Mike: Hey Chad how’s it going?
Chad: Its going good, and you? Just got off location… things have been crazy!

Mike: I just wanted to start off by finding out, how you got started in movies?
Chad: Do you want me to start from the very beginning? (laughs). I started doing martial arts at the age of 10, and that led into the movies. I ended up going to USC in Southern California when I was 17, and hooked up with an instructor there who was teaching me a bunch of the cool stuff. You know, Muay Thai, Shoot Wrestling, Jiu-Jitsu… and he wanted to become an actor.
So he started dragging me along to auditions to be his "fall guy". Since I had a judo and jiu-jitsu background, I was good for taking the falls and everything with him. I landed my first part in a low budget movie with Kathy Long and Kris Kristofferson I think. A stunt coordinator ended up taking my buddy for a film, and said you know what? We will take your assistant too. So I got into the stunts that way. And I really started to dig the job, you know? I got to get involved with all kinds of stuff since I was young and learning. Swords/Motorcycles/Trampolines.

Mike: Doing all those stunts, have you been injured yet?
Chad: Yes. Severely and many, many times. (laughs)

Mike: How did you end up getting involved with "Ninja Assassin"?
Chad: Well, David Leitch and I were working on "Speed Racer" at the time with the Wachowski brothers, who we had worked with previously on The Matrix. So we were brought in to do a little bit of choreography on a few little, kind of silly fight scenes in the movie. One of the cast members "Rain" was a good looking kid, really quiet and we didn’t really know who he was at the time. Little did we know, he was one of the biggest pop stars on the planet at the time! The directors wanted us to take him back and show him a couple moves for a fight scene. We started showing him some very basic stuff, but he was picking it up so fast! So we started stepping it up, and pushing him and he was still catching on to all of it. He started to open up a little and we found out who he was, and found out he had some Hapkido and Tai Kwon
Do background, and was doing some really good kicks as well! We looked him up on youtube and seen he was a phenomenal dancer and that was the reason he was catching on and looking so good with these moves and how he could memorize the fight sequences so quickly, which is rare for an actor to pick up on. We always kind of had a running joke with the Wachowski brothers about making a kickass ninja movie. We told them we found our ninja, and brought “Rain” in to do a fight sequence for him... and everyone was like "Holy Shit!" this guy is good!. After "Speed Racer" we all went our separate ways, and a couple months later… the Wachowski brothers contacted us and asked if we wanted in on the "Ninja Assassin" movie. We got our 87Eleven crew and went back out to get it going.

Mike: Could you tell us a little bit about the movie "Ninja Assassin"?
Chad: "Ninja Assassin" is about Raizo (played by Rain), who is an orphan boy brought into a Ninja School, that has been training assassins for a long time. While at school, Raizo falls in love with an orphan girl who is also a member of the school. She gets him to open up a little, and we find out some more about him. She ends up getting taken away form him, which completely kind of changes his attitude, and on his first "assassination attempt" or "mission" he ends up having a change of heart. He ends up becoming a hunter of ninjas, he goes after them, they go after him... it kind of becomes a race between the two.

Mike: I also heard this goes back, as kind of an old school martial arts film… without all the special effects and stuff?
Chad- We as choreographers, love to use the wide angles and film in a way that allows you to see all of the physical talent these guys have… and love to showcase all the martial arts and make it as real as possible. Unfortunately though with studio films, it goes back to them… and they get to do the edit. Its filmed in an MTV style with the shaky/fast cams and everything. We always think we know what’s best, and the studio always thinks they know what’s best… its one of those things. It’s hard to say how it will end up, but we had a phenomenal stunt crew and martial artists in this film, and I think that will show.

Mike: Could you tell us a little bit about your martial arts background?
Chad: I started doing martial arts at 10 years old. I was doing competitive Judo at the time. I also got hooked up in some Karate at the time and eventually started taking all kinds of stuff. Muay Thai, Jeet Kun Do, Jiu-Jitsu, Shoot Wrestling, Boxing, Kickboxing…

Mike: If you had the chance to train with one, MMA star, who would it be?
Chad: Umm, you know, there are so many good guys out there it would be hard to choose. I would like to check out some of the gyms and see how they train before picking. Go see how Randy Couture trains his guys, etc… I would want to go somewhere, where they just don’t go in and beat the crap out of each other. But somewhere where I could see how they train and learn some stuff with them.

Mike: What’s the best martial arts movie of all time?
Chad: Ohh tricky one! That’s a big one... I have my top 10 list, but not sure if I have a clear cut favorite. I am a big fan of "Police Story", the really early Jackie Chan stuff, is great! More recently, Ong-Bak is really well done. I like "Flashpoint" Donnie Yen is really, really good. Man, it’s hard to pick just one movie though.

Mike: Anything else coming up your involved with?
Chad: We just finished up "The Expendables" with Jason Stathom, Mickey Rourke, Stallone, Randy Couture, Steve Austin and those guys… which isn’t really a martial arts film, but was a lot of fun. And we got to do some movie type MMA in it, which was really cool. Other then that we have "The Mechanic" which is another movie which Jason Stathom, which is going to be pretty interesting... but that’s it for right now.