“They just told me to turn the crazy down a notch”: Jake Gyllenhaal and Conor McGregor on Road House

Road House is a remake of the classic 1989 film by the same name that starred Patrick Swayze in the titular role of James Dalton. This time around, Jake Gyllenhaal picks up the baton and runs with the reimagining of that character when he takes up a job as a bouncer at the Road House bar in Florida Keys and comes up against some heavyweight troublemakers, including Conor McGregor in his first film role as Bitman Knox. Whilst the movie pays homage to the original feature it also has a chance to shine on individual merit with its own layers of romance, action and modernised characters. 

Jake, you’ve been eager to work with Doug for a while. Why was this the right project for you guys to come together for and collaborate?

Jake Gyllenhaal: First of all, we had been looking for a long time and I was out for dinner with him and he said he had been reading this reimagining of Road House and I said, “That sounds crazy, let’s do that” and that’s what we did. The whole spirit of it was fun and joy and playful throughout the whole thing. Every day that you were working, it felt like you were working with your friend. He felt like he wanted to get part of my personality in this that you hadn’t seen in a film before. We pushed each other, it was great fun.

You can tell from this film that there’s a lot of love for the original and personally for you having worked in the past with Patrick on Donny Darko, that there’s a real personal connection to that. How did you tread that fine line between something you wanted to make but paying homage to the original in a way?

JG: Patrick was the best. The most charismatic [person]. I was a fan of his since I was a kid, I watched Point Break over 500 times, and my sister took me to the cinema to watch Dirty Dancing and then Ghost and Road House. So to me, when we did Donny Darko, he was so good to me and his wife Lisa too, just supporting me from the start and then through the years. I didn’t feel a great responsibility because we both come from a space where in the theatre you play other parts and many actors play the same part, but I did feel I wanted to honour him. His energy from the original one I wanted to bring through. It was very important for all of us to respect the original. Both this and the original are produced by Joe Silver and those decades come through in the movie and we wanted to honour them both.

Daniela, a great performance and such a fierce character with no one telling her what to do. What was the most important thing you wanted to bring to screen with this character?

Daniela Melchior: I don’t like comparisons so I didn’t feel like I had to fill the shoes of Elizabeth and that’s another reason why they have different character names: one is Elizabeth, the other is Ellie. For me, I can really feel the time difference. I feel different to my mother and my grandmother so a lot of the patterns were broken. Especially on Ellie’s arc and her love story.

For her, what is the appeal of Dalton? What does she see in him? What’s her opinion of him?

DM: I think she sees trouble and she’s attracted to that. I’ve been saying that Ellie needs therapy asap as she definitely has daddy issues. We don’t see this in the storyline but I can imagine as she grew up with Brandt (Billy Magnussen) at school they could have also had something in the past. But as soon as fresh meat comes to town, she’s interested.

Billy, this character is a piece of work, but is there joy in playing someone like that?

Billy Magnussen: I think like Conor, anyone playing a villain, no one believes they’re the villain in their own story, so you’re operating from a hero place and he’s just trying to figure it out in his head.

Lukas, there’s a beautiful story arc for your character, especially being in this environment with everything going on around you there’s a physical ask of you as well. What does he learn along the way?

Lukas Gage: I think he learns a lot along the way. Dalton teaches him to stand his ground, to own his space. We see him as this timid boy becoming a man and standing up for himself. Working with Jake as someone I looked up to since Donny Darko, having him as a role model growing up and then having Dalton be a role model for that character, it was an easy transition. I didn’t know how to throw a punch before the movie and now I do. Life skills.

Conor McGregor, you make such an impression with this film and this performance. You look like you’re having so much fun, is that fair? Did you?

Conor McGregor: It was an awful amount of fun. It was my first time doing it and I had this amazing cast to guide and direct me and assist me and they just told me to turn the crazy down a notch, and that’s what I did.

Jake, how much was in the script in terms of him being this force of nature, not just physically but with the personality with that as well?

JG: When Conor said he would do it and he signed on, the part started to grow. He brought a lot to it, too. So many ideas. What I was amazed by was his brain was constantly bringing new lines, ideas, calling me notorious.

CM: That scene was good. We were given free rein and allowed to be ourselves and they were very supportive of that. The stunt guys that were co-ordinating the fighting scenes, they would lay a foundation and we’d add a couple of blocks here and there and they’d go “wow” and build us up to make us feel incredible. We just grew as a team.

This other side, away from the Road House, these flashbacks that you have as a fighter. Did you shoot those before?

JG: We finished shooting in the Dominican Republic and we were scheduled to shoot the backstory at UFC 283, but the night before I got Covid so the whole team went and I couldn’t go. So we had to cancel and wait two months for [UFC] 285 in Vegas. So we had to rally around and plan again. What they said to us was depending on how the undercards went, if they went the distance or not, we’d have anywhere between 45 seconds and seven minutes. So we had five alternate plans as to how much time the UFC would grant us to be in the octagon. Obviously, for me, I consider that a sacred space. To go in there and not be a professional fighter, I consider the stage the same place but obviously in a very different way. We were focused and we gave it our all and we ended up getting seven minutes because the other guys in the fight didn’t go all the way. When we were in there, they were saying, “You have three minutes” then, “Oh you have another minute”. In the end, they just said, do the whole piece, the whole choreographed fight. I was thinking, “Oh no, we are going to have to do this in front of the whole UFC and they’re going to think it looks so fake.” It felt like a stage in a way, you just have to commit to it and Jay Heiron who I was doing that scene with and fake fought in that moment, he turned to me just before we in and said, “It’s fine, you can just actually hit me.” That encouragement from the fans makes you go hard. They seemed to know who was good and bad in the story so they’d cheer when I threw a punch and boo when Jay did.

CM: You did an amazing job Jake, because I know what you were up against. Because the UFC fans, if it’s not real or not true, they will not be behind it. So that was my addition to it, to make sure it held true. I walked alongside him and he did the UFC, Swayze and all of us proud. When Dalton’s asleep in the car and he has that daydream and he’s in the octagon, for me that’s when the movie lights up. It was worth its weight in gold. The director Doug Liman was phenomenal, he made us all believe, me included, that I was better than I was and that gave me the confidence to express myself even more.

How many months did you have to spend getting in shape for this? Eating differently?

JG: It’s a lot about diet but I’m a physical person and I think as an actor it’s good to be in great physical shape, especially if you’re going to do a long run of a show. But this was a whole different game. I was 41 at the time and it’s important to have flexibility, mobility and strength. When Conor and I are going over it again and again, it’s important to have the energy, too, to pull it off for every take. It was about two months of intense working out and the physical nature of the movie as we were making it kept you in that space. We were in the Dominican Republic so you’re constantly sweating water weight so you have more of an opportunity to look aesthetically right.

The way the fight scenes were shot was really groundbreaking in terms of in terms of pushing that reality forward.

JG: We should show them how we did that. First, we do the Hollywood pass, which is what we all know and what you see in the original Road House,^, which is so you can see the angle for the camera. The next pass that Garrett, Steve and Doug designed was a pad would be in place for the person that was being hit, there were four or five combinations and Doug wanted to do big long takes, so we’d do six to eight combinations in the take and then he would put the pad where you needed to punch so you could feel the impact. So, if you were punching you’d see the impact on the body. Then the next pass was whoever was getting hit would get hit with the pad so you see the body respond in a different way. Then the last pass was us doing it in slow motion. So Conor would come and he’d punch me, he’d hit my face and I’d respond in slow motion, like when you’re kids playing. Then you’d put them all together and you’d get the final version.

Daniela, how was it to work with Joaquim again?

DM: It  was nice, I was saying that it must be funny to be Joaquim nowadays because for sure whenever he receives a call from his agent or his team he must be asking, “Ok, who’s my son, or who’s my daughter?” He played Jason Momoa’s father in Fast X, he played my father in this. He’s a great actor, he has this great career he built in Portugal and also in the United States so when people ask who are the actors from Portugal who work internationally, Joaquim is the big name, so I’m very proud to work with him.

Conor, you make a cheeky entrance to the film. Was this in the script? And do you plan on becoming Hollywood’s next ultimate hard man?

CM: Of course it was in the script, I didn’t just show up naked. This is me, who’s going to say anything or do anything about it? If you’re going to talk about who’s going to be Hollywood’s next hard man, who’s going to stop me? I do it for real, I’ve done it for real all my career. [But] I’m going to regroup after this and leave it to the professionals, it’s hard work. I’m looking forward to mapping my return to the octagon, I’m eager for that…I’ve got two fights left in my contract… so when the promotional work for this film comes to an end, when St Patrick Day festivities come to an end, it’s isolation, focus and moving towards a return to the octagon. I mean, I’d never say never as I had a great time and I made some friends for life here and I enjoyed the process.

JG: That’s what’s so cool about this movie; bringing these two worlds together…the fictional world of movies and the reality of the UFC. Someone like Conor coming into this space and doing that fight together. That first shot we ever shot was the head butt shot and I thought to myself, “What am I doing? This is crazy.”

CM: The first time we came together was when we came face to face when I had found him. So it was as real as it gets. I was coming in, I was the fighting man here, if I want to flip a lid, I’ll flip this whole place for real.

JG: And I was like, “I’ll act the shit out of this.”

CM: It worked. We made a great team…fighting you’re in, you know what the job is. You’ve got 25 minutes or less, I finished people in seconds. Ten seconds is my fasted UFC title fight. This was 18-hour days, it was consecutive, it’s also real, alright it’s a script but you’re taking wallops and taking hits. I threw him over the bar about 20 times. He slammed the door on my head about 20 times, I had a black eye from the door and the director was going, “Do it again, it doesn’t look real” and I was saying “I’ve got a F’ing black eye, what are you talking about?”. But it was a great experience.

Billy, as an actor what’s more difficult, a role with lots of lines to remember or one that has many intense physical scenes?

BM: I don’t think it’s about lines or physicality. I think it’s about developing a character and having to breathe life inside that character. I think finding that true spark for the character is the challenge and the excitement as an actor.

Ezelle Alblas

Road House is released on Prime Video on 21^st March 2024.

Watch the trailer for Road House here: