In Life After Fighting, the tranquil existence of Alex Faulkner (Bren Foster), a former martial arts world champion, is shattered when the inexplicable vanishing of two young students from his martial arts school culminates in a shocking revelation that strikes close to his heart. As all avenues of hope seem to dwindle, Faulkner’s determination ultimately leads to the rescue of the imprisoned girls, revealing an insidious international child-trafficking ring, which ultimately leads to the fight of his life.
As Life Afte Fighting prepares to unleash on VOD platforms on August 21, Nick L’Barrow spoke with Bren Foster, who wrote, directed, starred in, and lead the stunt team for this film. They discuss the rarity of Australian martial arts films, the differences between stunt fighting and real fighting, and the impact his mum had on this film and his career.
Bren Foster: Is that CDs or DVDs behind you?
Nick: That’s all my DVDs and Bluray’s! I’m a big physical media guy! Do you have a collection yourself?
Bren Foster: I’ve got a selection of stuff, but nothing like that!
Nick: Well, I appreciate you noticing it. I love movies, and I love talking about them with filmmakers, Bren, so I appreciate you taking the time to chat. I’d love to start at the beginning of Life After Fighting. You’ve been acting for over 30 years now, so how long has the idea of making your own film been gestating behind the scenes?
Bren Foster: Nick, it’s been a while. And I think it was born from the scripts that I was getting, and the jobs that were being offered to me. They were always a little bit disheartening, you know? There was nothing that I would get excited about.
So, COVID time came, and obviously you got a lot of time in lockdown. So, I put pen to paper, and away I went. I started writing all the ideas I had down. And Life After Fighting was actually the third script that I wrote. When I wrote it, I was back in Australia. I had written the other two in Los Angeles, but Life After Fighting seemed the most viable to go ahead with.
But, yeah, I think it was just from a lack of sincerely being interested in the jobs that were coming my way. The launching pad for wanting to start writing my own stuff and wanting to make movies that I really want to make is we’re only here for a short time. And to go to work day in, day out, just for a paycheck, that’s all well and good. You can earn a good living doing that. But you slowly die a little bit each day. It starts to eat at you.
That’s not to say there’s not gratitude for the jobs that I had. They were great. I learned a lot from them. But, we all have dreams. We all have the jobs we would love to do. And mine is a mix of strong drama and high action. Me and my partner at Spinning Plates, our production company, our whole motto is high drama, high action.
Australia, as you know, we do drama really well. We’ve got some great actors. But we don’t really bring action movies to the table. So, yeah, that’s what we want to do. Kind of blend those two together, and we have Life After Fighting as our first one.
Nick: You did mention that you have learned a lot from the previous projects you have done. Was there any key takeaway from those sets that helped with decisions you made as a filmmaker for Life After Fighting?
Bren Foster: Look, I think each and every job had its own valuable contribution to what I am today. Like, when I was in LA, I spent a few years on The Days of our Lives until 2012, and that was very quick and fast. You get one or two takes. You’re shooting eight episodes a week sometimes, depending on how many you were in. So, I think what I learned from that was preparation.
The Last Ship, that was a big show. I mean, it’s a Michael Bay TV show, the number one summer show in the United States for many years. And I guess from that, these big elaborate sets and fine tuning the action, I learned alot from that. I did a couple of movies with Steven Seagal, and sci-fi movies with Shane Abbess, and they all contributed little bits and pieces.
The amount of knowledge that you take away with you, I don’t think you know it at the time. But when you’re doing your own thing, I think that’s when you can see how much information you’ve actually pulled from all the previous jobs.
Nick: You mentioned as well how great Australia is at making drama films. And Life After Fighting is quite grounded in a dramatic, human story. When did you realise that you wanted to then bring to Aussie drama film to a genre like martial arts action, and showcase that side of Australian filmmaking that hasn’t really been done many times before?
Bren Foster: That was really important to me. And being overseas, and doing a number of action films, or even something like The Last Ship, other people were putting fights together and doing the action design, my imagination would just see everything they could do better.
And obviously I was a big part of the action, but I always had to navigate around other people. Whether it be a stunt coordinator or stunt guy doing a fight scene, or even the director. I had to navigate around what they wanted.
And sometimes I felt that because I have to take into account what they want and work with them, I felt that it was never as good as it could be, because you have to gel. You have to work as a team, especially if it’s not your job.
With Life After Fighting, I was completely set free. I was uninhibited. I didn’t have to navigate around another director. I didn’t have to worry about what the writer was going to say, or the producer. I didn’t have to worry about the stunt coordinator. It was my own stunt team, so I knew the capabilities of the guys.
And leading up to shooting all the fight scenes, we trained the hell out of stuff. I knew how far and how good we could make this. There was nothing holding me back with Life After Fighting. That was the biggest blessing that I could have ever asked for. Because I firmly believe that this is the greatest thing I have ever done in terms of action design, and fight scenes, and also in terms of a whole movie. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. And not to say the other stuff isn’t good, but my opinion is that it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.
Nick: There’s such a visceral feeling to the action, and the way you also move the camera so dynamically around the action. I’m curious to know however, with your extensive background in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Taekwondo, how different is it choreographing a movie fight, as opposed to actually using these martial arts in a practical way?
Bren Foster: Yeah, I wanted to bring the Taekwondo, the Muay Thai, the Filipino martial arts, the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, the wrestling, the judo throws – I wanted to bring it together in a seamless integration. So it was very important to me that I highlight what I would call a true representation of mixed martial arts.
MMA is one of the fastest growing sports in the world today, but most of the time it’s just, you know, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai, and boxing. We don’t see things like Filipino martial arts. You do have some people doing it, but I really wanted to bring that all together and have a true representation of what it’s like to have that seamless integration.
Now, you know, it should be said that fight choreography is a bit different to real fighting. You have to carry your own weight a lot of the time, and try to move with fighters who haven’t done fight choreography before. When you fight, you push the weight out and the blow lands on the other person. With choreography, everything is the same, but you have to hold back that weight, unless we pad them up.
There were a lot of shots, I’m sure you could’ve seen, where head shots were making contact. But it was all about planning it to a tee. A lot of shots to the body, the stunts guys were padded up with thin, but hard padding. So, it was like kicking a rock. But those back kicks and punches, and head kicks, were all real. We would practice it so much that the ball of my foot would hit the forehead, and then would glance off to the side.
The precision we were able to attain just by training and the work we put into the build up, or pre-production phase, was probably the difference between having okay fight scenes and fight scenes that are at a different level to what we’re used to.
Nick: The action is exciting, and it works because the stakes of the drama are so high. I think the stakes are also high because of how great Luke Ford is as the villain of the story. How did Luke become involved in the project?
Bren Foster: Luke is a bloody fantastic actor. Luke and I have worked together a couple of times. We worked on Infiniti and The Osiris Child. But, we also went to the same acting school for a while. Well, different classes but at the same time. Luke also started teaching there, and I’ve recently been teaching there too.
We became friends and then he came over to LA for a while, and we would hang out in LA for quite some time before he left and came back to Australia. So, when I wrote the role, I just had Victor, this character, in mind and it wasn’t really geared toward anyone. Then when I read it, I thought this could go one of two ways.
We can get someone who’s a brilliant actor, or get someone who plays it as very revealing and it won’t be as good as it can be, because he’s really cunning. So, I thought, Luke has done some tremendous work, but I don’t really ever remember him playing like a bad guy at this level. And the more I thought about it, the more I started seeing him in the role.
So, I called him up and told him I wrote this script, and I wanted to have a read and tell me what he thinks about Victor. And if he thinks it’s fucked, then okay, not a problem! But he called me back and said he was in! He came to a table read, and yeah, six weeks later we were on set. He was fantastic.
Nick: I want to wrap up on this, and I hope you don’t mind me asking, but you end the film with a beautiful dedication to your mum. I’d love to know how important her influence was for you as a filmmaker, actor, and martial artist.
Bren Foster: Oh, god. My mum was… God, she was the one that said to me, “try”. No matter what it was, she just told me to try. She put a tenacity in me and a belief in myself that was just priceless, you know.
She battled cancer right to the end. She beat it once, and she took it on again. And I just watched her fight so hard because she really wanted to stay. It was my dream that she would make it through to see the film finished, because she was my biggest fan. And I tried my best, Nick. I really did. I tried to get it finished.
I was at the editors everyday, but you know, she fought, but she just couldn’t hang on long enough. She was around while we were filming, and she’s there in the end scene! There’s a shot of an old lady in the crowd scene, and that was her!
But she passed during the editing phase. We cared for her at home. I didn’t send her to a hospital. We did everything from injections to medications. And she died in my arms. And to me, I wouldn’t have had it any other way because I was so scared I wasn’t going to be there when she passed because I was out still doing all of this stuff.
My wife, God bless her, was really caring for her. But she wasn’t there to see the film finished, and that’s why the dedication to her is in the film. Without my mum, I wouldn’t be half the man I am today. She’s the one that put me into martial arts. She’s the one that took me everywhere. She’s the one who encouraged me with those words, you try. Try anything. No matter what it is, just try.
Thank you very much to Bren for his time, and to NedCo PR for organising the interview. Life After FIghting will be available on VOD platforms from August 21.
