Issue 078

August 2011

Randy Couture isn’t the first and won’t be the last MMA star to hit the big screen as Hollywood plunders real-life action heroes.

A dingy garage filled with engine blocks, motorcycles, and hydraulic lifts serves as a non-descript backdrop to some of the recognizable faces in Hollywood. The 2010 film The Expendables featured a veritable who’s who of action stars.

Sly Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews and… Randy Couture? That’s a lot of muscle and, amid such heavyweight actors, even a UFC Hall of Famer might get lost in the wash of star power. But cauliflower ear aside, it is hard not to notice Couture’s emerging career path, as well as a slew of other mixed martial artists who are trying their hands at motion pictures.

“The guys we grew up with, Bruce Willis, Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, their time has kind of passed from that action genre,” Couture says. “A lot of people in Hollywood know there’s a void now and they’re trying to fill it with MMA fighters.” 

Indeed, Hollywood has noticed the appeal of MMA’s leading practitioners, and it’s akin to a gold rush as movie studios mine the Octagon to find the next big action hero.

Genuine action heroes

“The [2008] strike was going on in Hollywood, at that time it was hard to get any work. The business was going through a really rough time,” said agent Scott Karp, who represents MMA superstars Cung Le and Gina Carano. “The traditional means of getting jobs for actors and actresses wasn’t working. Actors who had a lot of credits were getting hosed, if you will, in their paychecks. Studios weren’t making as many movies. It was just a weird time in Hollywood. 

“My partners and I were scratching our heads asking ourselves what’s exciting, what’s different, what’s going to sell? And we’re in the action business, and there weren’t any more action stars. I grew up with [Arnold] Schwarzenegger, Sly Stallone, then the transition to Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal… My partners were big UFC fans, MMA fans, and we thought we should troll that world, if you will. So I went to see a fight featuring Cung and I was just blown away by what he was bringing to the fights, not just physically and how stylish he was.”

Between Karp and his partners, as well as Strikeforce president Scott Coker, they all saw the marketing potential for Le and began banging on doors within the film industry. 

For Cung Le, it was a renewing experience. He had been offered scripts in the past but mainly bit parts and his familiarity with Hollywood was slight. In his second attempt, however, the san shou expert has knocked it out.

“For a lot of fighters, these opportunities just sort of come up; they jump at it and do the best they can. I didn’t just go into acting blindly,” says Le, who just completed two films, including Quentin Tarantino’s The Man with the Iron Fist, starring Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu. “Any time I am offered a part, I will do private acting lessons and hire an acting coach to critique me and get me to the point where I can deliver my character and dialogue the way the director wants it. I’ve been taking acting lessons on and off since 1998. I take my acting very seriously. Whatever I do, I do it with 185% effort. I approach my acting classes with as much effort and energy as I do training for a fight. I wouldn’t jump into a role or a fight without the proper preparation.”

This includes hours of rehearsing lines, facial expressions, and fight choreography. If you don’t believe how dedicated Le is, Karp can attest to it. 

“We told Cung, after we had introduced him to a slew of studios, we could get him more opportunities, but now we have to get your acting game up to where your fight game is. That’s something we preach very seriously, something that I don’t ever want one of my clients to take lightly,” Karp said. 

On the surface, the move from mixed martial arts to action movies might seem as natural as a duck to water. After all, these guys already look like action stars, with their chiseled bodies, square jaws, and martial arts training. However, the transition takes time and preparation. An MMA fighter can look like GI Joe, but can he act like him?

“I’ve told clients, ‘You might have been training in martial arts for 18 years, but now you’re going to go against actors who’ve been acting for 18 years or more,’” Karp says. “They are as good at what they do as you are as good at what you do. So you better be prepared.”

No experience necessary

For some fighters, the question is not if he or she will break into acting, but when. Talent agencies and independent agents not only look for promotional opportunities for their fighters but also welcome the chance to add mainstream visibility for a fighter.

JT Stewart, manager for UFC middleweight Rich Franklin, says he encouraged Franklin to accept a role in Cyborg Soldier, in which Franklin played a Terminator-like character opposite Tiffany Theissen, known most notably from the teen TV sitcom Saved by the Bell. 

“I remember Rich’s initial reaction to it,” Stewart recalls. “He was reluctant because it wasn’t some bit part. He was in nearly every frame of that movie. And truth be told, in the beginning, Rich was a little tentative. But once he got relaxed he did quite well. 

“The thing is, I had to convince him that it’s not just the exposure you get from being in the movie, it’s the whole networking process with people in that industry. Realistically, it is a big industry with a small number of people running the whole thing. So the more chances he gets to get in front of people in ‘show business’ the more they are going to see Rich Franklin as a guy who could do this kind of work.”

With no previous acting experience, Franklin was helped, like Schwarzenegger was, by playing a somewhat one-dimensional character – an emotionless cyborg. 

“[So far] I have enjoyed the experience of doing films,” Franklin says. “The first one was a learning experience with being a lead in it. I hated it at first. All the waiting was tough, but once I settled in, it was fine.” And as Stewart hypothesized, opportunity has beget opportunity as Franklin just finished a small part in a movie with actor Kevin James, star of the TV sitcom King of Queens and comedies Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Grown Ups. James’ Here Comes The Boom bares a striking resemblance to Franklin’s own story – a teacher who becomes a UFC fighter in order to save the music department. “I had a good time shooting with Kevin James on his new movie and learned a lot,” Franklin says. 

Xtreme Couture and UFC welterweight Mike Pyle, starred in 2009’s Universal Soldier: Regeneration, opposite Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. Couture’s former manager, Matt Walker, who also had at one point been with noted talent agency Gersh, came across director John Hyams (The Smashing Machine), who was looking for fighters to star in his film. 

“They were looking for fighters. You know, guys who could talk a little bit, devastatingly handsome,” Pyle jokes. “Seriously, Matt gave [Hyams] a list of guys and they said we’ll get back to you. When it comes to movies, I’ve heard that line before. But sure as shit, [Hyams] just called me up and asked if I wanted to be in his film. I said, ‘Hell, yeah!’ So they flew me out to Bulgaria first class, and I worked out there for a month and a half. I did a lot of work on that movie, but it was fun.”

The experience served as an enlightening first exposure to the film industry and cemented Pyle’s interest in acting after his fight career concludes. For fighters in their mid-30s, like Pyle (35) and Franklin (37), these post-fight career considerations are a serious matter.

“Working on Universal Soldier helped me see what it was like to work in that atmosphere,” Pyle says. “I got to work with a couple of veterans like Van Damme and Lundgren and John Hyams is a great director. It was a hell of an opportunity. I’d like to see that go somewhere after I’m done fighting.”

Likewise, Franklin also can see life on the big screen after he’s done in the Octagon. It’s just that he feels he’s still got a lot of fights left in him. “We are working hard to be able to do more films after I get done fighting... but I am nowhere near being finished as a fighter,” Franklin says. “I still have goals in that area. We will just have to see what kind of opportunities come our way. I have been taking acting lessons so when that happens, I will be ready.”

Hitting your mark

Perhaps Pyle and Franklin might end up on the same path as Le and Carano, who both finished shooting lead roles in 2010. Both are signed to multi-picture deals and have become the loose templates with which other fighters are shaping possible movie careers. 

Le concluded 2010 starring in Dragon Eyes, an After Dark Films project, which was produced by Hollywood heavy hitter Joel Silver (Lethal Weapon, The Matrix), Courtney Solomon and Moshe Diamont. In Dragon Eyes, Le choreographed all the fight scenes and even got Strikeforce lightweight champion Gilbert Melendez a speaking part. Le has found unprecedented success (among MMA fighters) domestic productions with other starring roles in the sci-fi thriller Pandorum opposite Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid, and Fighting opposite Channing Tatum. However, more recently Gersh has helped position Le as a player in Asia, starring in the highly anticipated True Legend, starring David Carradine and Michelle Yeoh. True Legend was produced by the makers of Kill Bill, The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and was headed up by renowned director Yuen Woo Ping and received a staggered worldwide release in 2010. Certainly a heady realm for Le, who some might view more as an actor moonlighting as a fighter these days.

“I know I can’t fight forever. I’ve been in the fight game since 1994. But I have a great team around me,” Le says. “They look for the right projects and get me the opportunities and have me audition for them. But ultimately it’s up to me to deliver it.”

According to Karp, opportunities in Hollywood often manifest themselves in a perfect storm of timing, needs and skilled marketing. Le’s dramatic 2008 win over Frank Shamrock, in which Le broke Shamrock’s arm, served as the wedge Karp needed to jam open some studio doors.

“Cung was filming Tekken and on the last day of shooting, the lead actor misses his mark and hits Cung in the mouth, giving him 21 stitches,” Karp says. “This was a week before the Shamrock fight…. We all know what happened—the lip opened up, but Cung broke Shamrock’s arm in one of the best fights of the year.

“The fight was so compelling and dramatic that we used it as our big sales tool to Hollywood,” Karp adds. “Something that I’ve learned over the years is that there is a tremendous amount of MMA fans in the high ranks of Hollywood. We’re talking presidents of studios, huge producers, so we just targeted every guy we knew who was a fan. We decided to have Cung come out and take general meetings with all of these people fresh off this iconic win. We did that and created this huge fan base for Cung amid all of those Hollywood people, and that’s how they became really familiar with him.”

Likewise, Carano has capitalized on her immense popularity as the face of women’s MMA, despite her overwhelming loss to current Strikeforce middleweight champ Cristiane Cyborg last year. In an industry that places considerable weight on face value, Carano’s swimsuit model looks have opened doors that her fighting talents probably could not do alone.

Carano finished filming Haywire in late 2010 and then threw herself into training 

for her return fight with Sarah D’Alelio on the June 18th, Strikeforce: Overeem vs Werdum card. 

In Haywire, Carano owns the lead role of Mallory, an ex-marine doing blackwater for the US government much in the same vein as Luc Besson’s 1990 film La Femme Nikita. The film also stars Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Channing Tatum, and Ewan McGregor. Haywire is even directed by Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh, who specifically selected Carano for the role. Though conceptualized as a trilogy, Haywire is the initial script of the new action franchise for specifically designed for Carano.

Carano trained with an ex-Mossad agent, Aaron Cohen, in order to make the fight scenes as extra authentic as possible.

“It’s been educational for her,” Karp said. “It’s unique that someone with as little experience as Gina has had in the movie industry to be given the vehicle that she’s been given. She’s in every frame of the movie; it was designed for her and written for her as a trilogy.”

If a single key to the entire process exists, it is marketing. Get out there and sell yourself – being media savvy helps. “Absolutely, 100%. In this day and age with social media and video all over the place, the more engaging you are the better your fan base. Look, studios are trying to put bodies in seats. Video games outsell movie tickets four to one. I mean, kids can go and buy a video game with a cool storyline for 60 bucks and get several months of fun out of it then sell it back to the store – or spend two hours at a movie theater? 

“And it’s a new generation of kids who aren’t inhibited by piracy and don’t want to pay for anything and if they do, they want to know they’re getting so much value out of it. But if you have a real person who has an established fan base that believes in him or her – that equals value to Hollywood, big time.”

In that sense, MMA has proven to be fertile ground for films. A Gina Carano fan base will follow her outside of the Octagon and put people in movie theaters, offering studios and producers a way to reinvent who exactly is a box office draw – and at a much cheaper price than your average Hollywood lead actress. Nevertheless, though financial numbers were not disclosed for her work in Haywire, Carano certainly will make more than the $100,000 she made for her fight against Cyborg. 

“You will get out what you put into it,” says Le. “That goes for the amount of training and preparation you do, but also the more you are out there with the media. I hate to say it, the more people know you. If you’re a guy who can do that networking, it helps. That’s how things work in that world.”

Stewart, Franklin’s agent, agrees. 

“Look, Rich Franklin might not like doing that networking stuff but he’s is a good-looking guy, he’s articulate and he’s one of the nicest guys in the world. I told him if he wants to get into the movie industry after he’s done fighting, he has to let people in the industry know that. And all that waiting around on the set – that’s when stuff happens.”

Ultimately, Couture understands Hollywood’s personality, too. “There are no guarantees, and you can’t just jump in and expect to make a ton of money,” he says. “They pay you scale. But you just work hard and get that SAG [Screen Actors Guild] card.

“It’s a very fickle industry,” he adds. “MMA guys are all up against that hurdle. We’re seen just as athletes for the most part. Right now, I think MMA guys aren’t taken as serious actors yet. I think of Dwayne Johnson, ‘The Rock,’ he had to go through that and prove he could act. You have to get good at the craft, study it, develop skills and show them. It’s a lot like MMA training. You just have to keep getting better.”

Who is next?

Randy Couture, Cung Le, Gina Carano and Rich Franklin are certainly not the only MMA fighters who have made their way to the movies. Quinton Jackson starred in last year’s big-screen version of The A-Team and Chuck Liddell has made numerous cameo appearances on TV shows like Entourage, among others. Here’s a short list of other fighters who could make the jump to Hollywood:

• Brock Lesnar: With the rash of comic book movies flooding Hollywood, Lesnar has the physique and the charisma to star in a superhero feature film. Being a Minnesota native, the recent release of Thor would have made perfect sense for Lesnar, who once tried out for the Minnesota Vikings.
• Anderson Silva: His brash, confident personality combined with his panache for style might hold international appeal. He’s already starred in a documentary that debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, albeit to moderate reviews.
• Michael Bisping: If there was a fighter who reminded people most of current British action star Jason Statham, it might be Bisping. In the United States Bisping might be looked upon somewhat as a villain, but in the UK he is most certainly a white knight, not black. He’s witty, good-looking and can throw a bit of the Cockney slang in every now and then. He’d fit in great with the next Guy Ritchie film.