Transporter 2 - Jason Statham interview
Compiled by Jack Foley
Q. You did all your own stunts in Transporter 2, any scrapes or lucky escapes when you thought you were dead?
A. Well, there are always plenty of physical demands in an action movie. But I tend to do all my own stunts as much as they allow me to do. I do all my own fight routines. They are not dangerous necessarily so there is no need to get a stunt man involved with that. I do as much of the driving as possible and it’s pretty much as much as they allow me to do. I’m pretty game for anything they throw at me.
Q .Did you have a lucky escape?
A. I got a twisted ankle, a pulled hamstring. I got a bit of shrapnel from a squib in the wrist. There was a close shave when I jumped from the jet ski to the back of this moving bus, there was nowhere to put any safety rigs. Two vehicles traveling at 30 miles an hour independently so it can be a little bit hairy jumping from the back of one to the other.
Q. What’s the most dramatic stunt you’ve ever had to perform, maybe not in this movie, but in other movies? Is there a stunt where you have really done serious damage or pissing your pants with fear so to speak?
A. Um, this has probably supplied me with some of the more dangerous stuff I’ve done. Even jumping on a ramp like a gypsy in the stunt going on the back, I was jumping in a very small enclosed bay area so if you get it wrong you get thrown into a brick wall so you have to be on your toes with all that kind of stuff.
Q. How many of the driving stunts did you do?
A. I did as much as they’d allow me because that’s my favourite stuff, you know? Always as a kid I dreamt of being a Formula One driver. That would have been amazing. Even as kids we used to buy the hatchback GTIs and race each other, so I’ve always had a passion for being a bit of a loose cannon behind the wheel.
But now I’m just a boring old man who drives very safely, but only because I get to express myself in movies. When I got to jump in the Lamborghini it was on a big airfield where the airplane was on. I took that thing around and I was doing donuts and wheel spins and they said, ‘Calm down! We are going to need new tires and we haven’t shot the first scene yet!’
Q. Do you think your character in Transporter might be able to take the place of James Bond?
A. That’s a good observation. It’s the guy who drives the fast cars, can beat up the rest of the guys and gets the girl, but I don’t quite get the girl? You could say it’s a working-class James Bond. A Bond who drinks Heineken and not Dom Perignon champagne. He’s a bit less refined, but still very capable.
Q. Transporter 2 was supposed to be more violent than the first one. Is it?
A. My favorite action movies, my ultimate favorites are like Bruce Lee movies. They are always R-rated kind of movies. It’s a bit more graphic. I think if violence is going to be depicted in a film, then just show it how it should be. But that sometimes doesn’t translate to a movie like The Transporter because the tone of the movie is not like, say, something Martin Scorsese would do with Casino where he puts a guy’s head in a vice.
We are not trying to create gratuitous violence, but if there’s going to be some violence then I would like to see it followed through fully.
There is a part where a guy tries to kick me, his leg comes through the bar and I crack his leg or break his leg, but we can’t show that because it won’t make the ratings. It’s a shame to eliminate the kids from seeing it because there is some great fun stuff within it too that’s not to be taken seriously like some great car chases and an amazing chase on a Jet Ski and lots of fun things that ain’t to be taken too seriously so just to keep in those realistic harsh moments would be a shame to do that. I kind of came around to that thought eventually.
Q. Transporter 2, how was filming the second one different from the first one in terms of the physical side of things…was it very similar or did you take it to the next level?
A. Well obviously it is more demanding because we have tried to exceed what we did in the first one, making stunts a little bit bigger and we had a bit more money to spend and we wanted to make the movie bigger in its scope and I think we achieved that in the end. It was a great idea to shoot it in Miami and use that backdrop and go from there. I mean we sort of achieved everything we wanted to do from doing the second one.
Q. Were you really a black market salesman? I read you used to do that before Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, is that right?
A. I used to do it as a kid. I used to sell fake jewelry and perfume on the streets and it’s something that put me in the right place at the right time for Guy Ritchie because he was looking for someone who had done that kind of a thing when he made Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. He wanted someone authentic that would sit quite nicely into one of the characters that he had written so that’s pretty much how I got involved in the film industry.
Q. You were also a professional diver. How did that come about?
A. Well, I was just interested in it. I have always liked the Olympic sports and I thought this would be something to try and give it a go. I had an interest in being a stunt man when I was a kid so this is one step closer to doing high diving. It’s obviously something that would have helped me if I had pursued that route.
Q. A lot of your roles, you play the hard man, the tough guy. Are they the roles you want to continue playing or is that a deliberate choice of yours to put out that image to get roles for those sort of films? What’s your thinking behind it?
A. Well, not necessarily. If you care to look at Guy Ritchie movies where I play someone that is very under the sense of bad guys. I mean I play the ones who are in trouble. There are much more badder-looking people within the Guy Ritchie movies than the roles that I get. So it’s not like I am the bad guy. There are always people way badder than me. But people just assume that. So it’s not like we’re searching out roles to try to be the bad guy, no. I mean I am not really the bad guy in any of the Transporter films.
Q. You are doing a remake to The Italian Job, it’s called The Brazilian Job, right?
A. Yeah, that’s coming up. They haven’t written the script yet. The prospect of working with Wahlberg and Charlize and little Seth Green is very exciting.
Q. You have had a great acting career. Do you sometimes look back to those days when acting wasn’t a dream of yours and pinch yourself? What do you think when you look back to before you got Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, when you look over your career?
A. Well, obviously, I have been very lucky. It’s one of those things. I was in the right place at the right time. It could have happened to anyone. Just fortunately it came my way. If someone gives you a bone, you got to run with it and see how far it goes. As long as you don’t get too carried away and you enjoy yourself and don’t take it too seriously, you are going to have a bit of fun with the whole thing.
Q. Which is better, the Lamborghini or the Audi?
A. It depends on what you are trying to do. If you want to flat-out race, you get in the Lamborghini. If you want a bit of comfort and you are taking the family out and you don’t want to mess up your suit, get in the Audi.