French Frights: Lost Bullet
What happens when a French filmmaker sells an actioner to Netflix?
In every interview I read, Guillaume Pierret always states the same thing: Lost Bullet, the Netflix French actionner was a three-man job. Him, his producer Remi and Alban Lenoir. It’s fairly rare, in France, to have an actor credited as an artistic coordinator, yet Alban is in this precise movie. But let’s get back to the beginning.
Before there was a filmmaker, there existed two young boys: Guillaume Pierret and Remy Lautier. The filmmaker will tell you he knew Remy before he knew his own brother, for the two boys first met when they were two.
They both liked movies, lived in the south of France and when they became teenagers they decided to shoot their own movies. Goal was simple, Guillaume would direct and Remy would act. Since there existed no team, it primarily meant that Remy used to organize everything and Guillaume would busy himself with the technical stuff.
Problem was, Remy could not act but he was damn good at talking to people. Guillaume states that he was pleased with their first short film, that’s until he stumbled on a website forum and saw what other amateur directors were doing. Guillaume needed to step up his game. He learned a lot from sharing with other homemade brewers. Soon the flick that resolved around hand to hand combat would devolve into car-chase. Rémy’s talent for negotiation? It became very useful when the team needed to crash five cars for their last short film Matriarche.
I’ve seen Alban Lenoir state somewhere that every short Guillaume shot centered around an action scene, either a fight, a pursuit, a gunfight or a car chase. Around those core ideas, Guillaume would build little stories and act on his fantasy because that’s what interested him. How to do stuff, physically.
Search long enough, and you’ll hear Guillaume say he loves to make things up. That his goal since he was a teen was to make his own Star Wars, not the CGI version, no, the version with make-up and prosthesis and maquette. This would be his dream project.
To pursue it, circa 2011, Remy and he would move to Paris, in order to make it in the movie industry. The lost boys had grown by now, what with them having four short films under their belt. Guillaume says Alban was the first person from the industry he met in moving to the capital and I believe him.
Pierret gladly says that Matriarche convinced a lot of producers he had some talent but that very few wanted to help him produce an actionner. The filmmaker states that since the execs in Paris do not know how to make an action film they believe it to be really expensive, but since he was able to shoot four on a budget, he always believed he could make one with very little money.
According to him, the plot first revolved around the lost bullet in a police station environment, a huis-clos, before growing into what it is now. Mainly because Guillaume, in order to please investors, tried to cut and cut and cut on expense sbefore finally saying to himself: Fuck it, might as well go berzerk!
While French producers were not really up to it, streaming was evolving in France, and Guillaume being best pals with a producer knew the economic climate he had to deal with. Truth was, he feared his movie would flop like Anti-Gang, mainly because one can produce a genre movie in France, but distributors tend to not give them the release they deserve before calling them a flop.
The boys turned to Netflix, and while Guillaume said he was scared, he soon stood assured. The streaming giant execs mainly wanted to know real stuff, (What if they were to cut one day? What would he do with a bigger budget?). The duo, who until then had to only deal with the French elite that almost never knew how to produce a flick, felt relieved.
Choosing Alban was a no-brainer, he’s been the face of French actionner for a long time. The rest of the cast (people pretty famous here in France) came mostly from him. The sole person Guillaume handpicked was Ramzy Bedia for he always wished to work with him.
Production lasted 38 days, all shot in Sètes, south of France. The first three weeks were mainly used to shoot all the stunts. According to Guillaume, this was to create a genuine team spirit. There’s a form of team spirit that can be found in breaking cars with one another or assaulting colleagues for 48 hours straight. And one has to believe him, because according to Guillaume when the car started to burn, it was not meant to go in flames atop his main actor’s head, but it did, yet Alban Lenoir continued the take ’till the end where the stunt crew was finally able to put out the fire.
There’s no I in team
Alban Lenoir states that it was Manu Lanzi who directed the police station sequence. And one would definitely agree if he knew of Manu Lanzi’s own previous work. But trusting his colleague, trying to create a bond seems to be the driving principle behind Pierret’s work. His own way of trying to keep his upward-moving career into a friendly success story.
That’s why he credited Alban Lenoir as a creative, because he asked him to rewrite the scenario with him and he let his lead role cast most of the film. I’ve read Pierret stating that if the whole movie were to be a car, Remy would be the back bumper, Alban the front one, Remy would be at the wheel. Also there would be no brakes.
Of course.
Read long enough, and you might stumble upon Pierret citing video games as an inspiration. Also Mad Max and the Shield, but videogames were the core idea behind the movie’s last car chase. Pierret thought of it as a car tearing other cars’ heart. A core video game design.
According to the filmmaker, he edited most of the stunt by his lonesome, leaving it to his editor to edit all the “regular” scenes. Team work, I wrote earlier. But ain’t that the role of a real filmmaker? Knowing who to trust to do the work you’d like.
So, a duo of guys from the South tried for five years to build a French actioner. Every producer they met said they couldn’t make it. Netflix agreed. But was it a success?
According to the streaming platform, Lost Bullet was watched by at least 37 millions of accounts. It was the plan Pierret had in mind, hoping to build a franchise.
The sequel of the movie that couldn’t be made is now in post-production.
As a fun side note, French producers solely put money in comedy with VERY recognizable faces. We get a bunch of them every year. One of those was named Camping and it was a huge success here in France. When the duo was querying to find Renault 21 cars so that they would have enough of them to destroy them (they destroyed five by the way) they had to get the one who had previously played in Camping. They painted it red.
And then, they burned it.
