“We were trying to make something that felt like a throwback”: directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen on impervious action comedy ‘Novocaine’
As far as high concepts for action movies go, a protagonist who can’t feel pain is definitely up there. Dan Berk and Robert Olsen’s Novocaine isn’t just a mindless shoot ’em up, though, channelling the spirit of the genre’s golden years and weaving plenty of comedy and romance into the story for good measure.
Jack Quaid’s mild-mannered assistant bank manager, Nathan Caine, lives the safest life possible given the medical condition that’s robbed him of his pain receptors, only to be plunged into a desperate fight for survival when Amber Midthunder’s co-worker and newfound love interest, Sherry, is taken hostage during a heist at their branch.
From there, Nate continues failing upwards to achieve his objective, whether he’s brawling in a kitchen, plunging his hand into a deep-fat fryer to retrieve a gun, getting impaled in a boody-trapped house, or being hung upside down and tortured. It’s a wild ride and one that’s already topped the box office in the United States.
Novocaine may not be released in the United Kingdom until March 28th, but it only seemed fair to ask Berk and Olsen for their thoughts on being the directors of a movie that debuted at the top of the box office in America, an accolade they approached with a self-deprecating slant.
“That’s something you dream about when you’re a little kid,” Olsen admitted. “It was pretty awesome to see the headlines of the articles that just said, ‘Novocaine: number one at the box office’ and didn’t say anything about the historically low overall box office of the weekend. So it’s fine. As we always say, ‘In the land of sub-$10million openings, the 8.8 is king.'”
When the duo were working on Lars Jacobson’s script, they found themselves watching The Boys and started imagining Quaid in the lead role. The pilot of the superhero series was helmed by Dan Trachtenberg, who would go on to direct Midthunder in Prey and suggested that the two actors try and find a way of working together, which makes Novocaine feel nothing if not serendipitous.
“We were not aware of the Dan Trachtenberg matchmaking, necessarily, when we made our choices,” Berk clarified. “But it makes sense. Dan Trachtenberg is a great director who has a great eye for talent, so it serves to reason that he would see the chemistry between those two. We just knew from a very early stage that Jack was perfect for this.”
“He had all the tools that we needed for the Nate character in his comedic abilities, both improvisational and how he’s a physical comedian, and also how he can just has really deep chops and can handle dramatic scenes as well and sort of emotional heft of the love story,” the filmmaker continued. “So he was a no-brainer, and we were just so lucky that he and Amber had such crackling chemistry.”
Novocaine doesn’t work if audiences don’t buy into the central relationship. It’s not a stretch to say somebody who hates action movies could watch the first 25 minutes of the film, switch it off, be told that they lived happily ever after, and completely believe it, which is exactly what Berk and Olsen were aiming for, sharing their belief that audiences are more than capable of investing in the buildup.
“We felt like the audience could handle a little bit of a longer setup,” Olsen offered. “That’s something that movies used to do, and somewhere along the way, we kind of got away from that. I think it’s an influence of streaming that a lot of times you have producers, financiers, studios, who want you to have there be that action right up front because, especially if you’re making a streaming thing, they’re worried about somebody changing the channel. So you’ve got to hook them fast.”
“But we really wanted this to have a theatrical pace to it; we wanted to make a movie that we assumed you were sitting in a theatre and watching,” he elaborated. “That 25-minute rom-com at the beginning is what makes the rest of the movie work. If you don’t buy that this woman came into his life and changed everything, then you’re not going to buy that he’s risking his life to go and save her.”
Berk and Olsen were aware that audiences wouldn’t be guaranteed an attachment to the characters if they didn’t take the time to let viewers know who they were and invest, with “a little bit more luxurious first act,” giving them the leeway to prepare for the “downhill slalom” of batshit insane action that was to come.
Action heroes aren’t typically the most complicated characters, but Nate required a deceptively difficult performance from Quaid. He needs to be an engaging protagonist, romantic lead, and ass-kicker, often in the space of the same scene at the same time, never mind the fact the stunt sequences forced him to forget everything he’d learned by pulling off those scenes without flinching or showing signs of pain.
“Sometimes, we would think that we had it during a fight scene, and he would ask for one more take because he was like, ‘I think I did a little teeny wince’ because you obviously have to not show what would traditionally be perceived as pain in your facial expression,” Berk said. “But you’re still susceptible to physics, and you’re still susceptible to other emotions like concern or anger, fear, you know. So it was always threading a needle with him on that.”
Fortunately, it helps that the second-generation star is one of the industry’s most affable new stars. “He’s such a special performer, and why we feel he’s such a movie star because he is, by default, likeable. He didn’t have to work on that. You talk to him for five minutes, and you’ll fall in love with him. You could be talking about insurance rates, and you’d fall in love with him. He’s just that likeable.”
Continuing to shower Novocaine‘s leading man in praise, Berk believes Quaid is his generation’s version of Tom Hanks or John Cusack: “Those guys that we don’t really have in the acting market around this stage and are really important. These super, super relatable everymen who the audience can really map their experience onto.” Still, it wasn’t without its challenges, with the actor’s relentless training and preparation turning him into a convincing action who’s intentionally ill-equipped for the job.
“What drew us to the project was the fact that this was an action hero who didn’t know how to fight, almost more than the fact that he couldn’t feel pain,” Olsen confirmed, elaborating by saying that even though he and Berk had been “wanting to make an action movie for the longest time,” they weren’t going to do it just for the sake of it.
“You’re so used to watching John Wick or whoever it is, any number of Jason Statham movies where your protagonist is like a complete alpha, and they are killing everyone around them, and they’re fighting ten guys at once, and they are the best combatant in the movie,” which wasn’t what they were after. “This just felt like the complete opposite to us, where, basically, all of these fight scenes, he is just fighting and scrapping to stay alive, and he’s getting his ass kicked for the majority of them.”
Nate is an action hero who, in Berk and Olsen’s words, “Has as many fighting skills as you, the viewer, do.” By their own admission, the directors don’t know how to fight, and neither does Nate. “What would we do? I would probably throw the lettuce and raw chicken at him and run and flail your arms and try to talk them out of it.” The fight scene they’re referring to unfolds in a kitchen and features a bag of flour dumped all over an assailant’s head, but was it an intentional homage to John Woo’s classic Hard Boiled?
‘Kind of’ is the answer. “Hard Boiled was a big reference for this, but I don’t know that we ever put those two things together,” Olsen confessed. “We were watching a ton of action movies at the time, and Hard Boiled was one that we watched and we sent to Jack to watch. But I don’t know that anyone ever put two and two together with the flour, but maybe we should start saying that it is.”
Novocaine touches base with tropes and trappings audiences associate with the action genre; there are dogged detectives, costumed criminals pulling off a bank heist, and a gun-wielding hero in a suit. Berk and Olsen were constantly aware of embracing those cliches but subverting them without going so far as to wink at the audience, with their shared love of the best the 1980s and ’90s had to offer serving as their biggest inspiration.
“We were trying to make something that felt like a throwback to the sort of golden age of action movies that we loved, and we grew up with in the late ’80s and early ’90s,” Berk shared. “In addition to things like Hard Boiled, we were watching movies like, obviously, the entire Die Hard franchise, Lethal Weapon, and Midnight Run; these movies that feel like they have a lot of those elements. They have a lot of these action tropes in place, but they were in many ways better references for us than contemporary action movies because they had much more relatable protagonists.”
For the filmmakers, characters like Martin Riggs, Roger Murtaugh, John McClane, and Jack Walsh worked because they weren’t “secretly the best assassin in the world or some CIA operative moonlighting as a gardener or something” but guys with a job to do. Novocaine sought to channel the “relatable energy of those older action movies” with a contemporary sheen to try and emulate the way those titles “have resonated for 40+ years” by creating a connection between the viewer and the leads.
“It’s about not being afraid to have fun,” Olsen jumped in. The director reflected on how many modern action movies “don’t know how to have fun as much fun or make fun of themselves a little bit,” which caused them to “back themselves into tonal corners where you can’t have fun in those universes,” something Novocaine avoided by knowing when to step back and crack a joke or two.
“There’s a lot of slapsticky stuff in this movie; there’s a lot of physical comedy,” he opined. “There’s a lot of these high-concept action movies that you see, like a Crank or an Upgrade, but there’s also a little Ace Ventura or something. And I think that’s something that Jack is uniquely able to do because he’s an incredible physical comedian. I think he’s one of the best physical comedians we have just because of his body type; he’s so long and lanky yet athletic enough because you have to do that.”
It should also be noted that Novocaine is a gruesome movie, too. There’s plenty of blood, broken bones, and carnage that isn’t too dissimilar from horror, another aspect of the film that required Berk and Olsen to thread the eye of a tonal needle.
“It’s also this kind of fun, weird, adult fairy tale of a story,” the latter elaborated. “So we always try to find ways to make sure that we were able to mix a lot of like fun and kind of youthful humour into what would normally be a very grizzly movie, you know, because, like, there’s so much gore and violence in Novocaine that I think if you didn’t have those moments of fun, it would be gratuitous.”
The scene that best encapsulates Novocaine comes in the third act when Nate is tied to a chair and subjected to what should be an excruciating period of torture. Obviously, because he can’t feel pain, being stabbed and having his fingernails ripped out is pointless. He still has to pretend, though, and it was a highlight of the production for the filmmakers. On paper, it’s an obvious gag, but as they say, it’s all about the delivery.
“That was like the keystone scene in the movie,” Olsen said. “When we first got this script, it had that awesome concept in it, but the tone was very different. It was very dark and serious, and there were no jokes in there. And so part of our pitch was, ‘Hey, great concept, but can we come in and work this script and kind of change the tone, make it into a little bit more of an action comedy?’ And that was the scene that we pitched them.” When they were on set, it validated their desire to refit the tone.
“We knew right then that not just this scene, but that this movie would work. Because it was like the proof is in the pudding: if you’re making all of these crew members who are paid to not blow a take and laugh laugh, you’re gonna have a good time with an audience who is there to laugh.”
Their confidence was only reinforced during Novocaine‘s first test screening: “Everybody was cracking up and screaming because, again, you’re laughing a bunch,” Olsen recalled. “But also, some of our most graphic imagery is in that scene as well. And to see people vacillating between, you know, screaming and gasping and groaning and laughing, that was when we knew that we kind of had something here.”
Instead of asking if Berk and Olsen would be interested in making a Novocaine sequel (they are), it seemed the better option to find out which action franchise the duo would love to see Nate parachuted into. Unsurprisingly, their response leaned towards the more comedic outcome.
“I think he could do well in a Fast & Furious setting,” Berk proposed. “I feel that franchise could use an everyman that didn’t mean to join the family.” Olsen concurred for many of the same reasons. “One who’s not good at driving and keeps crashing into things.” The former even wanted to see him driving a Prius and being “somehow expected to keep up with these people,” which is a movie that needs to happen.
Outside of Novocaine 2 and a Fast & Furious crossover, Berk and Olsen even know what their dream project would be. By their own admission, it doesn’t have much of a narrative, and they’re not even sure how they’d pull it off, but the directors have ambitions of adapting one of their favourite video games for the screen.
“We’ve always wanted to make a Rocket League movie,” Olsen revealed. “I don’t know if you’ve ever played the video game Rocket League, but it’s basically soccer with cars, and we always play it when we’re on set together, and there’s no narrative in the game. It’s just you are. There’s no story to it. But the more that we played it, the more we realized, like, ‘Holy shit, this would make an incredible movie.'”
Berk and Olsen’s Rocket League would be “all the best parts of Fast & Furious, but also Speed Racer and Mad Max in there and all this stuff. It would be an expensive movie, and it’s very difficult for a million reasons to get the rights to that game. But we have this whole, like, five minutes in the future world that we’ve built and have an entire story ready to go. So yeah, I think, as weird as it is, it would be Rocket League.“
Having steered an R-rated action comedy about a man who can’t feel pain to the top of the domestic box office, who’s to say they won’t get their shot at Rocket League eventually?
