BUNRAKU: INTERVIEW WITH FIGHT COORDINATOR LARNELL STOVALL

My next project will probably be 'Bunraku'. That'll hit theaters and so that's my first monster. It stars Josh Hartnett. It's basically this westerner, Josh Hartnett, who comes to this town obviously seeking revenge or looking for the killer of his father. Gackt is there for his own personal mission as well. He's trying to honor something that I think his uncle or his father wants him to do as a last request. Obviously they become teammates and have to go on the same journey together but what's stopping them on this journey are these fighters who are all killers. It's funny because Ron Perlman is the lead killer and Kevin McKidd is his right hand man. So, basically, there's killer one through ten and most of the killers are played by stunt guys which helps to enhance the action. So there's going to be a tremendous amount of fights.

When I first got the script it had twenty eight fight scenes in it. It's huge and there were no guns either. So we're talking fights. This is one of the first times that I can probably say it got me excited. It really got the creative juices flowing, like, 'Oh, my God, I can't wait to tackle this.' The stunt coordinator, Clay Barber, who brought me on, he brought me on with an extreme amount of passion towards this. He said, 'I know there's probably a bunch of other projects out there that you could be a part of but just read this script and get back to me. I really think you're going to enjoy this.' From page one up until it ended I couldn't stop reading.

Bunraku" is not necessarily a western. It's like Josh Hartnett is from the west. Gackt is from the east and they meet in the middle of this interesting place. Bunraku stands for Japanese puppet theater. It's this paper world where all the sets are made of paper. There's CGI everywhere. I finally saw a sample of some of the work two weeks ago. The director is named Guy Moshe. This will be his first huge theatrical film, funded by Keith Calder. So it's independent which is why it's low key right now but I'm sure the studios are going to hop on it tremendously." It takes place in it's own individual world. You can't put a timeframe on it. You can't put a setting or anything on it. One guy said, 'It's like "Moulin Rouge" with fighting.' The transition of the colors and the backgrounds but with martial arts. A cast like this, Josh Hartnett, Kevin McKidd, Ron Perlman, Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson; it's just stellar up and down. I'm really looking forward to that. That'll probably be my first one in movie theaters with my name as the fight coordinator so things are going to pick up even more after that.

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