Paul Walker and Wayne Kramer Aren't Running
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Press: In some ways it’s also probably the most challenging work you’ve done. How did you prepare from the ground up – the accent, the physicality of the character?

Paul Walker: My lifestyle’s active. Attitude is attitude, whether you’re a West Coast gangster or East Coast gangster, you know? I grew up in the Valley and, you know, it’s mixed racially. I had Latino friends. I had black friends. And they thought they were thugs. A lot of them weren’t half the thug they thought they were, always getting into trouble.

But I know the attitude. I know the personality. My dad’s a biker and all the guys he comes around, most of them have got priors. They’ve been in and out of the joint, you know?

Wayne Kramer: This is what I’m talking about (laughing).

Paul Walker: Those are the guys I grew up around so there’s a lot to pull from. And then you know I worked with Chazz Palminteri. He’s in this movie and I worked with him on Noel. You know, he’s got his mobster crew buddies out there.

Wayne Kramer: Arthur Nascarella…

Paul Walker: Yeah, Arthur. I had guys to pull from at any given time. If there was ever a time I wasn’t comfortable with what I had to say, they were right there. They were the bullshit police for me, which was great. I grew up on gangster movies. I loved the mobsters, man. I mean growing up as a kid it was cowboys and Indians and it was mobsters. That’s an American childhood, you know. Those are the movies you grew up on.

Press: (A) hard R sensibility – what were some of the seminal films in that respect. Also, following up on that, there’s a theme in the film of satisfaction of revenge is very visceral. What are you feelings about the interaction you get there with an audience?

Paul Walker: I’ve always said that this film is very interactive. I’ve been to a couple of audience screenings and I can tell you the beats where they start like talking back to the screen and the whole pedophile scene, you can just start to feel sort of the anxiety building and sort of the silent chanting which then becomes vocal like, “Do it, do it. Do it!” You know what I mean?

I totally miss these kinds of movies that are these visceral, adrenaline rush experiences because Hollywood has become about the PG-13 watered-down film. And I remember growing up and seeing The Warriors and even 48 Hours was a tough movie. You know, we think of it more as comedic today but that was an R rated, just for the language itself. And the Peckinpah stuff and Scarface, which is a classic. And I felt like the momentum of a movie like Carlito’s Way, you know having to make it through the night and stuff like that. Dirty Harry…

Press: Charles Bronson?

Wayne Kramer: Oh yeah. It’s definitely got a Charles Bronson vibe. I don’t want to sound cheesy at all here when I mention this example of a movie that kind of seemed like wired through my brain on a subconscious level but it was a Steven Seagal movie, Out For Justice, you know where it takes place over the course of a night and he’s got to find the guy who’s killed his buddy. I’ll tell you, that is a bad ass movie, that movie.

Wayne Kramer: You know to me that was the last like really real movie he made. They called it Out for Justice but I remember that movie’s original title was The Price of Our Blood. I thought that would have been a much better title.

Press: Without giving anything away, was the ending that we saw the only ending that you shot or was there an alternate version?

Wayne Kramer: No. I get asked that question a lot and it was the only ending. And it’s interesting. In retrospect I’ve questioned whether that was the approach. But you know what? In the moment in watching that movie it’s such a brutal sort of…the audience just gets thrashed around and dragged through this. I always felt as a filmmaker, and I knew I made the right decision again last night, that it’s so intense an experience to just end up in a dark place where for the sake of being very noir about it or something like that I just think would have worked against this film because of how much you’re rooting for this guy and the situation, and enough people, enough blood gets spilled and it’s kind of like a dark fairy tale.

I do think it ends kind of well but probably with scars. We don’t know where that relationship is going and a lot of things, so it really was the only ending. But it could have worked definitely in another way and it was just… I know a lot of people probably think, “Well this is the studio forcing me to take that approach,” but I do tend to be a kind of a resolved ending kind of guy. You know if, and I say this, if a certain revolution was not made toward the end of the movie then I think a darker ending might have been more fitting for it.

Press: You also mentioned that the ending of the film is a release after so much pent up – almost claustrophobic – intensity.

Wayne Kramer: Yeah. It’s a really intense experience that, even I as the filmmaker who has lived with this film for a long time, when I see it I feel the audience going through it. I mean it really takes no prisoners in its approach. I liken the film to kind of like a primal scream.

Once Paul’s character realizes what’s happening it’s just bam, bam, bam, you know and I love watching his performance in the movie. It’s the most exciting thing for me about the film because there’s a crazy madness that plays in his eyes where he’s just crossed the line at some point. He’s in this woman’s apartment. She’s holding the baby and he’s yelling in her face. I really believe this man is fighting to save his life, his future, his family and everything else. There’s an intensity that Paul brings to it that I doubt another actor could have come through the door with.

Paul Walker: Every night.

Press: How did you live with that?

Paul Walker: I’ve never been the guy that brought anything home but when you’re forced to just reach certain levels… I mean, the only way to sell adrenaline and flying high is just to go there. You live it day in and day out. You can’t shut that off. I’d go home trembling. A girlfriend of mine came up to visit and she planned on spending some time with me. She spent four days with me and went home. She’s like, “You’re just too intense.” I couldn’t relax.

Wayne Kramer: For every scene up on the screen he’s really doing ten times on the day, so the amount of adrenaline that he’s having to manufacture is amazing.

Press: Paul, you’re a parent. I wonder what that brought to the experience of playing this guy?

Paul Walker: My family’s really close. My father’s like… Growing up as a kid, let’s put it this way. You know kids. As boys, you would engage in “Oh, my dad’s tougher than your dad. My dad has a shotgun. My dad has this…” You know? I wouldn’t even hold back. I was like, “My dad would kill every one of your dads.” I knew it.

My father’s a protector. My father’s old-school. He’s a cowboy. He’s not much when it comes to words of wisdom and just the pat on the back, he’s not very good. He’s a drill sergeant. He’s a Vietnam Vet. This is the mentality, this is the household I came up in.

So when I see it, it’s like… Hey look, people are going to think I’m sick and I’m twisted but when I read it I don’t think that there was anything that was unjustified. I’m sorry but this guy dug himself a hole and he dug his family a hole in the process. He’ll be damned if anything is going to happen to him. And besides, who’s he smokin’? Who’s he whacking along the way? They’re bad guys. The world isn’t going to miss them. So the whole way I’m going, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, do it!” I’m reading this thing, I’m going, “Yeah, fucking kill that guy!”

The pedophiles? If she didn’t smoke them, come on. That’s my favorite scene in the movie and the best thing about it is that the people who don’t get it, absolutely hate it. They go, “That scene just completely came out of left field.” I’m like, “You’re missing the point because that’s the whole idea.”

That’s my favorite scene. When I read it I said to Wayne, I said to Vera, I said, “I’m so jealous of you. That’s the most memorable scene in the movie.”

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Derek McCaw