"I got my new fuckin' axes in!" - Jason Momoa, actor/director
When I got an early interview with Jason Momoa to talk about his directorial debut last month, I figured it was just because he had such a busy schedule, he had to do the interview a month early. Now I think they knew his Aquaman casting announcement in Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justicewas coming and he didn’t want to be faced with Aquaman questions. At least I caught him while his personal shipment of axes were being delivered.
Road to Palomaaddresses a serious issue. On Native American reservations, outsiders can come onto the reservation and commit crimes, and the tribal government cannot prosecute them. A disturbing number of rapes occur and the rapists walk free because they are not Native American, and the tribal government has no recourse. Jason Momoa wrote and directed the movie, and plays a man who has killed the man who raped and killed his mother. He is trying to scatter his mother’s ashes before he is caught by the domestic government.
Momoa has been acting since 1999 when he landed a role on Baywatch. Of course, he’s best known as Khal Drogo on Game of Thrones and currently stars on Sundance Channel’s The Red Road. When Red Road premiered, Momoa was talking about his directorial debutso now we can finally see his passion project and find out his thoughts and motivations, as well as what he’s going to use those axes for.
JM: Fred! How you doing, Fred? The UPS man just showed up, man. I got my new fuckin’ axes in. I got three axes, all right, all right.
SG: Do you buy your axes from Amazon?
JM: No, I ordered them from Best Made Company. We’re doing something for the commercial that I’m going to be directing so I needed to get some axes.
SG: That’s great, and I’m excited to talk about Road to Paloma because you’ve talked about directing this for some time.
JM: Yeah, man, thanks for taking the time to watch it.
SG: You’re welcome. It occurred to me, we are talking more about rape in society and the media, but this issue of rapes on Native American reservations still isn’t very well covered.
JM: No, it’s not. Did you check out the bill? It got passed but it doesn’t take effect until 2015 and that’s just for married couples or if it’s your boyfriend. That should be a fucking no brainer. If you’re married to a Native woman and you hurt her, you should be tried by tribal law if you live in tribal land. It’s insane that that’s a fucking loophole, so that’s now going to come into effect in 2015, and most of it’s from non Natives. It’s from strangers, absolute strangers.
SG: Is the issue if it happens on a reservation, they can’t prosecute Caucasians and then the Caucasian law doesn’t prosecute them either?
JM: If a non Native is caught on tribal land, they can’t prosecute. They can hold him for a year but they can’t prosecute him.
SG: And then they don’t get prosecuted by the state or federal authorities either?
JM: It has to go to a federal court. Generally it gets thrown out. It’s like terrorist acts and homeland security. Taking care of a little girl who gets raped and beaten, there’s not enough evidence, there’s not enough this, it gets tossed out of federal court. There’s just not enough, and there’s too many of these crimes happening. It’s almost like an epidemic that’s happening on the res. So it’s in a weird place and hopefully this shines a little bit more light onto it and we can bring a little more attention to it, hopefully.
SG: I hope so.
JM: A lot of the articles that we read and obviously our research, if you go onto RoadtoPaloma.com, it’s just encouraging people who do watch it, you can go onto our website and there are some articles there. It’s pretty sickening, some of the stuff but hopefully it leads people further and further and further.
SG: But how did this problem begin? Did it start with a good idea on the lawbooks to keep tribal law separate, and then it got warped over the years?
JM: They have their own law systems. That’s the reason why. It’s sovereign land, so each tribe has their own different set of laws, so anyone who doesn’t belong to that tribe, they can’t really prosecute you. But that’s a bit of a loophole because if you’re non Native and you come on and commit that crime, that’s where all the sickos are coming out. Obviously they’re allowed to have casinos, we’re not. So they have their own different system, their medical care and everything, but there’s that loophole which is fucked up and I don’t think a lot of people know about it. That’s why we wanted to bring attention to it.
SG: So how did you feel when you say your credit “Directed by Jason Momoa” on screen?
JM: [Laughs] I don’t know if it was just seeing that. It’s more of a company of all my friends who bled and worked really hard and everyone being a part of this, it’s definitely pretty special. What hit me the most, my best friend and my grandfather passed and that really made me just go, “Wow.” That probably choked me up the most.
SG: The dedication at the end is your grandfather?
JM: You know, he’s not my blood grandfather but he’s my greatest friend, best friend. He’s the greatest man I’ve ever known and he just passed last year. He was in my first short and I met him through my wife. I wasn’t really raised by my dad and I probably didn’t have the greatest relationship with my grandfather so he’s just this man I looked up to beyond belief. He’s an unbelievable man. He passed right after.
SG: Did you take it for granted how guys like Mel Gibson and Clint Eastwood would act in the movies they directed?
JM: No, it’s definitely a hard challenge. I’ve always seen myself wanting to do that since the beginning. Both of my parents were painters. I always loved storytelling. If I wouldn’t have gone into acting, I would’ve probably gone into directing first. Acting kind of fell in my direction, and then I got my foot in to direct. I want to tell stories. I feel sometimes as an actor it’s just not enough. You do your job and you walk away and sometimes it can be great like Game of Thrones or it can not be great like some of the other things. I like having full control. I like going, “This is my painting. Love it or not love it but this is mine.” You have to work with many people on it but still I like having “This is my painting. This is my song. This is what I wanted to show the world.” I love it. I’m going to do my next one so I’m going to keep doing it.
SG: When WWE Studios came on board, did it seem like a perfect fit?
JM: Well, I wouldn’t say it was a perfect fit. It was actually a little bit of a shocker. I mean, we submitted it to Sundance but that was my contract to. Once it didn’t get into Sundance, even though it got me Red Road, and obviously some people liked it, it was going, “Well, who really responded to it?” They loved it and they wanted to partner with WWE for publicity. And when [WWE Studios President] Michael Luisi was saying he loved the story and he thought it was something that’d needed to be told and he wanted to get it out to their fans. He loved that it had the action and it was a human story. That’s a whole demographic that it probably wouldn’t have reached going to some film festival and maybe never seeing the light of day. There are a lot of people that’ll hopefully be able to see the movie. It’s hard with little independent films, you know. This thing was made for $250,000 in the can. It’s nothing.
SG: Submitted Road to Paloma to Sundance got to Sundance Channel and landed you the role on The Red Road?”
JM: Yeah, absolutely.
SG: So could there be future collaborations with WWE now?
JM: We never talked about that. They’ve really just been trying to put Paloma out. They haven’t approached me or brought up anything.
SG: You do know how to film a fight scene. I like that you used a lot of long takes with a lot of moves in each setup. Did that come from your experience on Game of Thrones and in action movies?
JM: Yeah, I also kind of love Butch Cassidy, those fights. I just wanted to see a little bit of humor in there too. I think our actor, Robert Mollohan really brought that little bit of desperation and humor to that fight scene. The gentleman who’s beating the shit out of him is one of my oldest friends. His name is Tanoai Reed. He’s The Rock’s stunt double and we’ve known each other since fuckin’ Baywatch. Him and I go way back and I called him in to put it together. Everyone is pretty much old friends and calling in favors. Just the way we shoot, I’ve done enough action scenes. I’ve worked with enough people to know how to put an action scene together.
SG: Is the ashes ceremony in the finale an authentic ceremony, and can you tell us about what it represents?
JM: What we wanted to do is, all the Mohavan people representatives, when I talked to them about that, I said, “Listen, we really need to spread these ashes. Where can we do it?” Obviously the Colorado River runs through the Tristate area. That’s where we were shooting, in Needles, CA where the tribe is. Obviously the tip of it would be up in Colorado so we kind of used that to spread the ashes at the source, that her soul would run down through the river and that would be good for the story. The pot that we did make was from the Mohave tribe and we spoke the language. We had someone teach us that and they were traveling with us. A lot of people in the fight were Mohaves. I definitely wanted to honor and keep everything as real as possible. It was almost a month, three weeks we were there. We had a beautiful birdsong that was there that didn’t end up making it in. Some of the stuff got cut out which was a bummer. Other parties wanted to cut it out because it didn’t move fast enough but we got a lot of beautiful stuff that hopefully someday we’ll be able to put out there.
SG: This runs a lean 90 minutes. How long was your original cut?
JM: Original cut was two hours when we turned it into Sundance. It probably would’ve been a different game. We chopped a good half hour out of it. There’s a lot of beautiful stuff in there that just got chopped. That was the experience. If it would’ve gotten into Sundance it probably would’ve stayed that length, but it didn’t so then we had to obviously do new cuts of it. This was my first time cutting a movie, so we went back to the editing room and chopped a bit out.
SG: When you originally got Game of Thrones, did you read ahead to see how long Drogo would be there?
JM: Well, I read the book before I auditioned. So I knew what was going to happen.
SG: On season one, did you have any idea how big the show was going to be?
JM: Not to this size, no. This is $8 million on the last episode. I didn’t see that happening, no. Even when I was shooting the first season, I thought it would stay consistently big but it’s just amazing. We love it. It just sucks that I have to wait a whole nother fucking year.
SG: Do you still hear a lot from the Game of Thones fans?
JM: Yeah, everywhere I go, people are like, “Drogo! Drogo!” It’s amazing how impactful that character was to a lot of people. I’m always baffled by it. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life except for my wife. I was like, “I want this fucking role.” When I got to play it, I was the number one fan because it was amazing. When I got it and once it played, obviously I was dead. When I went back for the second season, people were like, “Oh, that’s why you look the way you do when you’re over here in Belfast.” I think it changed when we went back to Belfast. Now that it’s so big, I’m sure it’s a lot different now, but fans really love that relationship between Daenerys and Drogo.
SG: Well, how did you and Emilia Clarke talk about those first scenes you had together?
JM: Well, we still remain very, very close friends. You try to separate yourself from that and just play the character. There’s a certain part where I’m just like, “Oh my God, sorry, sorry, sorry. I love you, I love you.” And just do it, get it done. Get it over with and then I’ll see you at the bar. It’s no fun hurting someone that you love. I don’t know if there’s a recipe ora way through that shit. It was hard any way you look at it.
SG: What’s coming up for Kopus in The Red Road?
JM: I can’t tell you, buddy. It’s fucking good though. I can’t tell you shit, unfortunately. Put it this way, my jaw definitely dropped. I’m really, really, really, really excited to go back and shoot.
SG: Is that even more surprising because it’s not based on a book, you’re just waiting for the show’s writers?
JM: Yeah, and we just had a meeting two weeks ago so I’m champing at the bit. I’m like, “Aaron, what the fuck is going on, dude? I wanna know.” He gave me my storyline and told me a bunch of stuff and I was like, “Oh, shit, yeah.” There’s some cool stuff. The end of the season is fucking badass. I’m gonna get Native on that ass. It’s going to be good.
SG: What’s the next movie you want to direct?
JM: It’s called Enemy in the Valley right now, but it’s a true story that happened in the 1890s in Hawaii. Jack Lemmon did a story on it but it’s about a man and his wife and he ends up getting leprosy and his son gets leprosy. They try to split the families apart. That’s when they were shipping them to Molokai. The provisional government was coming in and sheriffs trying to make a name for themselves, they basically broke these families apart because they didn’t have leprosy and he wanted to die with his wife. He ended up shooting the sheriff and he ended up running up in the hills and became an outlaw. They ended up bringing in cannons on the west side of Kauai trying to get this guy out. The newspapers made him a hero and more people end up dying. He just wanted to die with his family. The soldiers who were fighting were like, “This is ridiculous. This man’s going to die and he just wants to die with his family.” So they left and he stayed up in the mountains as an outlaw. His son ended up dying, the husband dies, the wife buries both of them. She came out four years later and told the whole story in Hawaiian. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful story and it got translated into English in the ‘50s/‘60s. We spent the last three years retranslating it, working on the piece, building the characters up and now it’s done. It’s a dramatic period piece with action, so the money that I want for it is going to take a little time. Let my name get a little bigger and then I can direct it, but it’s a heart wrencher. It’s kind of like Last of the Mohicans meets The Proposition to me. It’s definitely an homage to my people and a story that hasn’t been told.
SG: Are you hoping to shoot it in Hawaii?
JM: Yeah, absolutely. I’ll shoot in Hawaii.
Road to Paloma is now available on iTunes, theaters July 11 and on DVD and Blu-ray July 15.