Jesse Johnson

Jesse Johnson began his Hollywood career being a stuntman on various A-list films like 'Total Recall' and 'Charlie's Angels' to name only a couple. The British native has been doing this for twenty years. Along the way he started writing and directing his own smaller action films.

He has written four of the eight movies he has directed. Most of his work is concerned with outsiders, loners, and misfits looking for the missing piece of their lives. Not content to make another shoot em' up, he bypasses the typical action movie staples for more cerebral and emotional styles.

His latest release 'Charlie Valentine' won the best screenplay award at the Monaco International Film Festival, 2009 and also won Best Picture at the Pasadena AOF Film Festival in 2009.

Johnson has a black belt in "Lau Gar" Style Kung-Fu (Under Neville Wray) and competed at tournament level (semi-contact) where he ranked nationally in the UK from 1990-91.

This filmmaker is a family man living in Los Angeles with his wife and daughters. I have been familiar with his films since 2005's 'Pit Fighter.' I had a chance to photograph Jesse Johnson a couple of weeks ago. He is warm and witty in person with a contagious smile. Richard Levi helped out with the photo session and then we learned a little more about this talented creative and athletic man.

A special thanks to my Facebook friend Brett Ashworth in England for suggesting this blog.

AM: Hi Jesse, I see by your film credits that you are a stuntman in all these A-list movies. Are you a stunt coordinator?

JJ: No I'm not. I did stunt coordinate a couple of pictures and decided it wasn't where I wanted to be.

AM: Why not?

JJ: You have to be particular about what you want to do. There are a lot of people who desperately want to be stunt coordinators and it takes time and a commitment and I wasn't prepared to do that. I have always wanted to be a writer and a director. I came here to do that. Stunt work offered me a chance to finance those endeavors.

AM: Do you have a philosophy you live by?

JJ: You have to be passionate about what you do, not just work wise, but also how you live your life. If you don't fill your life with things that you are passionate about you become an angry person. I didn't want to become that kind of person. I do enjoy doing stunt work a day or two on different sets. It still makes my heart beat. I still can't sleep the night before I do one of those gags. I go in and do it, then I focus back on my writing and directing.

AM: What's the most dangerous stunt you've ever done?

JJ: It's a really boring answer and not the answer you want to hear.

AM: That sounds interesting.

JJ: The truth of the matter is, and this will hold true if you ask this of almost any stuntman, the most dangerous stunt is the smaller one that you forget to prepare for. It will be one that you think is going to be easy so you don't warm up for it. Those are the ones that usually catch you. The big stunts that you spend two weeks rehearsing are safer. There are things that can go wrong but not as often.

AM: Can you give an example of a small stunt?

JJ: I had a day job doing a commercial where I wrestled a Samoan wrestler. I thought it would be in and out. I ended up getting a compound fracture from that. I got whisked off to the hospital and they had to put the bone back in my leg. I thought it would be an easy job and I almost lost my foot!

AM: That's horrifying!

JJ: It was such a small stunt and look what happened!. It put me out of work for six months. It's funny how it works. Now getting back to the answer that people want to hear. (laughing) Walking the plank into shark infested waters in the China Sea during "Cutthroat Island" was a blast. We shot in Malta and Thailand. I could see the sharks circling around and frothing up the water because they were in a frenzy. That was pretty interesting.

AM: I don't know how you did that?

JJ: The sharks take a minute to figure out you are in the water so we had to get rescued out of the water before the sharks could get us.

AM: I'm assuming that you go from stunts to writing.

JJ: Yes, I take my computer to the set and I write when I can.

AM: Do you write the films that you direct?

JJ: I'm about 50/50 at the moment. I have directed eight films and I wrote four of them. The other four were assignments, work for hire.

AM: What's the main difference between writing and directing?

JJ: It's very difficult to make a film. When you write you are very aware that you are your own task master. The moment the script becomes financed it becomes a group endeavor. It's very easy to lose the ability to make the movie yours again. The integrity of your story can be damaged in the production stage. The most damning of all is post production. If you're not involved with that, it can be very difficult to not be compromised. It took me about six movies to find my way of traversing those waters.

AM: What were you doing wrong?

JJ: I started out very argumentative and feisty. I would physically challenge people on set who got in the way of my artistic goal. For three films in a row they relieved me the moment the film was finished. I had control of the set because I was scary and yelling in people's faces. I was aggressive and got what I wanted. It was all for nothing because the minute we finished filming the producers took over the editing, so they got what they wanted.

AM: How did you change?

JJ: Around film four I realized perhaps the aggressive stance was not the way to go, for me at least. I then became the nicest guy in the world. I tried to please everyone and made a lot of friends. In the same way you try to keep your wife happy, as in a happy wife is a happy life, I tried to keep my producers happy. I think I went overboard and the film was compromised by me, which is worse than having someone else compromise it.

AM: It sounds like that would be hard to cope with.

JJ: I literally took some time off and looked at what was really going on. I decided to hit a middle ground on the two styles, and on the last two films I made, I am very pleased with how they turned out. It might be a maturing of character on my part. It's a little easier now.

AM: I notice you have a theme to your characters as loners and anti-heroes.

JJ: It certainly seems to be, doesn't it?

AM: Why is that attractive to you?

JJ: I've always been interested in people that were driven by goals that weren't necessarily money related or revenge related that we've seen a hundred million movies about. I've always been interested in the guy that wants to play life on his own rules and not compromise his own ideals, whether or not we agree with it or not, they are ideals that the particular character doesn't want to compromise. I'm bored with the whole revenge plot. I'm a romantic and I'd like to think there is something else out there.

AM: Do you want to stay in this genre for your future films?

JJ: I'm not sure. The truth of the matter is you can't make a movie about a story you're not hungry for because it takes about a year and a half of your life. Then you still have to sell the film verbally so it's got to be something you're passionate about. The moment I stop being passionate about it I will move on to another subject. I don't think I've licked it yet.

AM: You are getting better and better reviews with each film aren't you?

JJ: Yes a lot of it is understanding how to traverse the creative process when you are working in a group. I feel that had I understood what I know now, when I was making "Pit Fighter" and I do stay up at night dreaming about having a chance to redo that film because the script was something special, that I could do a better job.

AM: Why were you less happy with the finished film?

JJ: There was so much in-fighting that happened. We lost all of the interesting parts of the script and ended up with all this violence in the pit fights and machine guns. The heart of that story was so much deeper and there was only a very small amount of that left in the film which is a pale shadow of what was in the script, that got the film made in the first place.

AM: Why do you think this happened?

JJ: It was purely through my lack of understanding how to express what I wanted to the producers at the time. I feel that as a writer some of my early works are just as good as the ones now, but it's the ability to get what you want into the finished film that I have achieved during the last two. Maybe I'm just working with better producers, who knows?

AM: You tend to work with a lot of the same actors. Why is that?

JJ: I love working with the same actors. I think we are all growing at the same time as artists. There is a familiarity there.

AM: Does that make the work easier?

JJ: I don't look for easiness in an actor. If you look at some of the guys I continue to work with, these are not guys who are known as being easy. Ease is not something that is necessarily attractive to me. What is attractive to me is that indescribable something that when five guys are on the screen, your eyes keep going to the same guy every time. The guys you see me keep coming back to are the ones that have that chemical magnetism, and believe me they aren't always the easiest to work with, but there's something about them you can't put your finger on. There is a technique they have, whether they are conscious of it or not, it is something that's very interesting. It's like alchemy.

AM: So even if an actor is not your favorite personality you can put up with the trouble for a good film?

JJ: I love the challenge of trying to figure out how to work with them. You'll have fights sometimes but that's OK. They're artistic fights and that's fun.

AM: Do you invite actors opinions?

JJ: Always yes, absolutely. You will run into actors who do not want to be involved. They just want to be guided and I can dig that style too. You have to love actors to do what we do. I have an enormous love of the craft and what they do.

AM: Do you see yourself ever acting?

JJ: I have tried acting in every film but I always get cut out! (much laughter) I had quite a big part in "The Butcher" and it was cut down pretty small I must say. It was a very awkward conversation with the editor. He was beating around the bush. Finally he didn't say anything at all. He just showed me the movie. I said, "So you cut me out!" He said, "Well...yes."

AM: Do you think you can act?

JJ: I think I'm a good actor. Every once in a while I'll put myself in a picture that a friend is producing or directing to remind myself of the absolute catatonic fear that grips me before I do that. It's a good thing to appreciate what these guys have to go through before they enter their artistic process, dealing with that fear of standing in front of a crew and doing the actual basics of what's involved with the craft. Let alone putting your own artistic thumbprint on it. To do that once and a while to remember what it's like is useful. I enjoy doing it.

AM: What films are coming up for you?

JJ: There are about four or five we have in the works at the moment that are very interesting. There's a thriller that takes place in a cabin ski lodge. A little bit of a change for me, but that's challenging in it's own sense. It's an ensemble piece which I'm very excited about. It's more of a horror piece if you were going to classify it. Then there's a film that's very, very personal that I wrote with an actor which is about a South London villain. It's an epic piece and one we are actively developing with the London Film Council which I'm really, really excited about.

AM: Will you shoot over there?

JJ: That will be shot in South London all on location. It's really fun. I think it's a take on a familiar subject which is to me highly original and hasn't been done before. It's a first person movie which I've never done before. He talks to the camera. It's something that is exciting to me.

AM: So you must be very excited about this!

JJ: The unfortunate thing now is that I am no longer naive as to what can ruin a movie so as we're putting these films together there'll be offers and different ways of making the film, but as I am no longer naive, I can see that the film won't be good if I pursue it that way so you end up being less gung ho about things.

AM: But you still have your stunt work all the time.

JJ: Absolutely I've been working on "Thor" out in New Mexico.

AM: Do you meet people on the big film sets that you want to be in your films?

JJ: I can do that, but I would never be so obvious as to approach someone on a set to be in my movie. It would make me a very unpopular stuntman very quickly. If you were to do that you would want it to be organic and be subtle.

AM: So really, you keep your two careers very separate.

JJ: I keep them very separate. For the most part, there aren't very many people on a set who know that I write and direct.

AM: Are you just another stunt guy?

JJ: I rather like the anonymity of it. I'll go to the dressing room and work on my laptop. It's probably one of the most wonderful, fun and exciting summer jobs you can have. I'm very, very lucky to be able to do it.

photos: Alan Mercer assisted by: Richard Levi

To learn more about Jesse Johnson visit his web site http://www.jessevjohnson.webs.com/