00:00and I look over and Ben's just sweating and he has like sweat in his chest. I was like,
00:06this dude's serious. Hi guys, how are you? What's up? How's it going, man? Good. Matt,
00:12I want to start with you. You know, obviously you and Ben go way back, but here you get to
00:17work with him as your director. I'm willing to bet my career on Michael Jordan. Come on, man.
00:22You ask me what I do here. This is what I do. I find you players and I feel it this time.
00:29I'm curious. Did you learn anything new about him from going through that experience?
00:35I don't think so. I mean, I knew he was a great director, so that news wasn't surprising to me.
00:41And you know, we've worked so much together over the years in various capacities that
00:47this felt like a natural progression, you know, it didn't.
00:51You know, plus when I act opposite him, he gives me notes anyway. So, you know,
00:54that wasn't a change. No, it felt very natural to be directed by him. But boy, he is really good at
01:04it. I thought it was the real deal. And, you know, as an actor, as a director, he was really good.
01:09But I'll tell you what messed me up. When he actually picked up a 90 pound camera and held
01:16it like this and was literally getting, and we was doing a long take. It must have been like
01:22an eight minute take. And I look over and Ben's just sweating and he has like sweat in his chest.
01:28I was like, this dude's serious.
01:31Marlon, you remember how hot it was in that room? Because it was the middle of summer.
01:35And it was, you know, in those scenes, whenever you have a scene like that,
01:38you know, they turn the air conditioners off, right? Because it's no good for sound. And so
01:43it was cooking in this scene. Ben's trying to shoot the scene and, you know, and he's like,
01:48OK, start again. So Marlon and I are doing a bunch of them on repeat.
01:52By the end of it, Ben was just like soaking wet.
01:54Halfway through, you just see the camera go.
01:59Well, Marlon, maybe you can tell me, like, what was it about joining this that made you say yes?
02:03Like, I heard you jumped at it. And obviously it's such a good time with everybody on set.
02:07You know, if I had to equate this movie to a basketball team, it's the 92 Bulls. I gotta,
02:14I gotta jump on the 92 Bulls. It's just, you know, you got Ben, you got Matt, you got
02:20Tucker, you got, you know, Chris with this such an amazing job. Bateman, I'm a big fan of his.
02:26And then Viola Davis, I'd be a fool to say no. So, I mean, yeah.
02:32That's how I felt too. That's literally how I felt, Josh. I couldn't, this was one of the,
02:37I mean, and I said, I have not, I've never had a better time in terms of like,
02:41just completely all encompassing, like, because the work was so fun,
02:45but the people were just so great.
02:47Well, yeah, you basically had a front row seat for everybody, right? Like,
02:50everyone gets to work off of you. And it's just like, yeah.
02:54I showed up and I was opposite, like, Muhammad Ali every day. Nobody was like,
02:58I had a great heavyweight across from me no matter, no matter what day it was. It was,
03:02it was unbelievable.
03:03Well, I gotta ask you, I know you prepare a lot for your roles. I'm curious how much
03:07research went into this versus how much getting used to that belly?
03:12Well, it was a lot of, it was really about, you know, capturing the spirit of these guys. Like,
03:19Ben didn't want impersonations. He didn't want, you know, and he talked to all of us about that.
03:23You know, he's like, it's more about what this time meant to them. And, you know,
03:27I spoke to Sonny a good deal about it and his nostalgia for this time and
03:33how much he loved these guys and how, how they were like, you know, they were friends.
03:37They were kind of a misfit, you know, they're a band of kind of renegades. And, and they did
03:41this incredible thing that totally bucked conventional wisdom and it changed the world.
03:45And so that's what we were trying to capture, that spirit.
03:49Oh, absolutely. And Marlon, I want to ask you, if someone were to come to you and pitch you
03:53another shoe story, maybe about those big red boots, then I hear you like those. Would you
03:58be into that?
03:58I'm going to do the big red boots as a parody to this movie.
04:06I'm going to do that story. That is definitely the story I would do as a filmmaker.
04:12If you do that parody, you know, you have to cast all of us. We all have to come in.
Comments