Ben Younger knows how to take a punch. After directing his last movie more than twelve years ago (2005’s “Prime”), the New York-born filmmaker suffered defeat trying to get a movie about the world’s fastest motor racing competition off the ground, which ultimately stalled out. But Younger didn’t stay down for long, pursuing other casual hobbies such as becoming a pilot, competing in motor-cross races, and working in a Costa Rican kitchen. But Ben Younger steps back into the ring – his true ring – in “Bleed For This,” his latest writing-directing movie about boxer Vinny Pazienza, who suffered a devastating spinal injury and who trained his way to get back into the ring.

It’d be easy to see why Ben Younger might find a connection with the crash and comeback story (“I didn’t make a movie for twelve years, which is kind of like having a broken neck in Hollywood.”), admitting that he had a lot riding on the movie’s outcome as well (“the movie had to be good.”). In a roundtable interview at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons, Younger talked working with Miles Teller and Aaron Eckhart, putting his paycheck back into the movie to gain two extra shooting days, and finally getting his passion project motocross movie (“Isle of Man”) off the ground.

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Why did you want to tell this story?

I wanted to tell this story because… simply because of the comeback. Vinny won fifty fights, I don’t know if you guys knew that. And I’m sure to real boxing aficionados that would be an exciting thing. I’m not one of them…

For me, it was all about the crash and the comeback. I just felt like… the real reason I stayed in, I mean… I started this as a writing assignment. I wasn’t supposed to direct this. I didn’t think I wanted to direct it. But once I realized there was a parallel between his story and mine – you guys know that I took a long time off. I didn’t make a movie for twelve years, which is kind of like having a broken neck (as Vinny Pazienza suffers in the movie) in Hollywood.

You didn’t make a film for twelve years. Why?

There’s a bunch of reasons. One, the primary reason is that the movie that I wanted to make, I couldn’t get off the ground, and I was used to getting movies made so easily. And I wrote this Isle of Man racing movie… do you guys know about the TT? It’s the oldest motor race on earth? Takes place in Ireland? None of you know that? Well, this is why the movie didn’t get made.

(Laughter)

So I couldn’t get it off the ground. I was so used to getting movies made like no problem.

So you were stubborn–

I got upset. And then I just kind of withdrew for a while.

To Switzerland?

Yeah! No, to Costa Rica.

So that’s why this is a perfect project for you then…

Yeah. And then for some reason, even when I took the job I didn’t make that parallel. And then in the middle of writing it I was like, “Oh wait, I understand this guy. Everyone’s saying it’s not gonna happen… .” So then I was like “Oh, I’m gonna stay on.”

Also, the other idea was that I have a lot of passions. During those ten years I became a pilot, I was cooking at a restaurant in Costa Rica, I raced bikes professionally for a year… so I did these interesting things–

Like motorcycle bikes?

Yeah, full-on road-racing.

Wow. That’s crazy. You’re crazy.

I’m not crazy, I just, I like trying different things.

But the point is, as much as I loved all those things, I wouldn’t… if you told me there was a chance I’d never walk again if I did one of them, the same question that was composed to Vinny, I would just say, “Well, then I won’t direct.” Or anything. I don’t have anything in my life that I love to risk paralysis, that’s what I’m trying to say.

A twenty-four-day shoot – your actors said it was OK, but being the director, how was it for you? 

I was fairly prepared… also, there was too much on the – in a good way – on the line, meaning like there was… if you make a movie every two years, and some of them are fairly successful, either commercially or critically, you get a few, like, “You can screw this one up,” – like free-passes. You know what I mean? You go to director jail for like six months, or whatever they say, like that, I don’t know. But if you don’t make a movie for twelve years, you don’t have a choice. Like, if I didn’t nail this one, it’s game over.

Why Miles and why Aaron?

Miles, it was the combination of… I mean, “Whiplash” hadn’t come out, so I hired him pre-“Whiplash.” I just loved him in “(The) Spectacular Now.” Even like his other more sort-of mainstream commercial stuff, you could see, you know sometimes? You do a movie that’s either a little soft. like even in “Footloose.” There’s still moments where you just go, “Wait a second, what was that?”

Combined with the fact that he’s just not a pretty boy. Good looking kid, but not in like a “Fill in the blank.” He’s not so stereotypically, or typically, beautiful. I like that. He was in that (car) crash, I’m sure you guys all know. He’s scarred up, he looks like he could be a boxer.

And Aaron?

Aaron was about finding someone who… I feel like in each movie (I do), I take somebody and show you something you haven’t seen. So whether it’s Vin (Diesel) in “Boiler Room,” or Uma (Thurman) in “Prime,” I wanted to take somebody who was respected and, known as a great actor, but just make them, show you something different. In this case, make them unrecognizable.

I showed the movie to Steven Soderbergh, and it took him ten minutes to realize that that was (Aaron).

And he directed him in “Erin Brockovich!”

I didn’t tell him he was in the movie, and then he goes… you probably can’t use this, but ten minutes in he goes, “Is that fucking Aaron Eckhart?”

(Laughter)

So when you talked to Aaron about the movie, did you say it would be nice if we didn’t put a fat suit on you, and actually gain the forty pounds?

I mean, it wasn’t even a discussion. Ted Levine wore a fat suit – and not that he’s any less committed – but Aaron was like, he wouldn’t even hear it. He was putting the weight on, as miserable as it made him. He’s a very fit person.

We heard that when Vinny saw the movie, with you, that he cried during the family scenes.

Totally true.

Could you talk about that, and filming those scenes?

Yeah. I mean he, I didn’t know… when we finished shooting, I didn’t think it through, I just thought, “I’ll show Vinny the movie.” We were locked, and I’ll just sit next to him. And it was much more intense then I imagined. I don’t know, it seems obvious now. I just didn’t think it through. I mean, he’s seeing a movie about his life. The interesting thing is where he got emotional. It wasn’t like the big fights or the car crash, or like the moments you think. It was like these really small, tender, familial moments. Like his mother praying for him at the shrine, or his father just like putting his hand on his shoulder. And then you realize, he could look up all those other moments. Like, he can, you can see any one of those fights on YouTube, tons of Halo footage of him, even training with it on. But we created what you’re saying. We created his family life in a way that moved him. So, I knew we got it, I was pretty sure we did a decent job. But when he started crying, that’s when I was like, “OK, that’s it.”

What was the choice behind – when Vinny comes back finally from having the Halo on for three months, you have him fighting Roberto Duran right away. He actually did fight quite a few others–

Bunch of other people.

Is that because people are going to know Duran?

I’d say that was the only concession I made, as far as, embellishment. In every other way, we had to actually do reverse-embellishment. So, for example, Vinny started training, that scene with the bar lifting – that happened five days after the halo went on, in real life. I couldn’t present that, because no one would believe it.

(Laughter)

Same with like, for Ciarán Hinds’ performance of Angelo. Angelo was such a colorful character that he bordered on like, a caricature of an Italian-American in New England. If I showed him as he was, you would say I was racist or we would have made a comedy.

East coast people have a surface-specific view that might seem cliché when presented on screen. How did you manage to keep it to where it felt like natural no cliché in terms of the acting and the accents?

Compared to – oh, not boxing movies, you mean just specifically that, regionally? Yeah. That was a fear. Boxing-wise, there’s so many clichés. Those I was like, “We’re going to avoid those, those are easier to avoid.” But yeah, this was tougher because the actual accents can, themselves, sound caricature-like. 

So, we had a great dialect coach, Tom Jones… not the singer. He works at Brown, really talented guy. And we prayed. And we were just careful and like, you really listen. I wasn’t looking on the monitors, I just stood next to camera and just stared and just, you know when someone’s bull-shitting, and when they’re not. And you just can tell when they’re getting it. Even if you don’t know the world, there’s just something, if you really pay attention.

The family dinners were really key, because it set a realistic tone. It looked like it was a real house, you know, not a movie house.

Real food too!

Real food?

Real food, like, real local cook, yeah.

How did it go in terms of “The Fighter.” Was that an inspiration? One of the trade reviews noted the similarity with the energy and the family dynamics.

Well, that’s a comparison I’d love to get. Yeah, David’s movie is one of my favorite boxing movies, it’s up there with, top three. I mean, “Raging Bull” is obviously a cut above everything, but I’d say “The Fighter” is top three boxing movies of all time. So yeah, most of the boxing movies that I watched, to be fair, were cautionary tales for me, less than they were influencers. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t get it wrong, I had enough faith in myself to know that when I did start rolling camera I’d start paving my own way, but there were things I didn’t want to do, and that’s when I started watching other boxing movies.

What are the other two top three boxing movies?

Um… “Rocky,” the first “Rocky.” You know Vinny saw Rocky when he was sixteen and decided he was going to be a fighter? There’s a scene that didn’t make the final cut, it was a great scene, but it was just, we were pressed on time, we had to be ruthless. But it’s Angelo and Kevin (Rooney) sitting in the hospital while Vinny’s getting the surgery. And this is something Angelo actually said to Kevin, at one point he just said, “You know Vinny went and saw ‘Rocky’ when he was sixteen, came home, rode his bike home, and said, ‘I’m going to be a fighter, I’m going to be a world-champ.’” And he went on to say, “How many kids you think came home from that movie and said that? How many kids do you think went on to win three world championships… five world championships?”

There’s a story that you told at Toronto Film Festival, about how hard it was to finance this movie…

Yeah, I’ll give you the short version, it’s a long story…

But basically we had a horrible day on set, and the scene that I wrote wasn’t working, I had to re-write it, there wasn’t time… my parents were there the one day out of twenty-four they came to visit set. And at lunch the producers came to me and said, I gave my whole salary up for this movie. Literally. I just, I gave it back to this movie because I wanted two extra shooting days. The Guild doesn’t want you to do that, the Director’s Guild, they won’t let you defer your salary, cause if they did, then you would just get it straight away, just get it right back. So what they make you do to discourage you is, if you want to put your salary in the movie, you have to get paid, pay taxes on that movie, and then invest that back in, just like any… So I did that, because I wanted these two days, cause I wanted to make, I had, the movie had to be good. And then halfway through on an already miserable day when my parents were there the producers came to me and said we gotta take one of those days away. And it was no fault of anyone’s, the tax incentives from Rhode Island didn’t come in the way we had thought, no one to point a finger at, but just, this is the reality. And so that was it, I was just like, defeated.

And I left, we left, I think we might’ve even wrapped early that day cause the scene wasn’t even working that we were shooting. And then I went to a restaurant and met my parents for dinner. I’d sent them home after we had got that news because it was too much. So they had gone home, and then we had got to dinner and they sat across the table from me and slid a check for one-hundred thousand dollars over so that I could get the day back. But my mom is a social worker, my step-dad is a math teacher, they are middle-class at highest, and it was from like from my mom’s 401k.

Did you cash it?

No, I started crying. I was done, that was the final, I couldn’t even help it. I was just openly weeping in a restaurant.

You mentioned how Vinny was inspired after watching “Rocky,” was there a movie that inspired you when you were young that inspired you to say I have to do this job?

No-one’s ever asked me this question, strangely, and I’ve been avoiding it for sixteen years, because I have to tell the truth. But it is Steven Segal’s “Above the Law.” It was his first movie, I was sixteen years old, I cut school, I was going to Yeshiva, like a Jewish seminary school, and I cut and I went and saw it, and it was the first time I realized that someone made movies, like that there were people behind it, some thought had gone into it. It was mostly that opening, they used – actually, that’s actually an amazing tie-in, I just realized this, to this movie, because there’s archival footage for the first thirty seconds. It’s footage of Segal as like a nineteen or twenty-year old studying martial arts in the far East, cut together with the narrative they were doing, it was about him being a CIA operative… the movie holds up, I see it probably once a year. It’s completely watchable.

We all have our guilty pleasures.

I wouldn’t even call this one.

(Laughter)

So that’s when you decided, that’s when you said, “I’m going to do this”?

Not that moment, but that was, that was the, it took a few more years. I mean, the background I come from, there’s not a huge emphasis on the arts and pursuing your dreams. More about learning a profession, keeping your head down, and, you know, not having what happened to my grandparents, if you know what I mean. So I didn’t quite get that far. But that really was, I’m just glad you asked because that’s kind of what I’ve secretly always wanted to say–

(Laughter)

There are a lot of other moving pieces in this movie apart from the boxing, with the family dynamics and relationships. What was the thing that you had to keep reminding yourself was the center of the movie?

He’s an unusual character, I don’t mean for the obvious reasons, I mean from like a, I don’t know how interested you are in like the minutia of screenwriting, but he doesn’t have an arc, Vinny. He’s all-in when you meet him, he’s all-in at the mid-point when he crashes, he’s all-in at the end. So, like, the reason that it works is because his desire is so strong. And I felt like that was the thing that I had to see, that was the thing that centered the movie in me and every scene with Miles. So like, even that shot of him, when he comes home from the Halo surgery, and he’s looking in the mirror at himself, and then he just like, you just barely see that he’s making a muscle… the guy’s, his spirit, it was and is indomitable, and like that’s, I think that was the center-line.

Having finished this two years ago, do you want to make another one or do you want to go back –

Costa Rica?

Or riding motor-bikes.

You do look back on it with, I mean look – it was a great experience, but the hardships? Yeah, you… the fact that I’m sitting at this table now makes it hard, it’s very difficult to remember how hard it was. Like I could tell the stories, but like the sense memory of it is gone, which is great, I mean human beings possess that, that’s how you like, move past like bear attacks and all the things we probably used to…

(Laughter)

So yeah, we acclimate quick. Cause yeah, like, I don’t really remember the, I know it was hard, but like, no, it’s all about, “Let’s just keep going, this is too fun.”

So you’re going to get back on track with the movie that you want to get made?

So, “Aisle of Man,” it’s fully financed. We got thirty million, we’re going with Bold Films.

And what’s your time frame on that?

Well the TT itself, the race is the first two weeks of June, so the idea would be to shoot the race almost as like a documentary film. We already hired a professional Cameron Donald, he’s easily Google-able, and Honda is our partner, so they’re going to provide full-on superbikes. And then we’re going to shoot the race with him as the rider, and then afterwards, three months with the actor–

Who is…?

We’re not sure yet.

Somebody under twenty-five?

No no, he’s thirty-five. He’s a retired American racer who goes to the Aisle of Win as a spectator, sees what’s there, realizes he’s got something left in the tank, stays on for a year, and works on a farm, then competes the following year.

So it could be Miles even?

Could be.

‘Bleed For This’ is now playing in select cities. For our review, click here.