Monday, May 23, 2016

Catching Up with Dax Shepard

Dax Shepard recently sat down for an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, where he talked about his film adaptation of CHiPS among other topics. Here's what he had to say:


First off, why a CHiPs remake?

I was always a fan of any TV program with vehicles as its stars. I loved The Fall Guy because of the brown truck, The Dukes of Hazzard because of the General Lee and CHiPs because it had motorcycles, dirt bikes and off-road trucks. I went for a ride in a dune buggy when I was 2 and have been obsessed ever since. But I was writing another script and I was making a Poncherello joke and I didn't know how to spell it, so I googled it — and not only did the spelling come up but this great photo of Jon and Ponch popped up that I had never seen before with them just staring off into the distance. They looked mildly tough and cool. It was such a family show but this image was kind of edgy. I just thought, "Guys on motorcycles can hold an edgier tone. I think there is a cool version of the movie that could be made." So my pitch [to Warner Bros.] was that it would be more like Bad Boys — the action would be more intense, the bad guys would be scary and the blood would be real.

Was it imperative that you shoot in California as the TV show did?
It was, and I had a locked budget, so the only way it could have been done is with an incentive. Had we not gotten it, we'd definitely have had to go to Louisiana or Atlanta, which felt criminal considering the word "California" is actually in the title of the movie.

Did you have trouble shooting scenes on the highways?
There's two sections of the highway where they tend to let people film: a little piece of the 710 and the 105. As I was watching [The People v. O.J. Simpson], I noticed they were on the 710. We also really wanted to shoot at the CHP central office. That required some wooing, for sure, because it is an R-rated comedy, and that's scary territory for a government agency.

How different will the film be?
Tonally, it's very 2016. It's a hard R. The only characters that are back are Jon and Ponch. I wanted to come up with new stuff. I feel like the show exists in the same way that I loved the Batman TV show when I was a kid, but I certainly loved Christopher Nolan's completely opposite [film] version of that.

And your wife is in the film, too, yes?
Yes, she plays my wife in the movie actually. I don’t think I'll ever make anything that she's not in. She's just too dependable. She's one of the very few actors that every single take is usable, so she's a very efficient person to shoot with. And when you're on a very tight budget and most of your days are blocked out for action, she's who you want in the other scenes.

I have to ask about the music video you and your wife made for Toto's "Africa." Were you surprised it went viral?
I mean, any time something goes viral I think that's shocking because it's really hard to do, as a lot of branded content curators find out. But at the same time, it was something that we had for four years on our iPhones, and anyone we had shown it to had really, really liked it a lot. And my daughters watch it on repeat for 15 minutes straight sometime. So I did feel like there was something sticky about it, but I would obviously never bet anything could be viral.

Read the full interview at The Hollywood Reporter.


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