by Gill Pringle
You’re in great shape. What do you do to stay fit?
Well you’re very nice. . .
What would I find if I looked in your fridge?
A lot of ice cream. But if I touch it, I get killed. I understand that. My daughters are very territorial over ice cream. But I try to eat the same thing every day. I call it the “racehorse mentality” – you know when you’re training for something and they’re going for speed? You’re not, all of a sudden going, ‘You know what? I think I’ll give them oats on Monday, hot dogs on Tuesday and pizza on Wednesday and then watch them run on Friday’. No. It’s the same exact amount every day so therefore you maintain some semblance of energy and body composition and also energy level. I’ll tell you, it’s rough. Especially if you’re directing. If you’re directing an action film or a boxing film, the calorie consumption on me is so low that it’s hard to keep upright sometimes, it really is. I don’t recommend it – it looks good but feels bad.
The character of John Rambo is very tragic – a lot of his propensity for violence comes from his trauma, and yet the popular perception of Rambo is also one of a “badass”. A lot of people admire that violence. How do you reconcile those two halves of his character?
Because he doesn’t flaunt it. He doesn’t ever think of himself as a badass; he’s very reactionary and he has that extra thing that some men are just born with, certain fighters – you look at Mike Tyson – they have a savagery that is just not normal. Audie Murphy; just a killing machine. I did a little bit of study about that, he’s that kinda fella who doesn’t care about his physical well-being; he doesn’t care if he dies, which makes him incredibly dangerous and just relentless. As a matter of fact, he’s almost welcoming it. When you have an enemy like that, it’s pretty awesome to overcome but, the thing is, he’s really a gentle guy – he doesn’t bother anyone; he speaks softly but never intrudes; always in the corner, a gentleman – like the scene we were doing in the kitchen where she wants to leave, and it’s a very volatile scene, he has such affection for the girl, he can’t even correct her, he’s like ‘Don’t raise your voice so much..’ and she’s, ‘Why not?’ because he can’t stand to see this kind of anger – even for a man like that; this kind of thing makes him so uncomfortable that she is being picked on. So, that’s the dichotomy, and I don’t know how subtle it is, but that’s why the character is still around. If he was just a badass, it’s one movie.
It makes sense that Rambo doesn’t have a wife or a child; an adopted family makes sense for his character. How many iterations did it take to come up with the idea that he’s not really a family man?
He doesn’t even have an animal or a pet! It’s just that he can’t focus on anything other than himself; he’s just so withdrawn that he cannot give affection to a cat even, so this is why it’s so profound. This is the first time that he’s opened up or even hinted at love. I always thought of Rambo when he was 16 or 17 – and I hope someday they can do the prequel – he was the best person that you could find; he was the captain of the team; he was the most popular person at school; a super athlete – and it was the war that changed him. If you saw him before, he was like the perfect guy.
I’ve met these guys and they can not even take care of themselves, so therefore they can not take care of anything else. That’s bothered him. In the last one, Julie Benz’s character, he was close, and in a couple of scenes that were cut out, where he was washing her feet and she was running through the jungle, you could see that he wanted her badly to stay with him but where she says: ‘How do you think my boyfriend is doing? How do you think my fiancé is?’ And he’s like ‘Don’t make me kill you’, but he did reach out towards that, but it was unsuccessful.
Going back to the first Rambo in the early ‘80s, did you ever think then that John Rambo’s story would lead him to this point, and you personally, to this point?
You know, that movie was a complete failure. That movie was so bad, I wanted to buy it back and burn it; that’s not a joke. I put that in Variety; it was that bad. Because it was just overblown, over-long and I had never seen an actor attacking his own country, it was just very odd. That’s why 11 people passed on the film. Then, once it was done, we said, ‘Let’s bring it down to about 85 minutes from about three hours’, because I think Rambo movies need to be short; there’s not a lot you need to explain; you get it. Especially with each film, you need less and less time; let’s just get to the beat of it. Well, when the film was finally done, the film that you saw, nobody wanted it. We could not get a distributor. Period. Zero. My God. Maybe they were right? And they said, ‘Sly, here’s our last chance. We’re gonna cut 20 minutes together – which I’d never seen – and you’re gonna go out there in front of a room full of strangers, like the last attempt, of people from Poland and Russia, and any distributor, and just try and get someone to take this movie.’ So, I had to go out there and say ‘Hey folks, you’re about to see 20 of the greatest minutes you’ve ever seen’ – and I hadn’t seen one second of it, it could have been the biggest bunch of crap ever. I’m serious. You talk about blind faith. I still hadn’t seen it and they’re like, ‘Sly! Just show it!’ Anyway, it went up and my jaw dropped, and I was like, ‘Oh my God – this movie works. It really works’. And that’s the beginning but, literally, it had such a horrible start. That’s the story of my life. Everything that’s bad, turns out good; everything that’s good is a horror.
Your female co-star Adriana Barraza, says you made her feel very relaxed in her scenes with you, which she doesn’t often find?
Well, Adriana made me nervous. She’s a great actress and usually an actress I work with is Dolph Lundgren!!! [laughter] Randy Couture, Terry Crews, you know what I mean? No offence guys, but a different league! So, ditto to Adriana.
Likewise, you were able to put Yvette Monreal [who plays Gabriela] at ease?
Actors, in a good way, are insecure. And I say, ‘in a way’, because they want to do better because they’re always insecure: ‘Can I do more? Can I do more?’ So, it’s a good thing, it’s not like it’s a bad thing. Anyone who is over-confident, they don’t really bother – but they do [indicating his two female co-stars], they really care. The one thing with actors which is so odd, is that as soon as I see them, I go; ‘that person’s a star; that person’s got it’. I remember a goofy movie, Macon County Line, which the guy from Beverly Hillbillies, Max Baer Jr wrote and produced, and there’s a guy there pumping gas in a car – and that’s it – three seconds. And I go: ‘that guy’s a star’. And it turns out to be Nick Nolte. Isn’t that weird? There are just some people where you go: ‘there it is’. Well, I felt the same way about Yvette Monreal. This person has the essence; it’s just there. Words, you can learn things, but just the presence on cinema is a very unique blessing because so many guys and women are just so good looking – but they’re just there. And some people can look like an elephant and you watch them and they’re just interesting to watch. So, I really look for that – people that can speak volumes without saying a word – just their body language.
After directing the 2008 installment of Rambo, which was very well-received by fans, was there any part of you that wanted to helm Last Blood and, ultimately, what led you to go with Adrian Grunberg (Get the Gringo)?
It was just a matter of timing and I think I was working on something else. With Adrian, I saw what he did before and I knew he would be a good partner that, if there was a suggestion to be made… he was amenable to keeping it in the same sort of look.
I remember I had a problem when I had to take over for John Avildsen with Rocky. So, I’m directing Rocky 2 and I realised I had to keep a similar style because it’s a direct cut: Rocky leaves the ring; he’s in the hospital. So, I directed kind of like John Avildsen, and it worked fine, and then on Rocky 3 I went to long lenses and I got to use all the toys. So with Adrian, he used his style but he stayed pretty close to the last one that was in Burma, which I think was good. I wouldn’t want, all of a sudden, to jump into some very dramatic…like Darren Aronofsky, great director, but that would have been like, ‘Wow! What a shock’, you know what I mean? So, you want to keep it pretty similar.
Rambo: Last Blood is in cinemas September 19, 2019
