All language subtitles for Wick Is Pain (2025) (Awafim.tv)

[people chattering]

[person 1]
You want to try one?

What do you say?
[person 2] Let's do it. Yes.

[person 1] Let's shoot.
[person 2] Yep. Shoot.

John, shoot.

[crew continues chattering]

[person 2] Let's go.

Roll Keanu back up.
Let's shoot.

[person 3]
Okay, let's mount up.

[person 4] Here we go.

[person 5]
Keep the charge. Go time.

[person 2]
All right. And let's roll.

[person 6] Quiet, please.

[pistol clicks]

[person 2] And let's roll.

[person 7] Rolling.
Very quiet all around, please.

[person 8] B.
[person 9] Victory 88 Charlie,
Take 1. A-mark.

[person 10] Guys doing
the shell casing,
it will come this direction.

What's a good eyeline here
to look at them?

[person 10]
Let's see. That's good.

[person 11]
Here to here to here?

No, uh,
bring it around a little bit.

[person 2] That's good.

[person 3] That's better.
You like that?

So, I'll start here.
Three, two, one,
and I'll just be like, "Fuck."

[person 3] Stand by.
[person 7] Standing by.
Here we go.

Yeah, let's see what comes.
But if we can get the pull
and--

[person 3] Quiet, please.
All right, very good.

And thank you.
Okay. Ready and action.

[grunting]

[groans]

[grunting]

[person 3] Good. Cut.
[person 7] Cut.

[person 3] There you go.
[Reeves] You like that?

[person 3]
A little bit of anger is good.

[Reeves] When we say,
"John Wick is pain,"

it's kind of like
a "Fuck yeah," you know?

It's like a "Fuck yeah.
Wick is pain."

It's like,
"It's so good, it hurts."

Or, "It hurts so good."

Um...

And I think...

I think that's why
the audiences like it, too.

I think you can see it
on the screen,

and there's a kind of B movie,
B-action genre to it,

taken to, like,
a super high artsy level
in a way.

But there is the joy
of people getting hit by cars

and falling from impossible...
Like, "You can't survive that."

And-- And then John Wick
kind of getting back up
or struggling.

It's like an invitation,
you know?

And it kind of
takes care of you,
and it feels authentic.

I believe
that that's in the movies,

and that when you watch them,
you're like,
"Yeah, this is like..."

As John Wick says
in John Wick,

"It's personal."

[upbeat electronic music
playing]

You know, I always looked at it
with, like, art envy,

with, you know,
Scorsese and De Niro.

You know, like, De Niro
had his director, you know?

And so, when I think of that,
then that's what I think of.

Like, with
the John Wick role, I had--
I had my director there.

[Stahelski] This is 87eleven.

I try to start my day here
every morning at 6:00 a.m.

before I go into the office.

[stunt performer grunts]

[Stahelski] This is where all
the stunt performers
come to train.

We've trained
for all the John Wicks here.

It's also where I have to come
and try to keep
the joints working.

Yeah,
a lot of miles on the body.

The wear and tear
of not just stunt work,

but of all the martial art
and the physicality
that I've done.

I've broken my hands,
both ankles, both knees,
both hips, both shoulders,

both elbows, both arms,
several concussions.

But if you're passionate
about something,
pain's part of it.

I don't think you can have
one without the other.

It's really about choice.

What you're willing to do
to achieve what
you want to achieve.

Nice.

Growing up,
my dad was very athletic.
Mom was very athletic.

Everybody in the house
got up at 6:00.

Before we went to school,
we did laps with Mom
in the pool,

or we went for a jog,
we went for a run with the dogs
or something like that.

They had that discipline
of get up,
go do something physical.

It was already instilled in me
way back then.

[Eusebio] I-I remember
Chad goes, "What are you doing?
You wanna train?"

I go, "It's Christmas Eve."
And he's like,
"Christmas evening."

"You can train in the morning."
Like that kind of shit.

[Stahelski] I, for some reason,
never gravitated towards
team sports.

I was a shy kid.

But when I was probably
only like ten years old,

I saw a Bruce Lee movie.
I'm like, "I wanna do that."

So I started doing judo
when I was like ten or 11.

That kind of
led to the martial art career

that I started
when I was in California
to go to USC.

In college, I had met a student
who was one of
the associate instructors

at the Inosanto Academy
in Marina Del Rey.

Dan Inosanto
trained with Bruce Lee,

and he was one of the greatest
martial art instructors
of the time.

The Inosanto Academy had
almost a collegiate setting.

It wasn't one martial art.

He'd bring in instructors
from all over the world.

Amazing instructors.

Literally, if I wasn't
going to school, I would
either jog the four miles

or take the city bus
down to Marina Del Rey
from Downtown LA

and take classes or spend
my weekends down there.

I would sleep on
the floor or whatever.

[Eusebio] Chad was probably
the best kickboxer
in that school.

I used to watch this guy
just beat the crap out of
everybody.

[grunts]

I just remember,
if we were training kickboxing,

he would try to come up
with the best training drills,

the best kickboxing drills.

Everything to just be
the best at what we were doing.

That's always
been his thing.

[grunting]

My last year in college,
I had met a few stuntmen
through the Inosanto Academy,

like Jeff Imada
and Brandon Lee.

[grunts]

Brandon was working on
his acting career,

trying to, you know,
follow in his father's steps.

Super motivated guy.

Had the best laugh
on the planet. Really
talented martial art guy.

[grunts]

Every weekend,
we'd get together,

and we'd do what we thought,
hopefully,
was martial art choreography,

but it was a bunch of us
just trying to figure out
how to sell a punch

and learn how to be stuntmen.

We'd have our old,
big VHS camera, trying
to figure out the angles.

[chuckles]
I still have some of the tapes.

I go back and look at them
going, "How did we
not kill each other?"

I remember Brandon
coming into the gym one night
before a workout,

going, you know,
"I fucking got it."

We're like, "What you get?"
and he's like, "Look,
they're gonna make The Crow.

I got the job
being Eric Draven."

It was really, really cool.
Like, we were so happy for him.

It was a big deal.
Big deal for Brandon
to get that.

And that's, um,
that's kind of how I got
my first big gig in Hollywood.

I was still competing
at the time and getting ready
for a big bout in Japan,

and Brandon had just gone off
to North Carolina
to Carolco Studios,

where they were shooting
The Crow.

And we got a call
saying there was an accident.

We're like,
"He'll be fine. It's Brandon."

You know,
we didn't think anything of it.

And he died, I think,
14 hours later.

And then the show shut down.
They were still
a couple weeks from finishing.

Between Alex Proyas,
the director, the studio,
and Linda Lee, Brandon's mom,

they decided
to finish the film.

Jeff Imada had contacted me,
and he knew how close
we were to Brandon.

He knew I was already doing
some stunt work at the time.

And Brandon and I had
very similar body types.

You don't know what to think.

Selfishly, one part of me
is like, "Wow, this could be
really cool to finish, man."

The other thing is like,
"What the fuck
are you talking about?"

You're like,
"Your friend's dead."

I-I can't recall
what my actual head
or mindset was at the time,

but I decided to do the job.

And Alex brought me down
to a little basement
in the studio there,

and we watched for like
two days straight every
daily we could of Brandon.

And he'd make me mimic walking,
talking, sitting,

just every
mannerism Brandon had.

And since I had known him
for a couple years,

it was one of
the most surreal experiences
you'll ever go through.

Your career starts
because of that.

[Bernhardt]
Chad, when I first met him,

had, like, this long,
beautiful hair down to here.

Insane. It was incredible.

He looked like Daniel Day-Lewis
in The Last of the Mohicans.

We actually met
through a mutual friend
at one of the first UFC fights.

Somebody was watching it
at home, and we all
met at somebody's house,

and Chad and I just met,
and we started talking about
martial arts.

Totally hit it off.

And I said,
"Hey, I'm up to do
the sequel to Bloodsport."

He was like,
"I love Bloodsport.
I'd love to be involved."

So he came onboard.

He became one of the fighters.
He did one of
the fights with me.

And Chad actually
choreographed that fight.

And at the time,
Chad was really into trapping.

We did a lot of trapping.

Chad used all my kicking.
I'm a Tae Kwon Do guy.

And it turned out to be
my best fight in the movie.

So when
Bloodsport III came around,

I ask him, "Would you like
to be the fight coordinator?"

So he came onboard.

This time, it's my turn.

And I actually think the fights
Chad did at the time
were incredible.

Even if you watch it now,

it's still a little bit
like, you know,
'90s, like... [grunting]

But the techniques
are already great.

Then I did a movie
called Perfect Target.

It was a smaller movie.
We shot it in Mexico.

So, Chad tells me,
"Hey, listen. I have this buddy

who's gonna come
and visit and wanna hang out
and maybe do some stunts."

I'm like, "Absolutely."

And I meet David Leitch.

[Leitch] I started training
at a martial arts school
in college

called
the Minnesota Kali Group,

and they were affiliated
with Dan Inosanto.

Once I was exposed to
those martial arts

and that sort of
martial art community,
I was, like, obsessed.

And that's where I met
a lot of my friends
for the first time

who are still my friends today.
And one of them was Chad.

He was just saying one day
that he really wanted
to go into acting.

And I was like, "Well, hey,
if you wanna be cast,
why don't you come out?

We'll put you in the movie.
We'll teach you
how to be a stunt guy."

You know, I was gonna go
to LA for holiday.

And he's like, "Why don't you
just come to Mexico
and get on a movie set?"

And I'm like, "Well, I'm not
gonna be working.
It's gonna be weird."

And he's like, "Just come.
It'll be cool.
You'll get to see it."

So, yeah, I took my money that
I was gonna spend on that trip,
and I flew to Mexico.

It was an awesome experience.

[Stahelski]
We just put him to work
as little background extras

and then started
teaching him stunts.

And then he looked like
one of the guys.

So, "Hey, just double
this guy in this fight scene."

He's like,
"What do I gotta do?"

"Just snap your head
like this."

I got to work one day on that.

Brian Thompson throws me
through a wicker chair.

I was so excited.
Couldn't wait.

Just do it again.
Take 2. Take 3. Let's do it.

But luckily it was
a low-budget movie, so they
could only afford one take,

so one breakaway,
and I was done.

[Stahelski]
Dave wasn't pretentious at all,

so it wasn't about looking cool
like stunt guys
are trying to look cool.

He would play any part.
He'd play the guy
that would cry.

He'd play the homeless guy.
He'd play the cop.

A lot of stunt guys
just wanted to do the stunt.

They didn't want to act.

Dave was like,
"I'll do the part."

So, very quickly,
his career kind of took off.

After that couple of years,
we ended up getting
a run on television.

Chad was doubling
the lead on The Pretender,

and I was doubling
a ton of different guys.

There was another thing
that was happening too.

Martial arts had started
to come to America
in terms of action.

Shows like
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
or Martial Law.

And the stunt world
at that time was very cowboy,

car, motorcycle oriented.

But now when you had
this really specific need
for martial arts stuntmen,

we became hot commodities.

And that's when Chad
got his break
on the first Matrix.

[Stahelski] Oh, my God.
That was the first time
I met you.

[Reeves] The Matrix.

It's impossible to really talk
about any of the John Wicks

without talking about Matrix.

- Yeah.
- That's where we all met.

I got this call saying
they were looking for
martial art doubles

for Keanu for a sci-fi movie.

A sci-fi movie!
It was a sci-fi movie.

So I got the call,
and I literally
just went in for an audition,

and that's where I met
Yuen Woo-Ping
and all the guys.

Then they introduced me
to Tiger Chen.

[Reeves] Two-time national
Chinese wushu champion.

[Stahelski] Yeah. It was
pretty mind-blowing actually.

This is Chen Hu.
Call him Tiger Chen.

He was in charge of
training Keanu Reeves
for all the Matrix movies.

He's also my coach.

One of the best performers ever
in wuxia.

So, when I got called
to do the audition in Burbank,

all that was told to me
was it's a Keanu Reeves
sci-fi movie

and they need some kung fu guy.
Sci-fi movie.

I'm like, "You need kung fu?"

He said, "Just go down there
and audition."

I meet Woo-Ping, I meet
the Wachowskis, and they say,
"Okay, follow him."

And he goes fucking
Wile E. Coyote and just
does the Tasmanian Devil thing.

Some of the best
martial arts stuff
I've ever seen.

And I'm like, "Follow him?"

Every tumbling pass,
every kick, every form, everything.

I'm, like,
in jeans and a T-shirt,
dripping in sweat, going,

"Well, this is
a different kind of audition."

He was like jumping,
kicking, punching.
Woo-Ping says, "This is good.

He looks like Keanu, too."

From the very first day,
he's training all the time.

Every day, even the weekend.

Every weekend
he's just calling me.

I was like, you know,
trying to go out and play,

you know, go somewhere to play,
he was calling me, like--

- No, please. Please.
- "Can we training?
Can we training?"

[Stahelski]
Please don't go karaoke.

I just didn't want to suck.

'Cause I saw Keanu,
and how much
they had trained him,

and he had like a six-month
head start, and he was already,
like, really good.

I had to go through so much
training to learn, like,
the kung fu and stuff.

Hong Kong style.
All the wild wirework.

[Stahelski] And wirework
wasn't huge even in
mainstream stunts at the time,

so I'm almost learning
from Keanu a lot of the times.

He had already been doing
the choreography a couple
months at least, right?

And some of your kung fu
was outstanding.

Well, no. Movie kung fu.

The movie kung fu was pretty--
[Reeves] Movie kung fu.

[Stahelski] You'd already got
the forms right,
everything looks good.

You had the flexibility going.
[Reeves] Yeah.

Oh, yeah.
There you are helping me out.

Yeah, there you go.
Yeah. Fucking awesome.

That's Chad into the wall.

That's Chad into the wall.

That's Chad into the ceiling.

Oh, yeah.
Then he's gonna break his knee
coming down from that.

That's right. Yeah.

[Reeves]
There he is on crutches.

[Stahelski] Before and afters.
[Reeves] Before and after.

Yeah. We learned
so much on that show.
Oh, my God.

[Leitch] Chad came back
from The Matrix,

and he was like,
"Here's what's happening, guys.

Like, they shoot
and edit their own stuff.

They choreograph,
and they cut it all together.

And they're telling
their own stories
in their own sequences."

And they're like,
"We gotta do this.

This is the way we should
be approaching all this stuff."

[crew member] And action.

[stuntmen grunting]

[Leitch]
We started to do it ourselves,

and we would get
all the martial art
stunt guys together,

and we would choreograph
and edit fight scenes

as an exercise,
but also because
we just loved it.

[Perry] We would go and take
a scene from Jackie Chan,

and we would
recreate that scene.

And it became very apparent
that Chad and Dave

were thinking like directors.

Like, why did
the camera go there?

Why did we use this lens?
How many shots?

How many moves do we hold here
before we move here?

Previs was a game changer.
Now directors saw
what we can do.

[Stahelski]
Soon we became known for that.

People would request them.
Directors would request them.

Somewhere along the way,
we started a stunt team.

Then we started
a stunt company.

- [barking]
- They don't like that camera.

[cameraperson]
They don't like it?
No. I can tell.

[Moneymaker] The idea behind
87eleven was that
it was a one-stop shop.

They were
an action design company.

You come here
and you get a fight team,
a fight coordinator,

stunt coordinator,
second unit director,
the whole package in one.

Whoo!

[Moneymaker] We were all
kind of with this team,

we worked together,
we trained together.

Chad and I got married.

So it was a very fun time.

Cheers.

I'll talk to you in a bit. Bye.
See you later. Bye.

[Hernandez] Even if
we didn't have a project,

Chad would just
make us do drills
like we had a project.

Put us in situations like,
"Choreograph this.

You guys gotta learn
this martial art.
Let's do this. Let's spar.

Let's put a knife in hand.
Let's see what happens
when we do this."

[Stahelski] Our company
started to get bigger,

and I was the one that was more
of a coordinator first,

so Dave was working
for me a lot.

Dave and Chad. Okay,
let's step out and narrate this
for a second, okay?

[Stahelski] All right...

Two partners.
Two best friends. Here we go.

Aw, see, there's the hug.
Aw. [chuckles]

They were best friends,
thick as thieves.

You know,
always training together,
always working together.

But then we were
very fortunate,
we had a lot of work offers,

so Dave started
doing his thing.

And he became
a stunt coordinator
and a choreographer as well.

[Leitch] Switch your lead
to the right lead.

[Renae] By that time,
they were like
this old married couple

that bickered and fought,
but also, like,
tight as can be.

We used to call them
Dad and Uncle Dad.

[Leitch] Before John Wick,
Chad and I had directed

a lot of second unit together.

And then our company
was getting so many calls

that we started
to work separately.

I was doing big second units.
He was doing big second units.

Action.

We were seeing each other
every day
and talking every day.

We'd riff different ideas
for choreography.

He'd be on, like, TRON
and be like, "Hey, how
do I do laser disc things?"

And I'd be like, "There's
some ideas," and bounce things
off of each other.

[Leitch] You start to realize,
"I'm telling one third
of the story.

I might as well tell
the whole story." [chuckles]

[Stahelski]
Dave was already going down
the first unit director

before I was actually.

I was still, you know,
pretty content doing
all the second unit stuff.

I was really getting the itch,

and I was, like, out there
looking to find scripts
and get them developed,

but to not much success.

They were offered movies
left and right,

but they were all like
the $5 million specials,

and they
turned everything down.

They were waiting
for the right, right project.

At the time,

I had finally optioned
my first screenplay
to Voltage Pictures.

It was 1,500 bucks which,
at the time,
was two months' rent.

And I was trying to figure out
what to do next.

I remember just kind of going,
"I haven't done
a revenge movie."

And our neighbors
were heading out of town,

and they had
just adopted a chorgi,

which is a Chihuahua-corgi,
puppy named Moose.

And I always write
slouched in my chair
with a pillow across my chest,

and the puppy
slept on the pillow.

And I started writing,
and I'd be like,

"Man, what if someone
killed this fucking puppy?"
[laughs]

We had met Derek
on a general meeting.
I'd read another script of his.

And he pitched this. He's like,
"I have this action script
I wrote called Scorn."

I remember vividly
reading it that weekend
and emailing Basil.

I still have the email,
and it was like, "There's
something about this script.

I think it's 'cause
I love dogs.

The villain's really thin,

and it's not perfect
by any means,

but I think
we should go for it."

And he wrote back, "I agree."

There was just a clean,
crazy hook.

"You killed my dog,
and now I will exact revenge."

I wrote it
with Paul Newman in mind.

So, he was in his early 70s.
It was a Robert De Niro type.

His wife dies,
he gets the dog,
and the car is stolen,

and he kicks some ass.

The dog was the last tenuous
connection he had to his wife.

But the body count was,
you know, less than two dozen.

[Iwanyk]
But I realized soon afterwards

that I may have
backed myself into a corner
because of the age.

And so then I was thinking,
"Okay, do you go with
slightly younger?

You know,
what's that age underneath it?"

Then we started
thinking about Keanu.

Keanu's agent is Basil's
best friend from childhood
and my first boss.

And he was like, you know,
"Keanu is looking
for something."

[Iwanyk] He just did 47 Ronin
and was just finished shooting
Man of Tai Chi.

He's ready to lean
into his movie star-ness.

'Cause the thing about Keanu,
and a lot of actors like this,

but especially Keanu,
when he feels like
he's repeating himself,

he runs the other way.

And sometimes
you have to get an actor

when he or she is ready
to give the audience
what they want.

And Keanu was at a moment
in time where he's like,

"I'm ready to be
an action star again."

And so we met, and soon
afterwards, he attached
himself to the project.

We took about six months
of developing the script

with Keanu's notes
with Derek Kolstad.

We spent a lot of time together
on that first one,

and it was slow going,
like page, line by line.

He spent just as much time
on other people's dialogue
as he did on himself.

At a certain point,
it was like, "Okay,
how much longer could this go?"

We could develop this forever.

And then, always-- there's
always an inflection point
on these movies, right,

in development, when you
develop with an actor,
where you go,

"Okay,
can we bring a director on?"

And he said yes.

But in the period of our
development, couple things
happened, unfortunately.

47 Ronin came out,
and it didn't do well.

Man of Tai Chi came out
and disappointed.

So the narrative that
Keanu Reeves is an action star
just evaporated.

And all of a sudden,
our director list
went from here to like here.

We're gonna have to really
work hard to find
a proper director for this.

Keanu was like, "Listen,
I'm gonna give the movie

to Chad and Dave
for second unit.
They're action directors.

What if they directed?"

So, from my notes
from an email,
in the forensics of John Wick,

you met with Basil.

I wanted you and Dave
pitched to them
to be the directors

on April 29th, 2013.

A week before,
you had sent me the script.

Yeah.
And we had talked.

And we had talked.
Well, you had sent it to me

for the action.
For the action. Yeah.

I was like, "Yeah"--
Well, no,
I had called for action,

but then I think you
came back to me saying,

"Dave and I
would like to direct it."

Oh, no.
I think you smiled and went,
"Yeah, that's why you're..."

Yeah. And so,
then I was like, Basil--

You were manipulating us.
[laughs]
I was... [mumbles]

But I was hoping.

And then I saw
from Basil's email to me,

he wrote, "Best
directors meeting he's had."

We put together
this incredible lookbook here,

and we started to sort of
build the worlds of John Wick
in the way we saw it.

It was a lot more stylized than
I think anyone saw on the page.

Peace. He's looking for peace.
[chuckles]
Look at that shot of Keanu.

Emotional connection.

See, we said
all the right things.

We talked about it
being a modern fable.

We talked about this sort
of visual minimalism.

She knew
he needed an attachment.

Yep. And that was a whole week
of casting for Daisy.

[Leitch] We wanted
to have a world of,
like, fun cars.

We wanted to have sort of
our exploration of action
and gun fu.

Yeah, and again, sort of
the love letter
to graphic novels

and anime
and all of that that we love.

Transformation.
Guns, lots of guns.

Boogeyman. World.
New York City. The Continental.

They just
didn't talk about the action.

They talked about the emotion

about what the world
looked like
and about everything.

I was blown away.

This is--
It's a pretty damn good
lookbook. [laughs]

You have to remember,
we saw John Wick as like
this tiny little thing.

Two stunt guys directing,
like, "No one's ever gonna see
this thing, so fuck it.

We'll just try some
weird ideas. We'll use it
like as a training exercise."

And, you know,
then they said yes.

And now we're like,
"We better know
what we're doing."

I remember thinking,
"Oh, my God, we got
these two great action guys

before anyone else
can get them.

What a home run."

And I'll never forget,
like three weeks
after we hire them,

Ed Pressman,
the famous Ed Pressman
who's since passed away,

calls me
about something else.

And he goes,
"You stole my directors."
I'm like, "What do you mean?"

"Yeah, we're about to go
into prep on a movie
that I was producing.

They were gonna direct it."

I'm like, "What movie?"

And they're like...

It was a movie
like Midnight Run
with Jean-Claude Van Damme

and PSY
from "Gangnam Style."

And I'm like,
"Those are the directors I got?
That was the other option?"

[Kelley] Uh, the shorter
the beard is, the harder it is
to make it look real.

[Leitch] Well, we would want it
to be a bushy one.

Okay. Right, right.

I mean, we have to make
some hard choices.

I mean,
I was just like pulling,
like what is--

I didn't know what exactly.

Are they more
in this happiness?

Yes, this is
more in their happiness.

We're hoping for that.
Okay, okay.

And of course,
what I worry about this is,

you can see it on this side,
is how patchy that beard is.

I mean,
that doesn't bother me.

If you guys can live with that,
because if we get that short,

I can't add hairs
to fill that in.

[Smith] That doesn't bother me.
This bothers me.

[Stahelski] Anything we do
is gonna get a picture taken

and sent to people
making a decision.

[Leitch] They'll approve
and we'll figure it out.

[Stahelski]
We want the beard.

[Leitch] The distributor
wants him not to have a beard.

Like he's supposed to be
the Keanu Reeves
of The Matrix.

And we're afraid
to shave it off because,
you know,

he's done that look
a million times.

Unfortunately,
they're distributing the movie
and have sold it foreign,

and they know
what their people want, so...

I guess nobody cares
what we want.
Asia hates beards.

[person] I know.

[Stahelski] Asia hates--
[Leitch]
That's what they said.

If we leave a beard,
no one's gonna see the movie.

The movie's gonna flop.

[Stahelski] Can't be
a first-time director--

"First-time directors,
you want to hang it out there
and have a beard? Okay."

Bye-bye, John Wick.

Partial bye-bye.
We're not going bye-bye
all the way yet.

[Stahelski] Yeah, no.
It's like,
"Hello, new John Wick."

[Kelley] So,
this is the next guard down.

[Stahelski]
Still looks like a beard.

That's what
I'm concerned about too,
and what they're gonna think.

Looks just like a beard.
[chuckles]
[Reeves laughs]

[Leitch] Go to the next level?
Gotta go to the next level.

Go one more down?

Well, that's beard.

[Smith] We're all just like,
holding on.
I know.

They were pretty
straightforward about...

[Kelley] No beard.
Yeah.

[Kelley] Yeah.

[tense music playing]

[Stahelski] We're going to get
action out of the hair.

Gotta get it a little bushy.

A little...

Okay.

Chuck it! Chuck it! Chuck it!

The suit
definitely helps.

It's all about the suit.

It's all about the suit.

[cameraperson]
Tomorrow will be
the first day, right?

Tomorrow will be the first day.

Tomorrow will be
the first day of photography.

[Leitch] We are looking at
the John Wick house,

and it's sort of three-quarters
of the way dressed.

And we're gonna block
some scenes here

and be ready
to shoot tomorrow, hopefully.

We're getting on with it.

[laughs]
[cameraperson]
What does it say?

[Leitch]
We're shooting on Monday?

[phone ringing]

Oh. Peter Lawson.

Pete.

I'm great.
I just got the email.

We are temporarily shut down
until further notice.

It seems our equity investor

who had to come up with
the 6.5 to cover the gap,

um, he's five and a half short.

We had some financiers
coming in to gap finance

because Lionsgate
presold the international,

but there was still a delta
of what we needed
to make the movie.

No one was ready to get onboard
for the domestic.

So it was really
something that, you know,

we were gonna
have to figure out
how to find the money.

I mean, maybe if
we get Lionsgate onboard,

and they take the domestic,
and we could
keep moving forward,

but I doubt it at this point.

I think everyone's
just gonna have to take
a kick in the nuts,

and it's all probably
gonna fall apart.

That's what I think.

I think this is, uh,
the nail in the coffin. So...

[cameraperson]
You think so, really?
Yeah, I do.

[cameraperson stammers]
Wait, hold on.
No, I mean, I do.

I'm not trying
to be dramatic for, you know,

editorial reasons
for our documentary,

but I don't know how you find
six-and-a-half million dollars
by Monday.

[Stahelski] What little
I know of Basil, I know
he's not a quitter, so...

He's a bit of a fighter,
so we're not dead yet.

We are doomed. I mean,
we are completely fucked.

We just had a gigantic hole.
There was just...
The money wasn't coming.

And I spoke to my lawyer
and I'm like, "Well, say,
if this movie falls apart,

who's gonna sue me?"

And he's like, "IATSE, SAG,
the WGA, DGA." This...

It was, like, horrendous.

And he's like, "Listen,
you gotta just
get this movie made."

[cameraperson]
Say if I was to give you
like six million--

Hey, hon?
Can I call you back?

I got Keanu on the other line,
so I need to talk to him.

Thanks, hon. Bye.

[Leitch] Hang on one second.
He's on the phone.

Hello.

What's going on?
How you doing?

Nice.
Did Basil give you a call?

He did not, huh?
You haven't talked
to anybody in the office?

Excellent. They're
probably stalling on him.

It's... Yeah, I...
[Leitch] Fucking...

[Stahelski] I'm a little
annoyed, so I think
I'll just tell you myself.

They've had a problem
with their gap finance.

They're coming in.

We've recalled everybody,
and they've pushed us again.

I'm sure they're scrambling
trying to figure something out.

We have a few options around.

Luckily, we know a few people,
so we'll try and close the gap
as fast as we can.

So we'll get back
to the office probably
in the next 45 minutes,

storm into the office
and try to retake the beach.

What did Keanu say?

[chuckles]

You know,
Keanu is a little different.

When he yells and screams,
it's a good thing.

When he gets really,
really, really quiet...

Was he getting really quiet?

He was the most quiet
I've ever heard him.

I reckon we'll lose about
20% of the crew.

There's already people gone.

[Iwanyk] A big part
of the production office

just stopped coming in to work.

But then another part of
the production office came in,

and they would come
in my office, and like,

"Do you feel confident
the money will come?"

And I'm like, "I do."

Uh, now, I was lying
because I had no idea.

So much so, I had to give
my credit card
to the costume designer

to buy wardrobe, and it was
really, really, really dodgy.

Any chance of reducing
the budget by
six-and-a-half million dollars

and making the movie happen?

That script would
look radically different,

and then you'd have to go back
to all of your
international buyers

and go, "Hey, you paid us,
you know, 250,000
for the rights in Germany,

but this is the script
you're getting now."

And then everyone can go,
"I don't want that script.

- I wanted the one
that I bought."
- Right.

And so, you kind of
have to keep the integrity.

You can change it.

Slightly, but not--

[Leitch] Yeah.
Six million dollars.

[Leitch] Keanu gave back money,
Chad and I gave back money.

Like, we all gave back money
of our salaries
to try and close the gap.

I think Keanu had to defer
and write a check...

[Reeves] Yeah.
Some of that going on.

[Stahelski] ...just to keep
our department heads.

[Iwanyk] I remember
I would walk to my hotel

from the production office
for hours because I was like,

"I need to get so tired so
when I get back to the hotel,
I pass out."

Because if I don't,
I'm gonna sit there
and I'm gonna be like,

"I'm fucked, I'm fucked,
I'm fucked, I'm fucked."

We gotta fucking start.

If we don't have
guys on planes by Monday,

you might as well
cut the end sequence.
It's gonna be a gunfight.

[Leitch] We've already
pushed for seven days

and that's like
a half million dollars'
worth of money

that just went out
the fucking window

when the mo-- when we
were 600 short to start.

[Stahelski sighs]

[Leitch] It's a fucking mess.

[Iwanyk] And then,
out of nowhere,
the money came through.

[laughs]

Should be fully
financed by tomorrow.

Ready to shoot on Friday.

[Iwanyk] We were blessed.

It was insane that we
pulled this off
in the amount of time we did.

It's gonna be...
This movie's about vengeance.

Not John Wick's.

Ours. [chuckles]

[Iwanyk] And then we find out
while we're shooting

that the money
was never from this guy,

but it was
Eva Longoria's money.

And I didn't tell Keanu
until after the movie wrapped

because I didn't want him
to be like, "What the hell
is going on here?"

So yeah,
if you look at John Wick 1,

Eva Longoria, thank God,
pretty much saved the movie.

We got through it,

but I think that it
broke a little bit of
Chad and Dave's spirit

because they were
first-time directors,

and they didn't realize
that sometimes
this is the game.

Things happen, especially
in independent movies.

And so, we went into shooting
the movie. We were already
exhausted as we started.

[Reeves] I mean,
I remember when
I got to New York, and I...

You know, I like to visit
the production office.

See what's going on.
Yeah.

And I took John Saunders,
who was the first AD,
and I was like,

"John, let's look at
the board," you know,
the shooting schedule.

[Stahelski] I remember that.
You wanted to see the schedule.

[Reeves] Yeah.
[Stahelski]
You're a schedule whore.

[Reeves] And I was just like,
"How are we...
We can't shoot that.

Like, how are we
gonna do that?"

I remember you just
were shaking your head.

I was like,
"No, we need more days."

And he's like, "I know."
I'm like,
"We need to get more days."

[Leitch] We could not
wrap our head around
what could go.

How do we do that?
How do we do this?

And Keanu couldn't,
and the writer couldn't,

and the producers couldn't.

So we're like,
"We're just gonna make
the movie with less time."

[Stahelski] You know,
we laugh and joke about
it's just a movie,

but we all know, every
crew member knows that
you take it really seriously.

You wanna do
the best job you can.

You don't wanna let down
the people that stuck
their neck out for you,

so you put a lot of pressure
on yourself to do it.

I mean, at the end of the day,
we had known Keanu
for like the ten years,

eight years at the time
from all the Matrixes.

But it's still Keanu Reeves.

You don't wanna
let this guy down.
Like, he's a pro, man.

This is Keanu-fucking-Reeves.

Like, you do not
wanna let him down

no matter what you think
the movie's gonna be.

So we decided to give it
our all and put
a lot of stress on ourselves.

[crew member] Guys,
gotta keep moving.
Gotta keep moving.

[crew member 2] Rolling!
[crew member 3] Rolling!

[crew member 4] Action!

We were just
assaulted with problems.

Go, go, go.

Shoot, shoot.

[intense music playing]

[Leitch] Problems
from different departments

and then budgetary problems.

Gotta figure out
what scenes we can cut.

[indistinct chatter]

The usual on John Wick,
what scenes we can cut.

'Cause we never
have time to shoot 'em all.

In low-budget filmmaking,
you have to be
in your own movies.

I would like to say this was
a creative choice,
but it was budgetary.

And then logistically shooting
in New York problems.

[crew member] Excuse me,
you gotta keep moving.
Active walkway.

[siren blares]

[Leitch] I think it was just
the movie gods hated us.

So we are on the cover
of the New York Post today.

Vinny's fine work
in the prop department
is featured.

Makeup's fine work.
Hair's fine work.

- [Reeves]
The all-hands-on-deck...
- [Stahelski] That really helps.

...on John Wick 1
was extraordinary.

When we went in to start
crewing up, I mean,
we were a tiny little movie.

No one was sure if we
were gonna go. So, we couldn't
really book a lot of crew.

So, it was catch-as-catch-can
with the crew.

We just take interviews
and whoever was
kind of available,

whatever we... You know.

People had to cut their rates.

And then
for the prop department

we got, no joke,
Vinny Mazzarella and Joey.

[Reeves] Yeah, Joey Coppola.
[Stahelski] Joey Coppola.

I mean, Vinny Mazzarella
and Joey Coppola,
those were our prop masters.

And they were
just the coolest guys,
and they just got it.

I mean, Vinny, like,
stopping-- Like,
we needed a garbage truck.

And he's running on the street.
He's running down the street.

[Stahelski]
2:00 a.m. in Chinatown
in New York on John Wick 2,

we decided we wanted
a garbage truck to come in
the alley and back like--

Yeah, back John Wick up.

Vinny just said,
"What do you guys got
in your pockets?"

We gave him a couple twenties.
Yeah.

He came back in five minutes
with a garbage truck.

With a garbage truck.

He paid
the city garbage truck driver
a hundred bucks.

[Reeves] I mean,
you make connections on films,

but the connections
that were made
on this were really special.

They were pretty good.
Yeah, we got lucky.

Personal and creative.
Yep.

You know?
Good people.

Loving, who love their work,
who are amazing
at what they do.

And they love the pain.
[laughs]

And they--
And who love the pain.

They love to suffer.

Literally the day before
we started shooting,

I saw Chad in the corner
like brooding, angry.

I went to Dave, I'm like,
"What's Chad upset about?

Like, somebody from the movie?"
He's like, "No, it's his wife,"

and this and that.
I'm like, "What do you mean?"

He's like, "Yeah,
I think they're separating."

I'm like,
"Now?" This movie?

We just got through hell
financing the movie.

I wasn't getting paid.

Not only
was I not getting paid,

I took money out of our house
to fill some holes.

And I'm like, "How can this be?

How many more hits
can this movie take?"

Hey.
Hey. How are you?

[Iwanyk]
And I spoke to Chad about it.

I'm just like, "I don't care
what you're going through.

You gotta just suck it up
and get through this."

And he's like, "Absolutely,
don't worry about it."

He's like, "I'll be dark
and self-loathing in private."

[Stahelski] We went through
a horrible breakup.

So I did the whole movie
separated from Heidi.

When he's locked in
on something,

when he's focused,
it's really hard
to penetrate the wall, right?

So, I think in a relationship,
you know, it's hard,

because when you're looking
for an emotional connection,

or you're looking for
some kind of,
you know, something,

and he's just
laser focused on something,
you can't get through.

She felt
she needed something more,

and fortunately
I agreed with her.

And then we managed
to get back together again,

of course after post
when I have all this time,

only to get divorced
on John Wick 2. [laughs]

So, you can see I'm laughing
at my own complete ineptitude

to sort that out
and balance my life.

[Leitch] What was really
frustrating for me was that,

when we got
our one fucking chance

that I personally
had been working on potentially
a lot harder than you

to get out there
in the director world,
and you're gonna blow it up.

It was hard for me
to be empathetic
'cause it didn't feel fair.

Two weeks in,
Basil called me on a Sunday
and was like,

"You need to be in New York.
These two are not
talking to each other."

[Iwanyk] I actually thought
that two first-time directors

would be better than
one first-time director
because,

you know, two sets of hands,
you get more done
than one set of hands.

Their disagreements seemed
like it was a progression

through the course of shooting.

It's almost like
the outside enemy of getting
the film produced was gone,

so now
the infighting could start.

I remember they spent
an hour fighting over
colors of bedsheets.

Fucking, it's supposed to be
a fucking cool, hip place
where you wanna be.

And it's like
a fucking lavender
purple fucking thing.

[Iwanyk]
You know, in retrospect,
I was naive to be surprised.

I think we
probably argued every day.

But I don't think
it was an actual argument.

I think it was we were both
stressed out,

and we kind of took it out
each other 'cause when you
love each other,

those are the people
you take it out on first.

[Leitch] You know what,
do your fucking job.

Making that movie
was like watching my parents
get divorced.

We would wrap at like 3:00
in the morning, and I
would like cry walking home,

being like, "What is this?"

It's horrible, man.
[laughs]

It's like Mom and Dad fighting
all the time.
I'm gonna need counseling.

They're busy thinking.

I think they're working out
their information for the day

in their heads, maybe.

At least that's what
I'm hoping that they're doing
during the silence.

It wasn't about creativity.
It was about management styles.

And I think that Chad,

he gets a lot of juice
by blowing things up
for a second

and then having people run
to put them back together.

And I just
don't operate that way.

Do you like this
or do you like that?

Does he put anything in his...
He takes his coffee black?

[Stahelski]
Black like his snot.
[Leitch] Like his soul.

Like his soul.

[Reeves] How about that.

[Stahelski] Is he
a single serving kinda guy?

The irony of John Wick 1
was Chad and Dave were really,

really, really comfortable
with the action sequences.

The dramatic sequences
and the acting sequences,

they were less so,
because they'd never really
done it.

And so,
it was a strange paradox
from what you usually deal with

from first-time directors.

Usually, first-time directors
get overwhelmed by
action sequences,

and the performance stuff
comes naturally.
It was flipped on this movie.

I think we shot
inside the house for like
nine days, or seven days.

Yeah. No, we camped out there.
There was a lot of John Wick
moping around,

and we're like,
"This is the character."

Remember how much we did?
Yeah.

[Reeves] Because he's
breaking up you two, right?

[Leitch]
He's breaking up your...

[Stahelski]
Dave and I were so nervous

that they were only
going to see us as stunt guys.

We can't focus on the action.
We have to focus
about the acting,

and the emotion,
and the pain
that this man is suffering.

So we spent nine days
of a very small budget,

very small schedule movie
of Keanu moping around,

of Keanu cleaning out
the closet and packing
his wife's clothes up,

and sitting there
staring into the darkness
and the abyss.

I remember like on day three,
Keanu didn't say a word
for three days.

He'd wake up,

brush his teeth,

look into a mirror,

go across the floor,

fill a dog bowl,

say, "Come over here,"

wake up,

and the footage
was like mind-numbingly boring.

And it was endless.

You have a lot of John Wick
eating cereal by himself.

Book making, right?
Remember he did
book restoration?

I forgot that.
We wanted to show something,
that he's very precise...

Precise.
Methodical.

So we shot for like two days
of Keanu doing bookbinding.

That's how terrified we were
of being pigeonholed
as action guys.

Oh, the kick in the head.

[groans]

I like
this reaction.
I do too.

You don't see that reaction
a lot with, you know,
like that kind of spasmy thing.

You know, you fucking
vapor lock when you're
in fucking pain.

[dog whines]

- [Reeves] Oh, right,
killing the dog.
- [Stahelski] Yeah.

[dog yelps]

[imitates yelp]
Oof.

You should have heard
that test screening
the first time. Oof.

Never won that audience back.

Oh, yeah?
[laughs] Oh, yeah.

Our first test screening--

How'd that go?
That dog-- That dog went.

The audience went quiet,

and people were walking out.

The movie
was still pretty rough.
It was still really long.

But yeah, it got weird.

It is one of the most
famous principles in Hollywood

is you never kill a dog.

As soon as a dog is killed,

you almost always are losing
a big chunk of the audience.

[Reeves]
Oh, yeah, the blood shot.
[Stahelski] Yeah, blood shot.

The puppy crawled his way
back to his owner
before he died.

[imitates dog whimpering]

When these dailies got back,

we actually got
a stern talking to about,

"Oh, fuck, you guys. What are
you-- like, what the fuck
are you guys doing?"

You cannot kill the dog.

"You're doing puppy porn,
like, gore."

I'm like, "No, man, we got
the baby lens on. It's going
to be really artistic."

They're like, "The puppy's
intestines are on the floor."

I'm like, "It's not intestines.
It's just blood."

We had a whole
argument about that shot.

I remember shooting
the dog's death,

and Keanu was on the floor
crying with
this stuffed beagle.

And at that moment,
you're like,

"This is either genius or,

like, the worst thing
I've ever made."

We always knew
we were gonna do it.

Oh, yeah.
I mean,
it's the movie.

There were others that kept
trying to talk us out of it,

but we're like, "No,
we got to kill the"--

You got to--
[stutters]
Where's the movie?

Yeah, we didn't
have a movie
without the puppy.

[Reeves] No, you got to
kill the puppy so
you're killing the attachment.

But I think there was
more talks about that.

There was that and then
killing Alfie at the end.

You can't just kill Alfie Allen
cold-blooded like we did,

'cause that's
pretty icy fucking cold.

Iosef, got to go.
You can't kill the puppy.

And his wife--
Puppy's gotta go.

And his wife has to--
We have to find out

that his wife
was poisoned by the bad guys.

No, the wife has to die.

Those were the three notes we
got back from certain peoples.

Even the night we were doing
the puppy, we knew
we had something good when--

I think because we shot that
push-in over the blood first.

[Reeves] Yeah.

And then,
you're just petting the puppy.

Yeah.

We're like, "That's awesome.

That's going in the movie."

And there was a lot of talk
behind monitors that,

like, "Oh, no, we got to shoot
a second... a second version."

Chad wasn't much of
a dog person back then.

Now he's got dogs,
and he's a dog person,

and he's embraced them,
and he's done movies with dogs,

and he's trained them
since they were puppies,

and they bite people in the
neck and the balls and shit.

But he never had dogs
back in John Wick.

Like, he wouldn't go, like,

"Chad's gonna direct this
heartwarming movie about a dog,

a guy and his dog."

That would have not been
Chad's first choice.

Which is partly why it was so
easy to kill the dog, maybe.

He was just like,
"We just get rid of the dog,

then I don't have
to direct a dog."

And now it's funny.

All there are are dogs.
[chuckles]

If that's the journey
that Chad's taken away,

like he's become a dog lover,
then I'm glad
we created John Wick.

Because it's huge for me.

There's a guy that could be
getting a bead on you here.

Which is why
you're hauling ass...

Okay.
It's more like,
"Oh, fuck."

Sometimes people ask us,
"What shot in John Wick 1 is
Dave's and what shot is yours?"

I'm like,
"I don't fucking know."
Everything was a conversation.

He'd be setting up A camera,
I'm setting up B camera.

It was just such
an organic process. We'd
worked together so many times.

We just knew this is
what we ought to do. We gotta
get this done. Let's go.

Let's come up
with the best idea.

[Stahelski] Dave had a much
more grounded sensibility.

I was influenced more
by Tolkien
and Japanese anime and manga.

And Dave wanted to be more
grounded, gritty, emotional.

We gotta make it painful.

So we both saw the movie
in different ways

and we landed
in that sweet spot.

Especially in the time period
with all the shaky cam
stuff going on.

That's why John Wick clicked.

Dave and Chad created that-- we
called it the John Wick style,

which was like long takes
and 30-beat fight scenes

where you're doing
like judo/jujitsu
with a gun in your hand.

That was something
created out of necessity

because of lack
of time and money.

When you do
the punches and kicks,
you need the coverage, right?

You need over the shoulder.
You gotta sell the hit.

And we just didn't
have that kind of time.

So we all talked about, "Well,
how are we gonna do this?"

Well, we're gonna take judo
and aikido and like--

Wick is kind of the guy
that's going to grab you.

If I got your collar...
Yeah, you got him.

...it was over.
Yeah, he got you.

It was over.

But that's
the vibe we wanted.
It was over.

It was just like if I got
a collar, inside, anywhere,

if I got a collar coming--
it's just like,
"We're going, bye."

You have no choice.
You're in the machine.

You're going down.
You're spinning.
You're being twisted.

But you had thought
about using that before
you did John Wick--

Yeah, we just never really
had the character for it.

You kind of implemented me
into like, "Let's see
if this can work."

Yeah, well, we had--
Take actor.

And experiment.
And experiment.

"Oh, yeah, he'll do it. I know
that guy. He'll come to train."

We had the close-quarter
choreography kind of worked out
with the gun stuff.

We just couldn't find
the test subject.
Yeah.

Once John Wick came about,
Chad and Dave
right away were like,

"Bring up the Safe footage.
Bring up the Safe concepts.

That's Wick right there."

[Eusebio] Back in the day, we
used to do-- well, we still do.

We do a lot of
Jason Statham films.

I remember there's one
movie called Safe.

And we were designing
concepts for that film.

And Chad challenged everybody
to combine jujitsu
and judo with gun stuff.

And if you look back
at the Safe previses,

it's all the moves and all
the style of John Wick 1.

For gun fu,
you did the mix of airsofts

and use visual effects
for the muzzle flashes
and blood spurts.

Because back in the day,
we were using blanks,
real guns to shoot.

So you can't do
close quarter stuff.
It's dangerous.

At a certain range,
it's still lethal.

Usually it's like,
once you fire a gun,
you cut.

And show the guy
firing the gun,

and then you're on
the reverse so you know
you're in the safe zone.

So we're doing shots
that aren't cut
right in front of each other,

shooting each
other point-blank.

When they cut it together
and put the muzzle flash

and the blood splatter on it,
we all were like, "Oh, shit."

It was cooler than anything
we were doing in any movies
we were working on.

[Perry] We sent it to Chad
and he damn lost his mind.

[Leitch] And I was
looking at it like,

"Dude, we got to get this
in a freaking movie.

Like, this is insane.
This is awesome."

[Marinas] What's funny is
we all thought Jason
would murder that.

Like, he's so good at action,
that should be easy.

And in classic Jason style,

love him to death,
he had notes,
he had thoughts.

You know, maybe he
didn't want this. Maybe it was
a little too stylized.

I don't know what it was,
but for some reason,

Statham didn't
gel with the style.

I was kind of like, "You got
to be shitting me right now.

This is the coolest stuff
I've seen in so long."

That being said, they ended up
doing some small pieces of it.

If you watch Safe,
there's a little bit
hand-to-hand.

It's the introduction of it,
you know, in that one fight
in the restaurant.

There's just like
a couple moments where, like,
you see gun fu come to life.

But I think at that point,
Chad was like, you know,
"Fuck this.

We're holding this
until we get our shot.

Like, we're not letting
anyone else
see this, because..."

He was right.
It was gonna
blow people away.

And I mean, we were so
excited to put it into Wick.

Like, we couldn't wait.

[Eusebio] It's funny because
even though they're both
great action icons,

Jason's a bad-ass
physical specimen too,

it just looked different
when Reeves was doing it.

[Eusebio] If you say gun fu,
you automatically think
Keanu Reeves.

It's his style.

The great thing about Keanu is,
I mean,
he was just such a stud.

He does like 98%
of all his fighting.

His stunt double comes in
only when there's something
really sketchy,

like me throwing
him over the balcony.

He's so good. It's amazing.

One, you go right here.
Grab.

[Bernhardt] I remember
Chad and Dave
coming up to me saying,

"Daniel, pad up."

I'm like,
"What do you mean?"

We're doing masters,
you know,

where you do the fight
from the beginning
to the end, no cuts.

And I really haven't done that
in a long time.

And they're like,
"We don't have the time.
Pad up."

[Stahelski] Go, go, go, go.

[both grunting]

We shoot a master,
and I remember me
and Keanu's double, Jackson,

we were both so exhausted.

But it turned out
to be a really good fight.

[Stahelski]
We're rolling, guys.

I think it came out better
than we had ever thought.

Because you've
made it a character.

- Now it's like--
- [Reeves] Right.

This is where John Wick
got to be like,

okay, he's the gun guy.

Yeah.
Like, holy shit,
it worked.

Yeah, but I mean,
I think that ties
into your philosophy

and David Leitch's
philosophy

coming out of the school
of the Wachowskis
with the Matrix

was that character
drives the action.

The story of the action,

the character of the action
has to be
so connected to story.

[crew chattering]

Last take of John Wick
principal photography.

All right, that's a wrap
on principal
and additional photography.

Thank you all very much.

Good job...

[Stahelski] Hey, Dave, you
just directed your first movie.

What are you gonna do now?

Smoke crack. [laughs]

To everybody that
said we couldn't do it.

[Stahelski] We thought
the hard part
was gonna be training Keanu

and killing it
with cool action.

We wrapped, we were like,
"Oh, my God,
we did it. We're in the clear."

And then there's this thing
we found out called post,

where you actually
have to find the movie.

[Stahelski] If you want
distance, you got distance
right there. Look at that.

[Leitch] I think post
was where I had
the biggest learning curve,

because you don't really do it
as a second-unit director.

[vocalizing noises]

And then cut to the
fast outside like...

We cut the assembly
and we thought,
"Oh my God, we did it."

We watched the assembly
and we're like, "What the fuck?
This is terrible.

Like, this is--
We're gonna never work again."

We showed it
to some friends and family,
and they're just going, "Yeah."

Tapping us on the shoulder,
"Good job, guys. Yeah, yeah.

You did your first movie."

I think that devastated them.
It was like,

"Guys, it's too long.
It's too long. It's too long."

The first cut of John Wick,
he was moping around his house.

It was like a
Swedish noir movie.

It was very blue.
He's crying, making coffee.

And you're like, "Okay.
I don't--"

I think people are-- They're
gonna wanna know when he's
gonna start killing people.

We were trying to hold on
to the script so tight

that I think we fought
everybody for the first four,
five weeks.

It's sometimes harder when
you're like, "No, but this
is the way I saw it,

and I just need to see it
that way until I don't see it
that way. Then I can..."

You know, and I'm like,
I've already
forgotten about that way

'cause this way
is already so cool.

Basil, he got mad at us
for being so depressed.

He's like, "What the fuck you
guys doing? Like, get to work."

We're like, "Well,
it's terrible. We failed."

He's like,
"That's your assembly.

Like, now you gonna go
make the movie, guys.

Like, you got 20 weeks.
You know, hurry up. Go."

We're like, "I guess
this is directing, huh?"

[Reeves] You know, they had to
figure out the film in the cut,

and then the battles that
you have to fight with
the show business part of it.

You know, what do other
people think of the movie

that you thought you made?

"There's too much action."
"Not enough action."

"You can't really kill
the dog." "Wait, what?
What's the ending?"

"The ending doesn't work."
Gotta redo it, you know.

And I'm sure they had a lot of,
you know, [exclaims]
"Is this fucking terrible?"

We kind of found the movie
very, very slowly.

It was very slow.
But yeah, we were panicked.

You know, at the time,
remember,
it was all about fast editing

and shaky cam and all
that stuff. And we didn't have
a single shaky cam.

Our stuff was very
slow and with no VFX.

Yeah, we thought
the movie was terrible.

Everybody but Keanu.

Keanu and Basil were just like,
"No, just keep hammering.

Keep going. We'll see you
in a couple weeks."

Part of it is
like your baby, you know?

It's the art you created

and you're really into it
and you're excited.

But then you're feeling
like self-conscious about,

"Is this moment
gonna be cheesy?
And are people gonna like it?"

And I know I like it, but I've
got to put it out in the world.

And it's all of that confidence
and insecurity colliding.

I gotta believe in myself,
but I also gotta deliver this

to an audience
and it's gotta work.

[Iwanyk] We previewed
the movie for the first time.

And the audience didn't know
what to make of the movie.

They're like, "What is this?
It's like Keanu
depressed and crying.

And what is happening here?
It's supposed to be
an action movie."

And I'll never forget, it was
the most important moment

in the entire
Wick franchise history

where Michael Nyqvist
calls John Leguizamo...
Aurelio speaking.

[Iwanyk] ...and says...
[Viggo]
I heard you struck my son.

[Iwanyk] And John says...
[Aurelio] Yes, sir, I did.

Because he stole
John Wick's car, sir,

and, uh, killed his dog.

[Iwanyk] And
Michael Nyqvist just goes...

Oh. [sighs]

- And the entire
audience laughed.
- Okay, we have them.

It's the greatest performance
ever in a movie
where someone says...

Oh. [sighs]

And I realized, okay,
they finally got it.

We're supposed to have fun.
This movie is crazy.

And from that moment on,
it played great.

I remember the first screening,

they give you these little
questionnaires to fill out.

And the first
question was like,

"Do you think
the killing of the dog
justifies all this death?"

And we divided it up
by demographics.

And I remember the men were
only on board at about 60%.

But like 98% of the women
were like, "Kill 'em all."

Because they knew it
was not about a dog.

[Iwanyk] We had
a really cool movie.

We had a movie
that I think we were all like,

"Boy, there's like
a world there
that we never realized."

And Ian McShane and
Lance Reddick really popped.

And Willem Dafoe was just cool.
We pulled it off.

And we should have a number
of domestic studio offers

because this movie
really works.

And then, we started to
screen it for the studios,
and everybody passed.

- Literally everybody passed.
- We didn't sell it?
Like, nobody wants it?

Like, this is better than
so many movies that I've
been asked to fix. [laughs]

It was heartbreaking.

I misread the marketplace,

and I put these people
in a really tough spot

because I advocated
making this movie

and put this movie together
that no one will ever see.

But someone at Lionsgate said,
"You know what? Fuck it.

We might as well
take the domestic

because we've already got the
territories for international."

There was a separation
between church and state
at Lionsgate at the time.

There was a domestic piece
and the foreign piece.

Lionsgate had only
sold the film foreign.

And so Lionsgate bought it,
but for no MG,
for zero dollars,

which is, you know,
not a great deal.

I'm like, "Okay,
that's better than nothing."

They're not believing in it.
They're not
guaranteeing us theaters.

But then out of nowhere,
their head of marketing
sends this trailer

that is awesome.

No!

And he's like,
"I could sell this thing."

This feels like
a Lionsgate movie.

You working again?

No, just sorting
some stuff out.

Let's figure out how to do
this movie, and we are gonna
do a wide release.

And then
something else happened
which was like a miracle,

but there was
a slot open in October.
A movie fell out.

There was this wide-release
action movie called Kingsman,

and for whatever reason,
they have moved the date
to next spring.

There's this opening here
in October. Let's go for it.

Then we were like,
"Okay, well,

we need to somehow let
people know about this movie

that's about to come out
in two months."

And so, the marketing team
says, "You know what?

We could premiere it
at the Fantastic Fest
Film Festival in Austin,

and that would be like
a week or two
before our opening weekend."

We've worked on so many
big action movies before,

and we've mentored under
a lot of great directors.

And it's been--
It's really incredible
to get a chance to,

like, show people what we
can do storytelling-wise
and action-wise.

We show the movie,
blow the roof off the place.

People freak out.
Twitter-space goes nuts.

Fanboys went apeshit for it.
They love it.

[Constantine]
Then all of a sudden,
reviews start coming in.

Reviews are fantastic.
Everyone's saying,

"This is not just
a typical action movie.
This is inspired."

I was more surprised
that nobody wanted it
in that buyer screening

than I was when we showed it
for the fanboys,

who I kind of deep down
knew would like it
because I'm one of them.

And so, one minute,
we didn't even really have
a theatrical release.

It was gonna just
go straight to video.

And the next minute,
it's like 1,200 screens.
It's pretty awesome.

It was a huge win
for all of us, huge.

But there was one thing
about that first movie
that I was so happy for.

It reminded the audience
why they love Keanu.

And it reminded them
that he was a movie star.

[Wick] People keep
asking if I'm back.

Yeah,
I'm thinking I'm back.

And now, you have
an opportunity for a sequel.

But if we make John Wick 2
and it comes out in six years,

it doesn't have the same value
in the audience.

I knew at this moment in time,
we cannot slow down

with the idea of
if we're making a John Wick 2.

We couldn't come up
with an idea,

and Chad and I were attached
to this other project

that I was really
falling in love with,

The Coldest City, which is
now called Atomic Blonde.

I thought we could do it
first together.

And I don't know,
Chad felt like he really
wanted to do Wick 2 next.

And part of me was like,
I want to do Wick 2.

But I know there's nobody
they could hire
that could do Wick 2.

We just-- It was such
a unique thing
that we'd created together.

It was either
Chad or me or nobody.

Like, who are they gonna hire
to do Wick? And I'm like,
we have time to do Wick.

This has Charlize.
It's ready to go.

And we can go
make another movie,
you know, and come back

and make Wick 2
when we have a great idea.

And he was like, "Yeah, yeah,
yeah," for a while. And then
he started to get cold feet.

And I think he really
wanted to stay
in the Wick world.

And he-- And although
we didn't have a script,

he's like, I think he
really wanted me to stay, too.

I think Dave wanted to
direct on his own. We all
want to direct on our own.

That's directing.
We all want to be on our own.

The co-directing thing,
if we did three films
together like that,

yeah, we would have done
three films together like that.

Long and short of it,
I just went to Chad,

and I said, "I want to
direct Coldest City."

Um, and he's like,
"Keanu's got a window. I'm
doing this at the same time.

So, you got to choose.
And I'm like,
"Coldest City."

He was just like, "What?
You're gonna do that?

You're gonna leave
our franchise behind?"
I think he felt like that.

I think he
probably said those words.

It was a big blow. It was--
It was like, oh, my God.

At the time,
I was fucking furious.

I was like,
"Are you out of your mind?
Like, this is a franchise.

Like, we're the luckiest people
in the world.
What are you doing?"

It was very dramatic.

And that was the straw.
Like, that was like, okay.

To me, it sort of felt like
people became
Team Dave or Team Chad.

It's not like Chad ever said,
"Don't work with Dave."

Dave was still
a very integral part
of who we all were,

'cause to us, he was Dave,
no matter what he was to Chad.

When he left,
it was more just like,
"Oh, man, I miss Uncle Dave.

He was the cool one."

So, yeah,
you feel a little bit like,

"Is it me? Is it them?
Is it that?" You know.

It felt like I was an asshole.

Like, you know, of course.
Like, no one
just leaves for no reason.

Your ego says it's them,
but hopefully
your brain says it's you.

You kind of-- Maybe it's
something in the middle.

Up to that point, they
just went their separate ways.

They ran a business together,
and they were
very close friends.

But being in the same
creative cockpit, I think
it was too much for Dave,

and I think Dave was like,
"I want to go do my own shit."

That made sense to me,
you know?

I never had, like,
"Oh, Dave's not gonna do it?"

That was like,
"Oh, yeah, right.
You're both directors,

and one's gonna go do that,
and another one's
gonna do this."

I was just glad Chad said,
"Yeah, let's do it." [laughs]

'Cause if he hadn't have
said that, I don't know
what would have happened.

I don't know.

I know you called
for John Wick 2.

[both] "Do you want to do it?"

I'm like,
"What are you thinking?"

And he's like, "Look, all
I know is we just got to know

- why we're gonna do it again."
- Yeah.

But we didn't have a script.
We didn't have any ideas.

We really didn't know
why the first movie worked.

I know it sounds dopey to say,
but it's not a science, right?

[Stahelski]
They came back and said,

"So you guys think
you're pretty clever.

Let's see what you got
for John Wick 2. "
I know, right?

Usually, when people talked
about John Wick 1,

they were like, "Yeah, the dog.
I mean, geez, that was great."

And we're like,
"We don't have a dog anymore."

What are you gonna do?
You gonna kill the dog again?

- Kill a cat?
- Kill the parakeet?

- What are we doing?
- It would've been laughable
if we did it again.

And so, we're like,
"Well, what-- Fuck.
What are we gonna do here?"

And so, creatively,
it was a big challenge

about how do we emotionally
connect the audience
to what's going on.

We kind of killed ourselves
on the second one

because we didn't want it to be
John Wick 1 and 2 and done.

When you think of franchises
that get to 3 and 4, beyond,
they did the sequel right.

A movie is not a franchise
until you've made
a second movie

and the second movie worked, right?

Once you have two movies work,
now you have a franchise.

That was probably
the most stressful.

It was like, "Did we
get lucky or are we good?"

[Kolstad] We went through,
I want to say a hundred ideas.

Massive universe builds,
Nigerian mob, the triad,

any number of iterations.

It's not like we talk about it,
hand the script off
to a writer,

and then,
"See you in six months."
Like, Keanu's writing is like,

out of the blue he'll text me
a scene, and then
I'll have a set piece.

He'll text me, "I was thinking,
John Wick should"--

And it's like
two pages of dialogue.

We don't know
where to put it yet,
but we know it's a scene.

You know,
I write for Winston.

I write
for the Bowery King.

I write for John.
I'll write scenes. You know,
I'll send pitches of scenes.

Full scenes. But they all have,
like, "We want this to say,
the theme is this."

Yeah. Right.
"The scene should be
about this."

And then, how do we get there?

It comes together
in the most haphazard way,

and it's kind of like that
for like six months.

Just, "We don't know!
We don't know!"

For the first one,
it was just a handful
of people in the trenches.

And the second one,
it was a thousand people
in the command center.

And the third one, you're
just like, what in the hell?

But that was the hardest job
I've ever had,
was John Wick 2.

No one gets out and comes back
without repercussions.

[Iwanyk] There were two things
that broke the dam
on the development.

One was the marker,
and then the idea of, like,

we wanted to go to Rome.

[tense music playing]

[Stahelski]
I remember we talked
a couple of times, going,

"What if there's a Continental
in every city?"

I said, "Where do you
want to go?" And you're like,

"Where's one of the old--
What's cool?"

[Reeves] Rome.
[Stahelski]
Then we're like,

well, how does he
get called back in? Well,
he's got to have a marker.

Somebody...
I think...

Marker,
I think, was Derek--

Derek? No,
Derek came up with the marker.

And then, Derek and I sat down
and went, well, what if
the marker is like a check?

Yeah.
You can buy something.
You trade it with it.

If you don't do this,
you know the consequences.

I'm not that guy anymore.

You are always that guy, John.

You give somebody a marker,
you have to honor it.

Otherwise, you risk
being on the open market.

It's a whole
arcane world of its own.

Market.

It's wonderful bullshit,
you know? Wonderful.

[Winston speaking Italian]

We're kind of all
under the table
in this weird, twisted world.

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of
like the development
of it, right?

I mean, the high table
was introduced
in the second one as well.

[Stahelski] Number two
is where we really kind of
found our feet, I think.

- [Reeves] Yeah.
- [Stahelski]
With the whole world.

The John Wick world
that it would become.

[Stahelski]
When you're trying to do
new or fresh or sell an idea,

a picture's worth
a thousand words.

So I will usually storyboard
a scene before I write a scene.

[Harris] The thing
about working with Chad,

it's like working
on a college film
with your buddies,

and you guys spend
most of your time

watching kung fu movies
and anime together.

And all of a sudden,
you gotta do a project.

So that's kind of how it was
'cause we would geek out
about the same things.

[Stahelski] Todd is part of
my inner circle creatively.

He's someone I like to riff
with, not just about visuals,

but about story arcs, characters.

On top of that, he's incredibly
gifted with a great eye,
with perspective.

They throw some ideas at me.
I throw some back at them
or bounce them off the writer,

take those ideas,
put those in the script.

[Stahelski]
I'll tweak, he'll tweak,
go back and around and around

and around and around.
And it won't stop
till the day we shoot.

It helps everyone's imagination
see the scale of
what you're trying to do,

the depth, the color,
the pattern, the framing.

[Harris] It was always
about getting into
the psychology of John Wick,

what kind of character he is,
what visually signifies
who this guy is

and what makes him different.

This is very much noir

filtered through kind of
a digital MTV aesthetic.

We kind of made the decision,
like, what do we love?

And we wrote it up on the...
"We love wuxia films.

We love chambara films.
We love Westerns.

We love John Ford.
We love Sergio Leone.

We love Bernardo Bertolucci.
We love Tarkovsky.

We love Wong Kar-Wai.
We love Zhang Yimou,
you know, Akira Kurosawa.

We love Steven Spielberg."

All these great directors
of action at the time,

or storytelling,
and we just went,
"Well, fuck it.

We're just gonna
combine everything we love

and build our own franchise."

I think one of the best things
about John Wick is

it wasn't an
existing IP already.

Yeah.
You know, so,
there was no rules.

Yeah.
We could make...

We could steer John Wick
wherever we wanted.

We could do
whatever we wanted.

We're like, I don't know,
is he that guy?

Sure, he's that guy.
He loves Mustangs.
He's that guy.

Is he this guy? Does he like...
Ah, he's that guy.

- Like, he speaks
all these languages.
- [Wick speaking Italian]

It's like every movie
we could reinvent him
a little bit.

I know, I love it.

[director] Ready, and three,
two, one. Action!

[Iwanyk] All the Wick movies
are very,
very difficult to shoot.

None of them are easy, at all.

Fuck.

[Iwanyk] But 2 was hard,
but I think we were all like,

"Do you believe this shit?
We're here again.
This is incredible."

John Wick: Chapter 2.

Like he never left.

[Iwanyk] And Keanu
was just so happy.

He starts working out and
training four or five months
before he starts shooting.

And I don't mean like
every couple of days.

I mean like five,
six days a week.
It's a full-time job for him.

But for Keanu,
it's where he's the happiest.

My bad.

[director] Good take,
good take, good take.

Going again.

I think
you'd like to have,

I mean, I like it too
when John Wick suffers,

but I think you like it
when Reeves suffers too.

Um... [chuckles]

Not gonna say no.

When you see Keanu in pain on
screen, it's probably for real.

Bad knee.

Bad knee.

[Marinas]
His knee doesn't work,

his right shoulder
doesn't work,
and his neck has a fusion.

So when you see John Wick
limping, that's Keanu limping.

[grunts]

[Iwanyk]
Chad told Keanu early on,

"I'm gonna push you
past your comfort zone."

And Keanu was like,
"Do it."

Now on 1 and 2,
it was kind of healthy.

On 3 and 4, it was
becoming like almost barbaric.

But Keanu would never
ever, ever, ever, ever
in a million years tap out.

[Spidell] Keanu's work ethic
and training regimen

that he wants to do
for these movies
was just really impressive.

[Schultz] First thing
you see Keanu walk on set.

He can barely move.
He's got his head down.

He just looks like he's been
beat to shit for the last
two months because he has.

Um, I guess we can start here.
And then there.

And then we add,
this is fun.

That one's not bad.

Got a little rug burn.
[Stahelski]
Those carpet burns?

Yeah.
[Stahelski]
You already got the job.

Right there,
got a little bit there.

[Stahelski]
Action star.
[person laughs]

John Wick.

[Spidell] For Wick 1,

it was really kind of
starting from ground zero.

Building up from nothing.

[grunting]

[Valera] It wasn't gonna
be the typical punch-kick.

It was gonna be more gritty,
hard-style, messy.

So, we had to kind of
beat on him a little bit.

Get him used to contact.
You know,

just grabbing on to
one of the guys
and pulling him in.

That was just a drill.

He would just do that
for 20, 30 minutes.

And then, pull him in, step,
pull him in, step. [exhales]

We sit there and we do rolls
for 15 minutes

and then break falls
for another 15 minutes.

Like that alone is
taxing on anybody.

I wish I could
get an ice bath.

[crew member] I'll get it.
[crew member 2]
Still rolling.

Ice bath.
I need an ice bath.

[crew member
talking indistinctly]

[Marinas] In the training room,
I got so used to
four months of him collapsing

on the ground, coughing
for ten minutes straight.

- [imitates coughing]
- [coughing]

[Marinas] He sounds like
he's gonna die between
every take of rehearsal.

I've seen him go
straight to the bathroom.

Like he's done that.
He's definitely barfed
during training.

He would go in the bathroom,
come back out,

just white face
and just be like,

"All right, what's next?
Where we going?"

Which I think for all of us
was just like, "Fuck yeah."

[grunting]

Chad used to get a camera
and he goes,

"I want Reeves to do 50 throws
before he leaves, in a row."

And he's like in New York
and I'm in LA,
but he puts a camera there.

So I'm training Reeves.

And then, it's like,
he does like take-- He does 30.

And he's dying.
Like he's fucking
like passing out.

And I'm like, "Ah,
we should let him go."

'Cause whatever, right?

Then I get a text.
It's like, "No, that's
number"-- Like he counts it.

"That's like number 31."

You know what I mean?
I'm like looking. Right?
He's watching.

So, it's like, he had--
he had to do it.

It's nuts, man.

He knows Keanu so well.
He knows like
how much he can do.

I'm like, "Dude,
he's not g-- [chuckling]
He's gonna die, right?"

Like most people are just
like... They would have,
like, stopped for sure.

So he knows how much you can
push him, not just physically,
but mentally.

[grunting]

[Stahelski] When you know
you have someone as your
lead actor go down those roads,

you have a whole nother
level of opportunities

that a lot of
directors don't have.

There's actors that
directors meet on the day.

You know, I knew Keanu for
years before I directed him.

I don't know if you realize
what kind of advantage that is.

[Prescott] No better union
could have happened
in the film business

than Chad and Keanu.

Keanu is the hardest
training actor

I've ever worked with, right?

He's so committed,
but it's the same as Chad.

They're both the same.

They see something
in their head,

and they will both bleed
profusely to achieve it.

Do you remember
the origin
of "Wick is pain"?

Day one? [chuckles]
No.

"Wick is pain" didn't
evolve until John Wick...

3.

I think it was
during the antique fight.

My knee had blown up.
[Stahelski] Oh, my God,
I remember that.

[Reeves]
The first week of shooting
and I'm sitting there,

and I'm like... [groans]
And I think,

in the fog of our...
in the fog of Wick,

I think
I was sitting there
and then you--

Like, I was there
and maybe I was like,
"Hey, how's it going?"

And you looked at me and you
were like, "Wick is pain."

[chuckles]
And then you-- [chuckles]

That sounded like something
a director would say.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[chuckles]

I remember that.
Your knee was fucking swollen.

It wasn't that bad,
but it was
a little swollen.

We were trying to get Patrick
and to get the doctor in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,
and I had the thing and
it was a bit of a situation.

But that's my recollection
of when like...
That's the etymology--

...of when "Wick is pain"
became formalized.

[Prescott]
I think with Chad,

there needs to be
a healthy amount of suffering

that is in direct relation
with the success of the film.

When we were on
the first John Wick

and we were doing the fight
at the Navy Yard
at the end of the film,

and it's freezing

and it's rain
and it's terrible,

he was-- he was so--

I don't think I've seen him
that happy before.

He loved it, you know?

And I'm sure Reeves
was right there with him.

They're just both
miserable suffering.

Anything hard is always
gonna be a little painful.

Is good.
Yeah, that's good.

I mean, honestly,
if it didn't hurt, if we
weren't stressed out by it...

I mean, it's more than just
the stunts. Like we'd be
working on the script.

Yeah.
Trying to figure out...

And then that's-- that's
a different kind of pain.

When you're trying to
figure out these scenes,

you can sense that
there's something cool,

we could do something
really neat, but it's--
You can't quite get it.

And I think that's sometimes
more painful than the--
[chuckles]

Well, almost as painful
as getting hit by a bus.

Could you recommend anything
for the end of the night?

Something big, bold?

May I suggest
the Benelli M4?

This is where we wanted
to up the action
a little bit,

so we started Keanu training
with Taran Butler,

the three-gun
champion of the world.

[beep]

I didn't know that
I was getting gun hands
in John Wick 1,

but in Chapter 2, I was like,
"The manipulations. Oh, yeah."

[Stahelski] We went
from John Wick 1,

where it was like 100 rounds
at a shooting session,

to when we got to Taran
on number two,
it was like 3,000 rounds.

Yes.

Did I not hit it?
[trainer] Nope.

Chad's obsessed
with weaponry and guns,

and I think always
like the cutting edge

of what would be next
and what we could do.

[guests screaming]
[gunfire]

[Iwanyk] The airsoft thing
at the time we thought
was not revolutionary,

but we were like,
"This is incredible."

But it was like 70%
of what we wanted.

As we increased
the sophistication
of the weaponry,

Chad was like,
"I want to be able to do
an enormous amount of gunplay.

I never want to worry about it,
and I hate airsofts."

And I'm like, "Well,
that leaves us nowhere."

Because we can't
have blanks, obviously.
It can't be plastic guns.

You've got to remember,
Chad was Brandon Lee's
stunt double in The Crow,

so Chad more so
than I think any person

that comes out of
the stunt world in Hollywood

is hypervigilant and aware
of gun safety on a set.

That's bad.
Yeah, yeah.

[Iwanyk] And a lot of the
gunfire is close combat.

And so, how do you
do that with, you know,
a gun that looks real?

So, you are
the speed of light.

I'm gonna
name the gun that.

Speed of light.
All right.

[Marinas] But then
Chad found Taran,

and they actually found
the secret sauce
of plugging guns.

Chad likes to have so much
close contact action
that he solid plugs everything.

What that means is
a normal blank gun in a movie,

when you fire it,
the flame comes out the front.

When he solid plugs it,
you don't get that anymore.

You get the ejection
of the casing flying out,

you get the reloads,
you get the smoke,
you get all that.

The action's operating,
but it's safe.

You can go right up
against somebody
and pull the trigger.

It's not going to hurt them.

As soon as you put a blank
with a blank gun,

you're basically
shooting a pistol
that's been fitted for blanks.

And you can get wadded.
I've been sprayed
a thousand times with wadding.

I've been shot and burned.

Nobody can get killed
with a solid plug gun.

Nothing comes out of the front.

[shells clattering on floor]

And now the gun cycles.
It's totally safe.

You can have
your hand in the front.
It won't do anything.

There was also a very
big benefit audio-wise
for the stunt performers.

Things are going on.

There's a hundred guys
Keanu is fighting,

so people are yelling,
making kung fu noises.

So, the fact that
we had a plugged gun

that actually
sounded like a real gun,

you know, it was easier
for our stuntpeople

to take their cues off
the sounds of the guns.

[both chuckle]
That was awesome.

I like that press.

Ah. So fun.

- Now we're just gonna
slap on the Benelli.
- We better get that shotgun.

[grunting]

- Oh, yeah. Match saver.
- Match saver.

When he runs out of ammo,
this is called the match saver.

In the old-school way,
you'd have to reach down
to your belt,

grab a shell, drop it in,
and drop the bolt.

And that takes, like,
almost two seconds.

This way, I'm shooting,
I run empty,

I know immediately.

I throw it in
and hit the bolt.

- Also on that one
did the jacket pull draw.
- Jacket pull draw. Yeah.

Jacket pull draw.
[Reeves] Jacket pull draw.

Very slick.
So good. Jacket pull draw.

[Stahelski] A lot of the DNA,
like we say, is always
in the first one, right?

But I keep going back
to number two
as the real experiment.

[EDM music playing]

[Stahelski] John Wick
rock concert.

See, where's Dave now?
This is his cup of tea.

Dave would be up there rapping.

When we were in Rome and we
were doing the concert stuff,

that was when we decided,
okay, we have
this huge crowd of people.

We have music going,
like, how kooky
are we gonna get here?

Like, is John Wick
really gonna run up on stage
and shoot somebody?

We're like, yeah.
Yeah.

[Stahelski] This is where we
were like, okay, we're going.

The crowd's cheering for
shooting people in the head.

So, it's kind of like
Red Circle
from the first one.

[Stahelski] We do
like a club scene.

That whole concert, for me,
it came together

so big and so larger than life,
and when we heard
the music going

it was like,
"Okay, we got to pump
this up a little bit."

Then it was you like,
"I'm gonna jump down the
stairs. We're just gonna go.

I'm gonna run
through the crowd."

It was this different kind
of energy than number one.

It was a lot more aggressive.

[Reeves] Yeah.

Bang, bang! Bang! Bang!

Bang! Got to go in here.

Oh, no. Bang, bang!

Bang!

[grunting]

Shit! Bang!

We did invent this choreography
in the night.

Literally did that
on the night.

[Reeves] Flick. Look at that.
That's legit.

John Wick's just got
a lot of angry arms.
Yeah, look at that.

I love that, the pullback.

I just want to see the heads
explode. I just want to see
a little bit of that.

[crowd clamoring]

[Stahelski] Yeah, pretty much
just made this all up
on the night.

[Reeves] But I think
this introduced, too,
the idea of the toolbox,

the way that
you guys trained me.

The magic of what Keanu
went through is we built
a giant toolbox for him...

[crew member] You're out.

...that at any moment,
we can pull out tools from
and plug and play.

Secondary.
[Perry] I built the training
very similar

to the way we do choreography.

I would put
a dummy round in the mag

so he would have to
correct a malfunction.

So, I would create problems
in the middle of this

that he would have to solve.

All that prep gives you
this luxury of, like,

we can be flexible
and in the moment,

and almost ad-lib the action

because he's already
gotten so good.

What? Cut it!

This is what Reeves
can do.

And see, that spoiled me
for the rest of the movie.

So, now I know you can
do anything. I'm like,
"I can change shit on the day."

In most action movies, you
can't change the choreography.

Yeah.
You don't want to upset
"insert name."

Yeah.
After this,
it was like, "Oh, no,

we can change everything
on Keanu. He's great."
[both chuckle]

All the stunt teams are like,
"So we can still change things?

This is great."
We can still change things.

Sorry.
[crew member]
Back to one. Reset.

Fuck!
[crew member]
It's all good.

[Stahelski]
That's what I like about
the John Wick action.

John Wick always feels
a little back on his heels.

Kind of like he just learned
the choreography that day.

Yeah, yeah.
Which is awesome.

And after this,
now it was a challenge to us.

How do we keep up with Keanu?
[laughs]

Whoever comes,
whoever it is,

I'll kill them.

I'll kill them all.

When John Wick 2
was being put together,

there were certain actors
that were saying, like,

"We would love to be
in John Wick 2."

You're not having a good night,
are you, John?

Once they put Rome on the map,
it was like, "I need to be
in John Wick 2."

Chad, man, like,
I have to be in there.
I have to be in that world.

I reached out to Keanu,
I was like, "Dude,
all of our friends,

all the guys that worked
on The Matrix pictures,

like, everybody's in the movie.
You gotta hook me up."

Mr. Wick doesn't remember,
but we met many years ago.

[Constantine]
And then there were
other actors that we thought,

"They would be great.
Let's try to get them."

And at that point,
not everyone
was in on John Wick

as such a big thing
that it's eventually
gonna come out to be.

[grunting]

Oh, you motherfucker.

[Constantine] When you
get to John Wick 3,

now there is this corner
that has been turned

where pretty much everybody
is aware of John Wick.

We can literally
call it a franchise

because number one worked,
number two worked even better,

and we're planning on
making number three.

Now you have brilliant actors,
Academy Award-winning actors,

like Halle Berry
and Anjelica Huston,

who really understands
what John Wick is,

wants to be with Keanu,
wants to be with 87eleven.

I was a fan. I mean, there's
not a dull moment on screen.

I don't need to see the script.
Just sign me up.

I gotta tell you,

I've been looking forward
to meeting you for a long time.

I'm a huge fan, John Wick.

[Iwanyk] We're part
of the establishment
all of a sudden.

When we weren't,

John Wick 1 was way out
of the establishment.

Even John Wick 2 was, like,
a foot in and a foot out.

And I said this to Keanu,
I'm like, "Listen,
for better or for worse,

we are now a place where
in the economics of film
and television and studios,

we have to
expand this world."

Like, there's no version
of us going,
"Ah, guys, we're good."

You know, the shareholders
of Lionsgate's like,
"No, we want more."

And so I think we've all kind
of collectively realized that,

and now we're like, "Okay,
how do we make things just
a bit cool, a bit different?"

[director]
All right. Picture's up.
Lock it up. Here we go.

Cool location, right?

[cameraperson]
It's awesome.
Thanks.

Fuck yeah.
John Wick 3. Manhattan.
New York City Library.

[Reeves] I feel like
every John Wick film has had,
like, the what and the why.

But what's the character?
What's the why?

And then along that,

each film has had two or three,

like, action,
not even sequences,

but, like,
I want to be here.
It's a mirror room.

[Reeves]
It's gonna be the fight
in the library with Boban.

It's gonna be the stairs
in Chapter 4.

There's always been
these impulses
of action or set pieces,

and somehow the story
has to go through here
and here, you know,

and that kind of relentlessness
of trying to figure it out.

Dogs, horses, pigeons,
Grand Central.

Grand Central.
Grand Central.

All right, get out of here.
I gotta go to work.

This is Ballet Land.
That's these ladies.
What are we shooting right now?

Tell 'em.
[both] John Wick 3.

That says it all,
doesn't it?

- [Reeves]
We're going to Marrakech.
- [Stahelski] Sounds good.

Going to Morocco. Halle Berry
in the desert with some dogs.

[exclaims]
[Berry] It's one of the
hardest things I've ever done.

I pushed myself to the limit.
I had some broken bones.

[chuckles]

But I survived.

[dog snarling]

Dogs.
We need dogs in the movie.

What are you gonna do?
Well, we're gonna train dogs
to attack groins.

- [man screaming]
- [dog barking]

That was one of the concepts.
That was one of the concepts.

John Wick 3.
If you knew the budget
we spent on dogs.

That was the concept.

[Stahelski] We're gonna
train Halle Berry with dogs.

Got an actress
who wanted to say,

"Yeah, I want to train dogs
for seven, eight months."

And that's not from
a book series. That's not
from a graphic novel.

That's from us going,
"Hey, man, you like dogs?

I like dogs. You like dogs?
I like dogs. Let's do
something cool with dogs.

We did guns and cars. Let's
do dogs. Yeah, I like dogs."

Dog fu.
Dog fu, man.

[barks]

And then, Keanu's going,
"John Wick's got to be
on a horse."

And I'm like,
"John Wick on a horse
sounds pretty fucking cool."

[horse whinnies]

[Stahelski]
But a lot of other people
that read the script went,

"Yeah, that's not...
How is that gonna be cool?"

- Because he ran out
of Central Park.
- And we're like,

"We're not really sure,
but we're gonna try
and figure it out."

There's horses
by Central Park.

[Stahelski] If you're willing
to endure that little bit
of fear of the unknown

and that little bit of pain
of figuring it out...

[Reeves] Who doesn't want
to see John Wick on a horse?

- [Stahelski] Yeah.
- In a suit.

I mean, how we...

And I think most people
get weirded out by it

because they don't know
how it fits in the story

or they don't know how
to make it work
with the character,

and that's the beauty of
what we have with John Wick.

It's our IP.
Yeah.

So, there's no... [chuckles]
There's no real rules.

Like, we've had people
come up to us and
actually say to Keanu and I,

"Well, that's not
very John Wick."

And we're like, "I don't know,

that's John Wick, and he
says he'll be on a horse."

You want to ride a horse?
Yeah, man.

All right, then it's
pretty John Wick, isn't it?

[tires screech]

[horn blaring]

Getting to know Jackie Chan
and Donnie Yen and Jet Li,

and having worked
with all those people.

I was talking
to Jackie one time...

This is after spending a lot
of time watching how he works.

And, you know,
I was giving him a little shit.

You know, like, if Keanu and I
were just sitting here
and I was telling Jackie,

"You know, if you have
two people sitting there
and there's a desk between us,"

we're like, "Well, you know,
he'd say something,
I'd say something.

I'd jump over the desk,
we'd start fighting,

and then we'd punch
and punch and punch,

and then the other guy would
walk out and say a cool line."

Jackie would do literally
the exact opposite
of any other choreographer.

He'd go, "Okay,
you don't say anything.
I'll say a joke.

I'm gonna try to walk out, but
you stop me from walking out.

Then the room catches on fire,
the door is locked,

we get handcuffed together
and... What,
are you right-handed?

Okay, so you can't
use your right hand.

And you got to protect
this vase here from breaking

because that's
really what you wanted.

And you can't kill anybody,
although everybody has a gun."

And you'd look at Jackie
and go, "Well, how am I
supposed to do that?"

And he had
the best answer ever.

He looked right back and said,
"I have no idea
how you're gonna do it,

but if you figure it out,
it'll be the best fight
in the movie."

One of the sequences that
I think will always go down

as one of the greatest moments
in all four John Wick movies
is the knife fight.

It's using all the things
that would normally
be a problem.

John is in
a straight, narrow room,
and he doesn't have a gun.

And all these assassins
who have guns are coming to
get him, and he can't hide.

So now he has to neutralize
the guns that could shoot him
and kill him, right?

That's number one.

Number two,
he gets thrown against glass.

And what feels like
it's gonna be a problem
turns out to be an asset.

It's brilliant.

- [Reeves] That's so good.
- We always called it
the snowball fight.

You and your brothers get
the snowball and you just
chuck them at each other.

We were saying
in every action movie,

no matter who it is,
he always picks up a knife,

and they throw it,
and it sticks in,
and the guy dies.

And we're like,
"That never really happens."

So let's do one where
everybody misses all the time.

We kept rehearsing it
and rehearsing it.

We kept changing
all the different pieces.

But it still
didn't fit right.

I was like, "Okay,
it's gonna be a decent fight."

You know, I was looking forward
to the horse stuff more
and all that shit.

- Yeah.
- It was about the third day
of doing this.

It was when you come at him,
just going one, two, three.

My opinion totally changed
in this fight,
right on that. Right here.

- [man grunts]
- [Reeves exclaims]

What do I do?
Duck.

Duck? Duck?
[Stahelski]
You better.

[laughter]

Duck?

This is real speed.

[Stahelski] This is... Yeah,
this is Shane and Chen here.

[Reeves]
Whoa! That's legit.

We were literally putting
this stuff together on the day.

[Stahelski] Action!

[grunting]

Remember, like, when we had
that, like, fucking take
that's in the movie?

Yep.

Take forever.
[all laugh]

Not that...
I know.

Shane is, like, amazing
as well, but I'm so slow.

But there was something about
that one take that was like--

Yeah, that take, you know,
it's great. It's great.

[grunting]

[Reeves] I was like,
"Guys, I don't think
I could do that any faster."

And Shane was like,
"Me neither."

We reached, like,
a high hand.
It is.

It was so good
but so very tired.
Right?

[all laughing]

[crew member]
That was fast. A lot.

Jesus.

What I learned
in John Wick 1,

which you carried on
through all of them,

was fight film
with who you trained with.
Yeah.

[Reeves] Everyone gets
to know your timing, you know?

They know how slow I am,
so they can do stuff
in between.

"Come on, Reeves!"
They compensate.

You figure
everyone else does that.

I don't know
why movies don't.
They don't.

[grunting]

[crew member 1] Cut!
[crew member 2] Cut.

[Schultz] Keanu, you know,
he's a perfectionist.

[Reeves] I sucked.

[Schultz] And he is
very hard on himself.

Obviously, his biggest action
movies other than John Wick

were the Matrix movies.
And the Wachowskis,

you know,
there was no good enough.

And even if it is perfect,
we'll shoot it ten more times

and make sure
it's perfect-perfect,
you know, super-perfect.

Super-perfect.

That's a Reevesian word,
super-perfect.
Yeah, that's--

That's where we get
the fuckity fucks.
Yeah.

All directed at yourself,
which is very admirable.

- [upbeat music playing]
- [grunting]

Fuck! Fuck!

[crew member]
Cut. We'll go again.
Fuck!

I can't do
the fucking lock.

Fucking lock,
fucking, fucking lock,
fucking lock, fuck.

Fuck! Fuck!

Fucker. Fucking, fucking,
fucking fuck.

Fuck.
That is my bad. Fuck!

Okay, now
let's just do that.

Fuck!

[grunting]

Fuck.

[laughing]

Fuck!

Fuck!

Fuck. Fuck.

Fuck it. I fucked that up.
Fuck!

[crew member 1] Cut.

[crew member 2] Got it?
Fuck!

[crew member 3] Yes.
Fuck!

[crew member 1]
Let's go again.

So, the fucks come from,

number one,
you wanna do it well.
You wanna do it right.

And also, when I've been
thinking about it, it's like...

[sighs]

...when you have to do
a wire, or you go
into an action sequence,

you basically
have like a spring.

You know, you have a tension
that's waiting to release.

And I feel like
the fucks are a way
to like... [grunts]

It's like a kiai.
Yeah. It's like a kiai.
Like, "Fuck!"

[exclaims] Like, "Fuck."

And then, you get to
ratchet it back up and go,
"Okay, let's try again."

[crew member]
Three, two, one, action.

Yeah.

[grunting]

[Perry] Reeves has consistently
been one of the kindest,
hardest-working,

gentle, generous people
that I've ever met inside
or outside of this business.

But when he plugs in and
he goes all in on something,

he's going all in, and
you gotta be ready for that.

[Dacascos]
He knows what he's doing,

and when he grabs you
to do a throw or flip,

it's like a vice.

And if you look
on my Instagram,
I posted a small picture.

My arms are just like, what?

But I was proud of those.
I earned those, you know?

John Wick, Chad and Keanu
right here, all over.

[Iwanyk] I cannot tell you
how many times on a John Wick
set I have taken my phone

and have videoed stunts
and fight scenes
that were happening.

Not for any other reason
but to say, "Look,
this actually was done."

You know, I've seen
Keanu and his stunt double

go through some
incredibly physical trauma
on these movies.

[grunting]

[people cheering, applauding]

[Spidell] Getting the chance
to double Keanu
was pretty surreal.

His relationship with Chad
being his double
through The Matrix,

which changed my life...

So, having Chad
pass me the torch
was just a huge honor.

And just getting to meet Reeves
and make that relationship.

Well, they're playing
the character too,
you know?

[grunting]

And they're doing things
where they can get hurt.

Like, really hurt.

I don't know how many car hits
Jackson took.

I mean, if someone
counted those,
there's at least 20.

And that's, like,
in an edited version.

And then all of the falls
that he did...

[crew member]
...one, go!

[groaning]

[Reeves]
Crashing, hitting...

collisions that are like,
"Oh, no. What?"

And then all of
the choreography that
he could do that I couldn't do,

you know, just physically.

Also the skill,
the movement,

the way he moved,
the way that he, you know, paid
attention to the character,

to me in the role.

And there's a talent
to that.

It's not just,
like, put the pads on
and get hit by a car.

You know,
he's playing John Wick.

And he's gotta move...
You want to sell it
a little bit.

So, I think you're bonded
and connected in art,

and you're connected
in the physicality of it.

We're all very
masochistic in a way.

It's just like, "It hurts."
It's a "Thank you, sir.
May I have another?"

My greatest physical pain was
from the high fall on Wick 3.

So, I fall
I think it was 12 feet
to this little awning,

which is Lexan,
which is like a plastic.

Slide down, I'm supposed to
catch my feet on the ledge

and, like, pencil over,
like dead body,

turn until I land
on my back half on,
half off the fire escape.

It's supposed to collapse
and I'm supposed to fall.

You're going to...
Yep. Yes, sir.

All right.

Well, we tested the gag,

but we never tested the suit
on the Lexan that I slide down.

I just had, like,
workout clothes on
or something like that.

And so, the static electricity
from a suit
creates less friction...

so I think when I fell,
I slid so fast

that by the time
I figured out where I was,

my feet were going past where
they were supposed to catch.

So my hip ended up
chipping off the ledge.

And I'm going sideways,
so I'm about to
Million Dollar Baby myself.

Luckily, I caught myself
and landed basically
on the back of my head.

The fire escape
didn't break away,

which would have let me fall
and continue the shot

to where I would
fall into a box catcher.

The first thing that
I thought of was just like,
"Move your foot."

My foot moved, and I was like,
"Oh, thank God."

"We're gonna try the other
one." The other went...
I was like, "Okay, great."

[applause]

[Spidell] This is how
I knew it looked bad
in the video village.

Someone said Chad went, "Fuck!"
[laughs]

[Stahelski]
I can bring a Condor
or you can come down your way.

I'll just drop.
[Stahelski] Okay.

Three, two, one, jump!

[Spidell] I just looked down
and Chad's just
hands in his pockets.

"How you doing?"
I'm like, "That sucked."

That was... Fuck.

[Stahelski]
You all right?
Yeah.

I'm like,
"Do we need to go again?"
He's like, "I'd like to."

He's like, "Can you?"
I was like,
"Yeah, but if we go again,

we need to go, like, now

because I have a feeling
in about ten minutes,

I'm going to be like Batman
'cause I landed on my head."

He's like, "All right.
Well, let's figure out
what we need to do to fix it,

and let's go. All right.
I'm glad you're okay."

Why was it so slick?
That was slick as shit.

[Spidell] So I went
and did it again.
[chuckles]

This is another testament
to our, like, bullshit.

See Chad looking at the monitor
and I was like,

"All right, how was that?"
He's like,

"Well, we're not
going to beat the first one."

He's like, "It looks
like you just fucking die."

And I was like, "Well, yeah."
[chuckles]

So, you know,
you're watching another person
put their health at risk.

You know? But you also
know that they love it.

[crew member] Nice jump.

[Reeves] And you also know that

when it turns out well
and everybody's okay,

it's like, "Fuck yeah!"

And so, for me, it's just like
you're admiring what they do.

We're all wearing the suit.

[Stahelski] When you
come up as a stuntperson,

if you're looking for credit
and notoriety,

you're in the wrong end
of the business.

You get to do this little part.
You get to...

You have the anonymity
that I've always enjoyed.

And then, you know,
you get to work with
some of Hollywood's best,

and you get to be a ninja.

No one knew who you were,
but you still got to sit
in the movie theater

and go, "Yeah, that's me."

And you pull off some of the
greatest moments in Hollywood.

I'm pretty sure that
I have died more than
anyone else in the Wick series.

Wick 2, in the tunnels,
I was taking just shotgun hits.

Wick 3,
Halle killed me as well.

I played guards
inside the Continental.

I die twice in
the club scene...

once inside the house,

two times
in the house of mirrors,

a bunch of times
inside the tunnel,

probably like
four times in there.

I also doubled
Michael Nyqvist, so I guess
I died there as well.

- [screams]
- [laughs]

There's a fight scene
in John Wick 1
that Keanu strangles me.

Then in 2, we shot a big scene
in Lincoln Square, I think,

but it never made it
in the movie.

Then in John Wick 3,
I'm the guy
who kicks him underwater,

super slow motion,

then Keanu comes up,
blows my brains out.

At Trader Joe's, there was some
young guy who kind of was like,

"You've been in a movie.
I've seen it. I've seen it."

I was like, "Yeah, I've been
in a couple movies
like John Wick."

He's like, "You were
in John Wick?" I go,
"Yeah." He's like, "Cool."

And then the next day
I come in, and he yells
from across the way,

"Hey, hey,
that's the Speedo guy."

[crew member]
Check, recheck.

[Stahelski] Cut!

[Lee] 3 was hard
because we shot everything

but not Morocco
because of weather,

and Halle had broken her ribs
and needed time to heal.

And so we had this
moment in time where
we were editing the movie,

but the middle
of the movie wasn't there.

We still couldn't
figure it out.

We didn't have enough money
to do that piece.

And then got to Morocco,
and Morocco was awful.

[laughing] I mean,
just like everything about it.

We were supposed to shoot
in one place.
We ended up in Essaouira.

We couldn't permit anything.

And then, we had the dogs,
which also we had to ferry
from the US.

There's five dogs.
We get there, and one of
the dogs wouldn't perform

because they just
didn't like Morocco.

- [barks]
- [Lee] It was also
this fishing village,

and so there was
dead fish everywhere,

which meant there was
stray cats everywhere.

So there was
fucking cats everywhere.

[dog handler]
Santana, over here.
[cat yowls]

Santana, over here. Hey.

[Lee] In trying to get the dogs
to focus and not kill the cats,

we built a cat hotel
on the side of the set.

I mean, it was
just like pure mayhem.

Fuck!

When we wrap, everyone
always has the same emotion,
which is "Never again."

Like, "Fuck this. Never again."
Especially Keanu.

At the end of every John Wick,
we're like, "There's just
never gonna be another one,"

because we are so dead
and we hate each other,

and Keanu
is literally half dead.

Halfway through, Keanu's like,
"At the end of this movie..."

I'm not exaggerating. He goes,
"I want to be beheaded.

I want to see the guy
holding up my head."

And I'm just like,
"One, no, and two, nice try,

'cause you will never be able
to come back again."

After 3, we were like, "Okay.

That's it. That's enough."
That's good.

"We've done it. We're good."

And it just kept eating at me,
eating at me.

Like, we didn't get to do
our Japanese portion.

We didn't get to do
our samurai version.
There was so much left.

I remember sitting with you
going, "Okay, I got
a pretty good why this time."

You just felt like
there was more to do.

Yeah.
[laughs]

Do you think you're ready to do
the forward 180 one-handed?

Yes.
And with your right hand?

Let's try it.
Let's try it.

Do you want the gun now
or on the next one?

Let's do it on the next one.
Okay, I got it.

[upbeat music playing]

[Stahelski] We were told that
there was too much action
in John Wick 3,

- so we had to cut it down.
- No.

[Stahelski] Boy, did we
show them in number four, huh?

[upbeat music continues]
[car engine revving]

[Lee] What was hard about 4
was we weren't in New York,

so the DNA of the movie
had changed.

So all of a sudden,
we were making kinda like
the international Wick version,

which was like
a little bit hard for us
to get our sea legs.

And we had Donnie Yen...

which, amazing, but also
another movie star on set.

And we started sort of behind.
We were spending
a lot of money.

[Iwanyk] It was coming off
the pandemic, all of the masks
and all that bullshit.

And it was a gigantic movie.

And it was also
almost 100 days.

You know, when you think
about the first movie,
it was like 40.

Oh, my hips.

[Iwanyk] You could push someone
well past the limit

when you're
shooting 40 or 50 days.

When you're on day 92,
you got to be careful.

[crew member] Cut!
Goddamn it.

Why can't I fucking do
that fucking throw?

[Schultz]
They never got easier,
and even as John Wick 4,

you know, now we got
a hundred plus million dollars,

because now we're-- we're
trying to make $120 million

look like $200 million.

[Lee] We also didn't have
our, like, core,

that crew that we had
for the three other movies,

and it felt different.

All of a sudden,
we're like based in Berlin.

We had a lot of
different teams.

And so, it was just like
getting into a rhythm was hard.

Is that another car?

No. It would be...
So, he would hit--

He hits the car,
doesn't know he hits the car,
then he gets floored?

Yeah. And behind that car,
Bruce comes out of the abyss.

Chad said, "I need you
to come do Wick 4."

I was like, "Awesome. We're
gonna have the team together."

Nope. No Jackson because he's
becoming a fight coordinator,
stunt coordinator.

JoJo's working
on his own shows.

So, I was under the microscope
of Chad with no older brothers
to watch my back.

[Marinas] Nice.

Chad just was like, "You're up.
Don't fuck up." [laughs]

Instead of blocking,
you shoot. And I shoot.
And he's like, I shoot.

It sounds very...
It looks very childish.

Donnie was a whole
nother entity to deal with.

Being the perfectionist
that he is,

he takes regular
fight choreography and puts
his Donnie factor on it,

and he throws
a bunch of curveballs that
we just had to be ready for.

This is...
There's no technique.

We got to put some Filipino,
like, a Kali in there.

Pop, pop, pop, pop.
You know, the pop...
You know, use that technique.

So, the pressure was high,
but he just wanted the best.

[crew member] Cut!
That's fucking awesome.

[Marinas] And that's
how I would equate Chad.

Chad wants the best.

In Chad's words,
"Don't do your best.
Do my best." [chuckles]

I'll tell you one thing,
because Chad
changes things so much.

The nunchuck fight
is almost shot for shot
the previs. [laughs]

So, there's one thing
I'm proud about.

[grunting]

[crew member]
Good, cut. Cut.

[Marinas]
Keanu was extra stressed out
during the nunchuck fight

because the first thing
you think about when you see
nunchucks is Bruce Lee.

[Stahelski] Nunchucks
are always one of those things
that sounds great

until you realize
how much work has to go
into them, as we found out.

And back in his day,
they didn't make all soft...

[Stahelski]
Didn't have the soft side.
...rubbery.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's all wood.
No. Wood.

When Tiger and I were
trying them, they were...
there was a penalty.

Consequences.

So many times.

There was
a lot of penalties
on John Wick 4.

I'd pick up the real pair
and go like, "Oh, no."

No, no.

Literally, anybody
that picked up the real pair,
ten seconds later,

yeah, put them back down
going, "Fuck."

[crew member] And action!

[grunting]

[Schultz] Probably
we should have bee able to
shoot that fight in half a day.

[Reeves]
Wrong fucking hand, Reeves.

But Keanu had
a horrible ear infection.
Could not hear anything.

I know he had to feel awful.

Goddamn it.

[Schultz]
It took us, I think,

at least a whole day,
maybe a day and a half.

But, you know, he never quit.

Why do I keep doing that, man?

Keanu, throughout
the whole movie of Wick 4,
he kind of had the flu.

And the work ethic
to work through it was intense

because we had
already started shooting.

He was doing
a couple other fights.

But on his off time,
when he wasn't on camera,

he was training nunchucks.

We would say, "You're sick.
Take a day off."

He's like, "No days off.
I shoot nunchucks
in a couple days."

Does he have a wall?
We've never found it.

[crew member]
Ready and action!

[Stahelski] A lot of
the Wicks are like love letters
to things that we love.

Like the low-budget
action movies
we grew up loving.

So we had Mark Dacascos
in John Wick 3.

I mean, we had Gary Daniels
in number two,
Daniel Bernhardt,

you know, Yayan and Cecep
from The Raid.

I mean, look who we got
on number four.

That was one of the things.
We don't know the script,

but I know Scott Adkins
is going to be in a fat suit.

Chad, I want to be
in John Wick 4.

Yeah.
That phone call--

Thanks for this opportunity.
I really appreciate it.

I remember that phone call--

But I don't wanna do
another movie with you.

I've had enough,
to be quite frank.

Nothing's better for me when
I get to call up Marko Zaror,

who I didn't know before
we worked together, saying,

"Hey, man, I really love
all your films." He's like,
"You're kidding, right?"

I was like, "No, really.
We watch them all the time.
They're awesome."

I killed Mark Dacascos.

I killed Scott Adkins. Now
I'm going to kill Marko Zaror.

[chuckles]

Who's left, man?
Cynthia Rothrock?
[chuckles]

[Stahelski] Shamier,
when you come in,
give it a one one-thousand,

then he can
build in his look.
Cool.

Beat, one one-thousand, go.

That's your first one.
Cool.

Should I wait to see him
before I dodge?

I think you could do it
at the same time.
Shamier counts to 1,000.

If you go to peek
as soon as you hit...
[Reeves] Okay.

...you'll run into him
and that can be the,
"Oh, shit."

[Reeves] Okay.
Someone say action.

Ready, and action.

[Anderson imitates gunfire]
Boom. Go back. Boom.

[Anderson] Bang.

Bang.

Bang. Drop gun.
Draw. Bang, bang.

[Stahelski]
Nice. Action hero.

[upbeat music playing]

We came up with
this idea for top shot
and what you see here...

Why do you keep saying "we"?
Well, I mean the crew.
Everybody.

'Cause like, okay,
I came up with the idea,
this is my thought...

What do you mean?
This is like
one of the first things,

this was one of the ideas,
the concepts that followed us,

the duel, the top shot...
Exactly.

More horses,
that was on the plate.

So, we came up
with all this stuff.
Why? Where's the "we"?

Well... [chuckles]
...can you lie?

You! You!
No. No.

- You!
- They don't see it
'cause top shots--

No. There was no we who said,
"I see a top shot
in John Wick 4."

We wanted to do a top shot--

It was like, "I'm Chad
and, yeah, that's what
I see in my head."

All right,
so kooky director guy
comes up with this idea.

Thank you.
And I used to play
with Etch A Sketch as a kid.

So, I'm like seeing things
in Etch A Sketch world.

And one of the things
I've always hated about action
movies is editing to hide,

camerawork to hide.

Because most times,
you don't have Keanu Reeves,

you don't have
six months of rehearsals,

you don't have the best
stunt teams in the world.

So, you're hiding wires,
you're hiding green screen,

you're hiding stunt doubles,
you're hiding,
hiding, hiding, hiding.

So what would happen if you
didn't have to hide anything?

We wanted to say,
"Hey, watch this, guys.

We're gonna see
Keanu Reeves do all this,
come up to a top shot

and then show all the bad guys
behind the wall,"

so the audience
is in on the gags,
even before our lead actor is,

because they can see
the bad guys coming in.

Kind of like Etch A Sketch.

But I don't think
there's been a time

where we haven't had pushback,
because people don't see it.

So, without maybe
telling anybody,
we started to build the set.

So we're already
spending the money.

So by the time the
actual "no" came back,

we had kind of already built
three-quarters of the set.

So, the rationale was, "Well,
we might as well shoot it,

but you guys got to
do it in two days."

You don't take dictation
from the studio by any stretch,

but you try to figure out
a middle ground.

As someone who has to live
between the creative

and the financial and,
you know, the studio
and Chad, it's hard.

I mean, he never accepts no
as the answer. And beauty
and magic come out of that.

But man, you go fully gray.

[electronic music playing]
[gunfire]

[Stahelski]
I think that the proof's
kind of in the pudding, right?

Number one is pretty good.

Hopefully number two is better,
three is better,

4 is... I'm most proud of,
because I think

it's the most anime
with framing, composition,
depth of field.

[Harris] Chad has
always been very cognizant

that John Wick is a franchise
that's dripping with tone.

And it's that Sergio Leone,
like, take your time,
move through the scene,

be with the character.

Chad was very much into not
cutting into a lot of details.

He wants to play it
as wide as possible,

have dolly shots
and crane shots and Steadicam.

So we would try to move
the camera as much as we can

to make it more epic,
more classic.

[Harris] And so, even in
the earliest discussions,

we always make sure
that, like,

does this feel important
and does it feel special?

Does it feel like
we're presenting
an image worth resting on?

[crew chattering]

Pretty cool.

Sacré-Coeur.

John Wick's final scene.

[cameraperson]
This is where it happens?

The duel.

Should be pretty cool.

If we can only figure out how
to light it and how to shoot it

and how to perform it
and how to edit it

and how to put score to it,
make it look really cool,
we'd be set.

Especially because we start
shooting in... 34 minutes.

And so we begin.

[Western music playing]

[Reeves] After Chapter 3,
it was like, why?

And I was saying, like,
"The why is he has to die."

And I think as soon
as I said that,

you-- you were like--
No, it's like, "I'm in."

Once you say that,
that's the period, right?

And then
you got to figure out how.
Yeah. How?

If he's got to die, like,
we got to make this count.

And I think that was
the hardest part, right?

Because we knew, one of the
first things we wanted to do,
like, we wanted to do a duel.

[Harbinger]
Positions, gentlemen.

[Stahelski] Then, you're like,
"Okay, but it's got to
mean something, like..."

[Reeves] Yeah.
[Stahelski] My duel was like,
"Well, he'll win."

And you're like,
"Whoa, whoa, whoa.
He's got to lose.

[chuckles]
But he wins
and he gets what he wants."

So, how do we get him out
of this whole life?

How do we
get out of everything?
Mmm.

And that's when we set up
the whole Donnie's
character's backstory

of saving a daughter.
[Reeves] Yeah.

[Stahelski]
And Hiroyuki's character

of the daughter survives him.

So you lose a friend
and a friend has to
fight you in the duel.

Because originally we had
Marquis duels you--

Right, yeah.
It took a little while.

It was like a clock trying to
figure out the right mechanism.

How do we tell
John Wick time? [chuckles]
Yeah, exactly.

[Lee] Chad always talks
about how he loves
the idea of frenemies.

It's in all of the movies,
but especially
in John Wick 4, right?

Like the Caine and Wick
relationship

and the idea that you can
love your brother,

but then also want
to kill your brother.

I missed you, John.

It's so good to
sit with a friend.

I love the Japanese concept
of secrets and hidden whispers,

meaning only a warrior knows
a warrior, only a soldier...

Like you have to be
in the trenches with someone
to really know them.

And just, I mean, that shot
alone, two guys sitting there

both knowing they have to
face each other the next day,
I thought that was--

In a church.
In a church.

We're damned...

you and I.

On that we agree.

What we've all tried to do
in John Wick

is link John Wick
to everybody in the movie,

so he's always got
a relationship,
so no one's a throwaway.

And I think that's why
John's so beloved,
even though he's an assassin.

I mean, even the tracker
who's literally just met him.

Because we don't have
the stereotypes
of good guy, bad guy,

we can fuck with
relationships like that.

Like Donnie and him
were probably best friends
at a point.

See you in the next life, brother.

Like, Hiroyuki's a best friend,
but John puts him in danger,

and Hiroyuki stands up for him.

Friendship means little
when it's convenient.

To play with friendship
and bonding and loyalty
like that is a real luxury.

Fire!

[Reeves] You started
John Wick 1 with John Wick
falling to his side.

[Stahelski] Yep.

[Reeves]
And then, there he is.

He gets his grace.

We're doing
this little focal thing.
Mm-hmm.

So I'll have you guys
look at the gravestone.

When I say "Laurence,"
they'll rack over
to you. You turn--

And then make my turn.
Exactly.

Very good.

[cameraperson] Is this
the last-- not last shot.

You're making the last shot
in the movie.

I think. Although,
I could change my mind.

Probably tomorrow.

Or now.
I've just changed my mind.

[cameraperson]
So it's not the last one?

Why? Who wants to know?

How much
does one more cost?

[chuckles softly]

We're still talking
about John Wick
and John Wick universe a lot.

But whether or not there's
a specifically John Wick 5,
I don't know.

Where do you think he is,
heaven or hell?

Who knows?

[Lee] I think the movies
are so, you know, hyperreal.

And we've proven that,
you know,

people can survive
all sorts of crazy things.

So, it's whatever
we want it to be.

We still have
ideas left...
I know. We still have--

...that we
haven't done, man!

[Iwanyk] It is a bit surreal
that after a decade
of nonstop John Wick,

that we'll have a break
and that Chad's going off
and do another movie.

I'm hoping, selfishly,
he's gonna go,

"This is what it's like
to direct a regular movie.

I want to go back
to John Wick, where I could
do whatever the hell I want

and Keanu will do
anything I ask."

Creatively,
like, even if--

I mean, if you and I
just spend, like,
seven minutes

and we could figure out,
like, what haven't we done,

and we could come up
with ideas for 5

and it would be like...
You know, it wouldn't suck.

Wick is pain.
It'd just be a different pain
on a different day.

Yeah. But maybe
we can find
another story to tell

and cook another meal.

[crowd clamoring, cheering]

[Stahelski] I can't wait to see
what happens next in action.

It's like fashion. It changes.
There's generations.
It evolves.

To be part of that movement
is really exciting.

People always send me clips
of different movies.

"Hey, look, they're copying
John Wick" or
"They're trying to do gun fu."

I dig that.

You know, when you read
a script and it just says,

"John Wick action happens."

I kinda... You smile.

You're like,
okay, that's pretty...

I kind of play it off.
But I'm pretty like,
"That's pretty cool."

That's inspiring because being
competitive is what drives us.

And that's being competitive
with what's been done,
including ourselves.

I don't have any competition
with Chad in my head.

[chuckles]

I don't think
I have any competition.

I mean,
he does his own thing.

He's doing...
Well, he's in his own world.

He does Wick.
Like, he loves Wick.

Wick is fucking Chad.
Chad and Keanu, they're Wick.

They bleed Wick.
They die Wick. They're like
Wick, you know?

And that's why it's so good,
you know?

'Cause Wick is pain.

Um...
Maybe Wick is pain.

Maybe it's a great name
for the documentary.

I think if there's one thing
that the Wick process
has taught me,

just from watching
Keanu and everything,

is pain's not necessarily
a bad thing,
you know what I mean?

Pain's just the end result,
often, of just brave choices

or putting yourself out there
or trying to win.

Yeah, we all have to suffer.
We all have to train hard.

But to me, no, honestly,
I love that.

That's what I do
every day anyway.

You have to suffer a little bit
to be better, you know?

I mean, our bodies suffer.
Our minds suffer.

And I love that.

We want to make it the best.

And in order to make it
the best, you got to do
whatever it takes.

And sometimes it hurts.
It hurts.

And it hurts you,
and it hurts
the people around you,

maybe the people
that are close to you.

But Wick isn't pain.
I mean, Wick's a blessing.

I mean,
it's like movie magic.

It's, you know...
We all hit a creative
and financial jackpot.

And, you know, there
isn't a day that goes by
where I'm not like,

"Thank fucking god
Wick's a part of my life."

Is the pain worth it? Yeah.

It's just a lot of pain.
[chuckles]

[Reeves] Congratulations.

Awesome.

[applause]

[crew member] Good job.
Thank you, guys.

[Reeves] It's like one of
the greatest gifts
I've had in my life.

[chuckling]

Well done.

I had a John Wick decade,
my 50s.

Fuck yeah.

I don't know if I could have
another decade like that.

Um...

Yeah, I'd be
very, very lucky.

But, uh, yeah.

Wick is pain.
Wick is celebration.

Wick is surviving.
Wick is trying to be free.

Wick is grieving.

Against the odds, surviving.

Wick is friendship.
Wick is love.

You know?

It's all those
kind of big ideas

in this... action movie.

And Wick is funny.
And John Wick is funny.

[rock music playing]

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