Sergeant Jonathan Barton – page 2
During rehearsals and production I used to simply tell you: "JB, Castle is shooting those guys over there and killing these bastards here, make it look cool and use some bad ass weapons!" How did you turn those directions into action?
Well, for years I always get asked by Directors and actors, “Here, take this gun, show me what you’d do in this situation.” In the action scenes from PWZ, I walked through the locations and sets and mentally mapped out what I would do in the same situations. I also made notes about weapons systems, rates of fire, types of ammo, and numbers of bad guys so that I could create mission specific weapons and load out. During pre production I would make drawings of the rooms and the most logical actions needed to efficiently neutralize the targets. Then, I would contact the armorer and discuss availability of weapons. Needless to say, in Canada I couldn’t always get what I wanted because of their anti-gun laws. So whatever I could get, I worked with the Armorer and we built them.
Look, in a movie it’s easy to just shoot guns. Per your instructions I wanted to make this a Punisher that actually had to deal with running out of ammo, or transitioning to a different type of gun to shoot through a wall. These are real concerns and the Punisher looks better on screen when he has to do a combat reload as opposed to never running out of ammo, or a combat quick draw with a Smith and Wesson .50 cal custom to blow through a wall to kill a guy because his M-4 isn’t going to penetrate the 9inch cinder.
I took all that information and put blue tape down on the floor of the rehearsal sound stages in Montreal to the dimensions and layout of the different sets. Then I’d have the armorer bring specific kits of weapons for that particular scene and I’d invent the choreography around those parameters. When Ray would come in to rehearsals, I would walk him through the action, hand him the guns, and then we’d rehearse it hour after hour!
How hard was it to keep track with the amount of ammunition he has so that we can realistically portray when he would run out of ammo?
Very! Plus during filming in the freezing cold, the automatic weapons would jam in the middle of a take and Ray would combat reload on the fly, LIKE HE WAS TRAINED TO DO, but afterward I would have to look back at my notes and make adjustments to the scenes that followed. Thank god for the Iphone! I could track the action behind the monitors with you, and at the same time adjust for all the crazy shit that would happen!
(Uh, as a side note JB, some of those reloads might be missing in the final cut because different rules apply in the editing room and authenticity doesn’t always win against pacing, but at least we can say we shot it realisticly)
What did you think when I told you that I want Castle to hang upside down from the chandelier so he can shoot a whole bunch of goons in a short amount of time?
I said, “He’s the Punisher! Of course he could do that!” Look, you and I both know that we were stuck between a rock and a hard place with that scene. Your first idea wasn’t even a chandelier, but a dining room chair. Remember when they showed the chair they had invented?? We both shook our heads and looked at the ground in dismay knowing that it was never going to sell. The spinning chandelier turned out to be much cooler. We need to remember that he did that kind of shit in the comics! IMPROVISE, ADAPT, and OVERCOME.
