Martin Dingle Wall: Learning Russian For All That Jam

By Dov Kornits

“If you just keep delivering solid work, then eventually that next offer will come,” says Martin Dingle Wall. “You’ll get to that next platform where you can collaborate with different levels of people.” Over fifteen years of solid work has taken Martin Dingle Wall up and down all different kinds of levels. The ruggedly charismatic actor first found fame as Flynn Saunders on the long-running Aussie drama, Home And Away, on which he appeared from 2001 to 2002. He has worked steadily since then, appearing on TV’s Underbelly: A Tale Of Two Cities, Rescue Special Ops, and the ill-fated Cops LAC (“We didn’t need a new cop show…we had another five, I think”). He then produced and starred in the eye-catching Aussie indie flick, The Nothing Men, which got Dingle Wall’s foot in the door in Hollywood, with the actor getting in front of the right people, and eventually booking some major roles. He takes the lead in the upcoming action horror film, Happy Hunting (the debut feature from Mel Gibson’s son, Lucian Gibson), and has a major role in Salty, which stars Antonio Banderas, and is directed by Simon West (Con-Air, The Expendables 2).

Before those films, however, Martin Dingle Wall will be seen in a project that came hurtling toward the actor right out of left field. All That Jam is a Russian romantic comedy which sees the actor playing a visiting American movie star. In this case, Dingle Wall’s mantra of delivering solid work has landed him the kind of role that he never saw coming. “The offer just came in,” Dingle Wall tells FilmInk. “I was humbly aware that I was not at offer stage for the kind of projects that I was going for in the US, and I was like, ‘Alright, that’s an offer for a lead in a film, that’s awesome! I’ll read it and hope that it’s not crap, because obviously it’s happening, and it’s a greenlit production. I hope it really hums.’ I read it, and it was beautiful. I think they wanted Keanu Reeves, but they couldn’t afford him.”

Something, however, had obviously gotten lost in translation. With his character being an American movie star (who falls in love with a Russian girl, prompted, no less, by her grandmother’s secret recipe for jam); with an on-screen personal assistant played by Chris Owen (best known as Chuck “The Shermanator” Sherman in American Pie); and the script that he’d received being typed in English, Dingle Wall was under the impression that the film was a US-Russia co-production, and that he would be speaking English. Wrong. “I arrived on set, and all the scripts were in Russian,” the actor laughs. “They said, ‘Your language class starts in an hour. Then I put it together in my head a little bit, and realised that it was an entirely Russian production. I had my translator enquire, and she was like, ‘You have seven scenes in English, but the rest of the movie is in Russian.’”

With only four days until the beginning of the shoot, and with no real way to back out of it, Martin Dingle Wall literally took a long, hard look at himself in the mirror, and then bit the bullet. “I’m a fanatical believer in the fact that nothing occurs to you that you didn’t, on some level, will to yourself,” the actor tells FilmInk. “I’m just a huge believer of that. I said to myself, ‘I don’t know on what level I’ve asked for this, but here it is. I’m surrounded by Russians that are bilingual.’ Clearly this is something that happens, otherwise this would have come up as a big thing, or they would’ve hired a Russian that could speak English. We spoke about that, and they said that wouldn’t sell to Russians, and that they needed an American lead actor that could do the language. So there I was: I had four days to learn, and I went into meltdown mode.”

Showcasing his commitment and tenacity, Dingle Wall threw himself into his language lessons, falling asleep while doing repetition exercises, and leaning heavily on his translator during the shoot so he could actually handle what was going on. “I said to my translator, ‘We are going to get rough and get physical with each other. I’m sorry, but I have no mental ram for please and thank you, so I apologise in advance.’ It’s anyone’s guess how we got it done. From scene to scene, I’d hear them say, ‘Cut, we got it’ and I’d be like, ‘We don’t have that!’ [Director] Sash [Andranikian] would say, ‘No, we’ve got it.’ I eventually went and did some ADR [additional voice recording] some months back, and just fixed up a few words, which is God’s own miracle, and they wound up using my own voice in the whole thing, which is amazing.”

A highly commercial, and very high profile, release in Russia (Dingle Wall’s love interest is played by Julia Franz, whilst her friend is played by Svetlana Khodchenkova, who featured as the mutant, Viper, in The Wolverine), All That Jam will be making its bow down under at The 2016 Russian Resurrection Film Festival. “Oh, if it showed in Australia, my brain would explode,” Dingle Wall laughs. “I would be so happy if it travelled outside the Eastern European bloc, and actually traversed an ocean. I’d find it very difficult to imagine, but I guess these festivals do that. The whole thing’s beyond belief. I might even go through a social media seismic experience, and be like, ‘Oh, wow! Now I’ve got 6.7 million followers from Russia!’ That would be great!”

All That Jam will screen at The 2016 Russian Resurrection Film Festival, which will tour through Auckland (October 25-30), Sydney (October 27-November 6), Canberra (November 1-6), Brisbane (November 2-9), Perth (November 10-16), and Melbourne (November 10-16). For more on All That Jam, and to buy tickets, head to the official website.