#2114 - Zack Snyder

Zack Snyder (0:06)

Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day.

I'm good, I'm good.

Joe Rogan (0:14)

Welcome aboard. Thank you for being here.

Zack Snyder (0:16)

No, thanks for having me.

Joe Rogan (0:17)

My pleasure. You made two of my all-time favorite movies. The Watchmen, which I fucking love, and 300

I have a top 20 list. I've never formally put together a top 20 list, but those are in there.

Zack Snyder (0:32)

That's cool.

First of all, I appreciate that, because 300 was a complete labor of love and insane. I was a Frank Miller fan for a long time, and I thought I would do Dark Knight Returns, frankly.

That was the movie I wanted. I still want to do it. I always tell everyone, Dark Knight Returns, if I could do Dark Knight Returns, I'd be done with comic book movies. Really? If you've done Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, for me, your legacy is set. Batman vs Superman literally steals a lot of Dark Knight Returns. I'm not going to say it didn't. It did, but it's still not Dark Knight Returns. I think that's still out there. But I always, for a long time, I had 300 on my coffee table at my house when I was making TV commercials. I'd have my friends over and be like, I'm going to make this one day. It's going to look exactly like this comic book. They'd be like, yeah, yeah, sure it is.

I was having a general meeting with Gianni Nunari, who was one of the producers, and he was asking me about what I like. And he had that graphic novel in his office, like on his table. And I went, well, OK, you know what, if I could do anything, that book right there, I would make that. And he goes, well, what do you mean? How would you make it? And I literally just opened it up and I go, we'd make we'd film this.

We'd film these pictures would look like this. And he goes, OK, that's cool. Like, so you're saying you would just shoot the movie and it would look like this graphic novel. I go, that's what I'm saying. And I think and that's what. But at the time, we couldn't sell it. We tried. We went around town with it. We tried to literally we went to all the studios.

You know, they were all kind of kind of like, yeah, sword and sandals.

Joe Rogan (2:34)

Wasn't it the same time that Troy was being made?

Zack Snyder (2:36)

It was exactly the same time as Troy. And when we went to Warner Brothers originally with it, they they literally were like, we have we have Troy. So why would we want this? We have Brad Pitt, like literally Brad Pitt is in our movie. What do you I go? We're going to do something crazy. We're not even going to shoot it outside. And they were like, well, OK, you're not.

And I go, yeah, we're not going to go for one shot outside. We ended up going for one shot outside for this. When the Persian messengers are coming, that super high speed shot with the horses are kind of coming over the hill.

We shot that outside because we just couldn't get the horses going fast enough. It's the shot right before this, I think.

Oh, no, it's this one. That's it.

It's that shot. So that shot was the horses. That was a high speed shot we did with Photosonics outside. But that was it. That's like the only shot outside. Everything else is on stage. We couldn't get the horses fast enough inside. And it was too expensive. That was a low budget movie.

Joe Rogan (3:31)

300 was a low budget movie?

Zack Snyder (3:33)

Yeah, because we shot it all on stage, 60 days. That's like why there's no director's cut of 300, is because every frame of film we shot...

Joe Rogan (3:45)

You shot that movie in 60 days?

Zack Snyder (3:46)

60 days, yeah.

Joe Rogan (3:48)

Wow!

Zack Snyder (3:49)

That's insane.

We almost killed us, but it was fun. But yeah, so when we took it to Warner Brothers, they were like, you know, finally... Well, what happened was I did Dawn of the Dead, and then from Dawn of the Dead, I was supposed to do I Am Legend, right?

And I Am Legend was this movie that was at Warner Brothers that they were like, what do you think? And then there was some kind of crazy mix-up, and they ended up giving that movie to someone else. And then I think they felt bad or whatever, and they said, well, what do you want to do? And I said, well, I really still want to do 300 And so we shot that test shot. I think it's on the DVD. There's a test shot we did, and they said, okay, if you can make the movie look like that, go do it.