You've been a Kyokushin Karate instructor and you have known Dolph for quite a few years?
About thirty-five, thirty years at least. I first met Dolph when his instructor, Brian Fitkin, asked me to go to Sweden to teach his classes, because he wanted (to give) some feelings for his students. So I went there and that's how I met Dolph originally. But then I lost track of him after he got into the movies. I met him again about six years ago in Los Angeles, when he called me and said that he had a fight scene in a movie where he was handcuffed from behind and three guys beating him, and “what's the best way to get out of it”? So I told him and I've been living this ever since! So I've been doing all his fight scenes for him. Officially I'm his fight choreographer, unofficially, I call myself his “reminder”: I just remind him the things he already knows. I don't tell him anything that he doesn't already knows. If you'll notice, where he's concerned he's so busy that he'll do something in a fight, he'll look at me and I'll explain something to him and say “oh yeah I already know that!” That's basically what it is. But other than that, we've got a good thing with each other, we get on well, and there's a bit of team work and camaraderie which I think anybody should have, especially in this business.

So there's a lot of trust?
Sure, yeah you have to, I mean I don't do anything to make him look bad because that's not what I want. The reason I do this, because I'm retired, and he basically got me out of retirement, is because I wanna see him look really good in movies. He looks good anyway but there's just certain things I want him to do, which he does, and so far everything that I've asked him to do he's liked.

You brought a new feel to his fight scenes, more realistic…
Well this is what I was hoping. When you get someone like Dolph, who still trains today, he's training with Slavi (Slavov), they fight almost every morning, so he's a very very powerful guy, and I've always said, that if he hits you, you're not gonna get up. So when you see these fights where a fight lasts fifteen minutes and they're hitting each other and you see no blood, they're just running around, to me it's just crazy. But with someone like Dolph, he looks powerful, when he's swinging punches you know if he hits you you're gonna go out very quickly and for a long time. That's how I like to do my fights, hard, short, I don't like more than maybe between five to ten movements in a fight, that's how you can show power and what it can develop in a fight.

Which in a way is the martial arts spirit...
Oh sure, yeah. I mean I've been teaching martial arts now for like 45 years, so I know what knocks people out and the easiest way to do things as far as putting someone out, not just hitting. So I wanna try and bring a little bit more of martial arts into his movies as we go along, just simple things which people don't really know about in the layman industry. So these little things which will look good on screen I'm gonna get him to start doing, which he knows anyway. He already knows these things but you have to jolt the pride, jolt that memory is what you need to do.

So when in the process do you start to choreograph the fights for a film?
What usually happens is Dolph has sent me a script, if it's a script that we like. He sent me whatever fights are in it, “what do I think is a good fight”? If there's any more fights to put in it, what I do is I write them out. I don't write them in the script, I write them out 1, 2, 3 whatever how many fights we have, and then I'll send them to Dolph or call him and explain to him what it is and he'd say to me “that's great, that's great, that one's good”... And what we do then when we come to film it, I see what it looks like on the monitor, or before that, and if I think it doesn't look good then we change it. I know the way he moves his body, his instructor is a very good friend of mine, Brian Fitkin, and I know the way he teaches, so I know. Basically he's a Kyokushin boy and that also what I teaches, Kyokushin, so I know his body movements and that's how I work so you know, we just work that way.

How long do you rehearse before filming?
About five minutes! (laughs) It's been very sort of unlucky. The very first movie I did with him I had more practice time, and normally what happens now is that because of other things we get to the fight scenes and we're running out of time. So we gotta get into it and we just make it, what I usually do then I cut bits out of it to make a little bit shorter and easier to do. As long as to make it look powerful and Dolph looks good that's all I worry about. Basically that's my greatest insistences, Dolph has to look good otherwise there's no point doing it.

People are wondering if Dolph is gonna like pure martial arts movie, like a fighting movie?
I dunno, that's something you're gonna have to ask Dolph, sometime we talk about it and do maybe one of these bare-fisted fight movies or whatever, but that's something you're gonna have to ask Dolph. When he says to me we're gonna do this I say 'fine' and I start working on whatever he wants me to do. But basically I'm retired, you know I'm seventy years old now. But I enjoy myself at it and we get on well, we have fun, we laugh, which to me is a big thing on a movie set, you've gotta have a sense of humor otherwise, we do twelve, fourteen hours a days and if you don't have a sens of humor it can get it can get hectic and it can get boring. So we like to, we just laugh and jive and tell jokes, and just enjoy ourselves the best we can. He's got a good sense of humor, I got a good sense of humor and then we got some friends to laugh with us, we just have fun.

And the crew here in Bulgaria is very relaxed and smooth...
The crew here are fantastic, they've got a camaraderies with these guys, they help each other out, you never see them moaning and groaning each other, they work hard, I like the way they work. I worked with them when we did THE MECHANIK, and they worked hard then and when I came back I recognized them and they recognized me, it was just being in family again, it felt really really good, I enjoy these people, they're really nice, they're strong people too, I like them.

Aside from the fight choreography and being a close friend of Dolph, are you working with him on the projects as some sort of manager as well?
No, that sort of things no, I'm here mainly for the fights, but if he calls me and he's reading a script, and you know sometimes you're reading a script and you go blank, you want something out of that script and you're not getting out of it and you're wondering why, he'll either call me or one of the other guys and says “these doesn't seem right” so we talk about it and things like that. No I mean basically I'm just here, I class myself as a “reminder” (I might as well remind him...) whatever I tell him he already knows, then I just nag him and and jolt his memory.

So you're here to support him in the way he can look the best...
Yeah. Don't get me wrong, if he does something which I don't think is good I'll tell him, that's why he trusts me, if I don't like it I'll say to him “it doesn't look good or whatever”, then we talk about it and go from there, and that's why he trusts me, I don't tell him no lies, and I speak my mind.

Which you would do with like a karate student?
Sure, I never lied to my karate students, and I use train them very hard. And lots of fights scenes that I have Dolph in I've actually done, so I know what works and what doesn't work. Basically that's how we go all the time, as you see if you've been watching, we're always enjoying ourselves, always laughing and teasing each other...I enjoy it and enjoy his company, and we just have fun!

[...]

it's gonna be lots of violence in the fights all the way through it. I'd like to do a way with the same old stuff that you get on movies, same old thing, I like to use different sort of weapons, grabbing things and killing people with different sort of weapons, so we're working on the script now. Now he's gonna give me the script, once we're set on what it's gonna be, and I'm actually gonna write the fights in it, so then we can stick to the fights, so we know then, in production, how long it's gonna take for me to do each fight so then I'm gonna eat a lot of that time, then I will enjoy myself (laughs)!

Which is the main goal for everything...
Yeah I want people, an audience, to, when they see Dolph fight, I want them to go “holly cow, now that was hard, that was vicious!”. That's what I want people to sit back and cringe a little bit. And I've got ideas, I've got lots of ideas, they just come at my brain... and then once I get that going we'll see what happens, at times you do say “next movie we'll do this, next movie we'll do this” and somehow it never happens. But in this movie there gonna be hard punches and some hard kicks, some brutal shootings and things like that. Anyone that likes Dolph Lundgren movies is gonna like this movie.

It's really action-packed.
It's VERY action-packed.