'The Smashing Machine' Director Benny Safdie Breaks Down a Scene

I was obsessed with recreating the reality of it.

Because in the recreation, you create something new.

That's my feeling.

It's basically like therapy in a way.

If you think about it.

You talk about what happened

and by talking about what happened

and putting it outside,

you understand a little bit about it differently.

So that's what's happening here in film form I guess.

Hi, I'm Benny Safdie

and I wrote and directed The Smashing Machine.

And this is Notes on a Scene.

[speaking foreign language]

We have decided to call this fight with legal no contest.

No contest?

This is just after Mark Kerr

has lost his first professional fight.

The way that I approached all of the scenes in the movie

was what if I was actually there?

What if we had the ability to document what was happening,

but from the point of view

of an endless amount of cameras potentially,

but I was always conscious of where the cameras were prior.

I have an idea of what shots I need.

It's a very nice process with the actors.

Okay, now we're gonna put the camera all the way over there

and it's gonna be very far away.

This one's probably a 200 and something millimeter lens

on a tripod.

And it's zoomed in on the scene.

What'd they say?

They decided to call it a no contest.

That's awesome.

As they're approaching,

you kind of can't even tell what you're looking at,

but I find that very interesting

because it places you in the scene

and you kind of feel like you're hiding

and maybe you shouldn't have access to where you are.

That's awesome.

Why are you still so sad?

Because Dawn, I'm not sad,

it's just, I don't do that for no contest.

I want the decision, you know?

I mean it's just,

I'm out there, I'm sacrificing everything, literally.

You know. I see it.

I'm sacrificing everything out there-

Yeah, it's very heavy. For the reward at the end.

Right.

This camera is always kind of like zoomed in,

so we kind of bury the zoom.

That's a term I love.

You bury the zoom in the movement of all these things.

So now we're close on Dwayne this way.

And I'm a big fan of wide eye lines,

so as you can see, she's looking this way

and he's looking kind of straight ahead.

So the eye lines are correct, but they're very wide.

You know, you normally,

if you were to do this scene,

you would do that and then you'd get right over

and you'd kind of have them talking to each other

and they'd be kind of more, as I am looking to you.

There's something about the wide eye line that tells you

that you are watching a real situation.

And in this, it's funny

because this locker room was filled with people,

filled with fighters and filled with this

and you don't really see them.

And I have them actually talking.

It kind of allows the actors to get into a frame of mind.

I like the fact that now

you really are like, with them

and this camera, you're really with her.

She's really just trying to connect with him in this scene.

And this one you're a little bit more further away

because he's very disconnected in the scene two.

So even though you only have two camera positions,

I've given myself the ability to now

to be in a place where you're with him,

you know, he fills the frame essentially.

It just like physically,

you know, that was also very important.

He's very,

I asked Dwayne to get bigger in the movie.

And so like you can see like the size of his body

is just enormous

because Mark was a huge guy.

There's no other high like in the world.

I can only imagine.

Yeah, I can see it.

I can see it in you.

Just the element,

the contradiction of how he's acting here

with his physical size was very important.

As we did the scene a couple of times,

I didn't like that it was so clean

and I wanted to remind the viewer

that you are in a real place.

And so this guy comes from literally down the hallway here

and he just blocks the frame.

Normally you would cut this out

and you wouldn't have that in the movie,

but I think that this is important to see,

oh, first of all,

the camera isn't as close as I thought it was

because if it was, this wouldn't be as out of focus.

These are things that I don't think

people actually maybe understand,

but they feel it.

So the fact that he comes in like this

and completely obliterates the frame,

you realize, oh wait,

I'm not actually right up on the actors.

It's 40,000 people. Yeah.

And they're cheering you on.

I mean, that's orgasmic.

Yeah, no.

Dawn, I'm not kidding, I'm not kidding.

You're sitting and watching a conversation of two people

who aren't actually saying what they are talking about,

which I just find interesting

because then you have to read into the subtext

and also the parts of their performance that are different.

But the thing that's hard is

you're not close to them.

So it really is on the actors

to bring a performance that's very real.

And you had that feeling you fought,

you had the feeling, but you don't seem,

you don't seem happy about it.

No.

I'm trying to explain it to you,

but you just keep talking.

Yeah, it's so raw.

She goes, But you did that, you just experienced that.

And then this.

That move.

Ah.

When Dwayne did that,

that just, I was like,

oh, it's so dismissive.

Ugh.

And this look on his face,

like there's certain things that he's,

oh, and then just to point out,

Kazu did an incredible job with the prosthetics,

but here he's just gotten beaten up.

So he has a different eye piece, a different part here.

His nose is more swollen, there's a cut,

you know, his eyebrows are swollen,

this part of his ear is swollen.

So we had to add

a completely new level of prosthetics

just for after the fight in this specific scene.

Those were things that we had to think of.

And we also had to take the time

to kind of, in the middle of the shoot,

he had to then go and get

another two and a half hours of makeup

to change it all out

to have this kind of beaten look to him.

I do kind of have certain rules of when I'm editing.

Once you're in, you stay in

and when you go out, you have to have a reason to go out.

And now if you look like,

this is basically a closeup of Dwayne,

but when we started out, this is more of a medium shot.

We're slowly getting in

as the scene is going on.

And I think that that's an important thing

that you feel as a viewer as you're watching it,

'cause you're building up

as you're kind of getting closer to him

and closer and closer

and you are trying to understand and hear

what he's talking about.

But they were getting to a place

where they were trying to have a moment.

He brushes it off and then we cut back out.

So that like relieves the tension,

you know that something is gonna change within it.

No, I'm trying to understand what you're saying

and I'm trying to support you.

I know, but I'm,

only because I'm trying to tell you exactly what happened.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

And then this guy comes in and he's completely joking.

He's so happy.

This is also what I really wanted to show is that

these fighters are friends with each other

and there's a very close-knit community to them

and it's not what you would expect them to be.

And in the original documentary,

that's what's really special is

him and Igor have a very strange relationship.

This guy just beat him up

and made him feel the worst he's ever felt in his life.

And yet afterwards he can relate to this man 100%.

Hey brother, how are you?

Oh. Oh.

What wasn't real was Dawn wasn't there in this scene.

And so I thought,

oh, to highlight their disconnect,

I should put Dawn in the scene

because now you can see that he's relating to the person

who physically just beat him up.

But he can't relate to the person

who loves him and is trying to connect with him.

And I just thought that was really sad

and I feel bad for her there.

And I'm always shooting with two cameras all the time.

And those two cameras are always moving

and changing coverage

so that I can have as much coverage as possible

without switching positions.

So I'm optimizing my ability to cover the scene

without the time it would take to reset.

There's like little things you probably don't even realize.

All these things are built,

all this stuff is built.

And I really wanted the lights to be making this motion.

This has to be Japan.

So there has to be an element of like,

so I don't know, this is a very Japanese design,

you know, it's very thought through.

This is the locker room,

classy locker room with these lights.

And again, finding the right lights

that created that through the screen.

I think this is an interesting turn here.

Look at Dwayne here.

They're in the middle of a fight, okay?

They're in the middle of the fight

and instantly he turns and he's smiling.

I'm like, that is psychotic.

This guy has such a deep connection with Igor

that Emily will never have with him.

That difference is really kind of shocking.

Is that from me? Yeah.

Let me see.

[translator speaking Ukraine]

Nice.

And here they are joking about hitting each other.

So, Is that from me, let me see.

These are the parts of performance

that I am like obsessed with.

First of all, he has the cut.

It's an amazing job.

This was Felix who did the makeup on this cut,

but it's real tape.

So he's pulling it off of his head

and then like we put a little bit of blood there.

So these are the like the little details that I love.

How many stitches?

[translator speaking Ukraine]

[Translator] Four. Four stitches.

Four, four.

Does the body feel okay?

[speaking in foreign language]

[Translator] A little bit of the knee.

This person is a real Ukrainian translator,

not an actress.

She translates Ukrainian for a living.

She happens to look exactly like the person

who was the translator for the real Igor Vovchanchyn.

And why I decided to do that?

I have no idea.

You know why?

A lot of my head.

[translator speaking Ukraine]

I'm sorry.

No, no, no, it's okay.

So this is,

so there's two cameras here and there's one down the middle.

Again, I'm still conscious of the fact that

I don't want the other cameras to see each other.

So in this scene,

normally it would be very difficult

to have all these points of view.

It's still rooted in some kind of reality.

And this guy is,

he was a fighter from the time of Mark Kerr's career.

And again, I just really populated the world

with everybody who was from that time.

The guy is actually Usyk's manager, Egis

who's an incredible person.

But he's there, so Usyk who's playing Igor,

the two of them have a built-in relationship.

This guy was from the time,

so he's so excited and he's a fighter himself.

So he's like, I can't even believe

I'm with the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

So there's a whole vibe going on of this kind of friendship.

And Dawn is on the outside.

And so we play the whole scene

and I just have it on her.

Tell him it's natural, natural reaction.

[translator speaking Ukraine]

And she's not saying anything.

She's just looking at him

and we know because we've just seen it.

This is a very different Mark than we saw before.

Maybe he's performing, maybe he's being real.

We don't know.

Maybe he's putting on face for Igor

and he doesn't want him to see how upset he was.

Either way what she's seeing now,

and this is what I think is incredible,

is like, you can't make this up.

She is looking directly at him

and it is like,

she is so upset that wow,

this guy can't relate to me this way

and I don't know what to do.

And it's a very devastating position to be in.

The camera can literally just watch her

as the whole scene is going on.

[translator speaking Ukraine]

My head was down there, my face is down there.

[Igor laughing]

I know that Dwayne being the person he is

as famous as he is, as well known as he is,

he has those kind of arguments.

Everybody does.

You know, you have those kind of miscommunications

in private,

but this is a public moment in a way.

So now we're getting to literally see Mark Kerr

suppress his emotions

and be the person that everybody expects him to be.

And I remember specifically sending Dwayne a clip

from It's a Wonderful Life.

George Bailey gets the news

about his brother having to go to work.

When he gets the news, he realizes,

oh my God, he's devastated.

But as he walks to the other side,

to the crowd where everybody's having

a great time with his brother,

he turns on a smile

and you know that that smile is not genuine.

I think seeing that is really important

and it's very difficult acting wise to do that.

You know, it's Jimmy Stewart, one of the best.

Now Dwayne is doing exactly that

where he's completely changing his personality,

his persona and everything.

And you can't even imagine

that this is a guy who five seconds earlier

was hysterically crying

and having a crazy kind of miscommunication on a gut level

with his partner.

But she's trying to understand him

and it's just not succeeding.

So you are watching this gulf of a relationship,

which is really devastating to be part of.

And now you're seeing him smile

as if none of that ever happened.

And I know that he's had to do this

who knows how many times.

I've had to do it myself.

Let's all get a picture.

[Manager] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's do it together.

Let's do it, yeah, let's do it.

Can you do a picture?

Let's all get in.

Let's all, everybody get in.

This is a moment where he's gonna say,

Oh, let's all get in, let's all take a picture.

Here Dawn.

Here Dawn, and he just kind of like,

Can you take it?

And he's so sweet about it,

but it's so in that action.

Hey Dawn, can you take this picture for us?

Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah, come on.

[Manager] Look at you two guys.

The best ones, two of the best ones.

He has no idea what he's just asked her to do.

And it's one of the most belittling, really sad.

You are on the outside.

Here I'm gonna take an amazing, happy picture.

All these guys are having fun.

So we specifically had a giant flash

that would do this to the camera

because I think that this frame is really just special.

It's like it imprints itself in your memory,

even if it's just for a second.

The fact that this is how happy everybody is

and this is where Emily is.

And again, now we're really close to her.

We are with her, separate from them, they're together.

You can have the cameras set up

and you can move very quickly throughout the scene

to keep the performance alive

'cause there's nothing I hate more than,

oh my God, that was amazing,

now let's turn around

and then you have to wait an hour and a half

for everybody to switch everything over and get that.

'Cause what I'm getting at here

is I'm trying to get at the realism of the performance.

Two of the best ones.

That's it.

And this was tough because like,

yeah, she has to sit there the whole time

watching him have a good time

and build to this moment where

she's gonna take this picture

and she turns away from him and wipes it away.

And nobody here has any idea that that's what she's feeling.

And then when the scene happens,

we shoot the rehearsal always

because then that also is a rehearsal

for our camera operators

to see where they can get in better.

And we're constantly having the conversation.

It is an open book,

everybody's listening, everybody knows what's gonna happen,

but at the same time,

the actors don't really need to pay attention

if they're on camera

'cause they are on camera,

they're always gonna be on camera,

so they have to perform.

You know, there isn't that element of like,

oh, I can take this one off.

You can't.

Because you might be seen at some point.

We're putting in all this time and effort

to make it look like it just happened once.

Thank you. Thank you.

Great fight.

And when the real Mark Kerr watched the movie,

this scene, he's like, That's it.

And I was very happy to have captured something

that felt very real to him.