Exclusive Expendables Interview: Randy Couture, Hardcore Army and UFC Veteran, Is Pounding Down Hollywood’s Door

Share on Facebook posted 03-22-10 by Julina Tatlock

Man, oh Man. I spoke to the formidable Randy Couture the other day, and if one thing’s clear it’s that Randy didn’t become a five-time belt champion by conforming to everyone’s expectations. The fights he’s most proud of are the ones that everyone thought he would lose, and the thing that most excites him about his role in The Expendables — Stallone’s upcoming summer blockbuster starring a buff ensemble of action-hero giants — isn’t the kill count (although the number easily rolls off the tip of his tongue); it’s that he’s playing a character that was written expressly for him and that he has a great monologue that his wrestling buddies will love. Haven’t heard of The Expendables yet? Oh, you will. Written by David Callahan and Sylvester Stallone, and directed by Stallone, the film’s biggest hook is its impressive cast of action greats: Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Steve Austin, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Sly Stallone — even appearances by the Governator and Bruce Willis. And then, of course, there’s a certain MMA giant.

At first blush, it might seem strange to add Couture to the ensemble of action movie stars, and I’ve certainly seen plenty of comments like this on message boards. But Randy has plenty of real-life experience to draw on that help him appear natural as a middle-aged mercenary, including a six-year stint in the Army. Randy’s film performances, which range from the title role in the straight-to-DVD film The Scorpion King 2 to a smaller part in the higher-brow David Mamet film Redbelt, are much easier to sum up than his fighting career. Couture is a UFC Hall of Famer and, even at 46, is still one of the most popular fighters in the sport. He’s the only man to have held championship titles in both the heavyweight and light heavyweight divisions, and he’s competed in the Olympics. His forte is using his wrestling skills to clinch with his opponents, hold them down or press them against the cage, and then knock them silly. Speaking from his L.A. home, Randy gave me the low-down on The Expendables, his battles in the Octagon, and whom he might fight next.

Randy Gets Mercenary With Sly Stallone

30 NINJAS: Can you tell me a little bit about your character Toll Road in Stallone’s upcoming film The Expendables? What’s his story?

RANDY COUTURE: Toll Road is one of the Expendables; he’s one of the team’s mercenaries whose specialty is hand-to-hand combat, and he tends to find himself in those types of situations. He’s also dealing with some of the things that he’s had to do through the course of his chosen profession, and he’s using a psychologist to come to terms with the person that he is. In a lot of situations, he’s kind of the quiet guy, the intellectual, college-educated guy who realizes the things that they do aren’t really normal. So he has to come to terms with this.

30 NINJAS: You’ve said in other interviews that there was a great chemistry on the set of The Expendables and that Stallone was great to work with. Can you tell me what was different about working on this movie compared to other movies that you’ve worked on?

RC: Well, aside from kind of the up energy on the set when all the Expendables came together because of the group of guys, there was also Sly, first of all having written the script and doing all the rewrites, plus directing the movie. He’s behind the camera, running in a lot of cases three units to capture everything he wanted to capture, plus he’s in front of the camera as a star, the lead guy in the movie. I know from my experience in just the nine weeks in New Orleans alone that it was a grind. It was remarkable; I had no idea how he was still standing after all of that, but I found him to be very refreshing. He wasn’t caught up with the words on the page; things changed on the fly — he rewrote stuff right there on the set a lot of the time, changing around the lines for characters to make it fit better, feel better, and he was very, very in tune with helping the actors get across what he wanted to get across. Not just me; I saw him work with a lot of the guys, and obviously he’s very — I think because of the characters that he’s played, people assume he’s — but actually he’s a very, very bright guy.

Hand-to-Hand Combat Stunts Come Natural to “The Natural”

30 NINJAS: I spoke to Chad Stahelski, the stunt coordinator for The Expendables, in the Fall, and he talked a lot about how much he likes Stallone. I don’t know if you remember Chad.

RC: Yeah, of course — the [stunt] guys. They were a ton of fun to work with, and my having done a ton of hand-to-hand stuff, they gave me a little free rein to ad-lib, and those stunt guys ate it up. They loved it. We had a blast. I worked with Chad a lot, doing all the second-unit stuff.

30 NINJAS: Chad talked a lot about the challenges of the film when you have such a talented ensemble of fighters who all have such different styles — [the challenge of making] all of you shine and yet still be acting in the same film. How did you adapt in order to do what they were asking you to do, or did it come with ease?

RC: Well, one of the things I loved about working with Chad is that he says: “This is the scene, this is what we want, and this is our idea of what’s to happen. How do you feel about that?” I would say, “Well, OK, what about adjusting this technique to fit that situation,” and he was very open in allowing some changes there to make it flow for me and pull off the physical parts they wanted to get while allowing me to use things that I felt comfortable doing. Obviously I’m not going to go out there and throw a big spinning, flying X kick or something; it’s just not something that I do. So that was great to be able to make those adjustments and make it fit, but at the same time get what they wanted. I didn’t worry about any of the other actors; they were doing their things and worked on choreographing and fitting what they wanted into their scenes, and it was never an issue for me. I just focused on myself and what they wanted from me.

Faking it On Screen Comes Easy When You’re an Army Veteran Who Owns Six Weapons and Kicks Ass for a Living

30 NINJAS: Did you do any special training for The Expendables?

RC: Nah, I didn’t do any professional training. I mean, basically I was coming off top fight shape and going into the movie, and I trained during the course of the movie so I didn’t have to do any special training. There was interesting thinking and different things I had to practice on the set, to pull off some of this stuff they wanted to pull off, but it didn’t really require any special training.

30 NINJAS: So no weapons training?

RC: Nah, I spent six years in the Army and I have several weapons, so handling the weapons is something I’m pretty comfortable doing.

30 NINJAS: What did you do while you were in the Army? Were you in their elite athletes program?

RC: Well, they didn’t have the world-class athletes program when I was in from ’82 to ’88. During that time I went to basic and advanced training and was trained as an air traffic controller and was stationed in Germany. As soon as I hit Germany, I ended up wrestling. This was during the Cold War, and there were about a million soldiers in the European Theater. They had huge sports programs, and wrestling was one of the sports that was pretty big in Europe. So I ended up wrestling over there and winning a championship while I was stationed in Germany, which got me the chance to try out for the All-Army wrestling team, which is an Olympic qualifier for Greco-Roman wrestling. I made the team and spent the last four years of my six-year enlistment wrestling for the All-Army wrestling team and being used as a public relations piece of the Army and Army-education programs. It was great duty and I trained a lot, rarely wore a uniform, went to all the national camps and national tournaments, and international stuff as well. It was really cool; I enjoyed it, got a huge boost from getting to compete on the international stage, which I’d never done before, and it gave me a lot of confidence in my abilities as an athlete — I learned a ton. That rallied into getting a college scholarship, and getting out of the service and going to school at one of the best wrestling schools in the U.S. It was a big opportunity for me.

30 NINJAS: People talk a lot about the rise of popularity of MMA and the UFC. Do you think that the reason fighting sports have become so popular is not just that they’re entertaining to watch, but that we are a nation that has been at war for ten years and fighting is much harder to marginalize when you’re asking young men and women to die for your country?

RC: More importantly, historically, from the very beginning, our country will fight for who we are, what we wanted to be and how we wanted to establish ourselves. I think it’s, if I look at our U.S. team for wrestling and the style of wrestlers that we were — we were brawlers, we were fighters. That’s kind of ingrained in us from our forefathers and our early beginnings in the revolution, not just the last ten years. This newer generation of kids has to contemplate that and their mortality and us as a country, but I think it goes back a lot further than that. I also think it’s man in general. If you go back all the way to the classic Greek games, three of the four sports that were competed in were combative sports, and that was just part of society that you had to defend your city-state. And those were the guys that got to wear the wreath, and those were the big guys around town because they were the best fighters, and that guy that won the Greco-Roman wrestling or the pugilism or the pankration back at the ancient games, he was the Man! So it’s kind of been part of being human for a long time. This sport epitomizes a lot of those age-old questions, not only was it style vs. style, but I think there is just something about the one-on-one nature of a combative sport that people are attracted to. And they want to call it violence, [but] if you want to understand, it is not for everybody, but there’s really nothing violent about it. It’s certainly physical, but it’s a kinetic chess, and it’s a very tactical, technical thing and takes a lot of discipline and a lot of ability to be able to compete in a sport like that.