Dominique Vandenberg is a man of many talents. The former French Legionnaire’s body of work includes action coordination on Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, and producing David Lynch’s son, Austin Lynch’s film Gray House. Recently, I spoke to Dominique about his latest movie, The Mercenary. And how he wrote the original graphic novel the movie is based on. Read on for the interview.

LRM: On behalf of LRM, I’d like to thank you for taking time out for this interview today to talk about your new film, The Mercenary.

Vandenberg: No, please, I want to thank you guys for giving me a platform to share this with more people so more people know about my movie. I really appreciate you guys doing this. Thank you very much.

LRM: Awesome. All right. I want to ask you, what’s your role in the film?

Vandenberg: I play the Legion Maxx character, which is the main character, the mercenary. And I created this character long, long time ago. I originally created it in a graphic novel. And then when things with the graphic novel kind of fell through, I decided to do it as a movie.

LRM: Nice. Is that graphic novel, is that out anywhere that maybe we could-

Vandenberg: No, at the time I was with a company called Magic Leap Studios, which was a company that does AR/VR technology and stuff like that, and I was an executive board number there. And the owner of the company, he says, “Dominique, while we’re getting the tech ready for the AR and VR, why don’t you come up with a comic book story?” So I came up with this graphic novel called Vive La Mort, which means long live death in French. And the Maxx character was one of the characters in that graphic novel. And what happened was when Google invested $500 million into Magic Leap, and then Alibaba also came on and invested money. It brought a real PC culture with that, and they decided not to do any super violent graphic novels. So my graphic novel got put to the side pretty much. So I decided to have this one character, which is the Maxx character, and create a synopsis first, and then write a script for a movie for it, and decided to do it myself in a film.

LRM: It sounds like a long process. What was that process like going from a graphic novel to a film?

Vandenberg: Well, the first script, after we finished the first script, I had a different director for about a year and a half at that do it, than the director that ended up directing it. And a year or so in, he told me, “Dominique, I don’t think we can do this movie with that much action in it for the budget that we have.” So I said, “Okay.” So me and the person that did the original script, Antoine, we decided to do a second script that we could shoot for a lower budget and shoot in one location. And decided to do that, created a second script, and then the director, he kept dragging his feet and I pushed him to do one testing shooting day. And I realized when we did the film test day, that he couldn’t do the action fast enough. Because when you have a lower budget and it comes to action film making, you’ve got to do them very, very fast.

So then my old friend, Jesse Johnson, became available again, and he became attached to the script, and then the original director didn’t want to let us do the second script. So we came up with a whole new synopsis and created a new scope to film and then started rehearsing and everything almost right away with the stunt crew and the whole thing. And then Jesse and I did one weekend, but we shot the mosque scene.

There’s a big mosque scene where the character kills a whole bunch of people in a mosque. We shot that, and then Jesse got hired for Triple Threat, the Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais movie. And he had to go off to Thailand for months. So he asked me, “Dom, instead of waiting in Los Angeles, why don’t you come off to Thailand with me and fill a small part in Triple Threat, and then when we get back to LA, we will finish up, The Mercenary APA Legion Maxx.” And that’s what we did.

LRM: Thanks for that answer. Let me ask you, were there any memorable tales from the set?

Vandenberg: Oh, it was a really rough shoot. Really a lot of action, and you’re on a limited time span. You have to move forward, and we were racing against time all the time. We had 16 days for the main shoot, and then we have two days after that for pick-up shots. And on the set, when you do fight scenes, a lot with guns and explosions, and the knives and all that stuff, you got to be really careful. There was one sequence, especially, that week that we did. It was a shootout inside of a car with a shotgun, semiautomatic and everything, with all windows up. And it was really hairy because even with blanks you can hurt people if it’s pointed straight at their face.

LRM: That sounds pretty dangerous. What went into the preparation for the action sequences?

Vandenberg: We prepared really well for the sequences. I had a stunt coordinator called Luke LaFontaine who is a veteran, and he’s done a lot of movies. And then I hired this younger kid, Malay Kim, as my fight choreographer because I coordinated all the fight sequences. And we just did a lot of preparation and that’s what you have to do when you have a limited budget. We rehearsed the thing, we shot it on pre-piece, and then we edited the pre-piece. So by the time we came to set, we could show to DP what we wanted, and he knew right away how to do the setup. And previously, with a director we would go over everything and create a shop list so we could just move along and just zip through the fights really, really fast.

LRM: Thanks for the answer there.

Vandenberg: Yeah. The thing is, I was the fight coordinator on Gangs of New York with Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis, but on movies like that, when you do a fight sequence, like for a Scorsese movie, which is over a hundred million dollar budget, you can do one fight scene and have a whole week or 10 days to do it. And we’re talking about simple fight scenes. Now when you work on independent movies, and you have big drawn out action scenes, you don’t have that time, so you have to move along really fast and prepare really well before you get to set.

LRM: Interesting. So you mentioned that you were the fight coordinator on Gangs of New York. What was that like with the battle of, was it the Five Points?

Vandenberg: Five Points, yeah. I choreographed all the sequences, and I created that whole sequence with Daniel and Leo and all of them. That was fun to do because we have tons of time. When you have a big budget, you have a lot of liberties to where you can go. You don’t have to rehearse as much before. And a lot of big stars, they don’t want to rehearse sometimes.
They want to come to set, go over the sequence that they have to do, and then do it. You’re lucky if you can get a big star for twice a week for an hour, to go over the fight sequences. So you have all that money and time, but a lot of times you don’t have the preparation like you do for an indie movie, where a lot of the guys are gung ho and they just want to do it right.

LRM: It sounds like you wore many hats during the making of The Mercenary. How’d you manage to handle all of that? And you were coordinating fights and starring in the film. How do you do that?

Vandenberg: In life, all of us, we all have one life, right? And this was always a dream for me to do my own movie without having those strains of people telling you what to do, so I found it to film myself. After I did the gunfire with David Lenz as a technical adviser and coordinator, I decided I wanted to get more and more in producing things.

And with the things going south on my graphic novel, the first film that I executive produced was David Lynch’s son, Austin Lynch’s movie, called Gray House, which was an art movie, and I executive produced that. And then I was thinking over it more and more, and talked to my wife, and I said, “Maybe I should do my own projects.”

And then the next character, was always a character that was close to my heart. And I always wanted to do a story that involved kind of mercenaries and members of the French Foreign Legion because of my background. Being a veteran of the French Foreign Legion, I decided to do a film that kind of could bring those characters into play.

LRM: So you definitely brought a lot to the process. Let me ask you, when does The Mercenary come out, and where can people see it? Where can we tell the fans of LRM?

Vandenberg: The movie’s coming out on January 7th, and right now you can get it at Redbox, you can get it at Walmart. I think they’re still negotiating with Netflix and all the other places where it’s going to be able to see. And it’s all also going to be on many TV channels. But it’s going to be released January 7th, and more of the details will probably come. I will know more about that in the next week or so.

LRM: Great. Okay. All right, well, I’ll keep an eye out for that information over email.

Vandenberg: Thank you so much.

LRM: Sure thing. And I’ve got to ask you this question because we are a comic book geared website over here. If you had to select one, who would be your favorite superhero?

Vandenberg: God, oh God, oh God. I could just pick one?

LRM: Just one.

Vandenberg: As a kid I liked Spider-Man a lot, but then as I got more into my teen years, I liked the darkness as Batman, I have to say.

LRM: Nice, nice, great answer.

Vandenberg: Yeah, but when I was a little kid, yeah, I loved Spider-Man. Then when I got into my teens, I liked the dark side of Batman.

LRM: He’s awesome.

Vandenberg: I always liked the dark side a little bit. I do love, as a kid, watching samurai movies a lot. I loved the old Japanese samurai movies, that kind of stuff I really liked when I was a kid. And then of course, watching them with my dad.

LRM: Nice. Is there anything that you want the readers of LRM to look out for other than The Mercenary, or anything that you want to say specifically?

Vandenberg: I just, whoever reads any interview that I do, I tell people to follow your dreams. Life is very short. There’s no second time around here, unless you believe in reincarnation, then it’s in a different light or stuff like that. So I think whoever reads this, you’ve got this one life right now, so go for it. Balls to the wall, go for it.

LRM: Awesome.

Vandenberg: That’s always what I have done in my life.

LRM: Great.

Vandenberg: If you don’t… Excuse me?

LRM: No, go on.

Vandenberg: I will say if you don’t find your purpose in life, it can be pretty meaningless.

LRM: Yes.

Vandenberg: It’s very fast.

LRM: That’s great advice.

Vandenberg: Before you know, it’s over.

LRM: You’re right. That’s great advice there. Now it looks like, let’s see here. I want to thank you on behalf of the website, LRM, and the readers, for again, taking time out today for this interview.

Vandenberg: No, please, I want to thank you because it’s people like you that spread the word and that let people know that there’s indie filmmakers still out there, that use up their life savings to follow their dreams and that go to it to the grinds. I really appreciate you taking the time for interviewing me and sharing this interview with your readers. Thank you so much.

LRM: Thank you, Dominique. Have a great day.

Vandenberg: Yeah, you also. Take care. Thank you.

Be sure to check out the action film, The Mercenary now on DVD, Blu-ray, and digital.

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