Laurence Lerman

The Mechaniks of Dolph Lundgren
March 11, 2008

A month or so back, I co-wrote a story with Wendy Wilson on Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and their quiet initiative in developing a solid business with a line of DVD premiere action titles featuring stars that were more often found on the big screen back in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, including Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren.

I had the chance to speak with Mr. Lundgren about his work in this industry—over the past few years, he has appeared in such Sony DVD Premieres as The Mechanik (2005) and this year’s Missionary Man and . He appears to truly enjoy his work and spoke to me quite engagingly about making the kinds of films that he makes. Most of our production-speak focused on The Mechanik, which Lundgren not only stars in, but also co-wrote and directed. It was produced back in 2004 in Eastern Europe and Russia, not so far away from another notably bigger American production that was shooting down the block!

Diamond Dogs

“We shot in Sofia, Bulgaria and St. Petersburg – I had been there seven years earlier and it was very rough, but not now,” he told me. Now, they’ve got the pop-out trailers, big hotels with room service, restaurants, spas--the movie business was there, so they built up to service the business. If you go off the beaten track, it’s a little rough. That’s part of the cost factor. Black Dahlia by De Palma was shooting there the same time as we were and you can see why: You can get carpenters for $100 per month -- get 500 of those guys working on a set and you win.”

 
Lundgren told me that though his priority will always be enjoying life with his wife and two children, he also enjoys the lifestyle that comes with traveling to make feature films and the fame that accompanies his particular brand of movie stardom.

“If you’re in L.A. too much, it’s a little bit unreal. And, yes, there’s a snobbism, I suppose,” he remarked. “If you make the kind of movies that I do, you go out on the street, you get your car valet, you go to a restaurant, you go anywhere in the world, and you get a lot of positive attention from regular people. It’s a living and it beats pumping gas—I’ve had a great life out of it and I still do.”

Posted by Laurence Lerman on March 11, 2008 | Comments (0)