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Nathan Jones and I have been working together on the new Action Movie "Som Tam" or "Pattaya Papaya" (Western title I think).
I first met Nathan Jones many years ago now up in the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia but working in Som Tam is the first time we have worked together.
Nathan Jones is HUGE, currently he is not training with weights and has let his bodyweight drop down to more comfortable levels as he said "all the really big guys keep dying early"
Nathan Jones, Damian Mavis and Conan Stevens
In the photo our little friend and action movie star himself is little Damian Mavis, coming in at a measly 5'10".
Damian recently completed the Hannuman movie by Panakorn films as the main villian and got to do a whole pile of cool things, like getting blown up with pyrotechnics, having his safety glove slit through the canvas and gouging deep into the plastic, luckily saving him from cutting the tendons in his hand, falling from moving trucks and almost being set on fire when they burn down an "orphanage".
To be honest it is a really funny feeling to be working with Nathan Jones - he is so big and so strong and so unusual in that I have never come across anyone this size before.
I watched Nathan Jones talking with the Thai crew and doing his job and just sat there thinking, he is huge, then it occured to me again that we are about the same height and weight and that what he looks like is what I must look like to everyone else too.
Two Movie Giants Fight Together
In Som Tam Nathan Jones and I have a pretty good fight scene at the end of the movie, "pretty good" - in fact once it is edited and on the big screen it will be sommething that 14 year old boys remember for the rest of their lives - it has some spectacular effects.
Fighting with Nathan Jones was interesting too, for 2 days we filmed the fight in the heat, me wearing a leather jacket and Nathan Jones wearing his "torture suit" a quilted flannelete shirt - add this to the blazing heat of the tropics and filming in the direct sun and it got very hot very quickly.
This was the first time in my life I have been man handled by anyone - it was disconcerting.
In the fight with Nathan Jones we are fighting in some rather 'unbalanced' places and to finish the scene and then have Nathan Jones grab my ankles and pull me back up was disconcerting to say the least. To work with someone I did not totally dominate was great, we worked together well and helped each other out for the fight, both of us wanting the fight to look as strong as possible.
Nathan Jones was a pleasure to work with, besides being a fellow Australian he was professional, has absolutely no ego, talkative and fun to work with. The Thai staff loved him. I look forward to meeting and working with Nathan Jones again in the future.
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