Why ‘Normal’ Guys Like Bob Odenkirk & Keanu Reeves Make Great Action Heroes: TIFF Q&A With ‘John Wick’ & ‘Nobody’ Creator Derek Kolstad

EXCLUSIVE: After creating the John Wick and Nobody action franchises, screenwriter Derek Kolstad is at it again. Premiering last night in the Midnight Madness section at the Toronto Film Festival as an acquisition title – I’ll eat my hat if it doesn’t get a distribution deal as Kolstad already ponders a sequel – comes Normal. The star is Nobody protagonist and Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk, this time as a temp sheriff in a Fargo-like snowy town that turns out to be where the Yakuza keeps its stash of ill-gotten cash and gold. The Ben Wheatley-directed tongue-in-cheek actioner also stars Henry Winkler and Lena Headey, and a lot of sh*t gets blown up. I’m not sure the real Odenkirk could beat me up, but he’s once again ideal as the reluctant action hero ruining the white snowy streets with splashes of red. Kolstad here reveals the care and feeding that goes into creating these unlikely action hero franchises, starting with John Wick, who carries the name of his grandfather.

DEADLINE: You’ve done things different in creating two action franchises and you’re at TIFF with what might be the third. Start with your decision to kill John Wick’s puppy in the first film. I remember watching I Am Legend with my kids, and how upset they got when Will Smith’s dog got killed. I reminded them that every human being on Earth also bought the farm, but they were unmoved. You made it even worse by killing a puppy given him by his dead wife. Explain.  

KOLSTAD: The dog? It’s funny because when I was a kid, the movie that really screwed me up was Old Yeller. Disney put out those white-bordered VHS tapes and it’s a really sweet movie until Old Yeller gets put down. And then of course reading Where the Red Fern Grows in fifth grade in school. I beat everyone to the end and just sat there crying. There was something special about that ultimate innocence of a puppy. I spent so much time on the world building of John Wick and what’s taking place in the background, and the texture. I thought that I knew I was doing something a little bit off kilter. My wife Sonja is the first line of defense, she reads the first draft of everything. I hear her in the other room, hitting page 11, 12, or whatever it was, and she just started going, Nope! Nope! I got the script back with a big X. It’s the one thing we disagreed on and it turned out the way it did. But also even you look at Nobody, you could say it was all about a kitty cat bracelet, but it’s not. It’s like you could say it’s about a puppy, but it’s not. But then again, sometimes the puppy and the bracelet, it becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

DEADLINE: So now you’ve evoked the image of a camel with a broken back. Were you pressured to change the dead puppy?  

KOLSTAD: The first cut of the movie, certain powerful people with notes come back and say, first thing we got to do is get rid of the dog. And you’re just like, wait, wait, wait, wait. To their credit, man, since day one, Chad [Stahelski] and Dave [Leitch] fought for that because they understood it. Keanu Reeves fought for it, he understood it, but ultimately it was a flash of negativity in the pan, and once they decided to go with it, everyone was behind it.

I think it helped because this is the way I put it. I have 8-year-old twins. They’re too young to see the movie. And about a year ago, I showed them one of the trailers, the general audience one, which is already too violent for them. “Did they kill the dog, daddy?” I said, yes. And then, “Well, what is he doing about it?” And I said, “Killing them all.” And the response, in a very small voice, was “Good.” From the lips of a child.

DEADLINE: John Wick was the name of your grandfather. How many hundreds of people did your grandfather kill?

KOLSTAD: He’s nothing like that character. In fact, he never saw the movies. The last R-rated movie he ever saw, he took my grandma to see The Piano in the early ’90s and was just like, yeah, I’m done with R-rated movies. There’s a lot of nudity there. I argued, there’s no nudity in John Wick. And he’s like, nah. But he was always so happy because I’d wanted to be a screenwriter since the age of 8 or 9, I loved books, loved movies and was like, I’ll be that guy. And so for this to actually work out, man, we had a special connection there.

DEADLINE: When I watched Normal, I felt like I did with John Wick an Nobody. I am not a violent person, but I could watch it on a loop. I’ve talked about this with Chad, that I cannot even describe why I feel that way. It’s almost meditative, despite the carnage and body counts. Why are your creations so damn watchable?

KOLSTAD: It’s funny because half of the answer is there’s a catharsis at play, right? I would also argue that in talking with Bob and talking to Keanu and a lot of the other guys I’ve been working with, they recognize that a good fight sequence is a dance number.

You look at these two guys and these two franchises, and they already come in with a great deal of goodwill. They’re good people, both in the public eye and on set. John Wick is not an anti-hero, he’s a hero in who he was and who he is and who’s going to be. I think part of the reason is you sit down, you relax, and you enjoy. They’re not too long, they’re not too short. They feel the right amount of length, and you’re just like, that made me feel good. It’s one of the reasons I go back and I watch Long Kiss Goodnight or Die Hard or Hunt for Red October or Predator over the years. I love Cabin in the Woods. We all have our 20 movies that when we travel and turn on the TV and there’s that one movie on at two in the morning, you’re like, well, shit, I have to watch the rest of it. That’s kind the goal for me.

DEADLINE: I’ve got my go-to films, and always had that relationship with the Equalizer trilogy and with the movie Payback, the one that Mel Gibson was in. All he wanted was the $70,000 he’d been screwed out of?

KOLSTAD: Dude, my favorite line in both that and Point Blank, I think they had the same line. It was, I’ll pay you the $79,000 or whatever the number, and Mel goes, I don’t want your money. I want my money. And he realized, oh, this guy’s kind of insane. And it’s just a joy.

DEADLINE: What were your touchstones in creating John Wick, Nobody and Normal?  

KOLSTAD: I’m a big fan of Spencer Tracy, and so I went into this idea for Normal because I love Bad Day at Black Rock. I wrote out this treatment when I couldn’t sleep one night and Mark Provissiero, Bob’s manager and the producer on this, he had asked me what I was working on. I pitched him this thing and he’s like, that sounds awesome. Then we both got super busy and finally Bob calls me and said, what’s this thing you mentioned? I pitched him and got, that sounds awesome. It was just lightning in a bottle because the way I work with Bob is, I bring in my love of genre and he brings in his love of comedy and character. I build out the story, the world, build the action, I populate it. But he comes in and he spends just as much time with everybody else in the script. We have a shorthand. But mainly it’s a love letter to the stuff I loved as a kid.

DEADLINE: You killed something else lovable, not as bad as the puppy, but…

KOLSTAD: And every time I see that scene, it kills me because it is so funny.

DEADLINE: We’d seen Keanu in action films, but Odenkirk is an unlikely action hero. Then again, Liam Neeson was this serious actor known for Schindler’s List and Jason Statham was this fast-talking funny guy in Guy Ritchie movies and they’ve made careers in action. How did you know Bob would be good at this?

KOLSTAD: Bob says it best, and it’s that he came for the world of sketch comedy where the sketches are between two and a half to six minutes. And he said that’s what a fight is. And he’s right. A good fight scene is around that time and he’s like, it begins this dance. Both he and Keanu especially, they loved to say … pain is the wrong word, but they both put their bodies through the ringer. They’ll both be the first to say, I can’t really fight, but I can film fight. And they just get excited about it. The stunt crews love Bob and Keanu. They work hard, they love the craft, and they become friends with the crew. And when the crew wants to switch something up or Bob’s got an idea to make the scene a little funnier, or Keanu’s got an idea that is more of a character moment, it just becomes this perfectly oiled machine. But I also remember seeing Geena Davis in Long Kiss Goodnight and going, holy sh*t. And I think again, we said the same thing about comedians who go and do dramatic parts. They just see a new challenge that they haven’t done and they just embrace it.

DEADLINE: If Normal gets a Toronto deal and becomes a hit, do you want to do more as happened with John Wick and Nobody?

KOLSTAD: That’s the hope in everything I do. I think back to Star Wars when I was a little kid, you hear the name Jabba the Hutt and you’re like, what? And you expect to see him in Empire Strikes Back, and you don’t, but there he is in the third film. You plant these seeds and hope for a creative harvest. The weight you put on yourself is to make sure that the first one works. Then, if there’s only one, you’re happy, and if the studio or the investors come back and say, let’s do another, you have to make sure that it’s the character’s evolution. You can trust me with the action and the world building and cool bad guys and all that kind of stuff. But if your character doesn’t change, it’s the end of the franchise, right?