Over the last few years, I’ve interviewed and done Q&A screenings with both Dax Shepard and Michael Peña, so when the opportunity comes to interview them for anything, I know to just take it because the conversations will always been fun and open. The two star in this weekend big release CHIPS, an update of the classic 1970s-early ’80s television series about two California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers riding up and down their little piece of the state stopping crime. Written and directed by Shepard, the film version of CHIPS has a heavy emphasis on vehicular stunts, not unlike Shepard’s previous two films as director, HIT AND RUN and BROTHER’S JUSTICE.
Peña’s career seems stronger than ever, making him one of the most popular go-to actors in Hollywood for both comic relief and serious dramatic support. The Chicago-born actor’s string of incredible performances includes roles in CRASH, WORLD TRADE CENTER, MILLION DOLLAR BABY, “The Shield,” BABEL, OBSERVE AND REPORT, END OF WATCH, AMERICAN HUSTLE, FURY, THE MARTIAN, and a scene-stealing part in Marvel’s ANT-MAN, a role he’ll be returning to later this year, when he begins work on ANT-MAN AND WASP (due in 2018). The pair seemed to have a good time making CHIPS and certainly seemed to be having fun together being interviewed. With that, please enjoy my talk with Dax Shepard and Michael Peña…
Capone: Having talked to you for HIT AND RUN a couple of years ago, I know that you are crazed for all things vehicular.
Dax Shepard: Yeah, you don't need to ask why I did this movie like other people do.
Capone: Those bikes are big and heavy and cumbersome, and I’m wondering, “What is he going to do that I haven't seen done with a bike like that?” And now I’ve seen it. There’s stuff going on with those big, dumb bikes that I have never seen.
MP: I don’t know how dumb they are, because I only had four weeks prep time, and those machines are pretty sophisticated. You think it’s just a motor, clutch and brake, but there’s actually a lot more going on with it.
Capone: I mean dumb as in like…
DS: Clumsy. Oh, yeah. I had done front endos on motorcycles before. I had not done one on an 850-lb. motorcycle. So I crashed twice doing that thing in front of the whole crew. They were gnarly, yeah. And we knew also we were going to be crashing a bunch, so we didn’t even have like the newest version of the BMW. We had some pretty janky, bullshitty BMWs. In fact, the entire movie was reverse engineered from the simple fact that I knew I wanted to showcase a few different motorcycle disciplines, like Moto, racing street, like dragging the knee, and then drifting. So really knowing that, there was only one motorcycle I could use. And then it was like, “How on earth can I justify that CHP has Ducati Hypermotards?” I was like “Well, what if one of the guys is FBI? Then the sky’s the limit.” So it really informed the whole story.
Capone: That scene when you’re riding the BMW off road and up the hill, that’s not designed for that, is it? That doesn't look easy.
DS: No, no, not the cop bike. In fact, that was a really fun day, because we had wagers on who was going to make it up that hill. It looked so-so steep in the movie. There it’s quite steep, and it had rained for like three days straight, so it was really muddy, and there were all these wagers on which guys were going to make it all the way to the top. I just did that mount one time. Luckily, the timing worked out, because I’m riding with the camera on the front of the motorcycle, and as I pass his fallen motorcycle, I say a line “Southbound,” and the odds of getting that timing right were pretty scant, and then I got it and we were like “Oh my god, that’s it.” We only have to do that once.
Capone: The most controversial things I’m going to throw at you today: I grew up watching the show, and I remember “Capital C, capital H, small i, capital P, small s.” You changed it.
DS: There are two reasons. One was that was never even [series creator] Rick Rosner’s intention. That was a mistake that when he handed out—this is in the old days when he couldn’t have gone into a computer and fixed it—he had printed out CHP on the script, and he gave it out. Then he decided, you can’t really call this show “CHP.” Let’s go with “CHiPs.” It was last minute “Let’s go with CHIPS,” so he went to like Kinkos and inserted the only thing that fit, which were lowercase “i” and “s.” So once I learned that, I was like a), it was not intentional to begin with, and b), I think the movie needs some kind of evolvement of the iconography. When it went from the Adam West TV show “Batman” to THE DARK KNIGHT, they changed everything, so I felt like our movie deserved that too.
Capone: What do you remember initially responding to about the show when you were younger?
DS: Well, we’re both Midwestern boys—I’m from Detroit, he’s from Chicago—so for us, it was grey for eight months of the year. So to turn on a show that for one hour had sunshine, beaches, bikinis, motorcycles, these two dudes that seemed like an unlikely combo taking on the world, those were the elements as a little kid that I loved. It started when I was two and ended when I was eight. Those were the essential ingredients in that show that I loved, so those were the only ingredients that I felt obligated to honor in the movie.
MP: And they just seemed so cool. It was pre-“Baywatch,” but when you live in Chicago, you just think “Wow, California is this amazing, magical place where all the girls are pretty,” and all the songs were about it as well, so it made it seem like heaven.
Capone: Growing up, I remember exactly two Latino characters on TV.
MP: Which ones were that?
Capone: Freddy Prinze was a little bit before this, and then Estrada…
MP: How about Edward James Olmos in “Miami Vice”?
Capone: Yes, but that was deeper into the 1980s, though. And I’m talking lead actors. I also remember Jimmy Smits on “L.A. Law,” again, deeper into the ’80s. But Estrada was all by himself for a while on TV.
MP: Yeah, he really was. He took that all by himself.
Capone: I was wondering did you respond to that at all?
MP: Yes and no. Because I know that he brought a lot of himself to the role. And I said that’s all I’m going to do. If not, it’d be me imitating an actor portraying a role, instead of me just trying to do my own thing.
Capone: Even growing up, do you remember him standing out on television?
MP: Yeah, I mean I grew up on 16th and California, where it’s a Mexican neighborhood for the most part, so whenever there’s any Latino that’s on television, it’s a big event especially when they’re playing the good guy.
DS: You said your dad really dug.
MP: My dad dug him, but also my brother did. He was at the screening yesterday and he was like, “Mike, I liked Ponch too.” [laughs] “Thanks, man. It’s ok, man. It’s okay to like people. It’s fine.”
Capone: What I remember was it was women who responded to these guys. It was man meat on TV.
DS: Well, Ponch in particular had a animal magnetism.
Capone: And the tightest clothes I’ve ever seen on a human being.
DS: Yeah, he filled it out nicely.
Capone: Were there a lot of conversations about how tight the pants should be?
MP: Oh my god. I mean, we have physical limitations on that, so I made sure to look okay.
DS: I did. I specifically know that one of the ingredients was their buns, and I almost exclusively focused on doing squats before the movie, and I made sure that they did tailor my pants extra tight. I was 100 percent conscious of this thing from the get go.
MP: I’ve got a big butt and big thighs, and I always turn my butt to the camera.
DS: You don’t have to worry about it.
MP: Yeah, I don’t have to worry about that.
DS: I look like a chicken in profile.
MP: Also, Erik Estrada was like 24-26 when he played Ponch. So I was ripped when I was 25. I’m not 25 any more.
Capone: You’ve changed some things, you’ve modernized it, but you also created the origin story, because neither of these guys has a real investment in being a highway patrol cop, but as the film goes on, they grow to love the job and like each other, so this is the beginning of the partnership. You said you reverse engineered the stroy, but you also said you reverse engineered the beginnings of the TV show in a sense.
DS: Yeah, the conventional construct of the buddy-cop movie is one has a revery for the job, and one is irreverent. And I thought it would be way more fun watch two guys, neither who give a shit about the police department. My only goal in being there is to win my wife back because her dad was a cop, and I think that will work. To me, it’s a lot more fun to watch two bulls in a china shop instead of one.
Capone: You did something really interesting with D’Onofrio’s character, because I’m pretty sure we see him as a villain first. Usually the reveal is that the good guy is a bad guy, but here you have “Wait, the bad guy is actually a cop.”
DS: The reveal for him is more about the emotional story he has with his son. That’s the switch is like you start sympathizing with this guy who’s just ultimately trying to rescue his son from an addiction. And that’s just me stealing blindly from my favorite director Tarantino. You’re not sure if you want Marsellus Wallace to win or Butch in the fight. You love them both. That makes for a much more compelling scene for me as a viewer when I’m rooting for both guys. I enjoy that grey area more than the black and white.
Capone: Had you done much riding before this?
MP: No, like I said, I only had four weeks of training, but I was riding on smaller bikes, which are much easier to handle. I didn't know they were going to triple in weight. [Everyone laughs] Not only that, but my toes barely hit the ground, so stopping, normally, no problem, don’t care, but with the weight and especially because I’m just not used to it. Just like in any sport you practice it long enough, then you acquire the muscle strength for that particular sport, that balance especially. I didn’t have that.
DS: Of the more dangerous things you might get asked to fake in a movie, this is certainly at the top of the list. Anyone can fire a gun with blanks in it. The things you might have to do are basically like asking him to fly an airplane for the first time.
Capone: What I also remember from the TV show is that, for the most part, the cases were pretty serious. They played them straight. There wasn’t a whole lot of action, and they always seemed to be driving up and down the same strip of highway.
DS: Or the stunt you’d see coming from a mile away. There’s one episode in particular I watched where they're chasing some guy that’s in town for a Motocross stunt show, and of course he’s a villain, and then they’re driving down the road, and it’s just a dead empty road, and there happens to be a semi with a big ramp on it, and of course instead of going around, the Motocross guys jumps the semi, which causes Larry to jump it. I mean, everyone could go around the semi. There’s no oncoming traffic, and I was like, this was fine in ’78. You could do that.
MP: I’ve gotten the question a couple of times: “Why did you want to remake the comedy CHIPS?” Some people actually thought it was a comedy.
DS: She kept calling it a sitcom.
MP: Sitcom, like a one-hour comedy, and I don’t know if that’s what they intended.
DS: No. It’s a family-friendly drama.
Capone: That’s what I remember. Here, you’re upping the comedy, but you still have a real case at the center of it. Talk about balancing that as you’re writing it.
DS: Again, like I said, Tarantino is my favorite, so what he does is he approaches everything very dramatically and then within that dramatic, high-tension situation there’s like all this comedy just coming out of nowhere that’s just breaking tension, and there’s such a big relief in that. When looking at what type of movie we were going to aim at, were we going to go the STARSKY & HUTCH, 21 JUMP STREET route, or were we going to go LETHAL WEAPON, BAD BOYS? Although I did not hit is as a bullseye, I definitely aimed it much more towards BAD BOYS and LETHAL WEAPON. I wanted the world to be real. I feel like those movies are much more watchable. They have a much longer life when they take themselves serious. We’re never winking at the camera, we’re never in on the parody of it all, and that was very intentional and important to the both of us. We didn’t want it to be in a send up of CHIPS per se.
Capone: With the stunts, what did you want to show that we haven't seen before, other than these giant bikes doing going up a big hill?
DS: First and foremost, I can’t think of a motorcycle chase movie that’s been done in the last—I don’t know how far back you’d have to go. I guess TORQUE was one, but I wouldn’t really consider that one. So the fact that a), no one’s really tackled it, and b), even if they had, up until five years ago, the technology wasn’t there to capture what it’s like to be on a motorcycle. Traditionally, you’re on a camera car or camera rig on a truck, and you can’t lane split with them. The cameras back then were just way too big to mount. So now we have the tiny Reds we were putting on bikes. We had drones that we were flying up staircases. All my fear in prep was like “How am I going to get a tracking shot up staircases with bikes?”
So the fact that we have all these crazy tools now at our disposal made for what I think is one of the first point-of-view-type motorcycle chases that I’ve seen, or that I’m aware of at least. My wife, who hates action, couldn’t be less interested in motorcycles, she saw one of the first cuts of it. She goes, “I’ve got to tell you, your biggest accomplishment is I actually cared about the motorcycle chases. I get it finally. It’s a superpower. You want to go there? Go there. You want to squeeze between there? Go there.” It is a superpower that someone can go buy at a Yamaha dealership.
MP: Also, the electric bike was really amazing too. It’s like a Tesla, where it makes no sound whatsoever, and it can ride with you in and out more than a car can.
DS: And it’s got a booming rig, so it can raise and lower.
MP: It’s pretty fucking amazing.
Capone: That’s a camera bike?
MP: It’s a camera bike, and it doesn’t make any sound.
Capone: Did I read somewhere that you worked with the real CHP? This is not something you did…
DS: Rogue? Yeah.
Capone: What was the relationship?
DS: The main carrot for us pursuing that was that the show had shot at CHP central in between the 10 and the 110, which is a very iconic station for CHP, and I desperately wanted to film in and around it. I had many different meetings with CHP, brass, slowly climbing the ladder until I met with the top person, and they were extremely cool. They basically said, “There are a couple of things in the script we’d love for you to change, if you don’t object.” They were simple things. One made it way easier for me, and, “We can’t officially endorse it because it’s an R-rated comedy, but we can give you access.” They invited us up to the CHP training facility. Some of the producers went. We had CHP on the movie as liaisons and expert consultants.
Capone: I was actually surprised how much actual, non-highway investigating was going on. Do they do that?
DS: Yeah, so a common misconception, certainly with teenagers getting pulled over who think this, is that the California Highway Patrol can only ticket you on the highway. But in fact, the CHP is the state police. In Michigan, it’s labeled state police, so they actually are just below the federal agencies. They’re above all the local city agencies, so they’re in charge of protecting the state capital, the senate, they provide security for the governor. They’re the state police, so they can do everything.
MP: Are they a part of the sheriff’s department? I thought they were.
DS: So in ascending order of power it would be the city LAPD, then the LA Sheriff’s have jurisdiction over them, then the state police have jurisdiction over all three. So they’re higher up.
Capone: Let’s talk briefly about your nude scene.
DS: Sure, I’d love to.
Capone: I’ve never seen anything blurred in an R-rated movie like that. Was that a for-real blur? Or was that for effect?
MP: Blur?
DS: When I go against the wall…
Capone: Legs up in the air, wide open, and it’s blurred.
DS: It’s because I’m married, and my wife doesn’t think penises are as funny as I do. We first started dating when I was editing the first movie I made, BROTHER’S JUSTICE, which was almost wall-to-wall junk shots, and she was like “I don’t understand your sense of humor.” Yeah, I had to take a few things out of BROTHER’S JUSTICE. I think penises are one of the just standalone funniest things in the world. They’re just so stupid looking.
MP: Nobody can look down and be like, “Dude, I have a beautiful penis.”
DS: “That thing looks awesome. Elephant trunk between my legs? Awesome.”
MP: “I have an animal in between my legs.” [Somewhere in this part of the conversation, the publicist walks into the room to end the interview, seeming a little perplexed as to what we’re talking about.]
Capone: This reminds me of those days when I was a teenager watching an R-rated movie at home, and my mom walks in at the one nude scene. That’s what just happens with the publicist coming in.
DS: Yeah. We’re discussing the hilarity of penises.
Capone: Michael, you’ve got to be gearing up pretty soon for ANT MAN AND WASP, right?
MP: I’m doing that, but I’m doing EXTINCTION first with Ben Young. He did HOUNDS OF LOVE, which is a kick-ass movie. It’s an Australian movie. I’ve never seen a movie shot like this. It’s got very slow camera moves where you’re actually are peeking around corners. It’s a beautiful thriller, and he’s directing this sci-fi thriller. It’s with Good Universe and Mandeville Films producing; Universal is distributing. And then I’m doing ANT MAN. I start shooting right after we do this press.
DS: Hardest-working man in Hollywood.
Capone: Are you doing a new Scooby Doo movie?
DS: Yes. I’ve been writing and directing SCOOBY DOO.
Capone: An animated version, right?
DS: Fully animated, yeah, yeah. My new niche now is existing childhood IPs.
Capone: Guys, thank you so much.
DS: Yeah, thank you. You’re always a friend, and I appreciate it.
