Death Race - Jason Statham interview
Compiled by Jack Foley
JASON Statham was an Olympic diver on the British National Diving Team and finished 12th in the World Championships in 1992. He was also a fashion model and black market wheeler-dealer before graduating to a prospering acting career.
In this syndicated interview, he talks about appearing in Death Race, driving fast cars, visiting prison as part of his research and getting into the right kind of physical shape…
Q. At one point while making the film, you said you hadn’t driven the cars. Have you now?
Jason Statham: Yes, I have. But I had to do a lot of pressurizing. They get really bloody concerned because the track had many pylons and girders sticking out that they were shitting themselves, thinking that I was going to smack into them. Once I’d done a few laps and shown them a few moves and said ‘This is fine’, then they started relaxing a little bit; they let me get stuck in.
Q. Which cars did you take out on the track?
Jason Statham: The Mustang was by far the first choice. It was one of the reasons I was so excited about doing the film. Bullitt was one of my favourites films; I love the McQueen movies and he gets to drive the old VA5 spec. In my taste, I’m more European. American muscles motors are fine in a straight line but when you want to throw them around corners they are bloody awful. Still, the Mustang is classic motor.
Q. Was this one tricky to drive?
Jason Statham: Yes, because it’s 650bhp. They did a serious job on the engine. They had to because it was so bloody heavy with guns and all the stuff they’d nailed on to it. I never knew how fast we were going because it didn’t have an active speedo! They’d literally taken out the dashboard, all that, anything that was useable and replaced it with all these speedos from different cars, different dials. They just wanted to smash it up and make it look more Mad Max than anything refined and straight out of the factory. And, anyway, the track didn’t allow for any high-speed thrashing. It wasn’t that sort of track; there was lots of gravel, lots of corners and lots of banging into each other. I remember banging into the Dodge Ram and it was a bloody nightmare, because as soon as the Ram makes contact it is so heavy. You’ve got the pillar there; you’ve got the wall there. It was like the dodgems, very expensive dodgems.
Q. You love cars, so other than the Mustang, which were your favourites?
Jason Statham: I thought the chop-top Buick Riviera was the best-looking car of them all. I thought it had the visual appeal. It’s almost like a German tank; it looks bloody cool. They did a great job with that.
Q. You’ve just bought a Porsche like the one in the movie, right?
Jason Statham: Yes. I’ve just bought the 9/11, the new GT2. I love a German motor. I’ve had several Audis for many years now. The RS6 is still in the garage. I’ve got a S8, too. So I’ve still got the Audis sitting there. I wanted some thing a bit more zip, though, something to take round this track I know. A couple of the stunt drivers from this film go there. It was a case of ‘bloody hell I’ve been doing all this work, let’s have a bit of fun out on the track. My GT2 arrives next week; I’m well excited.
Q. Death Race must have been a dream job…
Jason Statham: Yes, of course, you go bloody hurtling round the track with guns and ejector seats at your disposal. You know I remember Goldfinger. That’s the first time I’d ever seen an ejector seat in a car. Awesome, lots of fun. That’s classic. With Death Race I just love the look of the cars. The armour in there is great. German cars with anti aircraft bloody guns. There are 50-calibre machine guns on the hood there. We had a technical guy who came in and told us about all the damage some of these machine guns do.
Q. You must’ve fired a fair few machine guns during your career. Do you still get a kick out of it?
Jason Statham: Oh, yes. There’s a shooting school about one hour from L.A. and I’ve got a friend who was the armourer for Crank. He’s got a Class 3 licence, and there aren’t many people who have those. So that means we can shoot everything, Uzis, pump-action shotguns, you name it. You go there with a suitcase full of ammunition and just fire way into the hills. It’s the one of the best kicks in the world. Boys will be boys, eh?
Q. You visited Corcoran high security prison to get a feel of incarceration before you shot the film. How was that?
Jason Statham: It was quite worrying. There was this fella, a mass murderer. He’d done X amount of decapitations on the outside, and he’d done several on the inside. He was in a bit of a bad way, because he was in a medical ward and I think they were just giving him a bit of relief time because he was on his last legs. But he was one mean mother and the warder was sort of tapping on the window to get his attention and he came up to the glass. He looked – and he’d got these really cold, dark murderer’s eyes – and he said: “I know who you are. Do you know who you look like? Jason Statham.” And we all went: “How the hell does he know that?” I’m probably on his list! It was quite funny, quite bizarre.
Q. What did you learn from visiting Corcoran?
Jason Statham: It’s a priceless experience, the whole thing. You can only imagine the type of atmosphere. You sit in a cell and you feel what it’s like. You see the guards. They ain’t messing around. There’s no warning shots at the prison. There’s a big sign in the mess hall: ‘Warning! No Warning Shots!’ When I came back from that I said: “I’m never going to commit another crime as long as I have a hole in my arse!” It’s like: “No way!” I was frightened. Really, it’s not for the weak-hearted. It’s a real place that sorts the men from the boys.
Q. You got really beefed up for this film. Were you tempted to keep the same body shape and punishing regime once the film was done?
Jason Statham: Nah. It’s hard to keep that up. You go bananas. There’s no booze, there’s no sugar, there’s no refined carbohydrates so it’s a real testing time and to try to keep it up that regime for the period of a movie let alone what I’ve done, is bloody hard. You just have to go and hang up the gloves and order a pizza. Saying that, while it’s difficult, you do feel good. There are benefits of doing something as strict as what I did for Death Race, I do recommend it to anyone, but you do have to have a reason to go that deep. You need an incentive.