The Merchant of Violence: A Two-Question Interview with JCVD

www.cutprintfilm.com/features/interviews/merchant-violence-two-question-pound-flesh-interview-jean-claude-van-damme/
The Merchant of Violence: A Two-Question Interview with Jean-Claude Van Damme
By
J. Tonzelli



May 6, 2015


NEARLY ALL OF OUR ACTION ICONS have gone direct to video, the lone holdout being Arnold Schwarzenegger. Though some of them have returned to grace the silver screen once again, Stallone, Gibson, Norris, Seagal, and Van Damme have each seen the box office receipts for their films dry out, their former audiences go missing in action, and newer audiences resisting their niche, relegating their late-’90s-2000s output to video store shelves and vending machines (that vend movies). The stigma of direct to video, though sometimes unfair, is mostly well deserved. Every genre is guilty of cluttering these shelves and gizmos with zero-level output, with many of them being shot in Vancouver, or Thailand, or if you’re really cheapening out, Bulgaria. Rent two or three of these direct-to-video entries from strictly the Seagal catalog alone, and you’re likely to swear off ever deviating from movie theater lobbies again. But, in the same way a trip to theaters doesn’t necessarily guarantee a quality film, a film having bypassed that theater doesn’t necessarily guarantee a waste of $2.99. One look no further than Van Damme’s later career to see that he figured out how to play the direct-to-video game, during which he made some of the best films in his entire body of work.


Van Damme’s theatrical take began consistently sputtering somewhere around 1995’s Sudden Death, and so it was of no surprise that within three years, Van Damme’s films began skipping theatrical bows altogether, beginning with 1998’s Legionnaire. (1999’s atrocious Universal Soldier: The Return is the lone exception within a ten-year period.) But during this time, there were silver linings. For instance, there was 2008’s JCVD, the semi-autobiographical but mostly fictional character study of the troubled actor, shot in his homeland of Belgium, which played an array of film festivals and garnered loving praise for Van Damme’s meta performance, especially his genuinely upsetting, tear-filled, unbroken rumination on his own life during which he lays it all out on the table—every sin, every regret, every hope. Though it didn’t launch him back into theaters, it did begin a new stage of Van Damme’s career in that, if his films were fated to go direct to video, then he was going to pick the best projects and work with the most competent filmmakers available to him. Direct to video didn’t necessarily have to mean parking his pride at the door, and so what would follow, from 2009’s Universal Soldier: Regeneration, up to and including this year’s Pound of Flesh, would be a solid body-of-work 2.0 that would show Van Damme turning a new corner in his career, playing a collection of tragic, haunted, addicted, aging, mourning, sadistic, and even hilarious characters. By and large, nearly all of these direct-to-video titles, at the very least, are far superior to the worst of the Van Damme efforts that made it into theaters. To watch Knock Off, co-starring Rob Schneider, and then the solid and thrilling Assassination Games, co-starring frequent collaborator and fellow action bad-ass Scott Adkins, and then realize the former went to theaters and the latter did not, makes you realize just how backwards and unforgiving Hollywood can be. Filmmaker Brian De Palma said it best: “You’re only as successful as your last movie.”

Van Damme’s first (and perhaps only) effort of 2015, Pound of Flesh, sees him returning to the world of the one-man army, with director Ernie Barbarash at the helm, who had previously directed Van Damme in the before-mentioned Assassination Games as well as the darker Taken-esque Six Bullets. In Pound of Flesh, Van Damme’s Deacon goes to bed with a sexy siren and wakes up in a bathtub of ice, a jagged scar racing across his back and his kidney missing. He goes on a violent, split-filled rampage across Thailand to get it back, smashing men’s faces with bibles and completely emasculating every pawn he comes across, because he’s Van Damme, and this is what he does.



The elusive demigod that is Van Damme recently agreed to a brief interview about his new kidney-stealing adventure, as well as reflecting on what it’s like to leave his comfort zone of the typical action hero to embrace different kinds of roles.


CutPrintFilm: This is your third collaboration with director Ernie Barbarash. How would you describe your working relationship?



JCVD: Ernie knows me. He gets it. He’s smart, you know? I like smart people. He’s very relaxed and quiet with the actors. He’s a cool guy, plus he’s a good director and a good writer.



But I’m afraid for Ernie. He’s done so many good movies. And they call him, in a sense, a doctor, because sometimes he comes on the set to fix movies. And they take advantage of his good heart. And, you know, he’s got to work. But I think Ernie should get the chance to [make] a movie with a studio one day, with or without me, where he can get the 55 days of shooting. Then you will see Ernie Barbarash.



CutPrintFilm: Your colleague, filmmaker John Hyams (director of Dragon Eyes and two Universal Soldier sequels), has stated that you have transitioned from a typical action star to someone more interested in doing character work, such as playing the villain, or leaning toward comedy. Is this true, and if so, what makes playing the villain or the comic relief more rewarding?



JCVD: If you play comedy, it’s the best, because [there’s] no ego, you know? Like, for example, in an action movie… Example, The Expendables—they all want to look better than the other because it’s about action, testosterone, and all that shit. So with comedy, the more goofy and stupid you are, the more you’re winning the case. And then the crew, they have fun. The lunch is about fun.



And you know what: my father told me, “One day, I expect you to do action/comedy. You’ll take [off].” Because, you know, I’m like this in real life…having fun. So I like comedy—action comedy. It’s kind of cool.