NBD is not the rip off of Karate Kid…
…it’s the “evolution of The Karate Kid”
Actor gets his big break
Parma man knows to make dream reality, he must ‘Never Back Down’
By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer
Published on Sunday, Mar 09, 2008
Former Parma resident Sean Faris feels as if he is carrying a new movie on his back. His back felt the pain, figuratively and literally.
The graduate of Padua Franciscan High School, who turns 26 later in March, has known since high school that he wanted to be a working actor. He skipped college, heading to Hollywood when he was 18, determined to make it.
‘‘I love ‘Action!’ to ‘Cut!’’’ he said during a recent visit to Cleveland to promote the movie Never Back Down, which opens Friday.
''I love acting. That’s the greatest adrenalin rush. . . .
‘‘I didn’t even take my SATs because I knew that going to college wasn’t going to help me,’’ Faris said with a growing intensity. ''An SAT score meant nothing in my line of business. I didn’t take my SATs on purpose, to make it even harder for me to come back, to just give up. I gave myself no outs. . . .
'‘I would rather be broke and doing whatever I gotta do. I was tearing down garages and rebuilding them as guest houses. And moving my manager’s rich celebrity clients from one mansion to the next mansion, to pay my rent. I never did get a regular job, ‘cause I didn’t want to have any comfort and money. . . . And after three years, I was fully self-supportive as an actor.’’
Over the last eight years, he has built a resume that includes two TV series (Life as We Know It and Reunion) as well as some big-screen appearances; he was Dennis Quaid’s oldest son in Yours, Mine and Ours. But the biggest deal to date is Never Back Down. He is the central character and star.
Faris plays Jake Tyler, a former football star with a lot of anger about the death of his father. As the movie begins, Jake’s family is moving to Orlando, Fla., and he’s both a newcomer and outsider. He quickly runs afoul of the school’s toughest kid (Cam Gigandet, The O.C.). But he also finds solace through a mixed-martial-arts class and its coach (Djimon Hounsou).
The story of the movie is very familiar; Faris calls it an evolution of The Karate Kid, with mixed martial arts (MMA) instead of karate as its focus. Still, he said, ‘‘I love the message of the movie, to fight for the right reasons — to fight for love, to fight to defend yourself, not out of anger and rage.’’
But while Faris had been in sports in high school and had trained for sports in other show-biz productions, nothing prepared him for the effort required in Never Back Down. ‘‘This is definitely the most intense thing I’ve been through in my life as far as physical training goes,’’ he said.
While he was a fan of MMA, he had not done it before. Training took six hours a day, six days a week, for three months, he said. ‘‘And that was just the stunt training and the choreography of the fight scenes,’’ he said. ‘‘We also spent a couple of hours a day with a weight trainer.’’
Cast members had to see a chiropractor and a massage therapist regularly during training. Faris also was eating 5,000 calories a day, he said, to put on weight while doing all that work. ‘‘We had to consume, consume, consume,’’ he said. ‘‘Six meals a day. It was ridiculous.’’
And, even with all that training, it was dangerous.
During a fight training scene with Hounsou, Faris said, ‘‘we did about eight, 10 takes of him body-slamming me, and then a hanging-arm throw. Finally my back gave out. . . . But I didn’t know I broke it for about two weeks. I kept complaining to the producers — ‘I can do it, man, but I’m hurtin’.’’’
Faris thinks the producers shrugged off his complaints as the laments of an actor being pushed, and that ‘‘I don’t think they realized my tolerance for pain from being in sports all my life.’’ Finally, one day, his back seized up. He had to rest for six hours before finishing a scene. Then he went to a hospital, and discovered he had a severe back injury.
But he didn’t back down.
Fight scenes were delayed while he healed. ‘‘We did all the dialogue scenes,’’ he said, although even for that ‘‘they shot me through with painkillers.’’ Eventually, he did the fight scenes, too, ‘‘and I still did 75 percent of my stunts.’’
Asked why he didn’t just walk away, he said, '‘The movie would have fallen apart. It’s a $30 million film and it’s Summit (Entertainment)‘s first movie as a studio. This is my chance to really break through, and the last thing I want to do is let the insurance company know that I had a back injury that I couldn’t finish the job with, because I’d never get insured for an action movie again.’’
Filming the remaining fight scenes, he admitted he was fearful, but also confident in the cast and the stunt crew. ‘‘So we got in there and did it.’’
Now, he said, he is healed. He has traveled the country to promote the movie. But Faris still is trying not to think past ‘‘Action’’ and ‘‘Cut.’’
Asked how Never Back Down will do at the box office, he said, ''I have no idea. I’m staying here on planet Earth. I’m not gonna go to the moon right now, and live on cloud nine. I hear a lot of great things . . . but I’ve been in this business for eight years. I know how things go. . . . I just take it as it comes. . . .
''People don’t realize the sacrifices that we (actors) make. They think that actors show up to work, we do a couple of lines, go home, live this fabulous life, have all this money. They don’t see about when you’ve lived in an apartment on the floor, no money, no job, didn’t know if you’d even break into the business. They don’t talk about the 16-hour days. . . .
‘‘But ‘Action’ to ‘Cut’ is what I love. I may complain here and there, when it’s just too much, but everybody complains in every job at some point. At the end of the day, I am the most fortunate person.’’
During a fight training scene with Hounsou, Faris said, ‘‘we did about eight, 10 takes of him body-slamming me, and then a hanging-arm throw. Finally my back gave out. . . . But I didn’t know I broke it for about two weeks. I kept complaining to the producers — ‘I can do it, man, but I’m hurtin’.’’’
