Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2114 - Zack Snyder
Uploaded: 2024-03-06T18:00:11.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2114 - Zack Snyder' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-03-06. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2114 - Zack Snyder' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-03-06. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2114 - Zack Snyder

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
What's going on, man? How are you?
I'm good.
Welcome aboard. Thank you for being here.
No, thanks for having me.
My pleasure. You made two of my all-time favorite movies.
The Watchmen, which I fucking love, and 300.
Okay, awesome.
I have like a top 20 list. I've never like formally put together a top 20 list,
but those are in there.
Oh, that's cool.
Well, first of all, I appreciate that because, you know, 300 was a complete
labor of love and insane.
Like, you know, 300 was—I was a Frank Miller fan for a long time, right?
And I thought I would do another—I thought I would do Dark Knight Returns,
frankly.
That was the movie I wanted. I still want to do it.
I always tell everyone, like, Dark Knight Returns.
If I could do Dark Knight Returns, I'd be done with comic book movies.
Really?
Well, because, like, if you've done Watchmen—oh, sorry, I'm banging the mic.
If you do Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, like, for me, your legacy is set.
So, like, Batman v Superman literally steals a lot of Dark Knight Returns.
I'm not going to say it didn't. It did.
But it's still not Dark Knight Returns.
I think that's still out there.
But I always—you know, for a long time, I had that—I had 300, like, on my
coffee table at my house when I was making TV commercials, you know, and I'd
have my friends over.
I'd be like, I'm going to make this one day.
It's going to look exactly like this comic book.
And they'd be like, yeah, yeah.
Here you—sure it is.
And, yeah, I was having a general meeting with Gianni Nunari, who was one of
the producers, and he was asking me about what I like, and he had that graphic
novel in his office, like, on his table.
And I went, well, okay, you know what?
If I could do anything, that book right there, I would make that.
And he goes, well, what do you mean?
How would you make it?
And I literally just opened it up, and I go, we'd make—we'd film this.
We'd film these pictures.
It would look like this.
And he goes, okay, that's cool.
Like, so you're saying you would just shoot the movie, and it would look like
this graphic novel.
I go, that's what I'm saying.
And I think—and that's what—but at the time, we couldn't sell it.
We tried.
We went around town with it.
We tried to—I literally—we went to all the studios.
You know, they were all kind of like, yeah, sword and sandals.
Wasn't it the same time that Troy was being made?
It was exactly the same time as Troy.
And when we went to Warner Brothers originally with it, they literally were
like, we have Troy, so why would we want this?
We have Brad Pitt.
Like, literally, Brad Pitt is in our movie.
What are you—I go, we're going to do something crazy.
We're not even going to shoot it outside.
And they were like, what?
Okay, you're nuts.
And I go, yeah, we're not going to go for one shot outside.
We ended up going for one shot outside for this—when the Persian Messengers
are coming, that super high-speed shot where the horses are kind of coming over
the hill.
We shot that outside because we just couldn't get the horses going fast enough
in the—it's the shot right before this, I think.
Oh, no, it's this one.
That's it.
It's that shot.
So that shot was the horses—that was a high-speed shot we did with Photosonics
outside.
But that was it.
That's, like, the only shot outside.
Everything else is on stage.
Because we couldn't get the horses to run fast enough inside.
Because we couldn't get the horses to run fast enough inside, yeah.
And it was too expensive.
That was a low-budget movie, you know, and we couldn't get—
$300 was a low-budget movie?
Yeah, because we—I mean, we shot it all on stage, 60 days.
Like, that's, like, why there's no director's cut of watch—of 300 is because
every frame of film we shot is in the—
You shot that movie in 60 days?
60 days, yeah.
Wow.
It was crazy, yeah.
That's insane.
It was—we were just—it almost killed us, but it was—it was fun.
But, yeah, so when we took it to Warner Brothers, they were like, you know,
finally—well, what happened was I did Dawn of the Dead,
and then from Dawn of the Dead, I was supposed to do I Am Legend, right?
And I Am Legend was this movie that was at Warner Brothers that they were like,
what do you think?
And then for some—there was some kind of crazy mix-up, and they ended up
giving that movie to someone else.
And then I think they felt bad or whatever, and they said, well, what do you
want to do?
And I said, well, I really still want to do 300.
And so we shot that test shot.
There's—I think it was on the DVD, there's a test shot we did, and they said,
okay, if you can make the movie look like that, go do it.
Was that one of the first movies that was ever shot in front of a green screen?
Like, basically most of the movie except that one scene?
Sorry.
Yeah, I don't think it was like—look, green screen photography was like a
well-known way to make a movie, visual effects and all that.
A whole movie?
Yeah, I don't know about a whole movie.
Yeah, that was weird.
I always say, like, they go, like, well, what innovations?
Like, what—and I always go, like, it's basically the same technology that the
weatherman uses, you know, like, when he stands in front of the green screen
and says, like, oh, the front's coming in from the north.
You know, it's literally—yeah, it's literally the same—it's literally the
same technology, you know, as a—because look, like, easily you could put,
like, the weather behind that guy right there, and it'd be the same.
That's—that's Eli, that's my son.
Oh, wow.
He's now making movies.
He was the second unit director on Rebel Moon.
Oh, that's so cool.
Yeah, he's—he also plays the young Rorschach in, uh, in, um—
Watchmen?
In Watchmen, yeah.
Wow.
Like, the baby Rorschach, yeah.
Because, like, you put your kid in a movie, and I always was like, oh, let's
have Eli do that, because it's easier, you know, like, he has to, like, beat
the other kid up.
Just Eli's better, because, like, I don't have to talk to, like, some, you know,
other—because, like, actually, there's a scene in Watchmen, you know,
where he bites the kid's face, and he pulls the flesh off the face, and I go,
you know what, let's just get E to do it, because then I could just be like,
okay, E, bite this, now pull it, like, rip it off.
Right.
The only troubling part of that is that there was a scene that we did, um, in
that movie where the—you know, because Rorschach's mom was a prostitute,
right?
So there's that scene where Rorschach's mom, in the flashback, is like, I
should have had that abortion, right?
And she slaps him in the face, right?
Because he hears, Mom, is he hurting you?
Like, because she's having sex with some John in there, and then she opens the
door, and she's like, you know, he's like, is he hurting you?
I should have had that abortion, slapped him.
And I had wanted the mother to be topless in that scene, and they were like,
nah, like, you can't have—and it's cool because his mother was visiting set
that day, and his mom, um, was there, and she was like, oh, you're putting our
son in a movie?
Like, we weren't together at the time, um, his mom and I, but she—we're
really close friends, but, like, she was an actress, and I said, and they went,
the only way that the woman could be topless is if it was actually his mom.
And I was like, uh, I go, Denise.
And she was like, no chance.
Imagine asking your ex-wife to play a terrible prostitute who slaps their son
and says, I wish I had an abortion? Holy shit.
I go, come on, it's for the drama. It's not like—
Oh, my God.
I know, and she was like, you were insane. And I was like, come on, it would
have been awesome.
It's at least slightly insane.
But that would be the only way to do it.
Yeah.
Could you CGI boobs on her?
Yeah, that's cool. At the time, probably—now, I think we could.
Now, I think we could have. Yeah, I think we could have.
If I had wanted to do it now, I think that's how you would do it.
You'd do it, like, with, like, some sort of chest rig, and they would paint
them out, and then redo the boobs.
That'd be—that's a good idea, actually.
I'll go back in.
How much of any CGI was used on their bodies in 300?
Zero CGI on the body.
Really?
Really zero. We didn't have the money, honestly.
So many people talk so much shit.
I know, it's shit. I swear to God.
I'm like, you know, you did Mark Twight on this show, and then Mark will tell
you.
You know, Mark trained the guys. Mark's, like, this amazing—he's, like—I've
known Mark for years, and he's an incredible alpine climber.
He's, like, this—he's just, like, this insane—he can shoot. He can fucking—he
can do anything that anyone can do.
And, like, when I asked him to train the guys, he's like, this sounds like
Hollywood bullshit.
Like, train actors for a movie. Like, they're all fakers. They're all liars.
And I was like, look, you—you will make them honest.
And so he's like, all right.
So he started training everybody.
Yeah, there's Mark right there.
And, um, his gym was called Jim Jones, right? Like, just as an example of, like,
how hard he is.
Um, but yeah. And so, like, you know, he had trained all these SEALs, and, you
know, basically—it was basically the same thing that he was doing with the SEALs
he did with these actors, and, uh—
So a prerequisite had to be, though—
You can imagine—
You had to be in some form of shape.
You had to be in some shape.
Yeah.
A teeny bit of shape.
A couple of guys came to us that were, you know, pure actors, um, but 90%, you
know, had, um, had some—had some shape.
How much time did you have to work with them?
I'm trying to remember. Normally, what I like is at least five weeks. I like
five weeks, and I'll take more if you'll give it to me.
Sure, for a film, but I mean to prepare physically.
I—I'm talking about before the film starts. At two months or three months, I
like, before the film starts of training.
That's enough time to get them into that kind of 300 shape?
It's not. It never is. These guys trained doubly as hard, and they knew a lot
of them were athletes anyway, so they came in with, like—and Jerry had had
more time.
Um, and Jerry trained with his own guy. Jerry didn't, uh, train with Mark, uh,
but, like, yeah, so, you know, it depends. Like, you know, Henry Cavill, um,
Mark trained Henry for, um, for Superman.
And, uh, that was a very—that was a real, um, that was longer. I think that
was three months or four months.
Um, but yeah, it's not—it's never enough time, because you just can't get it.
Right.
Like, actors, you know, they just—ideally, you know, you'd have a, you know,
half a year. Six months would be perfect, really.
At least. Yeah. I mean, just to get you, you know, visibly—you know, I always
say the one thing is, like—I always say the one thing about, um, movies is
that—and the thing about Mark that I love was that he—he went to
psychological war with the actors in the best possible way.
You know, like, he—what he was looking for, he would always say, "I'm gonna
put you in your pain cave, and you're gonna find out a lot about yourself when
you're in there," right?
And then when you come out of the workout, you know, you're gonna—you're
gonna grow. You know, I'm gonna grow you here.
And, uh, some people—some people just don't—they don't like that, you know?
Especially people who haven't—like, you know, fitness isn't, like, a
lifestyle that they've chosen, you know?
No, that's a journey that you have to be really dedicated to go down.
If you're just a kind of a casual and someone comes along and says, "I wanna
put you in the pain cave," you're like, "I'm not interested in that."
I think it works with actors because he makes it part of the crucible of the
performance, you know?
And I think if you can connect it to the performance, it makes the training
mean something, you know?
I was always—I've always been, like, a sort of bodybuilding fan, like, in the
'80s.
I trained with this guy in the '80s who was just, like, a