[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

"On Story" is also brought to you in part by the Bogle Family Vineyards, six generation farmers and third generation winemakers based in Clarksburg, California.

Makers of sustainably grown wines that are a reflection of the their family values since 1968.

[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story," a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators and filmmakers.

This week on "On Story," we're joined by writer, director, and producer, Gavin O'Connor, to discuss writing and directing his character-driven sports drama, "Warrior."

"Warrior" tells the moving story of two estranged brothers forced to reckon with their family past when a mixed martial arts tournament brings them face-to-face.

- My brother and I split up when we were children.

I lived with my dad.

My brother lived with my mom.

My dad was an alcoholic.

So, I just threw my own life into the movie.

I'm half Tommy and half Brendan.

That's my struggle when I was younger of being this loner and also desperately wanting to be married and have children and live that life.

And I just started to figure out how to tell it in a way that was personal for me.

So, I just started writing.

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] - Has anybody in here seen "Smashing Machine"?

- You gotta be a real MMA fan to know that documentary.

- But he's a fascinating character.

- Yeah.

- And so, that sorta seeded this idea for you, for "Warrior," right?

- What happened was after "Tumbleweeds," I didn't come from a lot.

I sold the movie for $5 million.

I financed most of the movie myself.

I sold mostly everything I owned and I put the rest on credit cards.

I suddenly, I was like a millionaire.

And I didn't come from much, so my life changed.

And I said to my brother, let's start a finishing fund where we can give back, because I wanted other people to have the experience I had.

And so, we started this finishing fund and one of the movies was the "Smashing Machine."

And so, we financed that.

We financed all the post on that movie.

My brother had said to me, why don't we do that as a feature?

The movie had been done and came out and we sold it to HBO.

And I was like, I dunno.

But that was, he infected me with the idea of doing.

And then, I just started to figure how to tell it in a way that was personal for me.

My brother and I split up when we were children.

I lived with my dad.

My brother lived with my mom.

My dad was an alcoholic.

So, I just put all, I just threw my own life into the movie.

I'm half Tommy and half Brendan.

That's my struggle when I was younger of being this loner and also desperately wanting to be married and have children and live that life.

And so, I just started writing.

- How's work?

Oh my god.

What, what happened?

You said it was gonna be a slow night.

- I'm not bouncing out of the club.

- What do you mean you're not bouncing?

You've been lying to me?

- One of the things I actually love about the beginning of this film in general is that in a very short period of time, and I think a lot of people wanna do this, but have a hard time with it.

We get a sense of every major person we're gonna care about in this film right off.

And I think that's a great scene where we get to see them as a team and get a sense of who he is right off the bat.

- That's a dramatization of a marriage and every marriage's conflict and him trying to keep...

They're both trying to stay afloat and he's realizing there's a way to do this that requires, at first, him lying to his wife, 'cause he knows what the answer's gonna be if he ask her up front.

- But opening him up as this guy with a double life right off the bat and about maybe losing his house.

And just from what you were talking about on such a personal level, now that you've told us your story, it's clearly so infused in here.

Obviously, you're pouring a lot of stuff out, but how are you feeling about revealing so much of yourself to the world if this was gonna get made?

- I have to mention, so I wrote this movie with a friend of mine named Anthony Tambackis and he was great because he was in the sidecar, because it was my, it was a story I really wanted to tell.

And he was instrumental in helping me tell it and write it.

And even with "Miracle," I was...

In "Miracle," I put my family on a shelf to chase the dream.

And that's what Herb did.

That was my way of telling the story when I rewrote it.

I mean, this would be the most personal film I've ever made.

No question.

It's all of my life is in there in different incarnations.

It's what gets you out of bed every day to go to work.

It's almost like therapy.

You're just trying to figure [bleep] out, you know?

And hopefully there's an answer when it's all finished.

[typewriter dings] - I'm gonna do that.

But if I'm doing it, then, um... then I'm gonna need a trainer.

Now, that much you were good at.

- Huh?

- What?

No, no, no, no, no.

This doesn't mean anything, okay?

I'm serious.

We train.

That's it.

I don't wanna hear a word about anything but training.

You understand?

You wanna tell your war stories, you can take 'em down to VFW.

You can take 'em to a meeting or to church or whatever, whatever the hell it is that you do nowadays.

- What about cool boy?

- What about him?

I told him I don't train the people that I don't know.

- Hmm.

The devil you know.

- Excuse me?

- The devil you know is better than the devil you don't.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

[Waitress] There's your coffee.

[cup clinks] - Thank you.

- You're welcome.

- Obviously, a lot to talk about in that scene about the relationship, but I also love the way that's shot.

It felt very 1970s to me, and it's also just the views we're not getting, rather than the views we are getting, like how their faces are on screen.

Can you talk about how you envisioned that whole thing?

'Cause it's such a pivotal relationship scene here.

- There was a scene previous to that in the script with the two of them.

It was right after Tommy came home the next morning and it's Paddy, Nick trying to bond about his, he was articulating his experiences in Vietnam, trying to connect with his son.

The first take of the previous and the scene, it's one of...

It is probably my favorite scene in the movie.

And it's a lesson in editing, because I cut it out, I cut the scene out.

It just slowed up the pace of the movie.

And for all you filmmakers out there, you have to kneel at the altar of the movie, not kneel at the altar of a scene.

So, you can love a scene, but if it's not advancing the narrative, even energetically, pace-wise, and you're not losing information.

But when we shot the first scene, this has never happened to me.

I was covering Nick first and first take, and he was telling the story about when he was in Nam.

It's a beautiful monologue and I've never seen this.

When he finished the monologue and we finished the scene, I said cut, everyone in the crew applauded, because it was day one right out of the gate, this intensely emotional and dramatic scene.

And just first take, he just hit a [bleep] home run with it.

It's an exploration of the dynamic between father and son, not only today, but in the history of them.

The thing about Tommy, when he comes home, he's shocked to find his father is a thousand days sober.

He wanted his dad that he grew up with, which was this emotionally abusive... drunk.

And now, Paddy's working the program and has found spirituality.

And so, in essence, Tommy's, the whole movie, Tommy's just trying to get his dad to become the man he knew when he was a boy, which he finally gets later.

But Tommy doesn't trust anyone else and he has a very strong want with the money.

So, he knows his best chances are with his dad because of his childhood with his father when he was a wrestler and his dad coached him.

- But then when he delivers that the devil you know is better than the devil you don't, they're just the, what passes between the of them, I mean- - There's so much subtext in that scene.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- And the devil is Paddy going, I know you think of me as a devil, that's how you view me.

So, I guess the devil you know is better than the devil you don't.

- I feel like we get to know Paddy really well in this scene, like really well.

Just sometimes less is more, I guess, is a lesson, huh?

- It informed a lot of Paddy's backstory, vis-a-vis his own experience in war.

This scene is more about Paddy than it was about Tommy.

- Especially considering what we've seen before where Tommy just gets in the ring and just beats the [bleep] out of that guy, and then just essentially, [chuckles] just ditch, kills that guy's career for a while.

So, you get a sense [Gavin laughing] that he's a brawler.

We know he is addicted.

And just sitting across from them, just that feeling comes out off the screen of these two are the same.

- So, Nick was the first person to read the script when I finished.

I wrote the part, well, Anthony, we wrote the part for Nick.

I always wanted Nick to be in the movie.

We were friends and I was just really a big fan of Nick's when I was a boy.

I had one very specific rule with Nick, 'cause you have to, was that I said, "Nick, you can't play a man who's a thousand days sober if you're drinking."

He did that for me.

And I'm not telling you anything outta school, 'cause we've talked about, he promised me that, I gave him the part.

And then, actually rehearsing that scene when he showed up, he was so hungover and I almost fired him.

He broke my heart.

I was so angry at him 'cause he lied to me and I almost fired him.

And I ended up getting somebody.

I call him Jimmy Pittsburgh, but Jimmy became his handler.

And I said, "Nick, if you're gonna stay in the movie, Jimmy's gonna be your handler and you have to do everything he says."

So, Jimmy took him fishing every day he wasn't working, they went fishing.

They went to the police athletic league.

Nick was on the front page of the "Pittsburgh Gazette" cutting more ribbons, [Barbara laughing] 'cause Jimmy had a famous movie star in Pittsburgh.

So, he didn't drink again the rest of the movie.

[typewriter dings] - I got a thousand days, Brendan.

A thousand days sober today.

- Well, it's great, pop, but it doesn't change anything.

- What do you mean doesn't change anything?

Have a heart, Brendan.

- Listen to me.

You take your have a heart bull [bleep] and you run it down the road.

Yeah, run it out with someone that doesn't know you like I do.

- Ah, listen to me.

You know, I, I thought maybe, you know, we could, could break bread, you know, just o-open some lines of communication.

- You got two lines of communication.

You got the telephone and the post office.

God, just 'cause you decide it's a special day, it doesn't make it one for me.

I got wife and kids inside and they're waiting for me.

So, I don't have time for whatever this is.

- I know you got a wife and kid in there.

I-I-I've got a, a granddaughter in there I haven't seen in three years and another one I haven't even ever met.

- Yeah, why is that, pop?

Why is that?

- Man, that scene breaks my heart.

- Yeah, it breaks my heart.

I'm so glad you picked that scene, because for a sports movie and a movie that I love also for the sports, I think that scene is amazing.

It's something that screenwriters at the festival talk about all the time.

How do you write effective and engaging dialogue and not sound expository.

You just gave us the plot, all the setups, the characters, everything we needed to know was in that scene.

Like, everything is there and there's not a moment of it that feels like it's there because you wanna make sure you got something across that you couldn't figure out another way to do it.

But it feels so true.

It just feels so real.

- Paddy's, he's torched the bridges with both his sons.

So, he's a [beep] punching bag and he is later in his life and he's sober and he is trying to... And now that Tommy's back, he has an opportunity maybe to try to reconnect with his other son.

And it was tricky because, and I appreciate everything you said.

It was also trying to, without a feeling expository for the audience to understand some of the history in that relationship, which was important.

It's funny that scene was when the studio said, "I think it's way too long."

I don't know how many minutes.

It's a long scene for two people talking.

Even putting it up, I was trying to figure out how to block it so I can give it some energy, not just two people standing there without any movement.

So, that was trying to figure all that out, just so, was tricky.

When Nick has a scene of substance, man, he's [bleep] great.

He's great.

- That's a lot of dialogue to write between two people.

Was it hard to get that where you wanted it?

- You know, you think you have it in the writing, and then you never really know until you start putting the scene up.

And I knew when I was shooting it that it was working, mostly because I had two really good actors.

And we did a lot of, I do a lot of biography work with the characters and backstory and things like that.

So, they knew what they were talking about going years.

That was all worked out in prep with them.

And what you see there is literally as written.

I mean, so many times when you make a movie and you shoot a scene, you trim stuff, you cut some things out.

That's exactly how it was written.

I didn't cut out a word of it.

[typewriter dings] - Let me explain something to you, okay?

The only thing that I have in common with Brendan Conlon is that the pair of us, we have absolutely no use for you.

Look at you.

Yeah, I was right.

I think I liked you better when you were a drunk.

At least you had some balls there, not like now, tiptoeing around that.

Beggar with your cup out.

Take it somewhere else tonight.

In fact, you know what, here's a cup.

Why don't you take this and go get yourself some more of your [bleep] tapes and you go back to the room and you listen to some more - Don't do this.

- fish stories that no one gives a [beep] about and get outta here.

Get the [bleep] outta here.

Go on.

- So, that's an interesting point in the movie for a scene like that, to me, because they're dependent on each other at this point.

Or he's dependent on his dad at this point.

And the brutality, the fury that he still has in him is like at this moment is, it was just an interesting placement.

- So, the scene that comes after this is Tommy getting what he's wanted since he came home, which is his dad is now, he fell off the wagon.

He's drunk as a sailor.

There's also the collision of where Tommy is in the fights.

It's going into, he's made it in the first two rounds.

So, now, we get to the second night and I needed Tommy to start to spiritually break him down.

And the mirror that is reflected back on him when he sees his father as the man who he used to be as a drunk, in the hotel scene, is the beginning of the slide for Tommy where he, and also tap into his own humanity.

So, in the next scene, he comforts his father as best as he can.

And it's the beginning of Tommy's, sort of, what I was always going for from before I even started writing the movie was, I knew these two brothers were gonna meet each other in the cage and metaphorically, Brendan need to kill his brother, so he can rise from the dead a new man.

So, I called it an intervention in a cage.

So, during the fight, you can see Tommy's getting slowly more broken and more broken and more broken until he can finally, in a way, die to be reborn.

And it had to be at the hands of his brother, and the beginning of it had to start with his father.

And then, there's a moment later in the fight where, 'cause Tommy goes to fight and Paddy's in his bed in the hotel.

But Paddy does arrive for the two brothers fighting.

There's a moment in the fourth round where Tommy's breaking at the hands of his brother.

And at the end of the fourth round, Brendan walks back to his corner and he sees his dad.

And there's a moment between this emotional line between them where it's basically Paddy saying like, you have to do what you need to do to Tommy for him to come back to us.

That moment was never written in the script.

I actually wrapped, the day before, I had wrapped Nick and he flew back to California home to Malibu where he lives.

And I was shooting that scene and I'm watching Brendan go to his corner and I'm like, oh, [bleep] there needs to be the moment with him and his dad, but Nick's in California, [lightly chuckles] he just left yesterday.

So, I walked outside and I called him, I'm like, Nick, I [bleep] up.

I said, I... 'Cause you're always shooting things that aren't in the script.

It's always evolving, but I missed this one.

And, "You want me to get back, back on a plane now?"

[attendees laughing] I'm like, you gotta get back on a plane for one shot.

- You do that too well actually.

[Gavin laughing] - I spend too much time with him.

But it's also a testament to Nick that he got, next morning got on a plane, flew back.

I did one shot, two cameras.

Thank you.

- Tommy's so self-destructive.

It's so much a part of that whatever that psychopathy or whatever from being in this truly broken family and child of an alcoholic, and it's captured really well and he just can't help himself.

It's like he's gonna have to do that.

Like, he just can't stop.

And you can see it in his face.

That's just such a beautiful piece of acting that we get here from him too.

- He's breaking his own heart while he is doing everything he's doing.

But that's okay with him, because he's spiritually bankrupt.

[typewriter dings] [dramatic music] [kick slams] [dramatic music] ♪ Hey, ♪ ♪ Are you awake ♪ ♪ Yeah, I'm right here ♪ [Brendan] I'm sorry, Tommy.

♪ Well, can I ask you ♪ [Brendan] I'm sorry.

♪ ♪ Tap Tommy.

It's okay.

It's okay.

♪ ♪ ♪ How close am I ♪ - I love you.

I love you, Paddy.

♪ To losing you ♪ - It's amazing to me how much is going on and how much coverage you must have had to get for us to be able to really see what all is going on there.

And from the one shot where you're seeing Tommy coming in like a caveman almost, it's just amazing.

It just sets everything up so beautifully for the fight.

- Everything was driving towards that those five rounds.

Tommy's shoulder was broken at this point.

He's just slowly fall-- body parts are breaking down.

So, I had heard that song when we were writing the movie.

I got hooked on The National.

I didn't know them at that point.

And I love to write to music and I heard that song.

So, that was always in my head.

I was gonna end the movie with that song.

I was gonna bring that song in.

I always knew that in my head.

Once I had that song, it started to inform the score with the instrumentation that, because I knew what I was driving towards that.

But I met with the band and I screened the movie for them, so I can get permission to use the song.

It was just like one of these bullseye songs that had everything emotionally, the lyrics spoke to the relationship.

So, that was crucial.

And the performances and how we shot it, and that's a [bleep] wacky movie.

When I look at it now, it's like, when, I remember the studio said to me, they go, "You can't have two brothers fight at the end.

That's gonna be... And I'm like, yeah, you can.

And then, they go, "But you can't have 'em say I love you at the end and all."

I was like, yeah, you can.

[laughs] And I was like, it's not gonna be cheesy.

It's gonna... we'll earn it by the time we get there.

Don't put your attention on that.

Put your attention on everything leading up to that.

Because if none of this works and that you're right, that won't work.

But if everything works to get us there, it's the culmination of the movie.

[typewriter dings] - So, you put this together at a time when neither of those two actors was quite as big [Gavin chuckles] as those two actors are now.

And so, that afforded you the ability to be able to get it done, right?

- Well, the studio didn't want them.

They want...

I kept using, so "Rocky" was a big, was an important seminal film for me as a little boy.

So, I kept using "Rocky" as an example that no one knew who Stallone when he made "Rocky."

So, that was my story to the studio, because it was a $30 million film with no movie stars.

So, they didn't want Nick.

The studio wanted Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford.

They wanted like, they didn't care if they were right for the role.

- But it found an audience for a lot of the dramatic part of it as well, the brother part, the family part.

So many different layers in here.

So, how did it find that?

- In 2021, which was a 10-year reunion for the film, my agent called me up, he goes, "We're getting inundated with reporters and journalists and podcasts wanting to do pieces on the 10-year anniversary of this movie."

And I was like, what?

I didn't think anybody even gave a [bleep].

I really didn't.

But people did.

And like, there were so many, there were like this 10-year anniversary thing that happened with the film, which I'm deeply grateful for, but I was utterly surprised by that.

It found an audience once it went to home entertainment back in those days and DVDs, and then streaming and it just found an audience.

- So, when you showed this to your brother, this script, what did he think after he read it?

- You had to ask me that, huh?

[Barbara laughing] He didn't say anything.

He's my twin.

We're fraternal twins.

That's all I'll say.

I think it says a lot about where he...

He and I went....

I, for good or bad, I can cry right now.

I have this weird, I feel things so intensely.

I don't know why that I never closed the door to emotions.

[typewriter dings] [Barbara] You've been watching Script to Screen: "Warrior" on "On Story."

"On Story" is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story Project that also includes the "On Story" radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about "On Story" and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

♪ ♪ [projector clicking] [typing] [typewriter ding] [projector dies]