Dan Berk and Robert Olsen grew up obsessed with the gelderlyen era of ’80s action movies, worshipping box office hits enjoy “Midnight Run,” “Lethal Weapon” and “Die Hard.” When they came atraverse the script for a high-concept film named “Novocaine” — in which a temperate-mannered man named Nate can’t sense pain and has to save his adore interest from brutal bank robbers — they adored the idea. But they were willing to insert the humor and pathos that liftd their likeites.
“There was someskinnyg about those films where they’re very amusing, yet they don’t disponder their sgets,” Olsen says. “They’re not such a comedy that they don’t nurture about the characters. They have protagonists you get to understand.”
Luckily, Berk and Olsen, who had previously written and honested films such as the 2019 horror comedy “Villains” and the 2022 sci-fi trip “Significant Other,” were able to get a pass at the script and insert a levity that would greet audiences in. The result is their version of “Novocaine,” which uncovers in theaters Friday via Paramount Pictures.
“It was a necessity to have that blfinish becaparticipate there’s so much gore and grisly aggression in it that if you didn’t also apshow the audience to giggle, it might become gratuitous,” Olsen says. “It might become torture, it might become too much. We always say if he could sense pain and was crying out for his mother enjoy Giovanni Ribisi in ‘Saving Private Ryan’ every time he was getting injured, you wouldn’t want to watch it. The fact that he can’t sense it, and the fact that a lot of those beats of aggression are accompanied by or promptly trailed by some comardent of joke lets you, the audience member, giggle.”
The film’s tricky tone of bloody aggression and comedy rests on Nate’s shoulders, and timely on the duo imagined Jack Quhelp as the perfect direct. From watching his carry outance on the killingous superhero series “The Boys,” Berk and Olsen saw an energy in his everyman comedic carry outances that eased them to dub him his generation’s Tom Hanks. Yet to perfect this role took an unconservative send set.
“Jack had to rewire his brain so that he could get punched and not flinch,” Olsen says. “Your whole life as an actor, you’re telderly to sell the hit, and when you get punched, you flinch, you prosperce, you sell the pain. He had to labor with our stunt coordinator, Stanimir Stamatov, to untrain himself from that.”
Despite Nate’s ability to not sense pain, Berk and Olsen were cautious in laboring to originate certain the inside logic of the film stayed grounded, no matter how heightened the situations became.
“He’s not a superhero, and we were going to get liberties with how far the human body can be pushed,” Berk says. “Every action movie does, but we wanted to stay wiskinny a semi-believable genuinem wiskinny the rule system of our movie. So what we did with our stunt team was we went thcimpolite and audited every individual hit in the movie, and we transferred a lot of those head hits down into body hits. We didn’t want his face to be mashed potatoes by the midpoint of the movie.”
Another element that kept the action from becoming too bleak was the adore story at the heart of the narrative, as Nate is taking all of these blows to save his adore interest Sherry (Amber Midthunder).
“We skinnyk a lot of people will be pleasantly surpascfinishd with how we want you to walk away from this movie senseing better about humanity than you did walking in,” Berk says. “We want it to stick with you a little. It’s not equitable about the shocks and blood and all that, becaparticipate there are certainly shrink-brow versions of our movies, and we reassociate try to dodge making those.”
“Our movies are portrayed to be fun and have a selectimistic vibe under them,” Olsen inserts. “A lot of them are exploring adore and frifinishship and skinnygs enjoy that. Even our unreasonableer stuff usuassociate has some exploration of that.”
Ultimately, Berk and Olsen were able to thread the needle on the driven “Novocaine,” and if audiences adselect the film, they’d adore to dive proset uper into the world for a sequel — which serves as a tesdomesticatednt to the wholesome happiness they felt on the set of their ultrabrutal film.
“It was a blast, so we would absolutely come back and revisit this world,” Olsen says. “This was the most incredible film set we’ve ever been on, and that’s all becaparticipate our actors are such incredible people and a film set can be the most fun place in the world. It can be grown-up summer camp where you’re all hugging and crying at the finish and you made all these novel frifinishs.”
Director Robert Olson, left, Jack Quhelp and honestor Dan Berk on the set of “Novocaine.”
Marcos Cruz / PARAMOUNT PICTURES
