After a decade away from the camera, Boiler Room director Ben Younger’s back with Bleed For This.
Ryan charts his extraordinary return…
Ask him about his first movie, the crime 2000 dramaBoiler Room,and the words flow less easily.
Impressed, Kerper helped Younger get an agent, who in turn got theBoiler Roomscript sent to Ben Affleck.
Its when the topic of conversation turns to Youngers relative youth during the making ofBoiler Roomthat he becomes hesitant.
Uh, I dont know, he says.
Not good I guess.
At 26 you dont think… you think it happened because you willed it to happen.
So theres a lack of gratitude at that age, at least in my experience.
Its amazing to hear people come to me and go, Wait you didBoiler Room?'
This is a fuckin chick flick!'
Somewhere along the line, however, that project fell apart.
Younger wouldnt direct another movie for over a decade.
But otherwise, he largely spent the next ten years or so working outside the film industry.
I had a very rich, interesting decade, Younger says.
I became a pilot.
I raced motorcycles semi-professionally.
I had a lot of success in that.
And then I cooked in a restaurant my friends restaurant.
That restaurant was in Malpais, a remote fishing village in Costa Rica.
In 2012, everything changed when Martin Scorsese called up.
By the early 90s, Belfort was a multi-millionaire before the FBI moved in and busted him for fraud.
Scorsese then asked Younger what hed been working on.
Two weeks later, Younger got another phone call from Scorsese.
Im want to help you make this movie, he said.
There was no studio, I owned the project outright.
Its about as free and open and unrestricted of a movie as Ive ever made.
The boxing sequences, meanwhile, presented a more urgent technical issue.
If you think you might shoot a boxing scene in one day, he said, Youre wrong.
You have to go back and re-cut scenes so that you have more days in the ring.
Nevertheless, Younger stuck to his schedule: one day, one fight.
It was brutal, Younger says, shaking his head.
We had a great boxing coordinator, Daryl Foster.
It didnt flow as well as maybe I felt like it needed to.
Because its exhausting; youre fighting, youre boxing, and its intense, even after all those hours.
Aaron Eckhart, who was outside the ring as Pazs boozy trainer and surrogate father figure, concurs.
The stakes were so high in those days.
Again: time, money, Younger says.
We picked it up from a medical supply place.
The halo itself was a bit ill-fitting.
[Miles] was in quite a bit of pain…
Given just how tight the schedule was, its striking how confidently-made and effectiveBleed For Thisturned out to be.
There was no time but to act on instinct and to get this thing done, the actor says.
So that, I think, really worked in the films favor.
I can do it for a price).
I wish it had been a bit harder to get that first movie made, Younger says.
I probably wouldve had a bit more respect for my own work and movie-making in general.
I took a more circuitous path.
Ive arrived, finally, [at a place of] understanding gratitude.
But it took a little extra time.
Bleed For Thisis out now.
