there's any science to it.

Chad Stahelski 0:55 No, it just sucks.

Joe Rogan 0:56 It might be just a bunch of psychos-

Chad Stahelski 0:57 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:57 ... who just like freaking their brain out with, uh, smelling salts.

Chad Stahelski 1:01 I'm awake.

Joe Rogan 1:02 Anyway, man, uh, congrats on the movie. Looks awesome.

Chad Stahelski 1:05 Thank you. Thank you very much.

Joe Rogan 1:05 It's very exciting.

Chad Stahelski 1:06 Very nice to be here. Big fan. Thank you.

Joe Rogan 1:08 Thank you. My pleasure. Uh, it's, uh ... Boy, Jesus Christ, is it over the top. (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 1:12 Way over the top.

Joe Rogan 1:13 This fucking movie is so crazy.

Chad Stahelski 1:15 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15 It's so crazy. I saw a thing online of the amount of people that John Wick has killed compared to, like, Michael Myers and-

Chad Stahelski 1:24 Yeah, I think we beat him, right?

Joe Rogan 1:25 ... you know, Jason. Oh, yeah.

Chad Stahelski 1:26 I think we beat-

Joe Rogan 1:26 By a long stroke.

Chad Stahelski 1:27 I think we, I think we beat Rambo too.

Joe Rogan 1:28 Yeah, I think you beat everybody.

Chad Stahelski 1:29 But I think we had more deaths than Keanu spoke words in the movie.

Joe Rogan 1:32 Oh, for sure.

Chad Stahelski 1:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:34 100%.

Chad Stahelski 1:34 He just ... With everybody he's bringing up to me, I think he spoke-

Joe Rogan 1:36 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 1:36 ... 308 words in the movie or something.

Joe Rogan 1:38 Yeah. Well, listen, it works. It's perfect.

Chad Stahelski 1:41 Yeah, something fun, something for the guys.

Joe Rogan 1:43 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 1:43 The boys and the action fans and, and everybody out there.

Joe Rogan 1:46 Oh, yeah. It, it's murder porn. I mean ... (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 1:50 It, it ... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:50 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 1:50 Hopefully it's artistic murder porn.

Joe Rogan 1:52 It's artistic. It is.

Chad Stahelski 1:54 Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:54 It's, it's interesting how they're all so different too.

Chad Stahelski 1:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:56 Like, the, the fourth one is, like, almost like a comic book movie. It's like it's so-

Chad Stahelski 2:00 Very graphic.

Joe Rogan 2:00 ... over the top and crazy and ...

Chad Stahelski 2:02 Graphic anime. I think it's probably the best story that we've told.

Joe Rogan 2:06 Hmm.

Chad Stahelski 2:06 But it's, it's definitely wrapped up in the hyperreal world. You know, we get bored, so we wanted to go somewhere and do something. And it's always like, "How do we start these things? What do we do?" Like, we never start with a concept, right? It's usually, "We're done, we're done, we're never gonna do one again." And then Japan gets released, like, six months after the rest of the world, so we're usually doing a press tour in Japan. And we're sitting in the Imperial Hotel, they have an amazing Scotch bar, and we start off with the first drink going, "Thank God it's done. God, we survived." And by, like, the fifth Scotch, we're like, "Hey, man, I got a great fucking idea. Let's have 'em fight ninjas."

Joe Rogan 2:36 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 2:37 And then that's how it starts, and it's been that way for the last three.

Joe Rogan 2:39 So, you started off as a stuntman.

Chad Stahelski 2:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:43 And how did you, how did you transition to becoming a director? Because that's like ... There's gotta be a lot of barriers that are in the way.

Chad Stahelski 2:51 I think different time, for sure. You know, before, before cellphones, before all that stuff, we started as a stunt guy, before all the streamers. Um, you know, I was working for this guy Ernie Orsatti way back in the day, a brilliant stunt coordinator, second unit director on television. And I was working on, I don't know if you remember, the old show, like, Pretender with Michael T. Weiss-

Joe Rogan 3:10 Mm-hmm, yeah. Sure, yeah.

Chad Stahelski 3:10 ... and stuff. He could be anything, that kinda thing.

Joe Rogan 3:11 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 3:12 And, uh, I was doing a gig on that. I'd just done a car hit. I think I was only, like, 24. I split my head open on the windshield. (laughs) I was a mess. And then, uh, he comes to me as I'm holding the ice pack on my head. He's like, "Hey, they're having auditions for this sci-fi film in Burbank." He's like, "You know, you're off. You can, if you hurry, you could make it." And I'm in jeans and a T-shirt and I'm bleeding and I'm like, "All right. Yeah, sure, I'll go make ..." "It's for that Keanu Reeves guy." You know, Speed had come out. (laughs) I'm like, "Keanu Reeves? I'll go see him, sure." So, we go up there, and it was an audition for The Matrix. And, you know, I ... At the time, you remember, back in the day, there weren't a lot of martial art movies at a, at a big budget level. It was, like, Steven Seagal or Van Damme or, uh, you know, uh, Mark Dacascos, all those guys at the time. And martial arts, you know, they didn't do them in big budget films. It was considered low budget, you know, action porn kinda thing. And, uh, we get there, get to this big warehouse in Burbank, and you saw this guy, really scruffy looking with a neck brace, you know, punching. It's Keanu. He had just come out from neck surgery.

Joe Rogan 4:08 Oh, Jesus.

Chad Stahelski 4:09 And there's, like, 15 Hong Kong and Chinese stuntmen there, ah, screaming and yelling. I said, "Hey, I'm here for the audition." And I meet these, uh, these two fellas that come over. It's the Wachowskis at the time, uh, now Lana and Lily. And they introduce themselves and we're like, "Hey, you know, I'm Chad. I'm here for the ..." "Okay, great. This is Yuen Woo-ping." And I was like, "Oh." You, no one could told us. And Yuen Woo-ping we knew from, was the big choreographer that started Jet Li and Jackie Chan.

Joe Rogan 4:33 Oh.

Chad Stahelski 4:34 Did, like, Iron Monkey.

Joe Rogan 4:36 Oh, wow.

Chad Stahelski 4:37 You know, Once Upon a Time in China and all that stuff.

Joe Rogan 4:38 Hmm.

Chad Stahelski 4:39 So it was Yuen Woo-ping and his guys. And they're like, "Okay, you just, you just follow this guy." And this little guy named Tiger Chen. Tiger Chen. (laughs) Fucking phenomenal. The guy could do triple flips, twists, this ... Could do anything. A Wushu champion. They ... "Just follow that guy. Just do what he does."

Joe Rogan 4:54 Oh, God.

Chad Stahelski 4:54 And for the next hour, I tried, you know, being the tall white guy, trying to just keep up with him. Um-

Joe Rogan 4:59 Can you do all that stuff?

Chad Stahelski 5:00 God, no. God ... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:01 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 5:01 I just did as much as I could till I fell down. But I, I was pretty flexible. I had a good gymnastic background, so I'd throw a back flip, I'd do the kicks, I'd do all the spin hook kicks. And, you know, we'd train with a lot of taekwondo guys and stuff, so we were pretty good at all the kicking and punching and some of the acrobatics. But then it got to a level, he picks up a stick, and now it's ... You know, you've seen the Wushu guys.

Joe Rogan 5:18 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 5:19 They're going mental. And I'm like, "Oh, boy." You know, at the end of an hour, you know, I'm in jeans and a T-shirt still bleeding from a head wound. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:25 Oh, Jesus. Did you have a concussion?

Chad Stahelski 5:27 I ... Probably, yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:28 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 5:29 I think so. Knowing now, looking back, like, yeah, that didn't seem too good. Um, but I finished, drove home, thought, "Wow, I really screwed the pooch on that one." And I never thought I'd hear from those guys again. And then, like, a month later, I get a call, "Hey, can you come back?" And exact same audition again, exact same.

Joe Rogan 5:44 Wow.

Chad Stahelski 5:44 And then, uh, got the call saying, "Hey, would you like to double Keanu Reeves on this sci-fi movie in Australia?" And I was like, "Ah, uh, I got this other gig on TV. I think I'm gonna have to pass." (laughs) And the producer at the time was Barrie Osborne, who went on to do all the, all The Lord of the Rings. And he's like, "Ah!" He's kinda a little angry (laughs) at me for saying no. And, uh, I thought, "Okay, if I fuck that up, I'll never work again."And then-

Joe Rogan 6:09 (coughs)

Chad Stahelski 6:09 ... cut to two months later, it was in February, and he calls back and he's like, "Hey, we had to push the shoot. You available now?" It's like, "Yeah, actually I am." So I literally flew to Australia, like, two weeks later, got there, and within a day, you realized, oh, this wasn't, this isn't a normal show. You saw the rehearsals, you saw some of the sets, you saw some of the footage, and it was the fucking Matrix.

Joe Rogan 6:27 Oh, wow.

Chad Stahelski 6:28 So that's how we got in, (clears throat) or how I got in with the Wachowskis, and I spent the next eight and a half years with them, through all The Matrix sequels and all their, some of their other shows, and with James McTeigue doing V for Vendetta. I just lived in the Wachowski world. And that's probably one of the most incredible film schools you'll ever have.

Joe Rogan 6:43 Hmm.

Chad Stahelski 6:43 You know, that's where I got to know Keanu and all that. Cut to years later, after all that, um, Keanu and I had worked together for so long there, he, he knew I'd been doing a lot of second unit directing, which for people that don't know, it's the action or the, the fight scenes, the car chases, the sunsets, all the shit (laughs) first unit doesn't wanna deal with. Um, usually big action sequences, so they have these action directors or second unit guys go out and do the units, trying to do it more efficiently without, uh, without the cast, with the stunt doubles and such. And, um, Keanu had gotten this script that he thought was something interesting about it. It was called Scorn, and it was the original, uh, John Wick script, where-

Joe Rogan 7:18 How did it become called John Wick?

Chad Stahelski 7:20 Uh, Derek Kolstad's grandfather's name is John Wick.

Joe Rogan 7:23 Oh.

Chad Stahelski 7:23 Derek Kolstad being the writer of it, and so he just gave tribute to his grandfather calling him Wick, John Wick. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:28 Oh, wow.

Chad Stahelski 7:29 Pretty trippy, yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:30 And so, and how did that become the name of the movie?

Chad Stahelski 7:34 Um, Keanu at the... The original script, Scorn, the guy was like 65. He lived in a little brownstone.

Joe Rogan 7:39 Oh.

Chad Stahelski 7:39 It was very, very grounded script. I think only two people died in the original script, and it was like one in a car crash.

Joe Rogan 7:43 That's hilarious. (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 7:44 Yeah, it was just very c- it was kind of, it was very Cold War, old school. And that's where the gold coins came from because you didn't wanna leave a paper trail. It had very simple little ideas.

Joe Rogan 7:54 Oh, wow.

Chad Stahelski 7:55 And he handed it to, to myself and was like, "Hey, would you like to take a look at this?" And I was like, "Sure, sure, sure." I read it and I was like, "Uh, yeah, I don't know what to do with this action-wise. He only kills two people." He's like, "Well, we're trying to change it, and we're thinking of this." I'm like, "Well, I..." you know. He's like, "Would you like to direct it?" And I was like-

Joe Rogan 8:09 Whoa.

Chad Stahelski 8:10 ... "Oh, yes, as a matter of fact." (laughs) I have some thoughts-

Joe Rogan 8:12 So you had no experience directing, and then you directed John Wick?

Chad Stahelski 8:15 Just second... Yeah, just second unit, yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:17 Dude.

Chad Stahelski 8:17 Me and my, uh, partner at time, Dave Leitch, I called Dave... That was on a Friday. I called Dave on a Saturday going, "Hey, we might have a shot. We gotta put a pitch together in 24 hours." So I always had this idea about Greek mythology and how we could layer it and do this like... I'm a big Tolkien fan, so how do you take a, a fantasy gig and make it-

Joe Rogan 8:33 Right.

Chad Stahelski 8:33 ... modern day? So we're like, "Let's take it that way, and we'll put gods and Greeks and Charon and the River Styx, and we'll make this whole Zeus thing going on." And we kind of layered it, and Keanu just heard it on Monday and went, "Hmm. Interesting." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:48 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 8:48 And he said, "Sure, you wanna do it?" I'm like, "Yeah, you know, me and my partner Dave will, we'll co-direct. We'll, we'll, we'll do this," and we brought it to the, uh, producer, Basil Iwanyk, the next day. And he goes, "Well, if Keanu wants you, sure." We, we had done a little tape on that Sunday about, uh, you know, the gun fu stuff. We took aikido, aikijutsu, put in all the close-quarter tactical shit with some reloads, and we did a quick little pre-vis in our, in our space, 8711, back in LA, and showed it to him. Everybody thought, "Oh my God, this is gonna be, you know, great. Can Keanu do it?" We're like, "Yeah, I hope so." (laughs) Like-

Joe Rogan 9:16 Where did the magazine reload flip come from?

Chad Stahelski 9:19 That... Funny thing that... I'm gonna give total cred to Keanu.

Joe Rogan 9:23 Wow.

Chad Stahelski 9:23 100%. He started doing that in the second one. We're like, I'm like, "Dude, what are you doing?" He's like, "I gotta check it. Wow, fuck." (laughs) He started doing it. I was like, "That's awesome. Gotta keep doing it."

Joe Rogan 9:31 It is awesome. People do that now.

Chad Stahelski 9:33 And then he'd just single hand check. Yeah, it's a r- it's a legit thing.

Joe Rogan 9:35 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 9:35 They're doing a competition

Narrator 9:36 I thought was pretty funny.

Joe Rogan 9:36 You know how crazy that is? That an actor for a film decides to come up with a thing, and it's actually a quicker way to eject a magazine.

Chad Stahelski 9:45 He, he did, can do... He can do forehand and backhand.

Joe Rogan 9:47 (clicks tongue) Wow.

Chad Stahelski 9:47 He does some trippy thing... He does it with the AR too. Like, you'll watch in the second one, he'll do a quick flip with the AR, and he'll put it on there. You're like, "Where the fuck did he get that?" (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:54 Well, he really, really trained for that movie.

Chad Stahelski 9:57 That's him.

Joe Rogan 9:58 I mean, you can really tell. I mean, it's... There's films where guys do tactical scenes where you go like, "Okay, you know, I can buy it."

Chad Stahelski 10:05 Right.

Joe Rogan 10:06 But, but in that movie-

Chad Stahelski 10:07 The, the, the typical military way of cutting through-

Joe Rogan 10:09 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 10:09 ... you know, pieing the, the corners and going on stuff.

Joe Rogan 10:11 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 10:11 The very tactical sense. I think you're right. I, I, I see that. It just... It's like with martial arts. You can do the quick finger jab in the eye, right?

Joe Rogan 10:18 Right.

Chad Stahelski 10:18 Some... Once in a while, that staccato beat is cool, but choreography, and for the, the visual of it, I think sometimes you have to add something. You have to show people something they kind of expect, subvert it, and give them something a little bit different. You know?

Joe Rogan 10:31 Yes.

Chad Stahelski 10:31 Spice it up a little bit. So I think we went more with the competition sense. You know, I, I saw Taron online. You know, JJ Perry, a buddy of mine, introduced me to Taron online, and I saw Taron, and I saw some of the quick... I was like, "Fuck, that's what we're... We gotta put a little spice in this."

Joe Rogan 10:43 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 10:44 And then sent Keanu out there, and he-

Joe Rogan 10:45 Taron is such a freak.

Chad Stahelski 10:47 Oh my God, freak of nature... Like, he sh-

Joe Rogan 10:48 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 10:48 No one... Let's be honest. No one should be that good.

Joe Rogan 10:51 (laughs) He's cra- it's crazy how good he is.

Chad Stahelski 10:53 He should not be that good.

Joe Rogan 10:54 The speed that he has is so insane.

Chad Stahelski 10:56 I, I... How many people have you seen that are good at what they do?

Joe Rogan 10:58 He's such a good guy too.

Chad Stahelski 10:59 Just such, such a-

Joe Rogan 10:59 He's such a fun guy to be around, so easygoing.

Chad Stahelski 11:02 Oh my God.

Joe Rogan 11:02 And what a great instructor too, because he's so calm and easy.

Chad Stahelski 11:05 And he's got a, a naturalistic approach. It's just follow your body, follow your mind.

Joe Rogan 11:09 He's one of the only reasons I like to go back to LA.

Chad Stahelski 11:12 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:13 For real.

Chad Stahelski 11:13 He's the only reason I go to Simi Valley.

Joe Rogan 11:15 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 11:15 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:16 Well, that's... I mean, whenever I'm in town, I, I always make a trip.

Chad Stahelski 11:19 And, and, and you get better every time, right?

Joe Rogan 11:21 Oh, for sure.

Chad Stahelski 11:22 There's some- there's a little something-

Joe Rogan 11:22 Yeah, for sure.

Chad Stahelski 11:23 Just by watching him, you can see... And I, you know, I was up there, uh, just yesterday as a matter of fact picking up something, and I had introduced him to an actor about, like, three or four weeks ago, and he had taken this cast member in just three sessions. And the cast member happened to be up there yesterday. And to watch what he had done with him in three weeks, it, it, it... I mean, granted, there is a little natural ability there, I could tell. But, like, the, the progression and how fast he gets you from just pointing a firearm to drawing it, hip shooting, pressing, walking, and running (laughs) through the course.

Joe Rogan 11:57 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 11:58 I mean, i- it's hard to explain, right, until you actually-

Joe Rogan 12:00 Yes.

Chad Stahelski 12:00 You can see it online, but when you're there and seeing how fast the pings are coming in, actually watching Taron go through the obstacle course-

Joe Rogan 12:06 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 12:07 ... it's, it's, it's really, really impressive.

Joe Rogan 12:09 No, he's a freak.He's weird. It's we-

Chad Stahelski 12:11 But, like, uh-

Joe Rogan 12:12 So, something's going on in his brain.

Chad Stahelski 12:13 D'you think, like, m- I... There's something about the hand-eye coordination.

Joe Rogan 12:16 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 12:16 Like, we all have a little bit, especially-

Joe Rogan 12:18 Right.

Chad Stahelski 12:18 ... through martial arts t- but n- that's-

Joe Rogan 12:19 Not like that.

Chad Stahelski 12:19 That's... No.

Joe Rogan 12:20 Well, obviously-

Chad Stahelski 12:21 It's completely-

Joe Rogan 12:21 ... he's been doing it forever, but there's some... He's got some God-given ability.

Chad Stahelski 12:25 I- it's gotta be some autism, right?

Joe Rogan 12:26 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chad Stahelski 12:27 It's- it's gotta be.

Joe Rogan 12:28 100%.

Chad Stahelski 12:28 'Cause he can just... He... I've seen him do things where he's looking one way and he's still lining up... Like, he just knows that-

Joe Rogan 12:33 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 12:33 Uh, what would you call it? Like that physical dismo- or that body, uh, memory.

Joe Rogan 12:37 Yep.

Chad Stahelski 12:38 That motor muscle memory, to, to get in there and plug it.

Joe Rogan 12:39 And no red dot. He's doing it all through the-

Chad Stahelski 12:42 No, th- All iron sights.

Joe Rogan 12:43 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 12:43 All old school, which-

Joe Rogan 12:44 All old school.

Chad Stahelski 12:44 ... and that's how he teaches, which I love.

Joe Rogan 12:45 Yeah, I love it too because he says, uh, "Red dots fail." And I've had red dots fail on the range.

Chad Stahelski 12:49 Yeah, all the time.

Joe Rogan 12:50 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 12:50 All the time.

Joe Rogan 12:50 And you're like, "What the fuck? Is that fucking... Ah, shit." And you're fucking with it.

Chad Stahelski 12:54 I, I... And you're fucking with it and he's just like-

Joe Rogan 12:55 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 12:55 ... "Okay," as you're fucking around with it.

Joe Rogan 12:56 Exactly.

Chad Stahelski 12:57 "I'm just gonna go shoot, cover my bullseye."

Joe Rogan 12:59 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 12:59 But he's been, he's been very good. Like, I'm naturally left-handed, but I sh- always shoot with him right-handed. But he's helped me so I can... I... He's got me to the point where I can kinda go through the range with both hands and-

Joe Rogan 13:08 Oh.

Chad Stahelski 13:08 ... with the same dominant eye. Which is a bit of a trip. Next time you go, try, try alternate hands.

Joe Rogan 13:12 Mm.

Chad Stahelski 13:12 It'll mess with your... But it... I think it'll help your sighting.

Joe Rogan 13:15 Oh, I'm sure.

Chad Stahelski 13:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:15 Everything you do with your left hand will help your right hand.

Chad Stahelski 13:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:18 I learned that from martial arts.

Chad Stahelski 13:20 Yeah, absolutely.

Joe Rogan 13:20 They, they... Someone told me that a long time ago, that if you practice your bad side, it actually improves the technique on your good side.

Chad Stahelski 13:26 I think it, it helps you think-

Joe Rogan 13:27 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 13:27 ... in a different way, right?

Joe Rogan 13:28 Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons why left-handed people are so good at things.

Chad Stahelski 13:31 I... What'd they say, like, you know, back in the day, you know, in gladiatorial or whatever, like, they're left-handed 'cause it was hard... It wasn't so much that they were better, they just... You weren't used to, to, to fighting with them.

Joe Rogan 13:40 Well, I think, also... Well, there's definitely that, like when you spar with people, especially in boxing.

Chad Stahelski 13:45 Yeah, when they go southpaw.

Joe Rogan 13:46 When you spar southpaws, it's so confusing. I remem-

Chad Stahelski 13:48 Well, it fucks up your footwork-

Joe Rogan 13:49 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 13:49 ... 'cause you don't wanna keep stepping on their foot.

Joe Rogan 13:51 Exactly. Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 13:52 Kickboxing, maybe, is a little bit different. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:53 Well, kickboxing, you're... Well, MMA in particular, like the elite guys like Sandhagen, these guys, they, they switch stances constantly.

Chad Stahelski 14:01 Yeah, constantly.

Joe Rogan 14:01 And so there's this... You're getting overloaded with possibilities all the time.

Chad Stahelski 14:06 Right.

Joe Rogan 14:06 Which makes it so interesting.

Chad Stahelski 14:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:08 When you get to these high-level guys, you know, when you get to, like, an Israel Adesanya guy, they, they give you so many looks. You don't know what the fuck is going on.

Chad Stahelski 14:16 They, they're changing that stance all the time. It's very-

Joe Rogan 14:18 Yeah, and feinting all the time and-

Chad Stahelski 14:20 I- it's very interesting. I came up... I did a lot of Boxe Francaise, like Savate, which is very open stance-y, like, they'd mo-... It's constant motion, if you watch those old Savate guys, right? They're constantly moving. So they, they would fol- from almost a false lead, and you see so much of that now in MMA.

Joe Rogan 14:32 Mm, yes.

Chad Stahelski 14:32 It's false leads, they're switched so you don't... It's hard to gauge or set them up.

Joe Rogan 14:36 Yes.

Chad Stahelski 14:36 It's fascinating to watch now. I think athletes today, especially in martial arts, are like, just... Right? Whole nother level.

Joe Rogan 14:42 Whole nother level.

Chad Stahelski 14:43 Whole nother. You can't even compete with what-

Joe Rogan 14:44 They're the best of the best.

Chad Stahelski 14:45 Oh my God.

Joe Rogan 14:45 It's like, they're... No one's ever been better.

Chad Stahelski 14:47 No.

Joe Rogan 14:47 It's like, martial arts, I've always said this, that since 1993, in the last 30 years, martial arts have evolved more than they have over the last-

Chad Stahelski 14:55 Oh.

Joe Rogan 14:55 ... 30,000 years.

Chad Stahelski 14:56 Completely agree. Completely agree.

Joe Rogan 14:57 No question. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Chad Stahelski 14:59 Between the, the, the fitness, the training mentality-

Joe Rogan 15:01 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 15:01 ... and just th- the combative alacrity that these guys have.

Joe Rogan 15:05 Yes.

Chad Stahelski 15:05 The ability to, to, to... I mean, they're insane athletes, number one, but to kick, punch, shoot-

Joe Rogan 15:10 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 15:10 ... and grapple and not miss a beat and get right back up. Like, you just watch them. I- i- i- it's almost choreography. That's how good they're, they're being trained. I mean, their, their zero-range d-... You know, before it used to be like jab, jab, jab till you can shoot it.

Joe Rogan 15:21 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 15:21 Now it's like they can change ranges on the fly. They're so good at it.

Joe Rogan 15:25 And they're, they're switching levels on you, like they're, they're doing one thing to set up a takedown, they're using takedowns to set up strikes. I mean, it's, it's amazing.

Chad Stahelski 15:34 It's mental.

Joe Rogan 15:36 It's so mental.

Chad Stahelski 15:36 It's scary how good it is.

Joe Rogan 15:37 It really is because it's so much different than any other version of martial arts that existed before the UFC came along.

Chad Stahelski 15:43 Right. I think we have become so divided.

Joe Rogan 15:46 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 15:46 You know, you were just the kicker, you were just the puncher.

Joe Rogan 15:49 Right.

Chad Stahelski 15:49 I- it was almost a stylistic civil war going on, like, "My Kung Fu can beat your Kung Fu." Or-

Joe Rogan 15:54 Well, yeah.

Chad Stahelski 15:55 ... "My kicking will beat your punching," or my- like, you're like, "What?" (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:57 What did you start training in?

Chad Stahelski 15:59 I was originally a kr- uh, judo first. I was... Did a lot of judo back when I... Just, like, when I was 10 to, like, 16, then I started karate. It was like a Kyokushinkai, Koko Kondo karate, and j- and Japanese Jujitsu.

Joe Rogan 16:10 Mm.

Chad Stahelski 16:10 Did that all the way till I came to... I went to school at USC, um, from Massachusetts, and I got here and I bumped into this guy, Bert Richardson, who was a big student under Dan Inosanto.

Joe Rogan 16:19 Sure. Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 16:20 And Bert was teaching, like, a... Just a Kali class, Kali and, and-

Joe Rogan 16:23 Mm.

Chad Stahelski 16:23 ... and Silat over at USC, and I met him and I was a big fan of Dan Inosanto, you know, from all the-

Joe Rogan 16:29 Sure.

Chad Stahelski 16:29 ... Black Belt Magazine things.

Joe Rogan 16:30 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 16:31 So he hooked me up and I got into the Inosanto Academy, and that's where it went mental. We studied with, like, Francis Fong and, um, uh, Paul Dutoit for Indonesian Silat. We had, like, every other Filipino instructor you could imagine from that. We had Francis Asseline for... Uh, I mean, Francis Enchernard and Selim Asseli for Savate, Sarichai Sirisut from Muay Thai.

Joe Rogan 16:49 Wow.

Chad Stahelski 16:49 And then we'd get these, you know, guest appearances by, like, all these great martial art instructors, and that's kinda where we got it.

Joe Rogan 16:55 Oh, that's awesome.

Chad Stahelski 16:56 And that's where I met, um, this guy, Jeff Amato, who at the time was a very big stunt coordinator, and he kinda recruited us into the stunt world from there.

Joe Rogan 17:03 Oh, that's great. Wow.

Chad Stahelski 17:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:05 So, and so then you get into the stunt world, you're doing that for years and years, and the... This is just so crazy that John Wick is your first breakthrough movie-

Chad Stahelski 17:13 Crazy, right?

Joe Rogan 17:13 ... as a director, and it's a fucking-

Chad Stahelski 17:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:16 ... gigantic-

Chad Stahelski 17:17 We tried to look for something that was kind of bulletproof. We figure, very short story. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:21 Oh, man. That's his bull-

Chad Stahelski 17:22 Killed dog guy goes r- you know, and then we kind of layered it in with the subtext of grief and suffering and-

Joe Rogan 17:27 Everything.

Chad Stahelski 17:27 ... try to put our little thing in there but-

Joe Rogan 17:27 It's perfect.

Chad Stahelski 17:28 Uh, it was all about the puppy.

Joe Rogan 17:29 This scene... What... Who was the Russian gentleman, the, the guy who plays the father? He has-

Chad Stahelski 17:33 Yeah, Michael Nyqvist.

Joe Rogan 17:34 Yeah. That guy was so good.

Chad Stahelski 17:35 So good. He was in, uh, the original Girl with Dragon Tattoo, and I think he did-

Joe Rogan 17:38 Yes.

Chad Stahelski 17:39 ... the, the third Mission: Impossible, I think he was the bad guy in.

Joe Rogan 17:42 He died recently, right?

Chad Stahelski 17:43 Yeah, he died a couple years ago. Um, I think he... I don't know if it was a heart attack or stroke, but he died. He still has a nice, uh, uh, charity thing that they do every year for him.

Joe Rogan 17:50 God, that guy was so good.

Chad Stahelski 17:51 Fantastic guy, fantastic guy.

Joe Rogan 17:53 That fucking scene.

Chad Stahelski 17:54 Swedish actor.

Joe Rogan 17:55 The scene when he's explaining to his son, who's also awesome, the guy who was in Game of Thrones.

Chad Stahelski 17:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:59 What is his name?

Chad Stahelski 17:59 Alfie, Alfie Allen.

Joe Rogan 18:01 Alf- That guy's incredible.

Chad Stahelski 18:02 So good.

Joe Rogan 18:02 He's-

Chad Stahelski 18:02 We, we cast a lot of Game of Thrones.

Joe Rogan 18:04 Oh my God.

Chad Stahelski 18:04 I love, I used to love Game of Thrones.

Joe Rogan 18:05 He's so good.

Chad Stahelski 18:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:07 He's such... He plays such a good fuckhead.

Chad Stahelski 18:09 Oh my God, he's such a good prick, but like-

Joe Rogan 18:10 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 18:11 ... in, in life, it's so funny. He is the shyest, quietest, super nice, like, hardest worker, just never left set, always there ready to do his thing, the sweetest kid ever.

Joe Rogan 18:20 Yeah, well, I can believe it.

Chad Stahelski 18:22 And he just played... He's so good in the role.

Joe Rogan 18:23 Oh my God.

Chad Stahelski 18:24 He's so good.

Joe Rogan 18:24 Th- but that scene when he's at the bar pouring the drink-

Chad Stahelski 18:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:28 ... explaining (laughs) -

Chad Stahelski 18:29 Giving him the little fairy tale of the Baba Yaga.

Joe Rogan 18:31 Oh, it's such a good scene.

Chad Stahelski 18:33 You know, we were kind of laughing at ourselves. We're like, "How do we, how do we make a movie that people are gonna watch? How do we do something other than the gritty, you know, Bourne action stuff like this?" Like, "We gotta do a fairy tale. We just gotta do a fairy tale. We're gonna do a campsite fire and we're gonna have this little fairy tale." So we started looking up all these Russian fairy tales. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 18:47 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 18:47 Like, "We need a cool name. Okay, Baba Yaga. It's a witch. Don't worry, no one will ever know. No one will ever see the movie. It'll be fine." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 18:54 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 18:54 And we're like, "Ah, fuck, it's not the guy. It's the guy you send to kill the boogeyman." Okay-

Joe Rogan 18:58 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 18:58 ... we'll work this out. But it was like just building... Like, I'm fascinated by mythology, so if you can build your own myth, that's what we were just trying to do. Like, we were trying to be a little ridiculous. That's why we used the color cre-... Like, um...... instead of just noir, black and white, we tried to do, like, neon noir. We had Jonathan Sela and then Dan Laustsen, the cinematographers on it. And to try and take it and give visual cues to the audience that, like, this isn't real, it's a fairytale-

Joe Rogan 19:20 Right.

Chad Stahelski 19:20 ... trying to get on board with it. That's why you see the color differentiation right when the cop knocks on the door.

Joe Rogan 19:25 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 19:25 He goes, "Hey, you working again?"

Joe Rogan 19:26 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 19:26 We just switch colors and we're like, "Okay, hopefully people will get that we're, we're now in a fantasy." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 19:31 Well, it's, it just seemed, it was, it was realistic, but not.

Chad Stahelski 19:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:36 And just, I, I-

Chad Stahelski 19:37 You need one anchor, you always need one anchor.

Joe Rogan 19:39 One of my buddies called me up and the, uh, uh, he goes, "Have you seen John Wick?" I go, "No, is it good?" He goes, "Dude."

Chad Stahelski 19:45 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 19:45 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 19:46 Did you get the, "Dude."

Joe Rogan 19:47 When you, when you get that-

Chad Stahelski 19:48 The dude.

Joe Rogan 19:49 ... "Dude, you're gonna fucking love it."

Chad Stahelski 19:52 Pretty funny.

Joe Rogan 19:53 And then I, and then I saw it. I'm pretty sure I saw it in the fi- in the movie theater. And, uh, I mean, right away, I was like, "Holy shit, this is my kinda movie." I mean, this is so much fun.

Chad Stahelski 20:02 It's, uh, right? It's, everyone's kind of an older person. Like, you know, we all, um, we're probably the same generation. We grew up with, like, Steve McQueen-

Joe Rogan 20:09 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 20:09 ... and Bronson.

Joe Rogan 20:09 Sure.

Chad Stahelski 20:10 You know, a little bit where, like, not a lot of dialogue, but like-

Joe Rogan 20:12 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 20:13 ... the Bullitt, he's in that car.

Joe Rogan 20:14 Oh my God.

Chad Stahelski 20:14 And you're fucking in it.

Joe Rogan 20:15 The fucking, we just played the Bullitt scene the other day.

Chad Stahelski 20:18 Yes.

Joe Rogan 20:18 I mean, that car scene, no music.

Chad Stahelski 20:19 No, just, it's all car.

Joe Rogan 20:21 Just car.

Chad Stahelski 20:22 All car.

Joe Rogan 20:22 Just, just car shit.

Chad Stahelski 20:23 And that's the real, that's, uh, that's what the 68 Mustang.

Joe Rogan 20:25 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 20:25 It's just all car.

Joe Rogan 20:27 68 Fastback.

Chad Stahelski 20:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:28 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 20:28 All carrying that scene for the whole time.

Joe Rogan 20:30 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 20:30 And you're like, "That's pretty cool."

Joe Rogan 20:31 Have you seen the Revology 68 Mustang?

Chad Stahelski 20:33 No.

Joe Rogan 20:34 Revology makes, uh, they make a replica of the Bullitt.

Chad Stahelski 20:38 Really?

Joe Rogan 20:38 But it's with this sick suspension, with a 460 horsepower Coyote engine, and it's lightweight, so it's like 600 pounds less than the, than a real Mustang GT from today.

Chad Stahelski 20:49 Oh my God. Yeah, you'd be able to throw that around all day.

Joe Rogan 20:51 So, oh my God, it's, it's, it's an incredible car. Yeah, he, he makes like-

Chad Stahelski 20:55 We have to check that out. That sounds awesome.

Joe Rogan 20:56 Yeah, we should. Pull it up, I'll show you. This is, this is what he makes. Look at that.

Chad Stahelski 21:00 Oh, it's beautiful.

Joe Rogan 21:01 That's his car. I mean, and it's, you know, fucking zero to 60 in four seconds.

Chad Stahelski 21:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 21:07 You know, so you can get it as six-speed or a manual. And the fucking car screams.

Chad Stahelski 21:13 You have to get it.

Joe Rogan 21:13 It's such a fun car. So this guy's, uh, Tom Scarpello, he used to work for Ford. He used to be in their, uh, the program to make the Ford GT. And so he built this car.

Chad Stahelski 21:26 Full assembly to get this car. But he does it- Brands, the concept of a brand.

Joe Rogan 21:29 It's, it's inc- what he does is incredible because he's essentially done it like a production car, but it's a brand-new 1968. And it's done-

Chad Stahelski 21:39 All checked out.

Joe Rogan 21:40 But it's not just the Bullitt car. He does the '67 GT500, '67 GT350.

Chad Stahelski 21:47 That's amazing. That's for sure.

Joe Rogan 21:49 It's fucking awesome.

Chad Stahelski 21:50 Well, that's what, I mean, uh, again, for all your listeners, you're the one that, you're the one that told us to use the '71 Barracuda.

Joe Rogan 21:56 I'm so excited.

Chad Stahelski 21:57 (laughs) I just-

Joe Rogan 21:58 When I saw it in the previews, I was like, "Yes, he listened."

Chad Stahelski 22:01 No, uh, no, with, with, with context, I bump into you for the first time up at Taran's place.

Joe Rogan 22:05 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 22:06 And, you know, we got the handshake, "Hey, you know, how you doing?"

Joe Rogan 22:08 Yeah, yeah.

Chad Stahelski 22:09 And then it was, uh, Joe writes me going, "Love the movies. Where the fuck are the muscle cars?"

Joe Rogan 22:14 Number number three.

Chad Stahelski 22:15 Number number three. Like, I had no muscle cars.

Joe Rogan 22:15 That was the problem.

Chad Stahelski 22:16 I was like, "Yeah, sorry." I'm like, "Okay, we'll put one in for the fourth one."

Joe Rogan 22:20 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 22:20 He's like, "You better." So we go into production and we're sitting, I'm literally sitting in Berlin going, "I am fucking looking for cars way over in Europe. How am I gonna find a fucking muscle car? Joe Rogan's gonna fucking hate me."

Joe Rogan 22:28 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 22:29 "I'll get a bad review." I'm like, "How do I do this?" So I, I text Joe, I'm like, "What, what's the perfect car?" He's like, "'71 Barracuda. Don't go with any of that pussy '69 stuff."

Joe Rogan 22:36 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 22:37 "You gotta get the '71, the four headlights."

Joe Rogan 22:38 Yeah, you don't wanna get the early Barracudas.

Chad Stahelski 22:40 Right.

Joe Rogan 22:40 You want '70 and '71.

Chad Stahelski 22:42 Right.

Joe Rogan 22:42 Those are the years. I have a '70.

Chad Stahelski 22:43 That's right, you sent me that picture.

Joe Rogan 22:44 Yes.

Chad Stahelski 22:44 And that's the exact car in the movie.

Joe Rogan 22:45 It's the exact one with the fins, that's it.

Chad Stahelski 22:47 Yeah, exact-

Joe Rogan 22:47 That's it.

Chad Stahelski 22:48 Yep, exact car in the movie.

Joe Rogan 22:49 I mean, come on, that is fucking-

Chad Stahelski 22:51 It's so-

Joe Rogan 22:51 ... classic.

Chad Stahelski 22:51 We ripped that thing apart, like we had, um, Tanner Foust, like one of the best drift-

Joe Rogan 22:56 I love that guy.

Chad Stahelski 22:57 Tanner's awesome, right?

Joe Rogan 22:58 Yeah, he's awesome.

Chad Stahelski 22:59 So he's helped us out on a lot of the John Wick, so y- we brought him in to, uh, my stunt coordinator, Scott Rogers, and Steve Donlevy brought him in to t- teach Keanu to do all the, the 240 and the, the 360 drifts and all that stuff. So he gets right in there, they just put the new suspension in, put, put the fucking insane engine in this thing. And they, they had Keanu doing these fucking circular drifts, literally like in two weeks.

Joe Rogan 23:17 It hurt so bad watching you guys smash it up, bro.

Chad Stahelski 23:20 I know.

Joe Rogan 23:20 All of them. The '69-

Chad Stahelski 23:21 It was good.

Joe Rogan 23:22 ... Mustang in, in John Wick 2.

Chad Stahelski 23:23 I know.

Joe Rogan 23:23 When he destroys it. I'm like, "No."

Chad Stahelski 23:25 Just, I know.

Joe Rogan 23:25 Ugh.

Chad Stahelski 23:26 Well, we did-

Joe Rogan 23:26 Uh.

Chad Stahelski 23:26 We destroyed probably a few more than we should have on this one. We-

Joe Rogan 23:29 (laughs) Did you?

Chad Stahelski 23:30 Yeah, you gotta break a few eggs. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 23:32 Well, it worked.

Chad Stahelski 23:33 We, we cracked a couple. But-

Joe Rogan 23:33 I mean, I, I mean, how many people went out and bought '69 Mustangs and '70 Chevelles after that film?

Chad Stahelski 23:39 I, I actually really enjoyed this, the Chevelle.

Joe Rogan 23:41 Oh.

Chad Stahelski 23:41 I didn't think I would like the Chevelle as much as I did.

Joe Rogan 23:43 I fucking, I have one. I have one-

Chad Stahelski 23:44 Do you really?

Joe Rogan 23:45 ... just like that. Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 23:45 I'd rather that car.

Joe Rogan 23:45 Mine's not green, but I, yours didn't look green. It looked black.

Chad Stahelski 23:48 No, it, it had that, like, Matrix green that looked-

Joe Rogan 23:50 Mm-hmm. But very dark green.

Chad Stahelski 23:51 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 23:52 Yeah, but in dark, the way you film everything-

Chad Stahelski 23:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:54 ... so dark and moody-

Chad Stahelski 23:55 It's got that kick to it.

Joe Rogan 23:56 ... it looked black. Yeah, oh, it's-

Chad Stahelski 23:57 I really, I, I know I'm supposed to say the Mustang, but I really like the Chevelle.

Joe Rogan 24:00 I'm a Chevelle guy.

Chad Stahelski 24:01 Yeah, I like the Chevelle.

Joe Rogan 24:02 I love the Mustangs too. I mean, the go- I'm, I'm a muscle car head. I love them.

Chad Stahelski 24:05 Yeah, they're so-

Joe Rogan 24:06 So it's, you know.

Chad Stahelski 24:06 ... fun. The, the guys in Europe, when you go shopping around, there, it's almost you'll find a, I know there's a lot of people here, but we thought we were gonna have a big problem looking for all the different muscle cars in Europe. Like, they're amazing collectors over there.

Joe Rogan 24:18 Really?

Chad Stahelski 24:19 They love their m- like, warehouses full of-

Joe Rogan 24:22 It makes sense because-

Chad Stahelski 24:23 Right.

Joe Rogan 24:23 ... a lot of Americans collect European cars.

Chad Stahelski 24:25 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:26 Like, yeah, there's the '60, the '70 rather.

Chad Stahelski 24:27 I love that car.

Joe Rogan 24:27 '70 Chevelle in front of the Continental.

Chad Stahelski 24:30 That was kind of on a goof too. We, we wanted something else and we ended up getting this and we're like, "Oh my God."

Joe Rogan 24:35 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 24:35 "This, we just saw it when... That's the car."

Joe Rogan 24:36 Yeah. "That's the car."

Chad Stahelski 24:38 Yeah. We, we were trying to make a choice and Keanu just walked away and he goes, "No, that one."

Joe Rogan 24:41 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 24:41 (laughs) We're like, "Yeah, okay."

Joe Rogan 24:43 Well, it's, you know, it's, it's in the Mount Everest of the muscle car classics.

Chad Stahelski 24:47 Yeah. I mean, it's just-

Joe Rogan 24:48 Especially the '70. Chevelle's weird because like the old ones are ni- the '68 and '69 are cool, they're really cool. '70s the motherfucker though. And then '71 they go to like this goofy single headlight thing, it doesn't look right.

Chad Stahelski 25:00 Uh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:01 '72 looks like shit.

Chad Stahelski 25:02 Softened up.

Joe Rogan 25:03 They fucked with the rear taillights and oh...

Chad Stahelski 25:05 Well, I, I think that's what we were really trying to... He kinda summed it up right there. For like the John Wicks, uh, uh, they're like a, we kinda, we did it as a goof. We thought we'd never direct again. We're like, Keanu's like, "Man, let's just do an action movie for us," you know, whatever, we're thinking no one's ever gonna see it, like we'll just keep our second unit jobs-

Joe Rogan 25:20 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 25:21 ... just in case. And we're like, oh, we just make, we, we got this big whiteboard and we went in, we wrote down, "Okay, everybody take a marker. Write down the 10 things you fucking hate about action movies." (laughs) And then go write the 10 things you love about action movies that you'd wanna see. Like muscle cars, gun fu, or like martial arts, or like, you know, like suits. We want like, want to bring the little class back. Like, what do we love-

Joe Rogan 25:40 Mm.

Chad Stahelski 25:40 ... about Bond? What do you love about Mission Impossible? What, what's, what's Cruise doing? What's, you know, Daniel Craig doing? What's, you know, Matt doing in, in Bourne? Like, let's write down all the stuff we love that makes this, and then we're just gonna mix it up and throw all this stuff. Like, I have a museum fetish. I have an art fetish, obviously. I have a color fetish.

Joe Rogan 25:55 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 25:55 I have a dog fetish, obviously. Um, like, making something about a dog. We're gonna ... And then like, eh, we would have attack dogs on the first one, but they just didn't fit, so I, I could move that over to number three-

Joe Rogan 26:04 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 26:04 ... when we have more money.

Joe Rogan 26:05 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 26:05 And it's just like, okay, what's, what's all the fun stuff that you wanna see in action movies? And none of the, the structures we had in any of the scripts fit for it. So we're just like, okay, we'll go back to Odysseus in like the Iliad or The Odyssey, and we go, "Okay, this guy just wants to get home. He just wants to grieve, and we're gonna throw as many rocks at him as we can on the way and see-

Joe Rogan 26:25 Hm.

Chad Stahelski 26:25 ... if we can make obstruction. And we'll just have Keanu do an endurance race." That's kinda how we did it, and just threw in everything else we love.

Joe Rogan 26:31 Well, it's gotta be one of the most wild, pulse-pounding movies ever, because like the scene ... I did this thing with my friends. We do it every year. We do this Sober October thing.

Chad Stahelski 26:43 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 26:43 And, uh, one year we did a fitness challenge. And we're, the, the, my friends, uh, Ari Shaffir, Bert Kreischer, and Tom Segura and me. And Bert Kreischer talks so much shit. And the fitness challenge was we all had to wear these, uh, heart monitors. And, uh, it's this thing called MyZones. And, uh, you, uh, you have to keep your heart rate at 80%. You, it, it's like one point per minute. At 90%, it's like two points per minute. And so it's like, it's amount of points per day.

Chad Stahelski 27:15 Right.

Joe Rogan 27:16 And I watched John Wick 50 times in a row, and I did-

Chad Stahelski 27:21 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:21 No, I'm not bullshitting, man. I watched the scene from the, the bathhouse scene-

Chad Stahelski 27:25 Right.

Joe Rogan 27:26 ... 50 times in a row. I did seven hours of cardio, and I did it just to try to break Bert because he was talking so much shit.

Chad Stahelski 27:33 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:33 And so like a normal score for a day, a guy would get like 400 or 300. I got 1150 for the day.

Chad Stahelski 27:40 Holy shit.

Joe Rogan 27:41 And I put it up to Joe just because I'm like, "I'm gonna kill you." Because he kept talking shit. I go, "Dude, I'm gonna kill you. I'm go- I'm gonna drag you to hell." I'm like, "You're not gonna be able to keep up. I'm gonna, I'm gonna push myself to the point where I'm almost dead, and I'm gonna kill you."

Chad Stahelski 27:54 Th- there's probably a-

Joe Rogan 27:55 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 27:55 ... there's prob- there's probably a study in that. Visual stimuli. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:58 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 27:59 To, to heart rate and adrenaline.

Joe Rogan 28:00 So I'm on an elliptical machine watching that scene with a remote control.

Chad Stahelski 28:05 Just on loop.

Joe Rogan 28:05 Just rewinding it, going back, rewinding it. "That fucking nobody-"

Chad Stahelski 28:10 Just ba, ba, ba.

Joe Rogan 28:10 "... is John Wick." And then you go through that-

Chad Stahelski 28:12 And you just hit the peak, yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:13 ... and there's killing in the house. Get to the red circle bar, assassinations left and right. It's ... So that just carried me through the whole Sober October month.

Chad Stahelski 28:22 Yeah, that's a psychosomatic study in violence.

Joe Rogan 28:24 I probably watched that movie 100 times. I'm not bullshitting.

Chad Stahelski 28:26 That's crazy.

Joe Rogan 28:27 I watch it whenever-

Chad Stahelski 28:28 It's crazy.

Joe Rogan 28:28 ... I'm bored in the gym, I just throw it on.

Chad Stahelski 28:29 That, that's cool.

Joe Rogan 28:31 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 28:31 That's cool that you can watch it over and over again.

Joe Rogan 28:32 It's a fucking great get-you-pumped-up movie.

Chad Stahelski 28:36 It's, uh, it was fun to make.

Joe Rogan 28:38 Oh, yeah.

Chad Stahelski 28:38 But we didn't ha- honestly, we didn't know what we were doing. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:40 Did you ever- Any idea it would be so huge, though?

Chad Stahelski 28:42 No, I swear-

Joe Rogan 28:42 When it was done, though, you had to know you nailed it.

Chad Stahelski 28:44 No, we got, we got weird comments back. We got like too many head shots, cut out all the head shots. We got i- you can't kill the kid, Alfie Allen, and you can't kill the puppy. Somebody's gotta live. The, you know ... We were independent, so everyone was scared that we weren't gonna get picked up. 'Cause we had been ... We went ... When we shopped it, we went to, I think, four or five studios, and we didn't, we didn't even finish the pitch. They're like, "Nah, we're cool. Thank you."

Joe Rogan 29:06 Really?

Chad Stahelski 29:07 Yeah, we didn't, we didn't get bought, so we made the thing independently with Thunder Road, with Baz Launic and Erica Lee. Um, and it wasn't till we came out here, actually, to Fantastic Fest, like no one was buying the movie, so Baz said this great ... "Let's go. We'll show it at Fantastic Fest, see if anybody will clap." So me, Dave, and Keanu sneak in real low-key. We're gonna do a little surprise thing at that, and Keanu will do his little, you know, wave to the crowd. And the crowd goes fucking mental, like mental. And like the first family and friends we had, everyone got was really quiet afterwards. (laughs) Like, no applause, it was just really quiet. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 29:40 Really?

Chad Stahelski 29:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:41 Why?

Chad Stahelski 29:41 And then-

Joe Rogan 29:41 What do you think that is?

Chad Stahelski 29:42 I- I just think at the time, you know, we're, we're in the fast cut shaky cam, and it was, you know, the, the, the just ... It was so ludicrous that he's gonna kill 68 or 86 people over a puppy, and no one got that-

Joe Rogan 29:54 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 29:54 ... who was ... I know, it was fucking ... And I mean, th- you gotta remember, this is how we pitch it.

Joe Rogan 29:57 Right.

Chad Stahelski 29:58 So like we'll go to a studio and go, "Okay, so we got this g- we got Keanu Reeves, right? I know we're a first-time stunt guys, but it's a, it's an action movie, right?" And they say, "Okay." And, uh, but, "And we're g- he's gonna shoot all this stuff. And so his wife dies of natural causes." Like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. The bad guys don't kill her." Like, "No, no, no, no." "But they kill his puppy." I'm like, "Yeah." "And he kills all the people because of the puppy, but not the ... What?" Like, they're like, "Well, what happens next?" I'm like, "No, that's it. The next 45 minutes are like just, you know, rampage." And yeah, yeah, no, we didn't, we didn't sell it very, very much. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:28 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 30:28 So-

Joe Rogan 30:28 But they must be kicking themselves now.

Chad Stahelski 30:30 Yeah, well, uh, Lionsgate bought us internationally, and then they sold us to domestic. And, um, since then, you know, we've gone through a couple regime changes at Lionsgate, but now, like, the last one was really cool. Like, everyone's on board, like Joe Drake, Nathan Cahane, Matt Leonetti, um, you know, um, Adam Fogelson. Everybody that's part of the regime, they really pushed this last one. They, they knew John Wick was cool, they loved the third one, and they got on board. But for the first, first round, it w- we had ... Once we sold it, the movie came out. Before it even came out, there was like this lag. They bought it, and then there's like six months before we hit theaters. I think Dave went off and did Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 9 or whatever it was. I went off and did like The Grimsby Brothers, or Brothers Grimsby, Sacha Baron Cohen movie, second unit down in South Africa for like five months because I was broke. Um, it was pretty funny. Yeah, we, we thought we'd never direct again, so we were like, "We better go find some stunt jobs." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:19 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 31:20 And then it worked out. And then, um, like, uh, not even a month after it had opened, Keanu called up and he go, "Hey, uh, they called me about doing number two, but I'll only do it with, with you guys. You in?" And I was like, "Are you kidding? Yes. Uh, fuck, we're in. Whatever it takes."

Joe Rogan 31:34 Wow.

Chad Stahelski 31:35 Yeah. It was-

Joe Rogan 31:35 That's awesome.

Chad Stahelski 31:35 ... completely nutty, man.

Joe Rogan 31:37 Yeah. And number two just picks up right where number one left off.

Chad Stahelski 31:40 Yeah. And we just were like, "Okay."

Joe Rogan 31:41 And right off the jump, like, opening scene.

Chad Stahelski 31:43 Yeah. We had no idea what to do.

Joe Rogan 31:44 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 31:44 I was, like, trying to figure out ideas for that. We're like, "Ah." You know, it's like the, the sensory deprivation tank. It was just go into a room and not, not leave till we came up with an idea. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:54 (laughs) So you decided just the, the hunt for his car?

Chad Stahelski 31:56 Yeah. Well, no, it was funny-

Joe Rogan 31:57 And then he destroys it. (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 31:57 ... I was sitting with my, with my now partner, Alex Young. We, we were doing a second unit gig. We were doing Agent 47, the second one, whatever that was called. I think it was Agent 47. Right? In Berlin. And we're sitting there, and we had got the call to, to, "Okay, we gotta come up with an idea." And my partner at the time, or, or my partner now, um, Alex Young was sitting there. And he's like, "You gotta get the car back, man. He lost his fucking car." I'm like, "No one's gonna care about the car." I'm like-

Joe Rogan 32:22 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 32:22 ... "Dude." He was like, he was like... He fucking total loves muscle cars. He's like, "You gotta put the car. Every guy he kills, he's gonna get a piece of the car back. He's getting his fucking car back." (laughs) I'm like, "That's a great opening. He's gonna get the car back."

Joe Rogan 32:33 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 32:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:34 No, when he sits in the car, and he's, like, touching the steering wheel-

Chad Stahelski 32:36 And he's just, you could tell. He's like, "Ah."

Joe Rogan 32:38 ... and he gets the keys.

Chad Stahelski 32:38 But that's Keanu. Like, Keanu bring... Like, that's not just John, that's Keanu. Keanu loves cars. He loves bikes. He loves the discipline of it. He loves... Like, that's why he's got Arch Motorcycles, right?

Joe Rogan 32:48 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 32:48 If you ever get a chance, you should check that shop out. It, it's the most pristine engineering shop ever.

Joe Rogan 32:52 I'm sure. I can't fuck with motorcycles. I'm scared of them.

Chad Stahelski 32:55 It's... Yeah. But to build... Just to watch how he... He's got all the water cutters there. It's very, it's a very artistic, uh-

Joe Rogan 33:01 Oh, the, the bikes he makes are incredible.

Chad Stahelski 33:03 The bikes, yeah, they're great.

Joe Rogan 33:04 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 33:04 But that, he brings that to every... Like, he just... He's very, not compulsive. He's very, uh, he loves the art of things.

Joe Rogan 33:09 Meticulous.

Chad Stahelski 33:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:09 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 33:09 He loves the art of it.

Joe Rogan 33:10 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 33:11 He l- he's fascinated by, like, "Who makes this cup, Joe? Like, how do you..." Like, he, everything he'll, he's just fascinated over. He wants a story on it.

Joe Rogan 33:18 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 33:18 He's one of the most curious, most, um, I guess, curious artistically, like, how things are done or who people are. He's just got a genuine curiosity and love for things.

Joe Rogan 33:28 He's a very unique guy.

Chad Stahelski 33:30 I think so.

Joe Rogan 33:30 And I've never met him, but just every interview you see with him, every movie, he's in, he's a very unusual person.

Chad Stahelski 33:35 Yeah. And he's got... You know what I think? I think anybody really artistic, or at least they're really... I think, artistic people that I've met, they maintain that little bit of, and I mean this in the, in the best of ways, a little bit of, of, of childness wonder.

Joe Rogan 33:48 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 33:49 They's, they're still kids a little bit. Like, I, I could talk to you all day about, like, archery. I could talk to you all day about martial arts. I could talk to you all day about motorcycles. I could talk to you all day about movies. And I think that's... You gotta have that. Y- you need that little inspiration. I think you need that little bit of, of, of wonder, wanderlust into, into certain things. And I think he's still got that. Like, he, he will still... He'll see a sequence. We're coming with the nunchucks and do something, and he'll start giggling.

Joe Rogan 34:15 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 34:15 He's like, "You want me to do that?" He's like, "Okay, that's pretty cool." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:17 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 34:18 And he just goes from totally serious guy to, "Okay, now how do I learn how to do nunchucks?" He just, everything you need to know about nunchucks, he wants to know about nunchucks. He just throws himself into it. He just loves it.

Joe Rogan 34:26 So how much time did he have to train martial arts before John Wick 1?

Chad Stahelski 34:30 Oh, God, it wasn't that. He was coming out of a couple films, so he hadn't been, um... Like, he wasn't in fight shape. That was... So, you know how, you know how it is. Just like, you can't just jump back in. So we gave him like, I think, three to five weeks with some of the trainers we found to get into shape, to get into shape. You know, cut weight, got himself back in, stretched. You know, kind of got back into where he was on The Matrix. And then we stuck him with the, the fight teams and the stunt guys. I think we had him within three months. That was probably the shortest one we did. That was about three months to get him into that shape and teach him all the, you know, the aikido stuff and the aikijutsu.

Joe Rogan 35:06 Well, you need so... There's so much going on in those movies physically that you need to be proficient in.

Chad Stahelski 35:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:12 The gun stuff, the, the throws, jujitsu, striking, everything.

Chad Stahelski 35:17 The jujitsu was the new thing for him. Pro- probably not the most physically demanding, but you know how it is. W- we're used to using your hands and feet.

Joe Rogan 35:22 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 35:23 I mean, I'm sure you remember the first time he transitioned to jujitsu. It's like it looks easy, but you're like, "Ah."

Joe Rogan 35:27 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 35:28 Completely-

Joe Rogan 35:28 It's an eye-opener.

Chad Stahelski 35:29 Yeah, it really is. And only even recently for me, I, I'm starting to feel like, "Oh, I can move." I, I... It feels just as good to be on my back as my butt, as my... like, you know.

Joe Rogan 35:37 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 35:37 But I think we took a lot of inspiration from dance. Like, uh, you know, most of what we do is dance, they're based on dance drills. They're not based on martial art drills. They look like martial arts. We kick, punch, but we don't train the actors in Thai pads or focus mitts or heavy bag. We'll do maybe a little of that for impact stuff, but it's mostly about memory. 'Cause if a guy can punch and kick, that's great. But if he can't remember five moves, you're not much good to us.

Joe Rogan 36:00 Right.

Chad Stahelski 36:00 And it's more, you know, martial arts is action, reaction or causing the guy to be off balance. All our guys are trained to, to keep him on balance, to, to make it look crazy, but they gotta dance with him.

Joe Rogan 36:10 Hmm.

Chad Stahelski 36:10 So it's about that metronome, keeping the beat going.

Joe Rogan 36:14 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 36:14 So when we trained him, um, he hadn't been trained that way before. It was more about memori- memorizing, uh, you know, a few moves, hitting some guys and whatnot.

Joe Rogan 36:21 Specific sequence.

Chad Stahelski 36:22 But we realized we had no money and we had no time. And every time you do punches and kicks, you see in most movies, right? Like, they're on you, right over my shoulder.

Joe Rogan 36:28 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 36:29 Then, you know, you take the hit and it goes over your shoulder so I can sell the hit. So you're always doing these reverses. So if I do a big wide shot profile, you throw in a nice roundhouse kick, I gotta cut somewhere to show the impact, unless you're really kicking me, which not advisable most of the time. So all, every time, the more punching and kicking and striking you do, or if Keanu's not doing the motion, I gotta cut more. And every time I cut, it's a setup. It's the, it's, it's just time-consuming. Not that it's bad or good, it's just time-consuming. We knew we weren't gonna have that, so we're like, "Fuck, what do we do? Okay, we're just gonna grab people." (laughs) "We're just gonna make it all grappling." And, like, is that gonna look... You know. You gotta remember, it's all during The Bourne, so everything's gonna look very slow, you know, compared to what it was. But we're just, we're gonna do all gr- We're gonna do aikido, aikijutsu, or jujitsu. That's it. That's all you get. And if you get a punch, it'll be a contact hit. That's all we're gonna do. No punches, no kicks, no nothing. And we'll do it all in one take.

Joe Rogan 37:16 Hmm.

Chad Stahelski 37:17 And we're all like, "Uh, yeah, sounds good." Um, you know. (laughs) No one...... no. Yeah, we thought it was a complete disaster after the first two days of shooting the fight scenes. We're like, "This is gonna suck. We're fucked." Um-

Joe Rogan 37:28 Why'd you think that, though?

Chad Stahelski 37:29 D- I think it was everyone's mindset. Like, we did it out of necessity, and we thought it was cool. But like, you'd see people that would, "Where's the k-" Like, you know, s- sometimes people look at it and go, "Well, he's doing the same throw over and..." I mean, Ippon Seoinage looks the same, but for us, the different grips, the different throw, it, it all looks different to me. Like-

Joe Rogan 37:44 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 37:44 ... I, I'm a throw, you know, I love judo porn. I, I could watch a million different throws. It's awesome. Um, for some people, it all looks the same. They wanna see the cool jump spin hook kick or something like that. Um, but then we put in the close quarter stuff, and when you're seeing it, remember, we don't have the muzzle flashes on, we don't have the blood splatters.

Joe Rogan 38:02 Right.

Chad Stahelski 38:02 So you're just kind of seeing, you know, looks like they're dancing.

Joe Rogan 38:05 Right.

Chad Stahelski 38:05 And then you put in the sound effects and you put in the muzzle f- and then you put in the fucking reload, and like, now it's making sense.

Joe Rogan 38:10 So what are you... When, when he's shooting in the, the actual filming, is he just pulling the trigger and it's just going click?

Chad Stahelski 38:17 Well, see, that's the thing.

Joe Rogan 38:18 You have dummy rounds?

Chad Stahelski 38:19 When you, when you... Most movies you always see A to B cutting, right?

Joe Rogan 38:22 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 38:22 I'm on you. You're the guy. Like, c- guns in the camera. You fire the blank. Most firearms up until very recently fire blanks. And for the people out there, a blank is a round without the actual bullet, the lead piece that hits. But a blank still has a gunpowder charge in it. Say maybe a, you know, even if it's only 50 grams of black powder. But at a, at a range of 10 to 15 feet, that'll still, that can kill you.

Joe Rogan 38:44 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 38:44 Just with the concussive force. That's, and you hear about all the accidents that have happened with blanks over the years. Like, you can't put a blank under your head and pull the trigger and kill you.

Joe Rogan 38:51 Right.

Chad Stahelski 38:52 Right? So we wanted to do all this close quarter shooting. Like we wanted to put the muzzle and, and do all this stuff, close quarter contact stuff. So we, you know, we went to our VFX guys, and the trick is not so much the muzzle flash, it's the lighting interaction, especially at night, and it's cycling the automatic-

Joe Rogan 39:08 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 39:08 ... getting it in and having the casing ejection. I'll do, but it can add up with visual effects costs. So we went and we found, um, the armors and, you know, through Taran and the other, the technologies that we found. Through the armors, we made a plug gun. A plug gun is a gun that has a, almost a steel rod inside the barrel, and it kicks the gas a different way. So we still have an ejection, but nothing, no energy, no flash-

Joe Rogan 39:29 Mm.

Chad Stahelski 39:29 ... no padding or wadding comes out the barrel. Like, you know, you, you couldn't put a live round in it if you tried. So-

Joe Rogan 39:35 So is it a lower ra- a lower level-

Chad Stahelski 39:38 It, it, there, in England they use some that are like almost air contained.

Joe Rogan 39:42 Hm.

Chad Stahelski 39:42 They can do it. And us, it's a very, very small charge of, of black powder. So it's a very, very, we call them plug guns. They're very, very limited in, in the grainage.

Joe Rogan 39:52 So it's just enough to cycle the round-

Chad Stahelski 39:53 Just enough to cycle it, yep.

Joe Rogan 39:54 ... and eject it.

Chad Stahelski 39:55 But nothing, yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:55 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 39:55 Ejecting, but nothing comes out the barrel.

Joe Rogan 39:58 So all that stuff that you see, the blood splatter, that's all CGI?

Chad Stahelski 40:01 The blood is all CG. There's one or two instances where it's not, but most of the blood is, is... The blood's so good nowadays digitally that it saves so much time because we don't have to change the wardrobe to get it. I mean, like-

Joe Rogan 40:10 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 40:10 ... you know, you see it in like a Tarantino, like in Django. Tarantino still uses old school blood packs, which I, you know, I'm old school. I fucking love that. I think it's amazing. But with just the time and, you know, you, like, you see a John Wick movie, it's like, you know, the reset on 20 stunt guys taking hits on one take, it'd be a three-hour reset to change the wardrobe.

Joe Rogan 40:26 Right.

Chad Stahelski 40:26 And head shots, you'd have to put a special head pack on with a wig and all that stuff. So we do, we do the, the, the blood hits digitally. The muzzle flashes, we actually shoot against a green screen, and we'll call them elements, and then we'll plug actual muzzle flashes back into the movie later on.

Joe Rogan 40:41 Oh.

Chad Stahelski 40:41 So they're not digital per se, but they are comped in, or in a composition. And that's how we get the cool lighting effect and keep the cool muzzle flashes.

Joe Rogan 40:48 How long did it take you to film that Red Circle Bar scene?

Chad Stahelski 40:52 Uh, I think less than four days.

Joe Rogan 40:53 Really?

Chad Stahelski 40:54 Yeah, we went really fast. And Keanu was, he had the flu, he had like a 103 degree fever. He was going down. It w- it was a, it was a rough day. It was freezing cold in New York. He had the flu, uh, super high temperature, and we were just flying through it. Like literally two, three takes. "Move on." Two, three takes, "Move on." Just-

Joe Rogan 41:08 Filming it with the flu? Wow.

Chad Stahelski 41:10 Yeah, he's a trooper, man. He's hard to keep down.

Joe Rogan 41:13 Wow. That's incredible.

Chad Stahelski 41:14 Yeah, he's a tough fucker. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:15 A lot of actors, they have a fucking ear ache, they'll call it quits for the day.

Chad Stahelski 41:19 Uh, yeah. Maybe-

Joe Rogan 41:20 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 41:21 W- no comment.

Joe Rogan 41:22 No comment.

Chad Stahelski 41:22 But look, most of the people we work with are, they get it. And then w- we try to be smart too. Look, if we, if there was another way, if we could have shut down and let them, we just, it was like one of those, we either got to stop or we don't, w- we only get one shot. And you couldn't af- and Keanu's that guy too. You can't, you can't make him go and sit a chair-

Joe Rogan 41:39 Where did you film that?

Chad Stahelski 41:40 It was all in New York City.

Joe Rogan 41:41 But the, the Red Circle, where was that?

Chad Stahelski 41:42 It was in this little, it was up in the theater district. I forget the name of it. It was a shutdown little club that we just kind of opened back up and put our own (laughs) , put our own, put our own lighting rig in there and just kind of lit it up. I mean, if you had seen it in the daytime, it was all like that shit brown leather. It looked like you were walking into a, like a, you know, Big Boy's or something. (laughs) It looked really bad. That gives credit to John Cella, the cinematographer on the first one. We went in, put our lighting grid up, flashed a lot of big screen (laughs) neon lights, um, put the extras in funny colors. And you know, (laughs) we ran out of money, so we were like, we didn't, we didn't know how to put the, the bad guys in something. So we were like, "Okay, what would Star Trek do?" In Star Trek, we always called them the red shirts. You know, the guys in Star Trek that were-

Joe Rogan 42:22 Right.

Chad Stahelski 42:22 ... always getting killed. All you have to do is when we were right there, Kirk was transporting down to the planet with the red shirt guy, that guy was gone.

Joe Rogan 42:28 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 42:28 So we put all our bad guys in the red shirts (laughs) and they were just gonna kill them all. Uh, I think we had a deal. There's a local, like, one of the garment district things. You could, I think we got all those red shirts for like 10 bucks. It was like a whole deal.

Joe Rogan 42:40 Oh, wow.

Chad Stahelski 42:40 So we just bought all the stunt guys red shirts. But yeah, we did it all in this shitty little club in like four days. Fi- uh, maybe four and a half days, something like that.

Joe Rogan 42:47 And this has got to be very stressful for you to be first time director, doing all this, and then so much pressure, and also it's not picked up by anybody.

Chad Stahelski 42:57 It, you know, it's weird. I guess when you're in it, you're just trying to, I don't know, you just go into that mode of don't suck. Like you don't have to win, you just can't lose. Just finish, get the day, do your thing. Um, and my partner Dave Leitch at the time, like, you know, we both were so... We just love being on set. So I think we just... It was kind of str- you know, you come from the action, you say, "Oh, these guys can do action and you can do that." But when you're trying to put the storytelling in, you're trying to do that. I mean, you might get other guys you'll talk to or guys that come from the stunt world and say, "Yeah, it's just like doing..." It's, for me, it was nothing like Second Unit.... completely different. It had that different kind of pressure, but like, I guess, you see how things come together more. You know, you just do the action, you're worried about just making it look cool. You're trying to do something like, he has, you have Keanu Reeves, you have Ian McShane, you have Willem Dafoe, Lance Reddick, and you're kind of going, "Oh, I hope I don't fuck this up." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 43:48 Who was the badass Russian guy that Keanu gets in a fight with and the guy throws him off the balcony?

Chad Stahelski 43:53 Oh, that's Dan-, that's Daniel Bernhard.

Joe Rogan 43:55 Ah.

Chad Stahelski 43:55 That's a good friend. He was the star of Bloodsport 2 and Bloodsport 3.

Joe Rogan 43:58 Oh, wow.

Chad Stahelski 43:58 Pull that one out. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:00 No kidding.

Chad Stahelski 44:01 Yeah, after Van Damme, Daniel was this, uh, he's a Swiss actor who came ... That's Daniel Bernhard, yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:06 He's very good.

Chad Stahelski 44:07 He's awesome. He's a good, good, good close friend. Uh, but I had worked with him. He had hired me in as a stunt guy when he was the lead actor in Bloodsport 2, Bloodsport 3, and Bloodsport 4 or 5, I don't know.

Joe Rogan 44:17 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 44:17 They go on forever. Right? But, uh, when it was time to do this, we called in every favor we had. And you know, like, that whole lower budget, well, that's how we got Scott Adkins, and Artinckasus, and Gary Daniels, and Daniel Bernhard, all these, Marcos Arroyo, all these great, you know, up-and-coming action actors.

Joe Rogan 44:32 My friend, Tait Fletcher, was in it too.

Chad Stahelski 44:34 Tait, yeah, Tait-

Joe Rogan 44:35 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 44:35 Tait was doing the beard. We slammed-

Joe Rogan 44:36 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 44:36 ... Tait's awesome.

Joe Rogan 44:37 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 44:37 Like, he had that beard, and we're like, "What are we doing?" "Oh, we gotta choreograph for the beard." We slam down and shoot him in the head. Tait's awesome, man. Um-

Joe Rogan 44:43 Yeah, I've known Tait forever.

Chad Stahelski 44:44 Great guy, right?

Joe Rogan 44:45 He's awesome.

Chad Stahelski 44:46 Good stunt guy too.

Joe Rogan 44:46 I love that dude.

Chad Stahelski 44:46 And he's, he's a really good actor.

Joe Rogan 44:48 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 44:48 He's got the eyes, like he can pop those eyes out.

Joe Rogan 44:51 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 44:51 He's fantastic. But you look for those guys, right? You put them in the cool spots.

Joe Rogan 44:54 Yeah. But this fucking-

Chad Stahelski 44:56 Look at him. Come on.

Joe Rogan 44:56 There's Tait. (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 44:57 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:57 This whole scene is just so fun.

Chad Stahelski 45:00 On his beard.

Joe Rogan 45:00 It's such a crazy scene.

Chad Stahelski 45:02 Come on. That's a real beard there, by the way. That's his real beard.

Joe Rogan 45:04 Yeah, that's his real beard.

Chad Stahelski 45:06 He's awesome.

Joe Rogan 45:08 Oh.

Chad Stahelski 45:08 Yeah. No, super fun. I mean, that's always the trick. But like, if you get the, the people you like around you, they kind of give you a hand. So we had a lot of... We called in a lot of favors and a lot of friends. And, you know, they all know it's your first time, like the crew and the cast. Like Ian McShane, every- everybody kind of knew. Keanu had gone out. Keanu had one day off on John Wick 1. And, you know, New York City base camp is like blocks away from the set. So me and my partner, Dave Leitch, um, it's Ian McShane's first day on set. So we're, it's like 4:00 in the morning. We're gonna walk over to his trailer, introduce ourselves, say, "Hi, how you doing?" I mean, it's kind of a big deal for us. Keanu's sitting outside his trailer at like 4:30 in the morning, it's his one day off, and we're like, "What are you doing here?" He's like, "I just thought he'd come in early and talk to Ian and, you know, warm up for you a little bit." (laughs) And we're like, "That's what kind of guy he is." So he kind of greased the wheels for us. So he walks in, and, you know, Ian's like, "So I hear it's your first movie." (laughs) Uh, "Don't worry, we'll get you through it." You know, everybody was so cool, 'cause we just kind of admitted we didn't know what we were doing, and we wanted to learn, and, and get our thing going. (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 46:09 How difficult is it to take the dailies and then edit it down to a film? Like the editing process?

Chad Stahelski 46:16 You know, to put the assembly together, to actually just put clips together, it's, it's not that hard. I mean, good, bad, you know, we could take a couple shots at it. It's to... And you don't know this until you try it a couple times. It's like, where's the actual ... Like, how much can you take away? It's like chipping away at the, at the statue, right? It's not adding things, it's taking away things to really shine what's good. You know, lose some of the good to get to the great. So y- you don't want to cut your action, you don't want to cut any scenes, but then you watch the movie as a whole. And this is what I'd say to any other editor or directors out there that are just getting started. If you just edit a scene or you just edit a sequence or you just edit, like, a, an act, and then watch it and go, "I got it, I got it," um, you still haven't got it, 'cause there's this thing, we've all felt it in movies, about pacing, right? There's a way a three-hour movie can feel like two hours, there's a way a one-hour movie can feel like three hours. It's all about the pacing, right? So, what, what I learned from it is, you gotta sit, and every time you make... When you're in that place where you can just make these one-minute or two-minute changes, you gotta take the time to sit back and watch the whole thing. No pee breaks, no phone calls.

Joe Rogan 47:18 Hmm.

Chad Stahelski 47:18 No Th- And that's what we did on Wick 4 a lot, was like, everyone kept telling me, "It's too long, it's too..." Like, "I know, but let's just watch it." And my editorial would hate me, 'cause like twice a week, we're like, everybody's watching it.

Joe Rogan 47:27 Hmm.

Chad Stahelski 47:27 You know, like, we're watching this. And you'd have to sit and get through the two and a half hours of it. And that's the only way you know. And then you're like, still, "W- we're not there. This is too fast, this is..."

Joe Rogan 47:35 But is it hard to, when you're in the middle of it, is it hard to see it?

Chad Stahelski 47:40 Yeah. I, I-

Joe Rogan 47:41 Because you've seen it so many times, is it hard to see it the way another person's gonna see it?

Chad Stahelski 47:45 It's like, it's like knowing you're lost, but also not being nervous by it. It's being lost in a good way, 'cause you can feel it, right? You can feel there's something cool there, and you can feel like ... I just go back to being an audience member. What do I wish I had seen in Star Wars? Which-

Joe Rogan 48:00 Push that microphone up to your face.

Chad Stahelski 48:01 Sorry.

Joe Rogan 48:02 That's okay.

Chad Stahelski 48:02 Uh, you know, you, you're trying to, trying to figure it out, right? And that's, that's the exciting part. You know there's something tingly there, you know there's something good, but what is it? Um, it's kind of, you can't be afraid to try, 'cause, uh, now, digitally, we can go back and forth and have 20 versions of the movie. Like, it's not like the old days-

Joe Rogan 48:18 Right.

Chad Stahelski 48:18 ... where you cut film and glue it. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 48:20 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 48:21 So, we would always make a new ... We, we'd try ... I, I've always had good editors. I've always had young, hungry, great, great editors that wanted to experiment. And you, they swing big. So let's just, uh, "Can we do this movie an hour and 20 minutes?" And they'll do a version of it. "Can we do this hour ... Can we do this an hour and 45? What's the version of it?" And you'll start to see things that you obviously hate, but you'll also see choices that you could make to tighten things up. It's, and I'm sure everybody you talk to will have a different process, but like, I think it's both terrifying and exciting. And, uh, again, it's hard to explain. You can feel like you're on the right path even though you don't know it. Does that make sense?

Joe Rogan 48:56 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 48:57 And you just have to keep trying till you watch it in the room with the sound, and you're like, "That's it. That, that's the movie I wanna see."

Joe Rogan 49:04 Did you bring in people that hadn't seen it before-

Chad Stahelski 49:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:06 ... and just watch them watch it?

Chad Stahelski 49:07 Yeah, I'm a, I'm a big fan of like friends and family stuff.

Joe Rogan 49:10 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 49:10 And like, y- y- at first you're gonna, your ego may not be ready (laughs) 'cause like everybody likes something else, everybody thinks something should be cut.

Joe Rogan 49:18 Right.

Chad Stahelski 49:18 Everybody thinks it's too much blood or not enough blood. I, literally, in the same day, I've had some of our, our, you know, some of our, our, our, you know, female friends came in and wanted more action. (laughs) And some of our d- guy friends were like, "We want less action." Like, you just couldn't tell what people wanted. Um-But y- you listen to what they all love, and that- that was the cool thing. They all love Keanu. They all cried when the puppy died. They all ... (laughs) You know?

Joe Rogan 49:43 Of course.

Chad Stahelski 49:44 They, they all n- ... They all felt it was something they hadn't really seen before. It was action in a different way. They liked the mythology part of it. They liked the color. They liked the sound. They thought it was all very well made. I mean, whether you like it or not, you know, like, the crew was really good, you know, that kind of thing. And that, that's what sticks with you. But, like, I ... Now, I, I'll show my movie to ... I love showing it, 'cause I- I love he- ... (laughs) I, like, I get some of the most insane comments, and it's pre- ... (laughs) It's pretty funny. Like, even the reviews, like, Keanu and I have this little thing, like, you know ... So I, I, I know I've talked to some director friends that don't, don't read reviews. We, we read, like, every one. We're, like, masochistic about it. You know? Or, like, everything on Rotten Tomatoes or Honest Trailers or Everything Wrong With or, like, you know, the, well, The Critical Drinker. All these great guys on YouTube are just fucking hammering us on littlest shit. And we're kind of laughing because, like, "Okay, fair game, that ... W- we were right. We're a little over the top." But it's very interesting to see what grabs people, 'cause partly you're kind of like, "Okay, what's working?" You just can't let it direct you, really.

Joe Rogan 50:43 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 50:43 You know? You don't want to chase the dragon of what other people like. You want to do the movie that you want, and hopefully people like it. But it's very interesting to see what, what does touch, because-

Joe Rogan 50:51 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 50:51 ... it ... I mean, you know? It's ... The only true north you have is what you like and what you're interested in, and that's how you drive your show, and that's what makes a show unique, beca- ... 'cause it's from you. If you start doing what you thought was popular, what everybody wanted to see, and it didn't work, how do you course correct? You don't know, because it's not you anymore, right?

Joe Rogan 51:08 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 51:08 And that's just kind of what we try to do.

Joe Rogan 51:10 Yeah. And that becomes a real problem with people that pay too much attention to criticisms or comments.

Chad Stahelski 51:15 Well, I-

Joe Rogan 51:15 You can get lost in the middle of ... I've- I- I was-

Chad Stahelski 51:18 That's it.

Joe Rogan 51:18 I was actually just talking to a friend the other night, and he said he thinks about negative comments while he's writing his jokes. And I was like, "Ugh."

Chad Stahelski 51:26 Uh, I, I don't ... Yeah, I don't know if that's productive in the right way.

Joe Rogan 51:29 No.

Chad Stahelski 51:29 I, I think it's okay to be aware of it.

Joe Rogan 51:31 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 51:31 But I certainly wouldn't want to ... I don't want to sit down and write a movie based, "Well, hey." You know, how many sequels have you seen where they bring back the same cast over and over again?

Joe Rogan 51:39 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 51:39 Or the same jokes or the same gag or the same f- ... Because they, they think it works.

Joe Rogan 51:43 Right.

Chad Stahelski 51:43 "Ooh, we better not fuck with it."

Joe Rogan 51:45 Right.

Chad Stahelski 51:45 Okay. That's great in a lot of businesses, but in entertainment, I don't think that's gonna push or move the needle-

Joe Rogan 51:52 Right.

Chad Stahelski 51:52 ... the way we need to do it. I think we got to take chances, right? Otherwise, what are we doing?

Joe Rogan 51:56 Well, you've created a ... The ... One of the interesting things about the whole Wick franchise is that you've created this universe, this universe of the Continental, this universe of all these different rules that this group of assassins has. And, and now you have this opportunity with that to do so many other things, 'cause you have, like, a ... There's a whole world. We have tea for you there if you want it.

Chad Stahelski 52:19 Oh, thanks. Um, l- ... I, I guess that's ... You know, we created the world based on stuff that we had done. You know, being a stunt guy, you're traveling around, you live in hotels all the time. (laughs) Like-

Joe Rogan 52:26 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 52:27 ... wouldn't it be cool if the concierge gave you a firearm? That'd be great. You know?

Joe Rogan 52:30 That'd be good.

Chad Stahelski 52:30 Or if they had a gun range downstairs instead of a gym, that would be fantastic. Um, but it's also like ... I mean, again, if you made your list of the top 10 things you wanted to see in movies, you know, y- you'd have dogs, ninjas, muscle cars, guns, archery.

Joe Rogan 52:43 Right.

Chad Stahelski 52:43 You know, sword fight. You know?

Joe Rogan 52:45 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 52:45 And then you made a list of the top 10 people you'd want to see. "I want to see Donnie Yen fight Steve McQueen do Bruce Lee on Schwarzenegger."

Joe Rogan 52:51 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 52:51 You know? We just tried to create a franchise where we could put all that stuff in and no one would call us on it, 'cause there's no ... I mean, you know, we've been called for the superhero movies and all the other stuff, which are all interesting and I'm a, a big fan. I just don't think that's what I'd be good at.

Joe Rogan 53:04 Right.

Chad Stahelski 53:05 You know? Uh, I think a little crazier mindset of what's not being done, let's ... How do we get that in?

Joe Rogan 53:11 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 53:11 Like, you know, the old Show Kusuji movies, you know, Enter the Ninja-

Joe Rogan 53:14 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 53:15 ... or something like that. Or Chuck Norris's Invasion USA. Like, you know, things that were kind of so nutty and wacky but, like, you know, they hit a chord. So how do we bring that back and just a ... And I don't want to say a cooler way, but, like, a more modern, uh, or technically more ... (laughs) I guess, more developed way.

Joe Rogan 53:33 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 53:33 That's why we spend so much time on the look of the John Wicks. Like, we want people to take the action. Like, "Look, we're trying to do a good job here, we're not just trying to phone it in." But at the same time, we do want to be a little crazy. Like, like, uh, I mean, how many dog bites to the crotch did I do?

Joe Rogan 53:44 (laughs) Quite a few.

Chad Stahelski 53:45 You know how long it takes a trained Biltong Malinois to bite a crotch? Uh, it actually-

Joe Rogan 53:49 Does it take a lot?

Chad Stahelski 53:50 No, actually about a day. (laughs) It takes-

Joe Rogan 53:51 They're pretty smart.

Chad Stahelski 53:51 It takes a stunt guy a lot longer to get used to being bitten in the crotch.

Joe Rogan 53:55 What do you do to pad their crotch? Do you give them, like, a ...

Chad Stahelski 53:58 We have these cool little Kevlar suits. Um, it's funny, right? Uh, uh, Andrew, our- our- our dog trainer, when I first to- ... He's the guy that trains all the, um, wolves for Game of Thrones. That's how I found out about it.

Joe Rogan 54:09 Oh, wow.

Chad Stahelski 54:10 So I- I called him and said ... Like, and I have dogs myself and ... You know. You know how you play with the dogs, they have the little ball, and you ... And you have the little tug-of-war fight with them. I was like, "I want to do that. How do I do that?" 'Cause, like, I- I don't know if people will see that. When you've ... Normally, up until very recently, if you see a dog attack in a movie, that's a dog attacking a human. The dog doesn't know it's a fucking movie.

Joe Rogan 54:31 Right.

Chad Stahelski 54:31 The dog is just attack- ... The dog is literally trying to hurt that person on f- ...

Joe Rogan 54:34 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 54:35 ... on camera. It's not good for the dog; it's not good for the person. Those professional animal trainers are wearing a, a bite suit that-

Joe Rogan 54:41 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 54:41 You know, all fucking Kevlar padded. You've seen them. It's bulky as fuck.

Joe Rogan 54:44 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 54:44 Like a suit of armor. And the dog just goes to kill them. We didn't think that was such a brilliant idea in the way (laughs) we wanted to do things. So it's like, there's got to be another way to train dogs, because I can train my dogs just to wrestle with me. So, um, what we do is we take these long cylindrical pads, bite pads, that are painted green screen green, right? And they're Velcroed on one side with a ripcord, like the parachute ripcord. So they're laced onto the- the- the ... Either the forearm, the crotch, the leg, the calf, wherever we want the dog to bite.

Joe Rogan 55:12 Hmm.

Chad Stahelski 55:12 And the dog's been trained to attack green. So you can't-

Joe Rogan 55:15 Oh, wow.

Chad Stahelski 55:16 You- you can't wear green on set. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:18 Holy shit.

Chad Stahelski 55:18 You can't wear green on set.

Joe Rogan 55:19 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 55:20 So we've got the dog trained to attack these green, uh, bite pads. And, uh-... the dogs, that's why we, we go out, uh, Andrew finds the, the Belgians that seem to have the most promise, and they're trained to wrestle. They're not trained to attack, they're not trained to, to kill or to bite the s- they're trained to wrestle, to have fun, so the dogs think it's now fun. So we're training them, you know, when, usually when a dog wrestles with you over a bone, you, you, "No, down boy, down." We're, we've encouraged it, so the dog is actually having fun so it's not mentally traumatic on the animal.

Joe Rogan 55:50 Oh.

Chad Stahelski 55:50 And we want the stun- so it's fun. So the stunt guys go in, they go in for their martial art training and their physical training, Keanu and whoever else we're working with, and for an hour and a half a day, each stunt guy that worked with the animal has to go in, because the dog has to recognize you, has to smell you, has to get used to him. The camera guys, everybody that's around dogs has to go play with... Basically just an hour of play.

Joe Rogan 56:07 Mm.

Chad Stahelski 56:07 So the stunt guys go in, put the gear on, and they wrestle with the dog for the hour. (growls) And then, uh, the dog gets used to them and we put the, wherever it's gotta go, and then we have these really cool sleeves that have a little bit of, uh, a bite-proof, uh, Ethafoam in it, covered with a really soft pad so the dog doesn't hurt his teeth.

Joe Rogan 56:25 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 56:26 And the dog will go in and bite and Belgians, once they clamp, that's why they call them, like, maligators, once they bite, they don't let go. (laughs) Right? So we had to figure out a way to get them off when we yelled cut, because they're so angst about getting the, getting the 10. So we have the rip cord going, so when we yell cut, the stunt guy would pull the rip cord, the pad would release, the dog would hold the pad, walk away with it.

Joe Rogan 56:45 Ah.

Chad Stahelski 56:45 And just hold onto it for the next five minutes.

Joe Rogan 56:48 (laughs)

Chad Stahelski 56:48 Till he got tired and just drop the pad. So we had five Belgians, and then we just rotated, every take was a new dog because the other one had to let the pad go. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:56 And what did Halle Berry have to do? How much-

Chad Stahelski 56:59 Well, we figured since, just like we did with Shamier Anderson, this one, you can't have the... Because we're so, we shoot so wide, we couldn't have a trainer, you know, right behind the couch telling the dog, so we just, Andrew and I had talked about, "Well, let's just, we'll just raise the dogs for the next six months with the cast." So Halle, for like, I think it was almost eight and a half months, actually, Halle would come in and she learned to train them. She'd carry the little treats and...

Joe Rogan 57:22 Oh.

Chad Stahelski 57:22 So they listened... The two, uh, Belgians that were with her in Number 3, there was actually four of them, but the two that were always on camera with her, like, she literally trained from scratch.

Joe Rogan 57:32 No kidding.

Chad Stahelski 57:33 So they obeyed it, like, they were like her dogs.

Joe Rogan 57:35 Wow.

Chad Stahelski 57:36 And they listened to every word she said. Like she could just snap her fin, they'd be like boom. But it got, it got, it got crazy to the point where... That's Andrew back there, but yeah, I mean, if you came over to, to Halle, you know, and the dogs were there, they'd give you the eye like, "What are you doing next to my master?"

Joe Rogan 57:52 Yeah, they're intense dogs.

Chad Stahelski 57:54 They're so brilliant, but they look at you. They sort things out.

Joe Rogan 57:57 Yeah, the team guys call them meat missiles.

Chad Stahelski 57:59 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:00 (laughs) They fly.

Chad Stahelski 58:01 They, they...

Joe Rogan 58:02 Like, we've played so many videos of, uh, Belgian Malinois running up hills.

Chad Stahelski 58:06 Oh my God. Jumping-

Joe Rogan 58:07 Just, just jumping over walls and like, they literally can fly through the air.

Chad Stahelski 58:10 Well, that's, that's really one of our Belgians that ran up the wall in that movie. That was like a 13 and a half foot thing.

Joe Rogan 58:16 Yeah, it's insane.

Chad Stahelski 58:17 And it's-

Joe Rogan 58:17 They, they are such athletes.

Chad Stahelski 58:18 And the funny thing, it, they're not, they're not huge, but it, it is a real 65 to 75 pound animal.

Joe Rogan 58:24 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 58:24 And I think the, the funniest thing when we're bringing in a new stunt team and we've got the, like, it w- before we even do anything, you line them up and you let the dogs go in, and everyone says they're good with dogs or "I'm a dog person."

Joe Rogan 58:35 Mm-hmm.

Chad Stahelski 58:35 Until you see that (laughs) , you see the dog attack on camera, if you were to turn that camera around, what you see are two trainers holding this dog back and the thing is like (growls) .

Joe Rogan 58:43 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 58:43 Just ready to go and you, it's a whole other level of animal behavior.

Joe Rogan 58:47 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 58:47 And you can see who gets a little shaky (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 58:50 Yeah.

Chad Stahelski 58:50 Right? And who's comfortable. Dave Camarillo, who we were talking about earlier, uh, who trained Keanu for the judo and the jujitsu in Number 4, I think he did over 100 dog hits on the street.

Joe Rogan 59:00 Choo.

Chad Stahelski 59:00 He was just, he bo- for whatever reason, Crazy Dave and