Bloody Disgusting - Interview Death Race Set: Full Report!

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Death Race Set: Full Report!

By: David Harley

When I was younger and being taken out for a drive, my parents would always joke that if they swerved off-road and hit someone, it would be worth 50 points. At that age, I really had no idea what that meant, aside from the fact that hearing my parents say it made me laugh. Many years later, I finally picked up on the joke after my first viewing of DEATH RACE 2000.

Acting as a commentary on the violent nature of sports and entertainment in our society, the film depicts America in the near future where a corrupt government keeps the populace happy with a violent and extremely popular sport of hit and run car racing, aptly named "DEATH RACE 2000." Starring David Carradine as Frankenstein, the clear favorite in the race, and Sylvester Stallone as Machine Gun Joe Viturbo, a rival driver, the film is a tour-de-force of camp and exploitation. Let's also not forget Roger Corman, the king of B-movies, without whom none of this would be possible.

With the recent rash of remakes on Hollywood's slate, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone realized the cultural relevance and cult status of the film and decided to remake it. Enter Paul W.S. Anderson, director of Event Horizon and Resident Evil, that latter of which is the second highest grossing franchise for Sony, right behind Spider-Man.

In Anderson's take on DEATH RACE, instead of having a cross country race, it takes place in a jail and is broadcast over the Internet. Using the inmates at Terminal Island, warden Hennessey (Oscar winner Joan Allen) has been running the race for a few years and is always looking to up the stakes and the ratings. When Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) is framed for a murder he didn't commit, the warden gives him an ultimatum: join the Death Race or rot in jail. Suiting up as the fan-favorite Frankenstein, he joins the three day race against some of the vilest criminals in the country, including Machine Gun Joe Viturbo (Tyrese Gibson). Driving a car outfitted with every weapon known to man and a competent pit crew (Including Deadwood favorite Ian McShane and Natalie Martinez), Ames heads towards the finish line with only one goal in mind: freedom.

Arriving at the second unit set in Montreal at around 9:30am one cold and blustery day in October, production designer Paul Austerberry showed us some concept art drawings for the cars featured in the film. Starting in April 2007, Austerberry and two other artists worked for eight weeks straight with Paul Anderson on creating the new look and feel of the DEATH RACE cars. Originally, the film's premise was a bit more high brow, featuring Lamborghini's and Ferrari's. But, once they went location scouting in Montreal and saw the industrial settings, they decided to use classic all-American muscle cars. Looking for cars that have been around and have been popular in our culture for decades, Mustangs immediately came to mind and they contacted Ford to see if they would be interested. Ford Racing division came on board and provided them with a quite a few Mustangs, three of which had 500 horsepower and racing suspension. Daimler Chrysler also came on board, providing several 300's and trucks. The car companies, of course, want name brand recognition so all designs were approved by the companies before Anderson and Co. set to work on building and modifying the cars.

Also in the room was a built-to-scale model of the race track. In reality, the complete track is comprised of eight different sets, making up more than two miles of track. Google Earth was used to map out the entire track and piece it together. Interestingly enough, John McTiernan's ROLLERBALL remake and Scorsese's THE AVIATOR were shot in the same area, only one block away from the DEATH RACE second unit lot.

Heading over to the track, I popped in a pair of earplugs and watched cars wiz by, machine guns go off and bullet casings fly everywhere. And then... there's the Dreadnaught, which showed up on line a few months back in a YouTube clip.

The Dreadnaught, looking like a mix between a gas tanker and a tank, was custom built in two weeks. Carrying 50-caliber machine guns, anti-aircraft guns and flame throwers, it was built as a obstacle for the racers. The Dreadnaught takes eight gunners and one driver to fully operate. The guns, while firing blanks, shoot out gun powder at such a fast rate that standing closer than 60-80 feet in front of it is lethal. In short, this thing is huge and destructive and should be a blast to watch in action.

After removing my earplugs and eating what may have been the best sandwich I've ever had in my life (no joke), we walked over to the mechanic garage to check out the cars. The cars looked very much like what I saw in the concept drawings and were decked out with a variety of weapons and defense systems, in a very video game like fashion. Not surprising, as Anderson and producer Jeremy Bolt worked on all the RESIDENT EVIL films, in addition to Anderson directing MORTAL KOMBAT. Most of the cars reminded me of designs that I had seen in Carmageddon, a video game from the mid-90's which was essentially an updated DEATH RACE. Since more than 90% of the effects in the film are practical, these cars see a lot of damage. Many of the cars I saw were in various states of repair, as the mechanics work overnight to repair the cars by the next day, so that they can be destroyed all over again.

Having fulfilled my goal of sitting in almost every car in the garage, we headed over to Hennessey's control room, which is situated above the track. Producer Jeremy Bolt came in to talk about the production so far and show us a few production stills. He talked a bit about the genesis of the project, which was originally more comical, "Really, the idea was much more of a tongue-in-cheek, slightly comical, over-the-top DEATH RACE, which was actually around the world, not just across America. We were actually going to jump the English Channel in a glass tube built going under the Atlantic, with sharks and dolphins. So it much more in the spirit of Roger's film." However, the script called for an enormous budget, which they didn't have. Between this and the popularity of reality television, the choice was made to alter the script and go for a more realistic film.

Around the time I went to Montreal, rumors were circulating that Fox had started re-shoots on HITMAN in order to get a PG-13 rating. When asked about the rating of DEATH RACE, Bolt put our minds at ease. "We're going for an R. I mean, it would really be hard not to, I don't think its possible. There's a lot of death and a lot of its very unpleasant and very explicit. Some very nasty fight scenes. It's very unlikely."

Earlier in the day, someone had mentioned something about the point system featured in the original movie. More specifically, that it's not there. When asked about the crucial decision not to include it in the final draft. "We really just wanted to make it about survival and keep it as simple as possible. There were some bad drafts with the point system and it become truly complicated. And you know, the film is more serious." Bolt explains. While I can't exactly say I agree that it'll be too confusing, I will give them props for the fact that they are really trying to not make this a carbon copy of the original. With this taken out and the setting changed to a prison, it almost seems like a mixture of THE RUNNING MAN and DEATH RACE 2000.

After a short drive over to the first unit set, I got to meet Natalie Martinez, who plays Jason's navigator, Case. Natalie found that getting into character was easy, as Case was very identifiable to her, "Just having the experience of where I grew up was enough. I grew up in Miami. Having that kind of hard knock life, growing up in not-so-great neighborhoods, having to battle that, knowing how to handle myself and be strong so that I wasn't taken advantage of was enough. You have to be strong in certain types of situations I believe... I'm a lot more street smart than I am anything else. I think that's what helped me get the part as well. I wasn't weak."

Since Anderson's DEATH RACE seems to be very removed from the original, Natalie went over the specifics of her job as a navigator. "Basically, we keep the driver focused. He has so much to concentrate on. There are so many tricks, booby traps and things he has to stay be aware of. There are so many things to look out for. We've got the napalm, we've got the oil and we've got the Nitrous. Something might happen to the gun or somebody needs to talk to Coach... It's also for the ratings. This race is being televised on the web. So, with that, our job is basically ratings. Because our outfit is all boobs and short tops. This is for the movie and for the web. Its that and the fact that we are light weight. We don't compromise their racing skills or how slow they can go."

While preparing for the film, Natalie was mostly exposed to application based training, "I did a lot of Google-ing. I needed to know what napalm was and what all of these other words were. I spent some time with everybody showing me the cars. Like sitting in the Monster [Frankenstein's car]. That was going to be my home for awhile. I needed to know where everything was. I had to practice with the belts, because they were race belts. There are all of these buckles, and all of these trick ways to do it. Then there was also training to stay fit."

After moving over to the waterfront to watch a death scene being shot and the extraordinarily beautiful make-up artists at work, Jason Statham came over to chat. Being a huge fan of his movies, this was easily the highlight of my visit. I really think that Statham is going to be a huge action star and he's well on his way, with hits like THE TRANSPORTER and CRANK, not to mention his work with Guy Ritchie.

In preparation for the role of Jensen Ames, Statham trained for five months with a ex-Navy seal and visited Corcoran Prison with Anderson to learn about gangs. In DEATH RACE, Statham departs from his normal martial arts based fighting style featured in his other films for more a street fighting style, "Yeah, no one wants to be repeating themselves. In this character is a different kind of person. He's a bit of a bad boy turned good from his misspent youth. But he got his act together and found itself a lovely lady. I don't think he had many skills from the military or in a martial arts environment. So we couldn't stick any of those skills on him. He's a bit more of a brute or sort of street fighting sort of guy. And we're picking out weapons instead of doing a round houses." The style sounds closer to CRANK than WAR, which is fine by this writer. I think it'll help give off the gritty vibe that Anderson appears to be going for.

Jason also talked a little bit about how he first became involved and the initial meeting he had with Anderson. "I sat and had a lunch with him in the Chateau Marmont and he showed me the concept drawings for the cars and I was like, 'Oooh, this looks really nice'. I mean I'm a massive car geek anyway. And the sort of chaps that I grew up with come from the same ilk. And then obviously that's not enough to make a movie, having a good meeting with the director and how cool the car looked, so he presented me with the script and I phoned him the next day. I said it's brilliant. So yeah we hit it off and it was a combination of great ideas from Paul and the start to finish of the whole movie was already presented to be by him that day, and the script was great. And I really liked him and I thought I could do a good job with him."

After moving down the waterfront for another scene, Paul Anderson got a chance to talk in between set-ups. Whenever someone decides to remake a film, the first question is always, 'Why?' For Anderson, it was his love for the film and the influence it has had on his directing sensibilities. "I guess I became involved in it when I saw DEATH RACE 2000 on video when I was young. In England, it was considered like a Video Nasty. It was one of those videos that your parents didn't want you to watch, so of course we all watched it religiously many times. And I just remember it being an insanely cool movie. I mean, you look back at it now it's definitely very campy, but when I was a kid I just thought it was the best movie ever made. Just the gratuitous violence and everything, I thought it was awesome. So it left a big impression on me, and then I loved the movies that it influenced. Like, George Miller admits that MAD MAX and THE ROAD WARRIOR were very heavily influenced by DEATH RACE 2000 and I'm obviously very heavily influenced by The Road Warrior. So I'd always liked the movie. Then after I directed MORTAL KOMBAT, it was number one in America on its opening weekend, on Monday I had lunch with Roger Corman. He said, 'It's great, kid. You'd got a number one movie. What do you want to do next?' And I said, 'Well, Roger, what I really want to do is I'd like to get the rights to one of yours, kind of do a version of that.' And he said, 'That's great, kid. We'll make it your next movie.' So cut to literally 12 years later, we're finally shooting it, which is about how long it takes to develop movies in Hollywood."

Anderson's reason for leaving the point system out of the film is different than Mr. Bolt's, as he thought it would work for the remakes angle better. "It was a very tough decision. I did a couple of drafts of the movie that still had the points system in tact. But in a way, I kind of saw this as a prequel to the original movie. The original movie was set in the year 2000, but clearly its set further in the future than that. Because by the time we got to the year 2000, it wasn't anything like that. And I see this as the genesis of the original DEATH RACE. THE DEATH RACE 2000, the trans-America race is kind of a progression 10 years on from Joan Allen's version of the DEATH RACE."

One of the more exciting aspects of the film is that the car chases and stunts are done practically, without CGI. "It's really difficult. I haven't directed a movie since ALIEN VS PREDATOR, which was four years ago. And the reason for this is I've been working exclusively on this film as a director, partly because the pressure to come up with something original with cars is kind of immense. And also, we made the decision very early on to make a movie that was entirely practical. I didn't want any CG cars, I didn't want any CG environments. I wanted to kind of go back to the old school way of making car chases, which is you build cars, they go really fast, you get the best stunt men in the world at the wheel, you mash them together and when they hit concrete blocks, they hit concrete blocks and they spin through the air. So that's a much more difficult way to make a movie. I think it's a much more satisfying way because it's much more visceral. What I'm trying to do is give the audience the kind of visceral thrill I had when I came out of THE ROAD WARRIOR because it was all real. When you saw the car mashed underneath that big truck, it was really getting mashed. And for me, that's much more satisfying than seeing two CG objects kind of crunch together. But it's a more difficult and time consuming way to make a movie and requires a lot more planning."

After being on the set for about 7 hours, we left for dinner and to get ready for our flights back home early in the morning. I honestly didn't know what to expect from Anderson's interpretation of DEATH RACE but if it's a mix of THE ROAD WARRIOR, THE RUNNING MAN and DEATH RACE 2000 and its not called DOOMSDAY, it certainly has the possibility to be a great popcorn flick.