Richard Wenk, Writer of The Equalizer 1, 2, and 3, On The Lost Art Of Great Character Work

0:01 Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore. I'm a producer, writer of film and television and now a podcast producer. And despite having every streaming service, I never know what to watch. So anytime I watch something good, I talk about it on this show. This way, you'll never have the same problem I do. I watched this tonight. There's always something good to watch. Let's get started, all right today on the show. I am incredibly excited to welcome screenwriter Richard Wink to the program. Richard has written, amongst many things, Sixteen Blocks, The Mechanic, all three Equalizer films, The Magnificent Seven, The Protege, You've Got Fast, Charlie with James conn and his final film coming up. Welcome to the show, Richard. Well, thanks for having me and pleasure to be here. So I wanted to share with you why I have. Like I I the first time I signed with an agent myself as a writer, they were like, what what do you want to do? Like, what's your dream career basically? And I was like, I basically your career? Like literally I think at the time, I think at the time Equalizer was just about to come out and I had read the script. The script was sort of passed around, um, you know, within you know, I came up with a lot of people who were like assistance to lit agents and people like that, and I was a development executive myself, so you could get

1:34 your hands on the script. It was your script, right and um. And I remember reading it. And there's a moment in the first act of The Equalizer where Denzel's talking about the hundred books, right and um. And he talks about that, you know, his wife passed away and he's reading them now. He didn't have time before she died, and now he's reading them, and he says something effective. And I looked back at it. Actually, I wouldn't found him. Look back at it. Something effective. It'll give us something to talk about. And I remember very vividly reading that. And for me, how I took it was he's saying that when he dies and he sees her in the afterlife, the thing that he didn't do while she was alive, he's doing it now so that he can see her in the afterlife and be able to talk to her about it. Right.

2:20 And I was so moved by that, and I thought it was so beautiful and it's not like it's in a way and this is going to sound like a really harsh indictment of where we're at now in film, but in a way, it's kind of everything that's missing for me and the majority of films now in the sort of action thriller space is that kind of soul and that kind of like real like care to character and so anyway, it just had such a profound I stopped reading the script, like I read first thirty pages that it was so good. I was like, I don't want to ruin it for myself and I'll just wait and watch it when it comes out of a movie. But that was one of the big things that I wanted to talk to you about. Is this idea of the sort of invisible craft, right, is that, like, that's what I find so impressive at your writing is that it's not anything flashy or if it's calling attention to itself.

3:08 It's just kind of good, clean, old fashioned craft. And the power of that it's it's it's all comes through character. It's it's very difficult to write. I think we passed in the eighties and maybe the mid nineties story movies, you know, where plot drives the movie and action fits into the story and it's just you know, some visceral stuff. What's interesting about the scene you bring up, which is one of my favorite scenes, is that, Um, he never says his wife died. She recognizes in his eyes that he's a widower because he doesn't offer that, and that is that's the moment where he can with her, because he doesn't really connect with many people, right. He's a sort of a m a ronan and a guy, an isolating guy. UM. Very charming and very fine, but he's got a past, and he's got which we never explained, and he's got he's reading a book and he only tells her that after she realizes that he's you know, because he's got a wedding ring, so that she she was able to see past all that. UM put her in that position where he opened up a little bit to her and I was able to say that that line

4:42 to her. He never says it to anybody else. M The only other person in the movie that knows what happened, um was Melissa Leo's character, Susan Plumber. So um Uh. It's one of those things where the movie itself and here's maybe something that's interesting. I had have been offered The Equalizer five years earlier from another producer who were named nameless because he's in prison, and I passed because I thought it was a perfect television show. I thought, oh, you know, helping people and all that other stuff, and I didn't really like the Jaguar anything else. But five years later, Todd Black and Jason Blumenthal, Escape Artist, called and you know, mentioned that they had the rights to this and would i'd be interested in and I said no. And he said, well, we actually worked with Denzel Washington and he's agreed to read it without an offer. And I thought, oh, well, writing a script that Denzel Washington will read, it's sort of a step up, isn't it. Right, So so you know, it was really basically a spec script. It was basically And I said to them, I said, look, the only thing I would keep from that that this project, which is the title. I wouldn't keep anything else. I said, I think this is an origin story. I think it's a different character.

6:11 I think it's I think it's it's it's a character driven movie. But as Sony as as a Sony movie, you know, they want big movies and they want you know plot, and they want, you know, big steaks. So what's interesting about when you said that you read thirty pages and you stopped. You don't mind, I'll tell you the story because it's kind of wild. So I started writing the movie. In the first fifty pages are exactly what's in the movie, right word for word, scene for scene, beat for beat. But then the movie started as I was writing it, veering into the sony world of you know, he's chasing an old nemesis, a terrorist or something or I can't remember what it was. And I had written some really great scenes, fall off your chair, scenes they call him. But it took me down a path I just was bored with.

7:08 And I also happened to watch Safe House and I thought, hey, it's kind of the same movie. All right, it's turning in the same movie. So I called the producers and I said, I got to throw out these thirty five pages. I'm going to keep the fifty. I'm going to start again from there on. Oh you can't. They're the greatest and the best and so action. And I don't know Denzel Washington at this point. I've never met him. I've never spoken to him. I just know his movie. And I said, for whatever reason, I said, I said, oh, I think he's going to read the first fifty pages and love it, and then he's gonna get the page fifty one. He's gonna throw it in the pile with all the nose. And that kind of freaked him out a little bit. And they said, all right, we'll tell you what. We'll make a deal with You write it how you want to do it, but if we don't like it, you have to put that stuff back in and finish it. I said, okay, that's fair. So I wrote the movie as as you've seen, as the script as as it is. That that kept the character movie that I loved. So they got it. They liked it. They liked it a lot, and they decided they gave it to Denzel. And because my manager knows Denzel's agent and I got him his first job, I got him his job as an agent, we were all waiting to see what Denzel Washington would think of this script.

8:28 And this is not I'm not making any of this up, but yeah, he called my My agent called Denzel's agent, said, well, what's happening and he said, he just called me and he said, I'm on page fifty, tell me the next fifty year just as good. And he said, they're better. And he read it and called up Todd and said, Hi, this is Robert mccaull. When do we art And and he goes, And by the way, it's not a development deal, it's this is the script I'm shooting. So again, instinctually, you're right that we were in a we're in a we're losing sight of the fact that most everything derives from character. And if you if you care about the character, he can do anything. He can stick a corkscrew in a guy's mouth and and uh and kill him and women will still love him. And so it was a learning experience for me, you know. I there was my instincts at the time. I had just done expendables to um uh and the mechanic um and uh, well they were they were good scripts. UM. I was really looking to do something a little more that had a little more uh depth to it, a little more meaning to it, I guess is what I and I had read in the Wall Street Journal did a gallop pole that published a

10:03 gallop Pole then asked Americans to list the five things that would make your life better and it was not. And here's the answer. The answer was not health, it was not wealth, it was not love. It was justice. And I thought, oh, that's what this guy is. He's he's the guy you want living next door to you when you can't do something about something, and he'll do it for you. And that's a kind of a wish for filment movie. But you imbew it with a real guy, a real guy who has a real past and a real heartache and a real because violence is he knows secondhand. But the other the dealing with his wife and his and the loss and the idea that he doesn't know where to put himself.

10:54 So the movie really is about binding your purpose, right because by the end of the movie he realizes this is what I can do, right. So you picked up on my favorite scene, by the way, So yeah, you know, it's so interesting the idea of writing for an actor. I remember I was hired to write something for Ken Won Nabe. It was a Japanese company and the whole thing was basically, we have to get Ken Won Nabe. I remember a certain point I asked them, I said, what happens if Ken Wan Nabe doesn't want to do it? And they said, well, we don't want to talk, we don't want to think about that. Yes, and by the way, Kennon Abby said, no, we did not get made. But it is interesting that, like, and for you as a writer too, because I mean, obviously you're you were incredibly accomplished already by that point, but even still, I would imagine when you sit down and like, it's almost like do you have to shut that part of your brain off where you're like, I'm writing it for Denzel, but I don't want it to like I don't want to be paralyzed by that.

11:56 I don't want to let it drive too much of what I'm doing. Or is it the other way? We were like, you're trying to learn about him and what he would be into and your sense of him. I would say it's that it's the latter. Um, I'm not afraid of that. I in the Mechanic. They they when I was brought onto the Mechanic, they had I think there were thirty scripts over twenty years that they tried to do the Mechanic, and they were they were all over them. I didn't read them, but I was told, you know, he was in the army, he was this and that. But I'm like, I don't know what was wrong with the first movie. I just think you just need to update it, and you need to, you know, make character. And one of the things that they were running into was that they couldn't cast the Ben Foster role. It couldn't get anybody. It was the script they had just that wasn't any even it and again not making it up. They said, we really want Ben Foster for this part. So I wrote the part for Ben Foster. I mean, I don't know him, I know his work, I know what he can do, I know his what I see in him when I see in the movies, and what I suspect he has in him. And so that's what I wrote. I wrote a character that had enough depth and enough place in the movie that he said yes.

13:13 So I don't mind that. I don't have any problem writing for somebody. In fact, sometimes it helps, you know, it's funny, it makes me think of, you know, in my little world. It's the smaller version of this. We had a project where we could not cast exactly what you're describing, Ben Foster, the second lead right right. We offered it to like ten people. They all passed and Finally I said, all right, let's rewrite the introduction scene. We'll leave the rest of it the same, but let's just rewrite the introduction scene. And it was a Western, but I basically did the scene from The Godfather when James conn beats up the guy who's hidden woman. Right, And even though this was a villain, that to introduce him that way with a scene that you actually were kind of rooting for him. And the next person we offered it to say yes, which was Round Probleman and he was great in the movie. But yeah, it's so interesting that I think that an underrated part of this, and obviously a great skill of yours, is it's all predicated on getting the star to say yes, right, bottom line, that's what runs the bottom line.

14:16 There's the bottom line. And so it's like, if you have if you can get to a place where you can write the role that will get the star to say yes, that is an invaluable skill. And do you think that there's anything that people sort of don't like? The big thing that comes to mind for me is like, I do think that there is a misconception that stars want to play the coolest guy, right, he's perfect he's awesome, And I think it's quite the opposite. I think the most good actors want to play somebody who's not that and they I think they want to play a real person and they want to flaws and all right and a well written character. Also, they don't want to play the same character, you know, the good actors, right, Um, you know, you don't see Denzel playing you know, other than an Equalizer's trilogy. He basically you know, he goes from plight to you know, unstoppable to this and that you know, he finds something that interests him, um that he hasn't done before, Um that he can um flex his muscle. Song. So I think a lot of good actors, Tom Hanks and Robert Downey and go on to Leonardo and all those, all those guys, Brad, they want to play a part that that has depth and richness, But they also don't want to play the same guy. And that's some of the mistakes they make. It.

15:43 We'll get Brad because he did we know he can do it, and he goes, well, you're not going to do it. He doesn't need to do it, and um, so it's it's a it's a it's It's one of the things I always tell young screenwriters. It's like, when you start to write a script, who's in it? Because that's all that's gonna matter in the end, right, I mean, it's got to be good, and it's got to be a good story. It's got to work structurally, it's got to have, you know, a story or the structure that that's interesting in the world, that's interesting. But ultimately speaking, who's gonna be in it? Who's gonna play this guy or that girl? And um uh And if you don't think about that, um, you're doing yourself a disservice, I think, because it's just the way the industry works. It's it is, it is what it is. There's um there's a movie that they made in twenty twenty one. It's called Without Remorse, and it was um. One of the writers was Taylor Sheridan, directed by Stefano Soldim I was an incredible director, starring Michael Jordan. A lot of really really talented people worked on this movie. And you know, anybody who works in our business notes that, like, you cannot judge the final film. You don't know what was in the script would change, all right, But I remember watching that movie, which I was very excited for it, and everything that didn't work about that movie to me is everything that works about your writing, which is to say that that movie felt impersonal money. I don't know what it was really like about underneath the plot. I had no investment in the

17:14 character. And on the surface, if you just tell somebody this is what happens in the movie, you'd think, well, why doesn't that work? That seems like that would work. But where do you think people sort of lose their way with that stuff where it can well. Audiences truly don't care about plot. It's white noise to them. They once you attach yourself to a person, a real human being, you can take them anywhere and you can go through anything. But they didn't do that in that movie, right. It was just a very visceral action e Tom Clancy kind of you know, cool stuff with nobody in it. Just an empty movie in the end, right, because it was they focused on that. And I just think it's that those those days again, back in the eighties and the nineties were now that those movies did well. Um, but I think the audiences are smarter today. They want to invest, they want to feel, they want to They want to be a part of right. And they're not a part of like you know, heists and things. They're they're part of human beings and why there's why this guy is doing heist or why this guy is you know, working in home Mark and all this stuff there's and by the way, the other the other thing that a lot of movies don't do is they don't have any mystery, and the audience is interestingly enough. You know,

18:45 I was fortunate to be on the set and to work with Denzel and work with Antoine on all the movies, and been to the editing room and said at all the test screenings and on the first equalizer they tested at once and it scored so high that they it was the highest R rated movie in Sony history. They locked it. But when the focus group happened, one of their favorite things was they didn't know stuff. They didn't know what he did in the past, They didn't know what happened to his wife. Did she get killed, did she died of of of sickness? How long ago?

19:26 All that stuff. They loved that part of it because their imagination there, we've all experienced loss, we've all all experienced heartbreak, and we're watching a man with whose heart is broken so in in that part of his life, so that they can identify with that, especially women. They were the highest scoring people and yet he was. It was the most violent movie, you know, compared to most of the movies I've done. So Antoine is genius at at at violent. It's in action. Um. But yet the women forgave that part because of that. So I think that when you when you do these movies, uh, and they come to you and they say, hey, we want to do you know a guy about a hitman or something, It's like, well, you know, none of us are hitman and none of us you know, have killed anybody. Most of us anybody, Um, I happen't. But um, what they can attach themselves to is the human nature of the of their lives, right. Um. They're their own personal issues and their own the hurdles to overcome that we have to overcome.

20:45 Um, you forget that. And if you if you do forget it, you you you're you're You've done yourself. You're down on the ladder a little bit, and you're gonna it's gonna be hard to keep the audience engaged. Yeah, it's so interesting that for the third Equalizer, Dakota has reunited with Denzel because Man on Fire is totally a movie where if I blink, I just think you wrote it like it's like it really feels like of a piece with a lot of the stuff that you've done. It's my one of my favorite movies, and Brian Heavilyn is one of my favorite writers. So it was really remarkable to watch them together, the ease in which they and also the history because there's a there's a twist to her character that I don't think you see coming that connects everything. And so again, she could have been just a CIA agent working on us, be part of the story and probably would have passed. But she wasn't. Just that she was something else.

21:57 So again, part of my job is to make sure or try to make sure that there's there's things in there, there's tasty things in there for them to hook onto and to play um. And it's the one thing that a lot of writers either forget or don't do. And uh, and then you get you know, those those Amazon movies or those you know movies, and you just go, I can I can stop this anywhere and pick it up anywhere. It's just I want to make sure I touched on something you said earlier, which is about not explaining everything. And you know, I mean I personally think this whole narrative that like, oh, development executives give stupid notes or whatever is way overblown. And I you know, I've known a ton of really smart development executives, but I will say that a note that is very common that you'll get from either producers you're working with or executives or whatever, is like, well, so can you so how come how come this happen? How come that happen? Or should we make it more that? Yeah? And so how do you sort of a key too that?

23:02 Right? Because you don't want to suddenly be like, well, let's have a scene or we explain why this guy bought a pink shirt. You know, like let's say I'm going to the store picking out the Well, I've been fortunate that a Equaliser was a spec script, so they didn't have any say. They basically got a script with a star and a budget and producers and do you want to make it or not? And you know, God bless Denzel Washington and who said that's I'm making that movie not don't don't start bucking with it. So um, same with the second one. They basically greenlit a develop you know, the development of the second movie on the night of the test screening of the first movie. And I had already in my head had seen realized that the movie, if there was going to be And by the way, Denzel has never done a sequel to anything and was not going to do a sequel to Dequalizer. And except what he told me was, well, you know, the only people are going to tell us anything of the audience that they want to see him again. And I said, well, all all characters, all most of the movies other than like A Mission Impossible James Bond, like Born m I'm forgetting a few you want to see them again. Right, It's not so much the story or the world or anything else. You want to see Jason Bourne and what happens to him, and and and and that's why you keep going back to see those movies, because they're so well done in terms of character and in terms of

24:33 investing in that character. So you know that that's again, you know, every every studio wants a franchise, every studio wants you know, uh, you know, a tent pole or whatever that they can do, you know, three or four of them. Um. But you know, other than a Marvel movie, you you basically you're you better write a character they want to see again. Um. And that's that. That, fortunately, was what happened, you know, wasn't in my mind. I had three in my head. I had three I had. I had he finds his purpose, he finds his peace, and in the third one he finds his place at home. So that was sort of in my head. If I could tell this story in in in three movies, that's how it would be.

25:27 And fortunately that's how it is. Um, just got fortunate. They don't always happen that way. And it's not because of anything much I did, other than I think people want to see him. They want to see him do those things. They want to see what happened to him and where he is now. I mean, he's a limp driver now, right, doesn't even work at home, already destroyed it. So where does he do now he's a limp driver. Well, that's great because he gets to meet people in the backseat and he gets to help people. So it's it's it's one of those things where in terms of the studio executives. Yes, I got a lot of that on Craven because that was assignment, and I just didn't do it. I just I just I just didn't write it. And they kept saying, well, you know, we're gonna tell this back then I'm like, first of all, I don't even like the character. We're gonna have to change the character. We're gonna have to make them something different, you know, And I did. I rewrote the mythology of Craven the Hunter.

26:30 Um I got fired, I got replaced. Let's say I got replaced on that movie by who knows how many people. And I don't even know how the movie. It's coming out this year, I think, so I'm interested to see what they did with it. But um, I just didn't do it. I can't do it. I don't. I don't believe in it. And I don't think any writer should write something because somebody said we need to have that. Because I did get a lot of notes like that, what's the back where's their backstory? Right, I'm like, I don't think I care about it. Backstory, Yeah, right, I don't know Jason Bourne's backstory till the final movie. Till the final scenes in the final movie. Yeah. Oh so, and that kept me wanting to see more.

27:11 Yeah. Um, I have this thing I've I've talked about this show before about dad movies, movies that your dad would would watch, and I would say, you're almost like the king of dad movies. Stuff that you made. I think it's a good thing. Okay, did your dad get to watch like when you as you started to have success, did your get dad get to watch these movies that you made? You got to see them? He got all the way up to the first Equalizer. He was at the premiere in New York at Equalizer. So that that's that that meant a lot to me. You know, he got to go to see sixteen Blocks, which is the white personal favorite movie and uh an Equalizer. Um so he saw the you know, the the progress that I made through the years as a screenwriter. That's bright. Yeah yeah yeah. So as we um I was gonna, I had had a question written down to say, oh, you know, it's pretty cool that you managed to be the soul writer and all these movies and obviously mentioned that you were U. It's interesting I've noticed I interviewed the guys who wrote this Apple plus a movie called Sharper, and I asked them about rewrites and you know, staying on the whole time, and because it's a big cast, a lot of stars and stuff, and they were like, yeah, Julianne Moore. They're like, that's the answer. Basically, Julianne Moore had our back from day one. That's the reason that they shopped our script. They didn't fuck with it. And I've heard this story again and again, right the value of having your champion that nobody can mess with for you as a writer, the value of that to you and getting your vision out there. I think there's more to it.

28:45 I think that well. First of all, I started out as a director, right I started directed Roger Carman movie, and then I directed an independent movie with Any Garcia and Any McDowell. So I immediately was already a collaborative kind of person. So I'm not precious about anything I write. If the one has a better idea or bumping for I would sit with Denzel on an equalizer every day for six weeks and he would come to my little cardboard desk and he'd sit down and he'd pull out the first draft. Now there's been four or five different drafts based on budget and schedules and everything else. And he'd go through it and he'd say, you know what happened to this?

29:25 And I said, well, they didn't want to pay for the softball uniforms. He just got up out of his chair and walked over there. He just came back, sat down and said, it's okay, softball's back in it. And by the way, I think there's so there's that, but there's also the idea that you're a collaborative person. I think people can tell that you're not. A lot of people are afraid of writers. That's why they're not on the sets. That's not why they're not invited into the editing room or you know, having you know anything. They feel they're precious about their stuff, and sometimes they should be. Sometimes, you know, directors and and people will will mess with their movie and it's bad choices. Um.

30:08 But by most part, if you're if you're a collaborative, you get to participate in that dialogue. So I always would go to Denzel's house and sit there and we go to the script and he would say, I don't understand this. How do I play this? I say, well, I don't know how do you play that? And he goes, well, you can't play that. I said, how do I play? I think this and I'm like this, and I'm like oh, I said, well, that's really written for the studios, so they understand it. You can do whatever you want, right, but when I write it, so there's two scripts. There's a script that they they read and they they read and they green light, and then there there's a script that they made, So you have to understand that when you're writing it. Like I don't say I write uh scripts, I write movies. When I when you've read I guess Equalizer, it reads like a movie, doesn't read like a script. I don't use a lot of exterior interior, you know, those kind of things, cut twos and stuff like that. It reads sort of like you know, I'm telling your story. It's very clean. It's clean and visual and has visceral stuff in it, and the fight, the action has emotion and it's clean and like you said, so, I'm thinking of it as a movie, not as a script. And I used to write them as scripts.

31:29 I used to write them as I started out. You'd write these movies for the executives, just like the scripts. They read, and I realized I was just doing myself at the service because they all read the same. Soon as you just say exterior Broadway, everybody sees the same Broadway. But if you describe your Broadway right in a different way and you don't say broadway, you say, you know the man with the push card is going down the street, that the band with the push guard is your is your slugline? I want to read, what does that mean? Where is he? And then you suddenly realize he's in New York City and he's so I think that that's a skill that people learn. I just read a lot of scripts Coen Brothers, um m m knight. I love his work. He uses no descriptions in his scripts, so I kind of call from people, even William Goldman, who who is the king of that right? You know? It basically reads like a movie. Yea. And so I realized that when you do yourself a serve when you start writing him like final draft scripts, yea.

32:40 And by the way, so that's the movie that they that's the thing they get and they say, wow, this is a great movie. Let's let's let's get you know, Chris Pratt to be in it. You know, and and then you have to go back and you start making it into the you know, the the mechanical version of it, right, who already to put in next two years and they do all that for you. Yeah, but so there's two versions, and don't be afraid of writing it that way because every executive, every studio chief, and every per actor appreciates that reading something that's readable. Yeah, it's opposed to things I've read. It just seems this looks like everything else I've read it. So yeah, I think you know something you mentioned earlier, maybe as far as like working with the actors and stuff. It really made me think of the most recent episode of Succession. There's a moment where Ship is talking to her mom and she's a strange from her mom. She hadn't seen her wife yes, and the mom comes up to her and she goes, oh. A Ship kind of like reacts and it's like oh, And basically what she's saying is, I can tell you're pregnant immediately. I don't need you to tell me. I don't need you to do it. Immediate's by looking at you, I can tell you're pregnant. And no, no point in their conversation is the word pregnancy, baby, anything used, And it's so like, you really have to have confidence in yourself as a writer in the actors. But they can do that. They don't need you to say, you know, like mom,

34:15 I'm pregnant, right, Like, so that of doing less, of the confidence to do less basically, and also the confidence to listen to the actors. Again on the first Equalizer, Melissa Leo came in maybe three weeks into our shooting and came into the came to the monitors and sat next to me, and she said, I love the script and everything. I want to talk to you about something. And I said, I know I have to do and she does if you watch the movie, she I know I have to deliver all this exposition, right, She yes, she's the one who basically tells us everything about Teddy and Pushkin and all whatever that stuff is. And she goes, I just I just would like it to feel because I know him more familiar. Right. That was her. That was her comment to me. And I went home to my hotel and I rewrote that stuff right with that in my mind, and I sent it to her and I can't tell you how delighted she was hugged me. That someone listened to her and did it and understood it. And that's my job, right, She's an Academy Award winning actress. It's my job to listen to her.

35:30 She instinctually is going, I can say this, but it's it's pretty dry, and you're missing the fact that I've worked with this man for you know, twenty years, so we don't have to say it like this. I can say it very shorthandedly. And so that's my You know, again, a lot of writers don't get that opportunity. They're not around. You know that the movie goes on without them, and they shoot it and they change it and they do stuff, and actors changed it and and you're not there. But if you get the opportunity to be there, and if you are collaborative and not precious, that's the other part of your job is so listen, right. The Denzel doesn't want to say that I had a line I used and I had to take it out of Equalizer and put it in Jack Reacher because he wouldn't say it. And that was when they kept asking him who who are you and right? And the answer was I'm the guy he didn't count them right, and he said an that sounds like a Bruce Willis line. I said, no, no, it's good, it's good.

36:31 So he did it once and he looked at me, said that's for you, but I do it again. It's not in the movie, but it's it's in the opening scene in Jack Reacher. Interesting. Yeah, so so you but you But but I listened. It wasn't like I got all hissy about it and said, you know, you're ruining the movie. You know, that's the great line and everything else, and it's like he doesn't want to say it. It's Denzel Washington. He's the greatest actor of the twentieth century. I think he would know more than me. So before we wrap up, because I so appreciate your time. I'm very excited obviously to see Budge with three, but I might be equally excited, frankly, to see James Cohn's last role, because I remember James conn before he died, he was interviewed and somebody asked him. He was like, I just want one more, like I can really act, because you know, he had gotten to a point in his career were just sort of doing low budget movies and you got the sense he wasn't getting the opportunity. Have you You presumably have seen the movie Fast Charted and that's his last performance, right, yes, wow. Um, I can tell you that he's brilliant in it. I can tell you that it was tailor made for him. I fought very hard.

37:42 I want to say. Originally they were trying to cajole Morgan Freeman to play the role. And I love Morgan Freeman. In fact, I met with Morgan Freeman on sixteen Blocks when we were going to make the most death character older and delightful. Man is super smart. But I just kept feeling like, you know, he's coming in for you know, a week, and you know I've seen him come in for a week, and I think there's something more interestful. And I suggested Jimmy Cohn. I didn't know what how his health was, and it wasn't great. Um. And I just hung up yesterday with Pierce Brosnan, who who saw the movie and loved it and was so touched by the scenes between them. He's he's, it's it's I don't know. It's weirdly the probably the perfect role for him at this time, because he was telling Pierce he goes he said I'm headed to the dark side Pierce, and Pierce kept saying, I think we should finish the movie and have some tea, and you know, you know all the stuff.

38:52 But he knew and yet that's part of the character. That part of the character he had samentha and and and um, you know, it was a almost a father son relationship. Even though that Pierce was older, it was he was his like father figure. And um, he was so kind to a man who didn't remember that or that. So he's he's just you're gonna love it. You're gonna love seeing him in that movie. Um uh. It isn't one of those parts that you go, oh, you know, it's one of those parts of Wow, I wish I wish he's still here. I wish he could do some more. That's great, man, I mean you really that's cool. Like you made his That's what he wanted.

39:36 I mean explicitly said, he's like, before I die, I just want to do one more. I really get to act. So I'm so glad you know you're able to do that for him. It's great. Yeah, yeah, it was wonderful to watch him and it's just fantastic. Richard. I don't want to take up any more your time, man, I really really appreciate it. That is the show for today. I don't need to tell anybody that Equalija three's coming out. I'm sure people will be aware of it of So yeah, thank you so much for coming on the show. And that is the podcast for today. Thank you for having me. M m m h, m hm m h, m hm m m h