Necromancy isn’t a skill you might associate with Sylvester Stallone, but over the past decade he has proved remarkably adept at resurrecting the ghosts of franchises past. Rocky Balboa (2006) and Rambo (2008) weren’t just unapologetically nostalgic and brutal throwbacks to a previous era of cinema; they were also critical and commercial hits.
Stallone wrote, directed and starred in both those movies, a formula he replicated with The Expendables in 2010. That film has now swollen into a franchise populated by just about every 1980s action star to ever fire bullets or one-liners on screen – with the notable exception of those without a Y chromosome.
These are men who once lit up the box office, but now shine brightest in dark corners of the internet. They are men tossed upon tides of time and testosterone, who wear their skin tight as wetsuits. So by the time a third instalment came around, Stallone needed to add something different to the cauldron. He needed fresh blood – and that’s where Patrick Hughes comes in.
Hughes, 36, grew up in Black Rock, and attended St Michael’s Grammar School before moving on to film studies at the Victorian College of the Arts. He had one feature film under his belt when Stallone hand-picked him to direct The Expendables 3, and he has the perfect anecdote for his Hollywood ascension.
“I started making shorts when I was very young, eight or nine years old – I had saved up and bought myself a Super 8 camera,” Hughes says. “The first thing I ever shot was a stop-frame animation that went for about 23 seconds; it was a Rambo action figure setting fire to a Han Solo action figure. Which is crazy, when you think about it, because 20 years later I’m literally on set directing Sylvester Stallone and Harrison Ford.”
These days Hughes splits his time between St Kilda and Los Angeles; but while we’re talking locations, the tale of his Hollywood ascension starts in a blood-soaked patch of the Australian outback called, appropriately enough, Red Hill.
Released in 2010, the film is a spry, solid tale of revenge and retribution that helped establish Hughes’ genre bona fides. He mortgaged his house to raise money for the film – mildly terrifying his friend and fellow director Greg McLean, who had had an international hit with Wolf Creek and promised Hughes he would match his financial input into Red Hill.
“I got to a point of frustration and wrote a list of 10 of my favourite filmmakers, and became very strategic about it. How did they make their first film, knowing the catch-22 that no one lets you make a movie until you’ve made a movie?” Hughes says.
“The Coen brothers, George Miller, Christopher Nolan – all of them sold body parts or mortgaged houses or shot it on weekends. They did it by themselves. You realise it’s not about the bells and whistles, it’s about telling a story. Stop trying to make it perfect and just do it.”
Hughes took the film from page to premiere in 11 months, shooting without a distributor. During pre-production, a short film he had made called Signs ended up “going bananas” on YouTube – it now has more than 10 million views – and attracting the attention of LA-based producer Roy Lee.
Lee got in touch, asking if Red Hill could be set in the US, but Hughes honoured the commitments he had made and went on to premiere the film at the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival. Two weeks later, Hughes’ agent called with the “awesome but completely useless information” that Stallone was a fan of the film. And then, in 2013, it turned out that Stallone wanted a meeting.
“I was shooting a lingerie commercial in Bondi and had to be back on set by Monday. I got on a plane, and as soon as I landed I went to one of those fancy-pants hotels in Beverly Hills,” Hughes says.
“Within 30 seconds Sly and I genuinely hit it off. We had a meeting that was meant to go for an hour and a half, and four hours later we were still sitting there. It was one of those crazy Hollywood meetings, and I got a verbal offer right there.
“Sly was on that list I made. He was down to his last dime when he made Rocky. He’s very creative, very proactive and never rests on his laurels. A lot of people at that age come in an for easy landing, but he keeps revving the engine.”
Hughes is a gregarious fellow, his thoughts built like Russian nesting dolls – all tangents wrapped in ideas inside excitement. He has a seven-year-old daughter (“She thinks I work in demolition because whenever she’s on set I blow stuff up”) and a son, aged five.
His cinematic sensibilities were given form on an international flight about the age of nine, in the days when there was just one screen for the entire cabin. The Coen brothers’ sweetly deranged Raising Arizona was on, and Hughes was swiftly hooked.
“I told my mum I wasn’t listening to the film, I was just listening to the radio, and I watched the entire film sideways through a gap in the seat while pretending to be asleep – and it just changed me,” he says.
“I remember Nicolas Cage robbing a service station for nappies with a sawn-off shotgun. I’d never experienced black comedy where you’re laughing at the hilarity and also the danger of it. It made me step back and say: Where did that come from? How does it work?”
His father, Tim, was an actor, so the young Hughes spent a lot of time wandering around sets and sound stages, fascinated by the trickery that went into elaborate sets.
After film school, Hughes started directing short films, winning Tropfest in 2001 with The Lighter, and built a successful career in directing commercials. He had dabbled in some acting, too, but a more formative experience was the Sundays spent watching western after western with his father, a practice he never enjoyed until he was older.
“I remember turning 18 and realising that westerns were awesome. They’re all about justice and sacrifice and revenge, all those big themes that every action film is based on. It comes down to fighting for what’s right when the world is wrong, and that really fascinated me.”
It’s that sensibility Hughes is seeking to bring to The Expendables 3, along with the question of how long one can last in the murky world of special ops and mercenary outfits – a theme particularly relevant to this group of actors.
“It’s the third in a franchise and these things have the tendency to go a bit flat, so I was really keen to hear about the hook and where he wanted to take it. It’s certainly not a personal film, it’s a big fat Hollywood popcorn movie and it’s a fun ride,” Hughes says.
“The first one was too dark, and maybe took itself too seriously, and Sly was aware of that. The second one for me just went too far into comedy, into parody – you lose all sense of threat or danger. I said to Sly that I wanted to get the tone right, I wanted to have a good time and a good laugh, and make the action really dynamic.
“The film is completely loaded with crazy action set pieces. The opening is a helicopter doing an attack on a prison train. The tendency is to go all CG with that stuff; I was like, ‘Nah, let’s buy a train, let’s get some choppers and let’s do it for real’. And that comes across on camera.”
Hughes “had a ball” working with a cast that includes Stallone, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Wesley Snipes, Antonio Banderas, Dolph Lundgren and Jet Li. He acknowledges the value of the collective wisdom available – the first two of those names have won Academy Awards for directing, and the others are some of the most experienced in the business, even if they do come with a particular set of hazards.
“You have a lot of testosterone on set – I’ve never seen so many dumb-bells, I almost killed myself tripping over them,” he says, recalling how even righteous anger can swiftly evaporate. “I remember almost doing a face-plant, turning around and yelling, ‘Who the f— left a dumb-bell right here?’ And Sly – who’s getting kitted up with a gun – goes, ‘Yeah that was me’.”
Next up for Hughes is a remake of the Indonesian action film The Raid. He also contributed to the script, but The Expendables 3 has confirmed that directing is dearest to his heart.
“I really love working with actors and I’m very vocal on set – I mean, I’m always screaming on megaphones to be heard because there’s bombs and shit going off. The director sets the tone on set, and we all had a really good rapport,” Hughes says.
“I said to Sly it was like dealing with my five-year-old son but having 13 of them; you call, ‘cut’, and everyone’s chatting to everyone. We just had an absolute blast.”
» The Expendables 3 (M) opens August 14
