In the late ‘80s, The Killer’s Game director J.J. Perry moved to Los Angeles shortly after completing his service in the U.S. Army, and almost immediately, he became fast friends with future John Wick co-mastermind Chad Stahelski. The pair cut their teeth as stuntmen, fight choreographers and stunt coordinators, and when Stahelski and his former partner, David Leitch, transitioned to the director’s chair on John Wick, Perry started to imagine himself in a similar position for the very first time.
Once John Wick and John Wick: Chapter 2 became pop culture phenomenons, Stahelski, through 87eleven Entertainment, and Leitch, through his own offshoot company 87North, began to pay their good fortunate forward so that other stunt professionals could get a crack at one of the most coveted jobs in the entertainment industry. Concurrently, after serving as the supervising stunt coordinator on John Wick 2, Perry then started receiving scripts, including one for what would become his vampire action-comedy, Day Shift, starring Jamie Foxx. He took the script to Stahelski and pitched him his take, and the duo then delivered the same pitch to Netflix who bought the idea in the room.
Naturally, Perry credits Stahelski for shepherding his feature directorial debut, and because of his efforts as well as Leitch’s, he believes that this current era is the most beneficial time period ever for the stunt community.
“[Stahelski] told me the hardest part for people like us isn’t directing … The hardest part is getting the opportunity to do it, because what they’re always going to say is, ‘But can you tell a story?’” Perry tells The Hollywood Reporter. “And my response is, ‘Am I doing Shakespeare? I’m not trying to win an Oscar, brother. I’m trying to make fun action movies.’ So, yeah, this is a great time for second unit directors and stunt performers, and the flood gates are going to open even more.”
Perry wasted no time getting back into the director’s chair, as 2023’s dual strike created an opportunity for Lionsgate to finally adapt the novel The Killer’s Game for the big screen after nearly three decades of development. The romantic action-comedy is about a terminally ill assassin named Joe Flood (Dave Bautista) who orders a hit on himself so that the love of his life (Sofia Boutella’s Maize) can collect on his life insurance policy. However, he soon learns that he was misdiagnosed, and as one might expect, it’s too late to cancel the aforementioned contract.
Thanks to Day Shift, Perry was not only better prepared to manage his time on The Killer’s Game, but he was also more up to speed on the politics of post-production.
“I didn’t know what post was on Day Shift, and I kind of got ambushed a little bit. I probably shouldn’t say that, but I understood what was coming this time and I also tested [The Killer’s Game] before we showed it to Lionsgate,” Perry says. “We tested it ourselves. So I heard what the target market wanted and got their critiques. I left my ego at home and just took the notes and listened to what people liked and didn’t like.”
When Perry remarked above that he isn’t trying to win an Oscar, he means that in more ways than one. Over the course of the last few years, his stunt peers have campaigned more and more aggressively for a best stunt Oscar, culminating in Leitch’s The Fall Guy, which was a tribute to the unsung heroes of the movie business. Ryan Gosling, who played the titular stuntman, even half-joked in late April that the action pic was “just a giant campaign” for a best stunt Oscar. However, as much as he supports his friends’ ultimate goal, Perry has major doubts that it’s ever going to happen.
“No, they’re not going to give it to us, and I’ll tell you why. When a stuntman gets the Oscar, what they’re saying is Ryan Gosling didn’t do the stunt. When the stunt coordinator or the second unit director gets an Oscar, you’re saying that the director didn’t do it; it was them,” Perry explains.
Perry’s reasoning was shaped by his corner of the business where taking credit is never the priority.
“The side of the business that we’re in and that I came up in isn’t like that. You never claim anything. No matter how hurt you are, you get up, you shake it off and you say, ‘I’m fine,’” Perry adds. “So I feel like that’s our place, and I don’t think that they’ll ever want to share that, but that’s cool with me. I just want to blow shit up with my homeboys and make a bunch of dough. I’m not in this for trophies, but if my friends want to get them, I hope they do. I’m just not counting on it.”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Perry also discusses why stunt professionals are better suited for the director’s chair than certain other departments.
So you were part of the 87eleven family, and after the good fortune they had with John Wick, Chad Stahelski and Dave Leitch have made a point to pay it forward through their respective companies so that other stunt professionals can become directors, beginning with second unit and then first unit. You’re an example, as is Jonathan Eusebio. Is right now the best time, the most opportune time, as far as the greater ambitions of the stunt community?
It’s a great time, and I would say it all started back when they were doing movies like Hal Needham’s Smokey and the Bandit. I would then argue that second unit directing might be harder to direct than first unit. You not only have to come in on budget and on time, but you also have to not kill someone going 95 miles an hour with 15 cars and motorcycles exploding in a city. It makes for responsible filmmakers, so, yes, right now is the time thanks to Chad and Dave.
They’re both good friends of mine, but Chad was the one who produced my first movie [Day Shift]. He told me the hardest part for people like us isn’t directing, because we’ve been directing massive car chases all over the world. The hardest part is getting the opportunity to do it, because what they’re always going to say is, “But can you tell a story?” And my response is, “Am I doing Shakespeare? I’m not trying to win an Oscar, brother. I’m trying to make fun action movies.” So, yeah, this is a great time for second unit directors and stunt performers, and the flood gates are going to open even more.
15 years ago, we were coordinating and second unit directing for the visual effects supervisors that were directing. They came from making animatics, and [the studios] said, “Let’s make them directors.” But where they fell short a lot of the time was that they didn’t have any human experience. We train actors. We trained Keanu Reeves for three months. We trained Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton on Warrior. We train everybody to hold a gun this way or throw someone that way. So when you have that rapport with them, you kind of become their sensei. You’re trying to teach them how to be a badass and the best way to fake being a badass is to just turn them into a badass. So we have this one-on-one rapport from actually dealing with actors, and that’s hard to match from somebody who hits the enter button.
So, yes, I’ve been with 87eleven. I’m also a member of Stunts Unlimited, which has been around since the ‘70s. It’s like another fraternity. But 87eleven itself was this laboratory where you’ll see Jason Statham, Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron training on any given day. It was a laboratory to do the next thing that hasn’t been done before. We never wanted to say, “Well, let’s just do the old,” because you’ve failed as an action filmmaker if you’ve repeated yourself. There’s such a thing as homage, but don’t just copy. So that’s probably one of the reasons we don’t really watch action movies while we’re directing action movies.
Dave Bautista in The Killer’s Game
Courtesy of Lionsgate
After the 2022 release of your feature directorial debut, Day Shift, you moved relatively quickly onto this project, which had a lengthy development process of nearly three decades. That might be a red flag for some people, but did you just use that history as motivation? Was it motivating to potentially be the one to crack it after all this time?
Well, this movie came to me ten years ago. They wanted me to be the stunt coordinator. So I read it and was like, “Cool.” Then they came to me three years ago to be the second unit director; another director and another actor were going to do it. I then brought [producer] Andrew Lazar into the editing room for Day Shift to show him my director’s cut, and that’s when he offered me The Killer’s Game. And then getting Dave Bautista was like winning the lotto. It was a big win.
I then got to bring on [writer] James Coyne, and we added some characters. Like you said, the script had been around so long that a lot of the characters had been lifted and put into other films. People read it and passed it around, and they put some of the ideas into their films. So I didn’t want to do what was in the original book or script, because it had just been around so long that people had poached from it. I don’t want to say what movies, but I just wanted to get a fresh take.
So I had some ideas for Korean characters. I had some ideas for my dancing Latino brother. I had an idea for unintelligible Scottish brothers because of my experience working in Scotland. I couldn’t understand a word anyone said, but it sounded cool. So together with my buddy James Coyne, who’s an amazing writer, we put some of my DNA into it, and that’s how it all happened for me.
I didn’t think I was going to become a director. When I got out of the Army, I was just really grateful to be a stuntman. I then started directing second unit, and I thought, “This is it. This is awesome.” As a second unit director, you can direct action in three movies a year. As a director, you can do one movie every nine months. I just finished my third one [Afterburn] a month ago. I like to keep going fast.
The Killer’s Game, we shot it during the SAG strike. We had an [interim agreement], so it created an opportunity where I could call all of my friends that I’d worked with in the past, like Pom Klementieff, Terry Crews and Scott Adkins. If you know you’re going to go somewhere and shoot a movie in 42 days, it’s going to be a grind. So you should bring all your homies with you, and that’s what I did. If you stack your deck full of aces, you’re probably going to win that hand.
While it’s brief, did you give Dave Bautista’s character your own Army backstory?
In Day Shift and Killer’s Game, [Jamie Foxx and Dave Bautista] have the 82nd Airborne tattoo. I put it on both of them. Even Snoop Dogg had it. So I always try to sneak in the two As, for All American, somewhere. I spray painted them in the background on my upcoming film Afterburn, as well. [Bautista] didn’t want the tattoo again, but I spray painted it in the background a couple of times. So I always respect and try to hire prior service, something I’m super proud of.
What did you learn from your first go-round on Day Shift that you wanted to apply here?
Budgeting my time a little better. Day Shift was a 42-day shoot. Killer’s Game was a 42-day shoot. Afterburn was a 42 or 43-day shoot. When I direct second unit for other directors, I just do the action for them, and they usually have 55 days to my 20 days. So, technically, there’s 75 days, but we’ve shot my three movies in 42 or 43 days.
I know what to do with the action because that’s my neighborhood, but when it comes to the drama, the comedy and the character development, you have to take your time. You can’t rush the actors. You can’t just gloss over it. It’s got to work. So from Day Shift, I definitely learned to budget my time, and that’s probably the biggest lesson I learned.
I really don’t want to say what the other lesson was. (Laughs.) But I learned a lot of things in post on Day Shift, because, as a second unit director, you never go to post. You only prepare and you shoot. Post is another animal. I was like, “Whoa, I didn’t know that was going to happen.” So I learned about post on Day Shift to where I knew exactly what I had to do on Killer’s Game.
Dave Bautista and Sofia Boutella in The Killer’s Game
Courtesy of Lionsgate
You created this grounded and elegantly lit world in Budapest, but then you have various visual flourishes throughout the movie. What was the idea behind that contrast?
I wasn’t really setting out to make an action movie, my brother. I set out to make a love story that has a head-on collision with a ridiculously fun action movie. When I shot Dave and Sofia [Boutella] falling in love, I dressed them in soft colors. We lit them very softly. If you watch the first act, it’s lit quite differently than the second and third act by design. I also wanted to dress Dave differently and put loafers on him. He went, “Hey brother, I’m not used to wearing these clothes.” And I said, “You look handsome. You look great.” But we wanted to make him look softer, and I feel like we did a good job of that. I watched the first Thomas Crown Affair for the slide transitions and the split screening. I always felt that it was such a slick movie, and I wanted to do something interesting to get me from point A to point B.
Dave has an extensive history with fight choreography, so did you look at his body of work to see what you could expand on and highlight?
All the guys that come from WWE are live show performers, and I’ve been working with those guys since the ‘90s, like Hulk Hogan and the late Randy “Macho Man” Savage. I’ve worked with all of them on different shows as a stuntman, a fight coordinator, a stunt coordinator, second unit director. Dave’s ability to retain choreography is second to none. You show him a fight scene, he looks at it, and he knows everything. Now, he has a background in combat sports, in real combat sports. He’s a badass pro wrestler, but he is also a brown belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He competed in MMA a few times. He’s got great hands as a boxer. So having a starting pitcher that can pretty much do everything, it makes the way that we cover it easy. You’re not hiding a double, so the action becomes the star of the scene. The audience feels when you’re trying to hide something. You’re either on overs or you’re behind the lead and the bad guy. But now, when we’re in a wide shot, you see everybody doing everything because everybody can do it. These action actors are all amazing, so I think we did really well here. It’s about creating a problem for your protagonist and showing how they solve it.
On Day Shift, you had to fight for that motorcycle crash shot. What did you have to go to bat for on this one?
My producers were very, very generous. They worked really hard to make sure that I got everything that I needed and a lot of the things that I wanted, so I don’t think I had to fight for anything on this one. Lionsgate has been a great partner to me, as well. I was also ready for post on this one. Like I said, I didn’t know what post was on Day Shift, and I kind of got ambushed a little bit. I probably shouldn’t say that, but I understood what was coming this time and I also tested the movie before we showed it to Lionsgate. We tested it ourselves. The testing process is like hunting. If you know the animal that you’re hunting, you have a better chance of getting them. So I heard what the target market wanted and got their critiques. I left my ego at home and just took the notes and listened to what people liked and didn’t like. I’m more interested in what people don’t like than what they do like.
Day Shift got a lot of attention for its contortionist gags, and you’d been pitching them to directors on various movies for many years. What was The Killer’s Game’s creative equivalent?
Well, the characters have been in my head. I’d also pitched them to other directors for years on different movies as a second unit director. I used to compete in Taekwondo, and there was a guy in my gym that used to wear a Walkman. And when he had the Walkman on, he was way better than when he didn’t have it on. You didn’t want to spar with him when he had the Walkman on because he’d tune you up, so we tried to take out the batteries when he wasn’t looking. But that was where Marko’s [Zaror] character came from.
The motorcycle sequence is another one. We hired a couple of these trick riders, X Games guys, and we wanted to create motorcycle kung fu. That was super fun, but unfortunately, we didn’t have a lot of time to shoot it.
I have an amazing action team that helps me. We always stay in the same hotel, and we’ve been on the road together for 10 to 12 years. We’ve done 30 to 40 films all over the world, and we cut the action every night in my room after we shoot it. We might order some room service, and there might be a little beer involved, as we talk about what we just did and what we are doing tomorrow and whether we missed anything. So that informs the next day, and it’s not just me alone coming up with action. I wish I could take credit for it all, selfishly, but I have this amazing team with me all the time. It’s constantly an ideas factory.
Dave Leitch made an entire movie recently to celebrate the stunt community and their craft, and while Ryan Gosling joked that The Fall Guy was just a big campaign to finally get a Best Stunt Oscar, there really seemed to be momentum earlier this summer. Have you changed your mind on this subject at all? I know you had doubts a couple years ago.
No, they’re not going to give it to us, and I’ll tell you why. When a stuntman gets the Oscar, what they’re saying is Ryan Gosling didn’t do the stunt. When the stunt coordinator or the second unit director gets an Oscar, you’re saying that the director didn’t do it; it was them. And the side of the business that we’re in and that I came up in isn’t like that. It’s very much like, “No, he did everything.” You never claim anything. No matter how hurt you are, you get up, you shake it off and you say, “I’m fine.” So I feel like that’s our place, and I don’t think that they’ll ever want to share that, but that’s cool with me. I just want to go around and blow shit up with my homeboys and make a bunch of dough. I’m not in this for trophies, but if my friends want to get them, I hope they do. I’m just not counting on it.
To play devil’s advocate, couldn’t you say that about the production design Oscar (or most other technical categories)? Is the production designer’s Oscar taking away from the director’s vision for the sets?
You can [say that], but they give them the nod. We design the action in movies for the most part. That’s the way it goes. And like I said, they pay me, and I’m super stoked to do that job. Being a stuntman was one of the funnest things in the world for me when I got out of the Army. When they shoot you, strawberry jelly comes out, and that was awesome. So to kick sand in the boss’s face and the producer’s face, they’re probably not going to do that. Again, I hope my friends who want it get it, but I’m not counting on it. I understand your point about the production designer and the art department and the hair and makeup team and even VFX, but I still don’t think we’re going to get that nod.
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The Killer’s Game is now playing in movie theaters.