Movies

Moviefone: To begin with, the movie is sort of “’Die Hard’ at a wedding.” What was your first reaction to the screenplay?

Brendan Fehr: Action movies are always fun. You never exactly know how it is going to turn out. For me, obviously it has to do with the story and ‘The Best Man,’ and I’m the Best Man. So, I was like, “Oh, that’s cool. Let’s go.” Every kid dreams of being a hero of some sort and saving the day. As an adult, I think we still have those delusions of grandeur, I suppose, of being put in that situation. Fortunately in my career, I get to sometimes, not actually do that, but play out those fantasies. So, that’s always fun. Then you’re looking at the people that are involved as well and getting to work alongside Luke, and I knew Scout from earlier. It’s always just an opportunity to do something fun and learn, and with all the ingredients put in there, see what comes out on the other side.

MF: What was it like working with Hollywood legends like Luke Wilson and Dolph Lundgren?

BF: I mean, they definitely have their different process. Actually, it was funny, I was thinking about this today. I don’t think I say anything to Dolph in the entire movie. I don’t think I actually talk to him. We do all hug in a group setting. I have scenes with him, but I actually don’t think I ever chat with him the entire movie, which is interesting. So, I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with either of them. It was a very quick shoot. It was kind of in and out. The movie’s a little bit of a run and gun, and so was the actual filming of it. But it’s one of those things where you realize everybody has just a different process. Having done this for 30 years, you’re always just kind of observing what’s their process. Do they like to talk a lot before the scene? Do they like to do this? Okay, that person goes off into the corner and they do this, and they got their scene. So for me, if the opportunity obviously presents itself, then you ask questions and you kind of get into it, but you don’t want to really talk about acting necessarily when you’re acting. You don’t know if that’s going to throw the other person off. So, it’s just more about observing and you kind of pick and choose what you think works for you or, “Oh, that’s interesting how they go from that to that.” Some people transform, some people want to stay in character. So, you never stop learning in this business.

MF: A lot of your scenes are with Scout Taylor-Compton, and you mentioned that you knew her previously, did that make it easier to perform the action sequences with her?

BF: Yeah. I had kind of a cameo in a movie that’s not out yet that she stars in. I actually play the father of her boyfriend or love interest, which is hilarious. Now we’re playing a couple of sorts. So, we had briefly met on that movie, and I really got along with her in the short time I was there. So, when I knew she was on this and then the role she was playing, I thought that would be a lot of fun. But with this one I saw the way she worked and she took it seriously and just very collaborative. So, ultimately we spent this entire movie together. All our days, the long days, it was a lot of me and her. She’s always looking to, how do we make this scene better? How do we elevate it? What can we do that’s fun? I’m very much the same way. When you have a partner throughout a movie that you spend a lot of time with, you hope that you do get along naturally. Sometimes you don’t, and that’s just the way it works. But this one, we were really open with each other. So, it’s that kind of creative spirit that I think I’m looking for in any project I do. We worked really well together in that respect.

MF: You play a Special Ops soldier, but he’s not invincible, he gets hurt a lot in this movie and does not win every fight. Do you think that added the realism of the film?

BF: Yeah. Obviously it opens up the movie establishing that, in this case, these are men that have seen a lot and been through a lot. That can go a couple different ways. That can bond people, or it could be, even though you’re bonded, there’s trauma there but you don’t necessarily have the capacity to deal with. My character, Bradley, goes off on the ranch, kind of lives alone, doing his own thing. Dolph’s character travels the beaches all around the world, kind of living it up with what appears to be a little bit of an alcohol problem. Then Luke falls in love with the person that we rescue. So, everyone’s kind of got their different coping mechanism with it, which you hoped those establish the characters a little bit early on, giving them their own journey and then obviously being thrown back into it with the ambush at the wedding. So, yeah, it was just a great way, I thought, to, in an action way, give them their own sense of where that led them. Then they’re all thrown back together again in what’s going to happen from there.

MF: Finally, can you talk about the weapons training you had for the film, and the attention to safety on set?

BF: Safety’s always a priority. I’ve worked with a bunch of experts in guns and armor throughout my career, and I go through my own checklists. So, everyone’s extra careful. It’s not like I’m a massive gun guy, but you’re always looking to make it as realistic as possible. So, you ask the armorer and other people around who have that experience, but I’ve been doing this long enough that I kind of know most everything I do. Then as far as the fights, again, I’ve done a couple fighting movies. So, I enjoy doing those kinds of things. It’s fun and you learn it on the day. It’s a real run and gun thing, like I said. So it’s just like, “Okay, this is what we’re doing.” The fight scene in the hotel that I have, there’s a couple of pieces to it. I always say that I learn it three moves at a time. So, you practice the first three moves and you go through that. It’s like a phone number, you get that sequence down. Okay, now the next three moves are this. Okay, now you put that together. So, now you got the first six down and once you got that, you move on to the next three. That’s a really good way to quickly learn something so that everyone’s in sync, no one gets hurt, and you look like someone who knows what they’re doing. (source)

I recently chatted with Brendan Fehr about his new action movie The Best Man where he stars alongside Luke Wilson, Dolph Lundgren, Scout Taylor-Compton and Nicky Whelan.

In the movie Brendan plays Bradley, the best man at a wedding who has to contend with some unwelcome visitors.

We’re going to be talking about your new film The Best Man. What made you interested in the project?

Number one work is always good (laughs). It’s always fun, you always want to be on set as an actor, that’s where you want to be. But ultimately, when I heard Luke Wilson was involved it was an opportunity to work with someone who’s done some really great stuff. There’s a bunch of different reasons you choose projects, from the director to the script, to the actors, and all that stuff. And if you get all three, great, but I’ve got a lot ahead of me, I feel like I’m still learning. You just try to hopefully work with people who are more experienced than you and have had “more success” and see why that is. You want to know how they go about the process, what their process is, and all that and see if you can just up your game a little bit.

Speaking of the people you work with, how did you find working with Director Shane Dax Taylor?

Shane was great. I didn’t know him before. We had a great working relationship. He knew what he needed, and what he wanted, he had no choice, or else the movie wouldn’t have gotten done (laughs). But he knew what he needed; an open guy, if you had any questions or concerns or any ideas he would definitely listen to them. I mean, you can always ask for a little more, but that was pretty good.

You play the character of Bradley, what was it about him that particularly stood out for you?

I think it’s the backstory for him, not to give anything away. But we start off the film with this special forces hostage rescue, and then we fast forward and where he ends up and why he ends up where he is, was a great kind of jumping off point for a character. There was a lot there to work with, just in terms of the psychology of him, and bringing that to the script in the story. As an actor, that’s what you’re looking for; the guns and the action and all that stuff, they’ll take care of themselves, it’s always gonna be exciting. As an actor going into it no one cares about the action if no one cares about the characters. Sometimes you can have some two dimensional characters in these action movies, because they think the action is going to take care of everything else. I come at it from a different way where the action will take care of itself, but the audience needs to care about these characters. That’s generally where my focus was and there was enough in the story that I thought made it interesting for me to play so that was a lot of fun to navigate that and bring as much of that interesting stuff about Bradley to the screen and to the relationship, especially with Scout Taylor-Compton who I spent a lot of time with.

I speak to a lot of fight choreographers and they regularly say action scenes should always tell a story with a beginning, middle and end where the fight scene should progress either the character or the story; would you say that’s true then when it comes to action?

I think good action scenes should do that. Definitely. That’s an interesting point. Yeah, me and my kids have just been watching the John Wick series because I’m gonna take them to go see it. I don’t know some of those action scenes just seem to be for the sake of action…

They are. It’s kind of like a video game.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, entertaining (laughs). Great but if you can tell a story through a fight, I mean, it becomes much more interesting. I love coordinators that think that way, it’s wonderful; they’re not just thinking about how do we make this exciting for the sake of excitement, but add an element of a story or add something to that. I don’t know if that comes either from the writing or the coordinator, or a combination of both, but you’re always looking to inject a little depth into whatever you’re doing. Whether you’re pouring a cup of coffee or smashing it over someone’s head (laughs) that’s what makes for great characters and great films.

Can you talk us through doing that fight scene with Andrey Ivchenko? He was one of my first ever interviews and is an awesome guy – a gentle giant.

Yeah, I’m not small, six feet, 195 pounds so I’m not a small guy. When we started to rehearse the fight, you look at him and you’re like “you’re a big guy” and then he grabs me and you’re like, “okay you’re bigger than I thought” (laughs). So, trying to throw Andrey around, it was a workout for sure but that was a lot of fun. We learned that on the day, that’s one of those situations where we’re like, alright, we’re gonna rehearse it. For me, the easiest way to rehearse the fight scene is kind of like a phone number. It’s like three steps at one time, like three digits at a time, and you’ll work your way through the first three, then once you got that down, you add another three, then you combine that and you do all six, and then you do the next three, and you figure out that. Working in that fashion, especially for when you’ve got to learn it on the day, just before you’re shooting, I find really helps. It keeps everyone safe and everyone feels comfortable hopefully. The only problem with that is, you don’t want the fight scene to be Doo! Doo! Doo!, You have to combine them, obviously, to make it as fluid as you can. That I found is one of the easiest ways to learn them because stuff can go a little bit wrong, you shoot the whole thing from start to finish and without a lot of rehearsal. If you don’t duck when you should duck you just might catch one across the nose (laughs). You always want to be careful and do it but that was a lot of fun with Andrey.

I liked how with the fight scenes in this movie, there was a desperation to them where nothing looked overly choreographed. It looked like people genuinely fighting for survival, which I thought was a nice touch.

Yeah, I am special forces in the movie so I’m going to have some expertise in fighting and Andrey being the henchmen he’s from that background and some sort of military background as well. But yeah, unless it’s specific to the movie or a certain style, I think people really appreciate a certain amount of messiness in a fight scene. I mean, we can all get on our phones or our computers and watch people posting for whatever reason street fights and all that stuff, and they definitely don’t look choreographed. Is this the way people throw punches? (laughs) This is crazy. No one knows how to fight and so you want to definitely look like you’re an expert at it. But at the same time, like you said, you don’t want it to look like it’s overly choreographed as much as you can. Making it a little messy always helps with that. I think we definitely made sure that we put as much of that without getting too crazy with it as we could.

What would you like audiences to take away from the film?

Enjoyment, and entertainment. It’s one of those films that’s not a tearjerker. No one’s gonna cry, you’ll laugh a little bit. The world’s a tough place, not everything’s going your way. Go spend an hour and a half and just kill it with a few laughs and some entertainment. It could be worth your while. You never know. Escape for an hour and a half. A little self care.

Saban Films will release THE BEST MAN in theaters, on demand and digital April 21, 2023.

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Canadian actor Brendan Fehr (“Roswell” and “Bones”) chatted about his new thriller “The Best Man.”

Aside from Fehr who plays Bradley, the film stars Nicky Whelan, Scout Taylor-Compton, Scott Martin, Dolph Lundgren, and Luke Wilson.

“Scout and Nicky were great,” he said. “I spend a lot of time with Scout and we play love interests and I am dragging her around everywhere. Scout is a great actress, collaborator and she really cares about the scene and what we are trying to accomplish. Scout was always throwing out ideas and I like to work the same way,” he elaborated.

On his experience in “The Best Man,” he said, “It was good, if you can’t have fun doing this then you are doing something wrong and you should be doing something else.”

“I always appreciate a little bit of the outsider aspect of him such as the reason he took the mission in the first place (because of what had happened with his family life). It was a great jumping off point for a complex character, and obviously, it’s an action movie,” he said about his character.

The movie will be released in theaters, on demand and digital April 21, 2023, via Saban Films. It was directed by Shane Dax Taylor with a screenplay by C. Alec Rossel and Shane Dax Taylor based on the original story by Daniel Zirilli.

The synopsis is: Luke Wilson and Dolph Lundgren star in this action thriller. When a team of ruthless mercenaries violently seize control of a remote resort hotel, former Special Ops soldiers attending their best friend’s wedding must rely only on their wits and training to combat the terrorists and save the hostages held for ransom.

“This film was an opportunity to work with Luke Wilson, and you get to observe him and see how he does it, and you pay attention on what works for you and what doesn’t. It’s just about meeting new people and trying new things,” Fehr said.

“The movie is me, Luke Wilson, and Dolph Lundgren running around a hotel shooting people up trying to save the day,” he added. ‘Roswell’ and ‘Bones’

Fehr opened up about being a part of “Roswell” and “Bones.” “Those were wonderful. ‘Roswell’ was my first big one, and ‘Bones’ later on had an incredible cast and crew. I love every project I am on. You are always going to learn something, even if it’s what not to do,” he said.

The digital age

On being an actor in the digital age, Fehr said, “It’s good, there are pros and cons to it. Anybody can make a movie now, in a sense, which allows for more voices and it will get a lot more people interested. On the other hand, I don’t think people are as prepared.”

“Back in the day, film was expensive so everybody had to be in their marks, and there was more of a craftmanship back then. We shot ‘Roswell’ on film, so we were on the tail end of things. That was my first experience and it will always be very special,” he explained.

“I focus on the acting part, and I leave the rest to everyone else,” he added.

Advice for young actors

For young and aspiring actors, Fehr said, “It’s all about being curious. It’s about reading books, watching shows, and talking to people that don’t think like you. There are instincts to being a good actor, and you can craft that with classes.”

“Ultimately, it’s about being curious and having some imagination, which is a muscle that you need to work out. Life experience plays a lot into that too,” he added.

On the title of the current chapter of his life, Fehr said, “Hopeful.”

He listed Jessica Chastain as his dream acting partner to someday work with in a project. “Jessica is just so good,” he admitted.

Fehr defined the word success as “being content with yourself.”

(source)

Set during a wedding, a team of ex-special forces must protect themselves from a wave of terrorists inside a hotel resort, and at the heart of the plot – and the action – is Final Destination‘s Brendan Fehr. STARBURST catches up with Brendan to discuss what The Best Man was like to work on whilst revealing how he brought his character Bradley to life alongside a talented cast!

STARBURST: How did you get involved with this movie?

Brendan Fehr: One of the line producers I’d worked with before, who I’d kept in touch with, said, “I’m doing a movie in New Mexico”. He knew I was there, and he was like, “I’m going to send it to you, and if you like it, then I think we can make it happen!” So I read it and I said, “Yeah, something with Luke Wilson and Dolph Lundgren, little shoot ’em up, let’s go do it!”

What do you remember the most from reading the script for the first time? What stood out to you?

Well, the first thing was, “Oh, I’m the best man? That’s cool”. When he sent it to me, he said, “It’s for the role of Bradley”, and I was like, “Alright, how soon am I going to die in this thing?” Between Luke and Dolph, I was thinking, “Do I die on page nine? Or do I make it to the second act!” No spoilers, but I’m there for a while! I think for me, it’s an action movie; they’re going to have the classic shoot ’em ups, running around, and fights and all of that stuff. Those always look great, you leave those to the stunt coordinators, and you do your best to make them look real. Editing helps a little bit. But for me, I looked at it and thought that it was an interesting relationship with the maid of honour. Me talking with other actors, as a character in the scenes is a lot more enjoyable than doing fights or stunts. Fights and stunts are very cool to watch when they’re done well, and they can add to a movie, but as an actor, they’re somewhat unfulfilling to me. They’re satisfying in the end, but doing them is very unsatisfying. It’s just piece by piece, little by little, and you build this thing. Whereas, interacting with another character, whether you’re amicable or whether you’re butting heads, or whatever the case may be, that’s kind of the fun stuff for me.

It’s an interesting idea, where a wedding turns into a hostage situation. What do you think the wedding side of the story does for an action movie like this? Like, maybe it makes the viewer care for the characters more?

Yeah, no story works if you don’t care about the characters, so that’s where I always put my focus; you know, as I said, I’ll leave the actiony stuff to everybody else because you could have the coolest stunts in the world, and the last thing you want is for the audience to go “I hate this character, I just hope he doesn’t make it through that stunt” My job is to create a relationship with the other characters, and then with the audience, whether they’re supposed to love me or hate me, or go back and forth. So I think with the wedding, and my character in particular, his back story is a great jumping-off point for how he arrives at the wedding, and then he hooks up with the maid of honour, and then the ambush takes place. I just had a lot of fun working with Scout Taylor-Compton on that and us trying to establish that chemistry because it’s got to kind of come quickly, it’s not like the whole movie is about us and our relationship, as we had too much shooting and fighting to do in the middle. So that kind of relationship has got to happen relatively quickly, and I think that it does in the movie. We had great chemistry, and she was wonderful to work with. We talked about every scene. We were super collaborative. We both had the attitude that no ideas are too dumb, even when the ideas were really dumb. It was a safe space to try them, and then we tried them, and we were like, “That was dumb. We shouldn’t do that.” It was a lot of fun to work with her because that’s when it’s easiest to do your best work when you feel comfortable, and you can throw anything out there.

You filmed much of the movie at the Inn of the Mountain Gods. Can you elaborate on what it was like to work there, and maybe why you think that location worked so well!?

It’s kind of in the mountains of New Mexico. It’s a beautiful place. I’d been there before. I filmed a little bit of Wander there as well. Yeah, so we ended up at the Inn of the Mountain Gods, which has some great golf courses, and I’m a big golfer. But I didn’t get to golf at this particular juncture. It’s always interesting shooting in a casino. It’s just got that vibe, we didn’t shut the whole thing down, but we could shut certain areas off. Casinos have just got that vibe of late nights, and there’s drinking. You get a whole cast of characters in there, walking around. It added a little air of excitement, I guess, you’re always hearing the noises of the machines, and you just want to make sure that you don’t waste your money at the craps table!

Going on from that, can you tell us about what it was like to work with your director Shane Dax Taylor?

Shane was great. I’d never met or worked with him before, but we got along really well. The movie is run and gun, but the filming was run and gun as well. Given the time frame of what we had to shoot and accomplish, he didn’t get flustered or frustrated. It was a real undertaking. We didn’t have a lot of time to shoot,, we tried to pack a whole lot in, just maintaining an even keel and being there for any questions we had. He left us to our own devices in terms of the characters that we had created. I think he liked what everyone was bringing to the table. My thing with every director I have is just like, “Mould me, I’m going to bring something to it. If it’s really bad, let me know, and if it’s close but not quite there, let’s talk about it, and let’s try to shape this into something, and get the best we can out of me”. I’m a real open book for that, so if I had any questions, he was always open. It was great that way, a good working relationship.

Saban Films will release THE BEST MAN in US theatres, on-demand and digitally on April 21st, 2023.

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