How Did This Get Made: An Interview With The Director Of 'Money Plane'

Recently, the gang at How Did This Get Made? covered this summer's most over-the-top and Snakesonaplane-ish action film: Money Plane. To figure out how Money Plane got made, I spoke with the film's director (and co-writer), Andy Lawrence. Which, I must admit, was especially fun as I've been a fan of Andy's work since the mid-90s when he—along with his older brothers Joey Lawrence and Matt Lawrence—starred in the series Brotherly Love. Since Brotherly Love, Andy has notably appeared in shows like Oliver Beene, The United States of Tara and Hawaii Five-O (and perhaps even more notably voiced characters on shows like Recess, as well as video games like Dead Rising 3). Needless to say, Andy has done a lot in the entertainment industry over the past couple decades. But there's one thing he had not ever done before: direct a feature film (well, not officially; we get into his epic feature-length home movies). So, of course, I was eager to hear how about the origins of his directorial debut. Which, as I soon found out, is a tale whose fate hinges on a very epic arm-wrestling match...[AUTHOR'S NOTE: the interview below has been lightly edited for clarity]

BJH: I get your point: that Money Plane is not, like, the movie that you've been carrying around in your heart for years. But, in a way, it is...because it's an homage to all the action movies that you and I grew up with. ANDY LAWRENCE: Yeah, I mean, I've probably seen them all. Honestly. Whether or not I can recall them all specifically, or whether they're all just a blur...BJH: [laughing]ANDY LAWRENCE: I've always watched movies. Growing up, I was never a big TV guy. I was a gamer, but I never watched TV. It was either movies or games. That's really what I did. So I've probably seen all of them. Everything from The Kickboxer to Hard to Kill to Executive Decision. I know all those by heart. And then mixing in a little bit of, like, Snakes on a Plane. That type of vibe. That's really what I feel like the category of this movie is. BJH: For sure...so in Alan's piece for The Ringer, your brother Joey says that you've been making home movies since you were a kid. And that you filmed one movie for six years called Truth Can Kill. What was Truth Can Kill about...? ANDY LAWRENCE: It was about these two brothers in the crime world—they were these mobster guys. One was just released from jail and the other picks him up and they set out to get revenge on the two guys that brought down their crime syndicate. BJH: [laughing] Gotcha. ANDY LAWRENCE: [clarifying Joey's statement] And it was two movies. That's why it took six years! I filmed one and then the sequel! BJH: [laughing]ANDY LAWRENCE: I was like 12 years old. BJH: That's so precocious. ANDY LAWRENCE: I was very lucky because I grew up in an environment where...I had really supportive parents, I was coming off of film sets, I had access to some pretty cool stuff and my brothers were my guinea pigs. And they let me torture them—time and time again—for years. Yeah, it was awesome. I would edit, like, 82 minute features on iMovie on those old color MacBook's and melt them. They would just explode. BJH: Really? ANDY LAWRENCE: Yeah. I went through two or three of them, for sure to try and finish that movie. BJH: Do you still have that movie? ANDY LAWRENCE: Somewhere, probably. BJH: Alright. I might be bugging you over the next few months to find it. ANDY LAWRENCE: [laughs] This thing would be epic. But...it might be better that it's 'lost forever.'BJH: Alright. ANDY LAWRENCE: But I'll look for it though. BJH: So flashing forward to Money Plane. Do you remember when you guys shot it.  ANDY LAWRENCE: Yeah. December of last year [2019]. BJH: WHAT?!ANDY LAWRENCE: Yeah. I know, right? BJH: Wow. You should be winning, like, a Nobel Prize for...I don't even know. ANDY LAWRENCE: Everybody [deserves that credit], though. Like: even to get it through post. Again, it's not a "masterpiece," it's really not, everybody knows that, but just the fact that we all banded together to get it out. It was wild! Again, this movie was put together so quickly. From, literally, talking about the idea to three-and-a-half-weeks later having a first draft of the script to about two [or] three weeks later being on set. It was nuts. I'm not kidding...it was pretty wild. And the production moved from Romania to Toronto to Louisiana within, I don't know, 12 days? And we needed an airplane set, so you can imagine how that's gonna work. Talk about "building an airplane in flight." So we get to Louisiana and we're building the airplane set while we're shooting. And [at that point] I'm picking corners of the set to shoot in. BJH: Wow. ANDY LAWRENCE: Because it's real indie, dude. It's very independent film. Even though we have awesome actors in it—which was crazy that they agreed to do it; I'm super humbled and flattered—but it was a rag-tag crew. It was rough but it was awesome. Everyone really did their part...BJH: As an outsider, it definitely didn't feel that way...ANDY LAWRENCE: That's awesome. I mean...if you only knew. BJH: Well, as you said [at the start of our conversation], you're a pretty relaxed guy. But were there times when you felt, like, in over your head? ANDY LAWRENCE: So the pressure of accomplishing what we needed to accomplish? That never got to me. Because I'm good under pressure. I get it. I get what that means to go to set and only have a finite amount of hours to accomplish what you need to accomplish. And there are no extra days. I get it. And we can call the audibles and make things work to facilitate that. But what does stress me out is, again, you know, budget's an issue. And that's always gonna be an issue—whether the budget is $100 or a $100 million. BJH: Yep. ANDY LAWRENCE: But not having more time to do some proper action stuff...like: only having almost one day with some of these big actors. To fit in all of this stuff that is obviously very expository. And trying to make it as interesting...just enjoyable as you possibly can. That stressed me out a little bit. I would love to have had some more time and some more freedom to push the limits. You know, exploding heads and all that good stuff. I really would!BJH: [laughing]ANDY LAWRENCE: It was actually pretty shockingly stress-free: location-scouting, and knowing that we have to shoot in two days and we have to build an airplane and make everyone look the best that we can make them look. That was okay. BJH: Yeah, I guess, once it's going...ANDY LAWRENCE: Yeah, it's do or die. It's finish or fail...And failing is not an option. BJH: So tell me about some of the actors. How did you get Kelsey Grammer? How did you get Thomas Jane in the film? ANDY LAWRENCE: That had a lot to do with the producers...and we got very lucky. Again, I'm so humbled. They were so awesome to work with. I thought they were gonna come on set and hate me, and hate us, because, you know, we only had like six people! You know, they're used to very big studio films. Granted, we're a well-oiled machine for six people! But you know... BJH: [laughs]ANDY LAWRENCE: But they came on set and did a fantastic job. They were super prepared. Kelsey Grammer was unbelievable with these lines. And I told him beforehand: cut [any exposition] you want. Demolish it! Murder it! Whatever you want. But he said: no, I like this arrested-development videogame-boss-type-of-guy. I really want to lean into it. And I was like: alright! That sounds fantastic! BJH: Yeah, I did realize watching it that I'd watch 90 minutes of Kelsey Grammer doing any evil musings...ANDY LAWRENCE: And [in many ways] that's all we could afford! And he killed it. BJH: Did you guys ever explicitly talk about [the similarity to] "Sideshow Bob"...? ANDY LAWRENCE: No. Honestly, there was so little...and we had so much to do. So we just shot for a full day, and that was pretty much it. BJH: And what about Thomas Jane? What was he like to work with? How did you end up getting him?ANDY LAWRENCE: Awesome. Same sort of a thing. I was always a huge fan of Thomas Jane growing up. He's done some of the coolest movies. I mean: Boogie Nights and The Punisher, right? The only time that he got mad at us was we shot something with him off-camera, and he was outside smoking his pipe (because he showed up smoking a pipe) and just smoked it all the way through the movie—so he was smoking his pipe and we didn't get him [for the scene]. We figured we'd get him reading off-camera later. But he came in, [saw us shooting] and wanted to be in the scene. [He said,] "I'm here to work! Put me to work!" Oh my god, this guy is fantastic! The only time he got angry at us is when we didn't have him in a scene! BJH: That's great. ANDY LAWRENCE: So he's fantastic. Thomas Jane is wonderful. BJH: And what about Adam [Copeland]? How'd you end up finding him and what surprised you most about his performance? ANDY LAWRENCE: He was extremely capable of doing so many things on set. Just the stunts and the performance. I mean, we had so much dialogue—just so many pages on these call sheets for the day. Again, we shot this movie so quickly. We weren't lounging around on set, living this epic studio film life where we bonded and all had MONEY PLANE tattoos. BJH: [cracks up]ANDY LAWRENCE: So he dealt with that...he spent most of the movie in the cockpit, honestly. Because originally that role was designed for someone that wasn't as physically capable as Adam. It was somebody that was potentially going to be a lot older. And when Adam got put into the mix and decided that he would be willing to do it? Of course, we were super stoked. It changed the dynamic, but in the best way possible. BJH: In what sense? ANDY LAWRENCE: [For example] he did this cockpit fight sequence and we probably shot for like four or five hours...because it was kind of his only fight sequence in the movie and we wanted to put some time in it. And to do your own stunts? I mean, it was these two giants guys in this teeny teeny cockpit. It was ridiculous, right? And the stunt guy sliced his head open within the first take. Real blood's dripping all over the place. It was nuts. And these gladiators continued to battle it out!BJH: Wow. ANDY LAWRENCE: For hours. Literally...and then after the fight sequence, we asked Adam to sit down and read 16 pages of dialogue. And he did, no problem. And [pivoting between stunts and dialogue], it's very difficult to do that as an actor.BJH: Did the movie change a lot during the edit? ANDY LAWRENCE: Yeah, for sure. There were a lot of things that we couldn't pull off; and we saw that [in the edit] so we decided not to do them. And really lean into the, you know, don't-show-the-shark Jaws type of thing. BJH: Right, right. ANDY LAWRENCE: We gotta go for what we think we can pull off here. Even though it's cheesy and campy and fun, we don't wanna look like complete idiots. So: yeah. A lot of things changed. We actually had...one of my favorite lines in the whole thing was [that you could bet on] "a dude f***ing an alligator." Which Kelsey Grammer said. Not only is the line insane. But just him saying it was fantastic. Pretty much, I could listen to him saying that all day.BJH: Right. ANDY LAWRENCE: So we really were very close to...not showing it. But there was an alligator wrangler in Louisiana—we could get an alligator—and maybe have [a guy] in his underwear chasing an alligator for a second, or something. BJH: [laughs]ANDY LAWRENCE: But we couldn't do it. It was just too hard to pull off. So we had a snake that we didn't show and a guy in a cage. BJH: And as a director, how do you go about finding the appropriate level of "campy"-ness? ANDY LAWRENCE: Well I think it's intention, right? It's how it dictates the emotion and almost your reaction to it. So if it's landing too dramatic or too serious, you want to tone it down a little bit and make it a little more fun. Again, in this space in particular, the goal was fun. BJH: Right. ANDY LAWRENCE: That's the goal. So when there's throwback lines to "one last job" over and over and over again. That's what it's supposed to be. And again, looking back on it—tonally—there was a bit of a, I don't want to say "struggle," but there was some uncertainty on whether it was a serious action movie or a crazy, zany comedy. I was really pushing for the crazy, zany comedy given the circumstances and the limitations to what we had. And I did the most that I could, honestly. And going forward, you know, I'll push even more. If that's the intention. That's the big thing that I've learned through the process—to really go for that intention and commit even harder...