A 33 page script for a 100 minute movie... sure... why not?
The original script for blood ties was only 33 pages long. Rob likes to joke that Kely wrote the script after he shot it. Not really true but it did evolve and have to be rewritten several times to accommodate the rapidly changing logistics. Meant to start in America and finish in Thailand; when money and time ran out and we came back to the US with an unfinished movie, it was then rewritten to end in the US and then once again rewritten to wind it back up in Thailand.
Extremely detailed and certainly setting up the characters, those first pages represent the first 25 minutes of the finished movie as well as the "DC War Room" with the confrontation between the two factions of the ISF - Randall and Hamilton. They also established the scope of our ambition as they took us on paper from Virginia to Georgia, then to New Orleans, Miami, and then Washington DC, all before arriving in Thailand. Only New Orleans would be cut, partly because it would have come across as establishing shot, which I was determined not to have in the film, (though later I compromised with the gateway from Cambodia into Thailand) and partly because the intervention of Mother Nature with a hurricane named Katrina.
One thing that the beginning of the script did accomplish and which stayed true to the entire film was that Jack Davis was emotionally scarred, driven to constantly move from point A to point B in the straightest line possible. So straight that we see Jack go through the ground (in the tunnel), and climb over the rocks and mountains, until finally we emphasize the point in the only static camera shot of the movie - Jack walking into the distance in the straightest line possible on the railroad tracks. He carries what little he needs with him. Possessions obviously mean nothing to him: after his whereabouts are discovered by the ISF, he tells Alfred - “Give me a couple of hours. Then burn the house.” Even through the rest of the film, he picks up what he needs as he goes along – his clothes, his boots, even the guns of his falling opponents. (the exception is near the end where he starts the final action sequence with a sword on his back – he had to get that ahead of time – but even that he discards as soon as he's done with it).
This constant movement was done over and over; off the train and across the tracks in Cambodia, cutting across Chinatown traffic, and certainly moving through as many people as it took to reach his brother.
Perhaps a bit subtle but Jack never stops moving toward "something", we never get the sense that he has arrived anywhere until he allows the truck to take him where its going and his final scene reuniting him with his daughter.
In contrast, his brother Jim is never in control - from his first tentative steps across the crush of Bangkok traffic and the kidnapping, to the many times he is dragged and prodded along - even as a child being pulled and pushed in directions not of his choosing - until Jim's final scene at the cemetery where we see he has come through it all and is now the master of his own destiny.
"The superfast cutting style was an attempt to mimic what the eye takes in, especially when one is thrown into an alien environment, where the eyes and the mind try to absorb it all."
Kely's idea, good or bad, was that with the realities of a handheld camera, the shakes and blurs and out of focused shots, which in turn was dictated mostly by the miniscule budget, was that the end result would have a somewhat documentary feel, a realism emphasized by the gritty choreography and rapid fire blocking.
With this idea in mind, Kely explains it like this. "Imagine being in the window seat of a restaurant. You are talking to your date, taking in the other people, the waiters and waitresses, the food and ambiance of the setting. A screech of tires and the shriek of metal on metal and you turn toward the street and watch 2 cars smashing into each other. So you now watch this bit of drama unfold. The police come, the drivers give their statements and try to reconcile the situation, the wreckers come and tow away the worst of the cars. You watch as one of the drivers makes a call on his cell phone and then waits until another car drives up to give him a ride. Soon its all over, you are back to your own world, probably talking about how you witnessed a car accident."
"We tried to do something similar in the script, the story, the filming and the editing of Blood Ties. You get to witness the events and take in some of the information, enough to piece things together and enjoy the story and yet... you do not know the names of the people involved. Nor the names of the police. You do not know where they work, or their wives or girlfriends names. You do not know where they came from or where they are going, or what may happen to them now. All you know is what you have seen and how that directly effects you now."
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Jack's a really nice guy... Our first action scene, shot in Virginia and Georgia, was designed to not only emphasize Jack's physical prowess and martial abilities, but to show his reluctance to kill. Though he hits and kicks and breaks bones, he only kills those who are a direct threat to his own life. (the merc with his gun firing and the merc with a knife in his hand) This stays true until he kills Erik in the jungle fight – then all bets are off – as he told Sarin at the beginning of the third act in the boat, “I am going to get my brother, and if they try to stop me, I'm going to kill them all”. More coming soon... |
A girl everybody could love... The flashbacks with Jack's wife developed from trying to give more weight to the wife's character. Again, dictated by budget, we only had this beautiful actress, Ananum Awana, for one day. The market and park scenes were a means to get her to relax and trust us. Originally meant to be a bit more loving, her nervousness at being in her first film, being in a hotel room with 3 Americans and a video camera (she did bring three of her girlfriends for support), meant that I quickly rewrote the scene while they ate. The new scene would embrace her nervousness and use it in the scene. More coming soon... |
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Why beat the kids? Kely felt the flashback as children getting beat and protecting each other was extremely important. Relatively easy to cast (we did not have too many choices), it was actually easy to film”. One of the early problems was to get the children to quit laughing and smiling as we filmed it. We felt very fortunate to find 2 young actors who so quickly bonded to each other and really delivered on what I had envisioned. The role of the father was written to be played by Ted Huckabee, who I always knew could deliver the almost out of control rage the scene needed, and yet pull it back to be a strong, sympathetic character. |
We need a villian! Our bad guy(s) was played by Erik Markus Schuetz, a German actor living in Bangkok. A very accomplished martial artist and stuntman, I think Erik did a totally believable job of playing two separate characters; one deadly serious, and the other a bit goofy but just as tough. We first see “Markus” in the early sex scene where he shoots one of his men stealing his girls. Notice how much longer his hair is, and more important, how serious and economical he plays the scene. We will not see him again until breaking the baseball bat over Jim's leg. More coming soon... |
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Story Details... don't blink... The super fast cutting style was an attempt to mimic what the eye takes in, especially when one is thrown into an alien environment, where the eyes and the mind try to absorb it all at once. Certainly the raw, hand held camera work, and the speed of the editing make it even harder to pick up on all the story details, but nearly everything is tied together. Not expecting anybody to watch it 2 and 3 times, but I am pretty sure most people would keep finding new story points, hints. and plot details even after 5 or 6 viewings.
One small example: In the scene we fondly call the “Tourette's Scene”, where Jim is cursing out his hallucinatory vision of his brother, one of his first lines is “My brother, can beat up your brother” - a foreshadowing for the reveal of the second brother. More coming soon... |
Let's finish this thing Wow! Certainly too many to write. Many already in the books and some we could write ourselves. Sound, location recording, good mics, and taking out extra insurance on shipped luggage. Finding a way to back up the huge amounts of information (6 terabytes and counting) that Digital FIlm Design's processing created. Creating the most stable editing and processing environment possible and a way to log the thousands of files and changes. More coming soon... |
