“Menace II Society” to “The Continental”: Albert Hughes on “two responsible ways” to film violence

While navigating all of the chaos, uncertainty and madness in the world, we also deserve to have fun. Award-winning director Albert Hughes identified the need for art to offer a means of escape and finding joy on a recent episode of “Salon Talks.”

Albert Hughes — one half of the Hughes Brothers — is known for putting out classic films that exposed the many social ills in America, like “Menace II Society,” “American Pimp” and “Dead Presidents.” His body of work also includes thought-provoking thrillers such as “From Hell” and “The Book of Eli.” As a solo director, Albert has worked on the hilarious Raid on Harpers Ferry parody “Good Lord Bird,” “Alpha” and now, “The Continental: From the World of John Wick.”

“The Continental: From the World of John Wick” is a spin-off from the blockbuster Keanu Reeves film series. This three-part series, currently streaming on Peacock, gives the background story of how Winston Scott became the proprietor of the New York branch of The Continental chain of hotels — safe havens for legal assassins where no murderous business is allowed. 

You can watch my “Salon Talks” episode with Albert Hughes here or read a Q&A of our conversation below to learn more about developing the action scenes in “The Continental,” why he moved to Prague and the difference between working alone versus collaborating with his brother. 

The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How’s it going?

Good, man. How are you doing?

I’m great. Man, is “Menace II Society” like 30 years old?

People have been telling me that the last few weeks. I’m like, Oh my God, I’m old. I’m old now.

That means I have to be a grandpa.

You look young. You can’t be as old as me.

Young man, tell us how the project came about.

It was offered to me by the producers of the “John Wick” film series, Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee. At the time we were all in the midst of COVID, and you’re speaking of my old projects, if you look at “Dead Presidents,” “Menace” and a couple other things, even “American Pimp,” we were dealing in inner city violence, generational trauma, all that kind of stuff.

Heavy stuff.

Heavy stuff. I didn’t realize what a stress it is, even if it’s fun making it. We had a ball making “Menace.” We were laughing every day. But there’s that subconscious stress going on ’cause you’re dealing in the real life drama, that I just wanted to have fun. During the time of COVID, I go, I think the audience just wants to escape. Those movies look fun. I want to have fun, so I’m going with this and just going to take a chance. It ended up being the most fun I’ve ever had on a project, basically because you’re not dealing with anything that’s related to real life, politics, gender, religion and you have this space open just to play, basically.

Take our readers through the world of “The Continental.”

It’s basically an origin story. If you’re a “John Wick” fan, you know that it’s based on the hotel, The Continental here in New York. 

Is that where you’re staying right now?

I was actually supposed to stay across the street from that real building. 

It’s a hotel, the manager of the hotel, Ian McShane, his name is Winston, and they have a particular set of rules in the “John Wick” universe, where assassins can stay here, but no business can be done in hotel grounds, which means no killing. Our story basically is the origins of how he got to be the manager of that hotel. Our origin story is a guy named Cormac, who’s not that great of a guy, who’s running the place and it’s kind of morally bankrupt, let’s put it that way. That doesn’t have anything about code. The “John Wick” films have code and honor, honor among thieves, honor among assassins, basically. 

What’s cool about the series is, I feel like you don’t have to know the “John Wick” world to kind of get into it.

Yeah. If you watch the “John Wick” world or you’re a fan or a deep fan, you can see the Easter eggs and where things are headed basically, but if you have no relation to it, you can watch it fresh and not have any issue or bump at all, because it truly is kind of an origin story. The interesting thing about doing that is, you can reverse engineer from the “John Wick” movies and it’s placed in the ’70s, so that gives you a whole other vibe of playfulness with the music and whatnot.

Could you talk about the format, because I felt like I was watching three films?

That’s what they wanted. It’s interesting, and that’s part of the thing that excited me about it, was in traditional TV, you have many directors for 10 episodes and there’s no prep time. This one, there’s prep time between each episode, and they’re 90 minutes long. I do one and three. This very experienced director, Charlotte Brändström did two, and you just have the time for quality, basically. That’s partly what attracted me to it. In TV, they just go into the next episode the next week with a new director and it just keeps going and you can feel it. TV lends itself more to writing and not kind of a cinematic take, so this setup was great for giving it a fighting chance for a cinematic take.

It’s a TV show, but John Wick makes killing look very artful and smooth and fun. Could you just walk our viewers through how you shoot those scenes? How do you choreograph that?

Well, the “John Wick” people, Chad Stahelski is the director of those films and David Leitch is his partner, they co-directed the first “John Wick.” They own a company called 87Eleven, which is a stunt group, and it’s a think tank of stuntmen that created all these spectacular fight and action scenes for other movies, even before they did “John Wick.” We used the same company. All the stunt guys that were working with us worked on all the “John Wick” movies. Chad Stahelski anointed and blessed Larnell Stovall, who’s our action director, fight coordinator, and they’re very creative about using the room. So you have the DNA because we’re using the exact same guys. I’m not necessarily an action director, even though some people who watch “Dead Presidents” think my brother and I are action guys, and some people saw “Menace” and think that Hollywood was offering us action movies after that. It’s like, no, we were reflecting real life.

Absolutely.

In the “Wick” thing, which you’re alluding to a little bit, it’s like having fun with violence. When you see it stylized, kind of parallel universe, it’s a subculture of assassins and it’s more winking and nodding at the audience of throwback John Woo type stuff.

It’s funny because even when you look at it, you think about reality and imagine me and you walking into a bar and it’s like 40 guys with guns, and we take them out. I’m grabbing a gun and I’m switching it around and taking it and then I’m kicking your ankle and s**t.

That’s when you know it’s fantasy. It’s kind of fantasy. What is the chance you’re going to walk in and shoot up a whole club? In one of the movies, he’s shooting up, he’s having a battle with a guy, and people are still dancing. Those motherf**kers, they just clear out.

A lot of the projects that you’ve just worked on in the past, like you already said, you dealt with heavy issues, even “Good Lord Bird.”

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Which is a parody on a slave and slavery.

Yeah, a satirical taken literally.

The only slave that wanted to remain a slave ’cause he figured out how to work the system, little Onion, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

But at the end, you’re getting at those deep issues. How do you feel like “The Continental” fits in with your whole body of work in general?

That’s actually a good question. You’re going to make me pause. I think it’s a reaction, like I said earlier, to the earlier work, and the reaction is, I don’t want to be — and I’m sure you’re the same way — the thing about being in America is you’re constantly reminded if you’re a minority. In the press, the way you get treated, you’re constantly reminded of it. I just don’t want to be reminded of it. For one project, let me just go in and be a man, and let me have fun and let the audience have fun.

I think because of COVID and the climate and politics and the divided nature of what’s going on nowadays, people just want to check out. We’ll get back to doing some serious stuff, and I do enjoy portraying real-life issues realistically, especially when it comes to violence. That was one thing my brother and I were always about on those first movies. It’s like if you’re going to have somebody get shot in your movie, show the audience really what happens to the victim. Sometimes they pee on themselves, sometimes they’re shaking. Don’t make it look pretty.

And then there’s a side of all of us that love the Hong Kong action. Back in the ’90s, loved John Woo and kind of the hyper-stylized violence, which “John Wick” is very much influenced by.

Maybe even the ’80s.

He started definitely in the 80s, but “Hard Boiled” and “The Killer.” 

When I grew up, every Saturday, “Black Belt Theater” came on at three o’clock.

That’s what I’m talking about, yeah.

They even had the John Saxon one. He hosted something like that, and they’d show all the Bruce Li movies, not necessarily the Bruce Lee movies. You remember Bruce? You ever grow up with Bruce Li? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, depending on the project, if the question is how do you treat violence. There’s two responsible ways. One is very realistically and one is to let the audience know you’re winking and nodding, and this is not to be taken seriously. It’s there for fun. 

And then we’re in a culture where things get perceived a certain way. Whereas in Japan, it’s not perceived the same way. Or in Korea, when you look at hardcore Korean movies, they don’t have a violent society, but they can make a violent movie and know that it’s a movie.

So you’ve been at this since you were 12?

Yeah. You’re reminding me again how old I am.

Can you speak to that? ‘Cause it’s like you had it figured out? 

We didn’t know then ’cause back then, if you’re given a home video camera, even if you were given it, you’re going to go shoot with your friends. Subconsciously in your mind, you’re never thinking, I’m going to be a director ’cause you never see anybody that looks like you, that’s a director.

Then later, I think we were 14, 15, 16, we saw Spike, and then we saw Robert Townsend’s “Hollywood Shuffle,” which we love. I’m in love with that movie. And also subconsciously you’re going to go, “Oh my God, I see someone like me,” and then that’s when it started to click. Even though we had the camera at 12, we were just taking it as a hobby, having fun and imitating Bruce Lee, Rambo. We even did a Johnny Carson, “The Tonight Show.” Me and my brother would set up an interview situation, we’d play with our GI Joe’s, set them on fire, but we never imagined that we would have a career in it. God bless my mother because she was like, “Here’s the camera.”

Are there going to be any more Hughes Brothers collaborations? 

There could be. I can see he producing me or me producing him because we have two different opinions on directing. We agree on a lot about directing, but he believes it should be a one person job. I’m into partnerships. I love the Coen brothers. I love the anonymity of the partnership for me, because my personality is an introvert. He’s an extrovert, so that’s what worked in that system. He was the mouthpiece for us. 

I preferred to it more for anonymity. I don’t want the attention. I understand his theory of one captain that everybody looks at ’cause I’ve done it, and it is a different experience. It feels great, but because I’m a twin, I’m just inherently built for a partnership. He inherently, because he comes from a performing background, my brother, he’s more like an actor. He was on stage at 16 doing comedy. He had a talk show at our high school that was like a Donahue talk show, so he is a performer. Sally Jessy Raphael, Oprah, whoever you want, but he has a performer’s soul. So a one man performer too. So he’s wired differently. My wiring is, I like to make it. I can do it in a partnership. And by the way, we both, even though we don’t work together directly now, we find partners. It’s inherently first nature to us to do that.

Right. It’s a big collaborative business.

Yeah. But on this project, the showrunner and writer, Kirk Ward, this big 6’3″ white dude with a mohawk, I bonded with him right away because I’m built for a partnership. He’s the writer, he’s the showrunner. I’m the filmmaker and it’s a natural thing for me. My brother bonded on “Dear Mama” with his editor Lasse [Järvi], and before that with Doug Pray, who did “American Pimp” for us. So we’re built for partnerships.

What’s next for you?

I’ll go home. [Laughs.] I don’t know. I think there is a dream project. I won’t mention a name, and it was based off of a Iceberg Slim book. You know about Iceberg Slim, right?

I know more about Iceberg Slim than any one person should.

It’s not the book that everybody would think it is. 

“Black Widow?” “Trick Baby?” “White Folks?”

Did you ever see the Blaxploitation movie?

Yeah, but the audio was so bad.

You can get it now. It was actually well-made for the time. The thing I love about it, it’s like “Good Lord Bird” in a way. If you really look at it and you make it right, it’s a satire in America. It had race, religion, politics, gender identity, all kinds of stuff. It’s about the American dream really being the American scheme.