00:00 And I look over and Ben's just sweating and he has like sweat in his chest.
00:05 I was like, this dude's serious.
00:07 Hi guys, how are you?
00:09 What's up? How you doing man?
00:10 Good. Matt, I want to start with you. You know, obviously you and Ben go way back,
00:16 but here you get to work with him as your director.
00:18 I'm willing to bet my career on Michael Jordan.
00:21 Come on, man.
00:22 You ask me what I do here, this is what I do.
00:24 I find you players and I f***ing feel it this time.
00:29 I'm curious, did you learn anything new about him from going through that experience?
00:33 I don't think so. I mean, I knew he was a great director,
00:38 so that news wasn't surprising to me.
00:40 And you know, we've worked so much together over the years in various capacities that
00:47 this felt like a natural progression, you know, it didn't...
00:50 You know, plus when I act opposite him, he gives me notes anyway, so you know, that wasn't a change.
00:56 No, it felt very natural to be directed by him, but boy, he is really good at it.
01:05 I thought he was the real deal and you know, as an actor, as a director, he was really good,
01:09 but I'll tell you what messed me up. When he actually picked up a 90-pound camera
01:15 and held it like this and was literally getting...
01:19 And we was doing a long take. It must have been like an eight-minute take,
01:22 and I look over and Ben's just sweating and he has like sweat in his chest.
01:28 I was like, "This dude's serious."
01:30 With Marlon, you remember how hot it was in that room? Because it was the middle of summer
01:35 and it was, you know, in those scenes, whenever you have a scene like that,
01:38 you know, they turn the air conditioners off, right? Because it's no good for sound.
01:43 And so it was cooking in this scene. Ben's trying to shoot the scene and,
01:47 you know, and he's like, "Okay, start again."
01:49 So Marlon and I are doing a bunch of them on repeat.
01:51 By the end of it, Ben was just like soaking wet.
01:54 Halfway through, you just see the camera go...
01:56 Well, Marlon, maybe you can tell me, like, what was it about joining this that made you say yes?
02:03 Like I heard you jumped at it and obviously it's such a good time with everybody on set.
02:07 You know, if I had to equate this movie to a basketball team, it's the 92 Bulls.
02:14 I gotta, I gotta jump on the 92 Bulls. It's just, you know, you got Ben,
02:18 you got Matt, you got Tucker, you got, you know, Chris with this such amazing job,
02:24 Bateman, I'm a big fan of his, and then Viola Davis. I'd be a fool to say no. So, I mean...
02:31 Yeah, that's how I felt too. That's literally how I felt, Josh. I couldn't, this was one of the,
02:36 I mean, and I've said, I have not, I've never had a better time in terms of like,
02:41 just completely all encompassing, like, because the work was so fun,
02:45 but the people were just so great.
02:47 Well, yeah, you basically had a front row seat for everybody, right? Like,
02:50 everyone gets to work off of you and it's just, like, yeah.
02:53 I showed up and I was opposite, like, Muhammad Ali every day. Nobody was like,
02:58 I had a great heavyweight across from me no matter, no matter what day it was. It was,
03:02 it was unbelievable.
03:02 Well, I gotta ask you, I know you prepare a lot for your roles. I'm curious how much
03:07 research went into this versus how much getting used to that, that belly?
03:12 Well, it was a lot of, it was really about, you know, capturing the, the spirit of these guys.
03:18 Like, Ben didn't want impersonations. He didn't want, you know, and he talked to all of us about
03:23 that, you know, he's like, it's more about what this time meant to them. And, you know, I spoke
03:28 to Sonny a good deal about it and, and, and, and his nostalgia for this time and how much he loved
03:33 these guys and how, how they were like, you know, they were friends. They were kind of a misfit,
03:38 but you know, they're a band of kind of renegades and, and they did this incredible thing that
03:42 totally bucked conventional wisdom and it changed the world. And so that's what we were trying to
03:47 capture that spirit.
03:48 Oh, absolutely. And Marlon, I want to ask you, uh, if someone were to come to you and pitch
03:53 you another shoe story, maybe about those big red boots, then I hear you like those.
03:57 Would you be into that?
03:58 I'm going to do the big red boots as a parody to this movie. I'm,
04:06 I'm going to do that story. That, that is definitely the story I would do as a filmmaker.
04:12 If you do that parody, you know, you have to cast all of us. We all have to come in.
Comments