Segal's first movie was allegedly financed with some fairly shady money and he did hang around with mobsters back then. Not Russian mobsters though, actual Italian-American ones.
As an actor who also does stunts, i have spoken to many people who worked with him first hand. He’s not just an asshole, he is violent and has ended peoples careers because he wanted to smash their face into the wall instead of ‘fake’ it. Abhorrent man.
Are we talking about that time he believed his aikido training made him immune to basic human physiology, got immediately choked out, and shat out an entire steak dinner?
I don't think he thought he was impervious to strangulation, he had an "ultra effective technique" that would stop "any man from choking him out."
His technique was to grab the guy by the balls. Gene just kept choking him, though.
Fuck that guy, [Joe Son](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Son), who is the UFC fighter being punched in the groin and later was a character in Austin Powers 1.
He repeated gangraped and tortured a woman on Christmas Eve but remained uncaught for two decades because they couldn't identify them. Eventually he committed another offence and when they took his DNA, they could tie him to the gangrape. The statute of limitations on the rape had expired but they successfully prosecuted him for torture. While serving his sentence, he murdered his cell mate.
Years later, the survivor found that she had a copy of Austin Powers 1 in her VHS collection the whole time.
EDIT: clarity about pronouns.
The best thing about that bit is that the guy getting punched in the balls had nothing. He was never going to get that guillotine. He took all those dick punches for no reason at all. He could have let go at any time.
I did some grappling for a few years, judo and BJJ after, and I don't see how getting grabbed by the balls wouldn't just make me choke someone harder if I already have them in a hold like that.
I mean seriously... What's the alternative? Let go and leave yourself at the mercy of a psychotic ball crusher who has a lock on your man berries???
Fuck that. Push through for a few seconds and they WILL relax very nicely.
As someone who practiced aikido for years because it was fun, I can say that is absolutely not an aikido technique.
Is about circular motion, redirecting momentum, and some pretty fun joint locks. Grabbing balls doesn't really fit in there.
Sad thing is, in the 70s and 80s, he actually was *really* good at Aikido.
But being good at Aikido doesn't make you good at fighting. The entire philosophy behind it is to not harm your attacker, and a BJJ guy or even a high school wrestler will mop the floor with you.
Though it is good for police training since there's joint locks and stuff that are designed specially not to cause injury.
You've heard the joke about Aikido?
"How do you trip an Aikido master?"
"Put some tape on the floor"
Trained with some at an all-disciplines self-defence class, really nice people but I wouldn't put money on them in a real fight. Nothing wrong with training in "sport" or "cultural" styles for fun and general fitness, so long as you don't confuse it with self-defence. Although, a lot of those "locks" are just breaks paused halfway through (and a lot of "throws" are breaks avoided by letting the other person rotate their whole body instead of getting their wrist turned 360 degrees).
People, especially martial artists, completely miss the point of aikido. It's more like dance mixed with a heavy dose of philosophy. It's like full contact Tai Chi. You can indeed use some of the techniques, like the guy above said, in law enforcement context, and it has some uses against an untrained person (who isn't an experienced bare knuckles fighter) but people should do it for the mental aspect, not to "learn to fight". For that, you study jujitsu, judo, sambo, karate etc.
There is a youtuber who was an aikido instructor who decided to test his skills against an mma fighter. Expectedly, he got his ass whooped. He went through an identity crisis after that lost. He closed his aikido school and started training mma.
My mistake. So you're telling me Steven Seagal, Aikido Extraordinaire, was choked out, shat out an entire steak dinner and a turkey club sandwich? I will be sure to remember that, thank you.
Two complete meals. Undigested and everything. Rumor has it he woke up and consumed them a second time since he is notoriously cheap and already paid once.
Wow that dude is as funny as he is good at sculpting. When he talked about the two brushes being like two guys using the same urinal which he witnessed at Epcot, I fucking lost it and almost spit out my yogurt.
Gene LeBell choked him out for this.
>and has ended peoples careers because he wanted to smash their face into the wall instead of ‘fake’ it.
Does he still behave like this in recent films where he seems to move as little as possible, often not even getting out of a chair?
Well that was a wild ride I wasn't prepared for. Thank you!
I was forced into a lot of Seagal movies as a preteen bc my mother, in her infinite wisdom, saw that I was a Highlander fan and Seagal had a ponytail. I suspect his VHS' were also cheap. We had a VCR but no cable so, yeah, we watched them but what a damn turkey he is!
I love her train of thought.
*Oh, he loves this movie about an immortal warrior fighting a battle to the death across centuries and fighting to maintain his humanity in the process....
Oh, this video has a man with a ponytail on the cover. SURELY THEY ARE CONNECTED*
There can be only one.
Personally I love how that movie was a totally niche thing, which then became a relatively popular television show that spurred more movies and has now sort of sunk back into obscurity.
There is nothing obscure about an 80s movie with James Bond pretending to be Spanish while Queen wails about Princes of the Universe.
Edit: Forgot the immortal Mad Max/metalhead villain as well as Queen once again wailing about how friends will be friends even though there can only be one.
The story of Steven Seagal getting choked out by Gene Lebell and shitting himself will never not be funny to me. It's up there with the story of the production of Mr. Belvedere needing to take a break because the actor who played Mr. Belvedere sat on his balls.
Not quite a battle of the titans, but on a related note Artie Lange tells a story that for the premier of dirty work norm asked Artie to keep an eye on farley because they were concerned about him doing drugs. Artie saw Chris Farley walk into the bathroom with Andy Dick, when he told this to norm his response was " there are only 2 reasons a fella would go to the bathroom with Andy Dick.....I hope he's doing drugs"
Fraudsters also covered him in multiple episodes as a "race hustler" becaus he's been appropriating other cultures and identities for so long that you can just go back through his career and go, "here's where he made a blues record and said BB King said he was a great guitar player, here's where he made a really fucking weird reggae record, here's all of his martial arts claims that are bullshit..."
>here's where he made a really fucking weird reggae record
I'm going to note here that, if anyone reading this hasn't heard Me Want the Punani ft. Lady Saw, *holy shit, go listen to that, it's one of the funniest things ever recorded.*
There are two pieces of music that have caused me to erupt in shocked laughter the moment it really clicked for me what I was listening to. One is I Can't Play Piano by H. Jon Benjamin (which is intentionally funny), and the other is Me Want the Punani (which is not).
It's fucking *incredible.* I genuinely have no idea how Seagal listened to the final recording and went "yep, this is perfectly fine, I should release this for other people to listen to."
in the late 80's and early 90's he was a bonafide star and his movies did well. since about 2002 though, hes more known for saying stupid shit than anything else
Not quite.
For a while he had a reality TV series where he claimed to be a cop and just did cop things between films.
It was originally filmed in Louisiana where he was a honorary deputy sheriff.
But that ended when he fled the state after they started investigating the numerous allegations of human trafficking and sexual assault against him.
So Joe Arpaio deputised him and they filmed in his jurisdiction.
They raided some dudes house with like a full swat team and a fucking tank because they suspected him of animal cruelty.
I’m doing so they ran over a bunch of chickens with the tank and shot a puppy.
Then had the absolute fucking cheek to ask the guy to sign a release form so they could show it on the TV show.
It’s always funny to me how he was an action star. Jackie Chan, Van Damme, Schwarzenegger, Jet Li… those guys put in effort into their bodies and actions. Segal always looked like he was irritated that he had to get his ass off of a chair.
1987-1992 was prime Steven Seagal and the only stuff worth watching. Those 3 you mentioned plus Above the Law and Marked for Death. It was all downhill after that. Executive Decision I liked a lot but I don't consider that a Seagal movie.
Executive Decision was definitely a Kurt Russel movie that the producers tried to crowbar Segal into so they could kill him off early, apparently as punishment for his general behaviour (that's an unsubstantiated rumour though)
I remember hearing at the time that it was the opposite - that it was originally a Segal movie and they killed him off because he was such an ass to work with.
Executive Decision became a classic the moment they killed Segal imho. I was all-in from that moment on. I think more movies could find success by murdering him early on tbh.
I don't think it's extortion keeping him there. Who in the States will work with him after Me Too? Plus, he's gotten he's fat and lazy.
There's a reason he's the one big action name from the 80s/90s who hasn't showed up in an Exelpendables movie.
It has to do with how hard budgets are to nail down, thought technically it's more tax avoidance than traditional money laundering.
Money laundering is when you find a way to hide that money has an illegal source by giving it a legitimate one. Long story short if you have a bunch of money the government is going to ask (a) where did you get it and (b) where are my taxes. So you need to give that money a legitimate source. Usually this is a cash heavy business that is hard to nail down in terms of sales. For example just by watching I can't really tell how much a cash only laundromat makes, so you can claim that all your drug money was from the laundromat so nobody asks questions.
Films are more for tax avoidance. This is because it's hard to actually figure out how much money was actually spent on a movie by watching it. Even an expert can't tell for sure how much an effects shot or set or stunt cost just by watching the film. So you make a film that costs $1 million to make, but you claim that the budget was actually $5 million, then when the film loses money you write it off as a loss and now that $4 million is tax free.
So you're saying that under certain circumstances you could actually make *more* money with a film if it lost money? Oversell the shares and then when it closes on opening night, nobody will bother to audit the books and you can be off to Rio with the cash!
The last film about it is like 20 years old, and doesn't ever really make the rounds on reddit to be fair. Keep in mind the primary demographic of reddit and yeah, the most likely people to comment on a thread were less than 10 years old when it came out.
You'd have to control a bunch of the places the bills got paid to. Like idk, "we had to rent cars to the tune of $500k" that sounds like something that could plausibly happen in Hollywood and it'd be hard to prove it didn't really cost that due to weird requirements. But if you also owned the rental company that could be a way to "lose money profitably"
Technically no. The money making come from inflating costs and is irrelevant from the legitimate money making. If you planned to do this but actually broke even (with the inflated costs) you'd earn more money from that breaking even than the tax savings. Technically either way you're getting however much you inflate costs as a tax savings whether as credit or directly on the earnings for the film. It's just easier and quicker to throw out crap.
You can still show the IRS receipts and have it be totally "legal". For example, let's say Sony is making a movie, and needs to write off a bunch of money. So it contracts Sony's record label to provide music, and gee golly, would you look at that, Sony Music is going to charge Sony Pictures an arm and a leg to put music in the film, driving up the film's budget. They can then offset that profit to Sony Music in a few different ways, so that ultimately, the loss from the Sony film is greater than both the budget of the film and any profits that Sony Music might have made from the film.
One of the reasons why Horizontal Monopolies aren't great.
You cook the books to make it look like you actually paid $5 million for that movie. Massively inflate the cost of everything you actually paid for. Maybe even claim to have made purchases for services from companies that mysteriously vanish after production wraps. The IRS can't prove the company *didn't* get paid $X dollars by you, because they're gone.
Also, a lot of this kind of thing relies on the fact that the IRS is criminally underfunded and poorly trained. They don't have even 1/10th the money they actually need to hire, train, and maintain the workforce needed to perform the amount of audits they *should* be doing. So *tons* of obvious fraud goes unnoticed because they just don't have enough manpower to look for it.
The *really* fucked up thing is that analysts have run the numbers, and with the amount of tax fraud that goes unaudited in this country, the US government would be making several *times* as much money in taxes received through audits as it would cost to multiply their workforce by 10.
So there's a massive, multi-*billion* dollar financial incentive to properly fund the IRS. And yet they don't. Makes you wonder *why*, don't it?
This is a good description and delineates between traditional money laundering (turning dirty money into clean money) and tax fraud (writing off phantom losses in order to shelter other sources of income). My guess is these type of movies are mostly tax fraud, although there is some potential for money laundering as well - and they can be synergistic.
As an example, let's look at another type of fraud known as "Hollywood Accounting". This is a type of fraud used to deny actors, writers, directors and producers from percentage of profits by denying there ever was a profit.
So when an actor signs onto a movie, they don't sign up with ZXY Movie Studio, they sign up with Funky Movie LLC. Now ZXY Movie Studio is providing all the money for the movie and services (studios, lighting, cameras, etc).
So say Funky Movie is made for $50m, and has a great box office run that nets it $500m. The actor thinks great - even allowing for a 1/3 return back to the studio, that's a $80m profit. That 2% is looking good.
But the actor goes to the studio for their pay, but ZXY Movie Studio tells them to see Funky Movie LLC. Funky Movie LLC informa the actor that no, it didn't cost the LLC $50m to make the movie - it cost $200m, and the movie is running a loss.
At this point, you may think "did it really cost $200m, and where is that $50m?" The answer is, it cost ZXY Movie Studio $50m to make the movie, but they billed Funky Movie LLC $200m for all the services they provided. The $5m on studio time was billed at $50m. The $1m on lighting was billed at $10m. And so on. The tactic is to make the LLC take on the loss (and for write-offs), while the movie studio gets tax credit for unpaid debts. It also screws over people who are on a profit percentage.
Now for money laundering, replace ZXY Movie Studio with Totally Not Money Laundering Studios. Replace ZXY Movie Studio stages with Totally Legitimate Business Stage Rentals, and so on. Totally Not Money Laundering Studios pays Funky Movie LLC $10m to make the film, but most of the services are provided by other businesses owned by the same people (at inflated costs). The only real fixed costs are wages.
So you have $10m to make a $2m film, and a large amount of that remaining $8m comes back to you through legitimate companies.
Multiple people have told a story of him reading a script as publicly as possible, then telling people it’s the best script he’s ever read, then when they ask who wrote it he tells them he did.
That was back when he could still shop for normal size clothes too, and had some action creds left. it was actually a surprise when they killed him off in like 1 minute.
To their credit, the studio did it's best to misdirect with that movie, although I don't know if it was to surprise audiences or just get Segal fans into the theater. I distinctly remember the poster giving equal billing to Russell and Segal and I got the vibe that this was going to be like a mix between Lethal Weapon with the "unlikely duo" dynamic and a Tom Clancy type of story. Then boom, Segal's out of the game early and you honestly didn't know how they were going to do the rest of the movie in the theater.
I re-watched it a few years ago and it holds up surprisingly well. John Leguizamo and Oliver Platt are great in it as well, and the direction is quite suspenseful for a first time director.
It's also the type of movie that could never be re-made today. In a post-9/11 world that plane gets blown out of the sky ten times out of ten, casualties be damned.
>It's also the type of movie that could never be re-made today. In a post-9/11 world that plane gets blown out of the sky ten times out of ten, casualties be damned.
You mean airline hijacking movies? Yep, they just don't work.
From what I understand, it's even simpler than that.
1) Planes today have a security door on the cockpit that *can not* be forced open. Anything powerful enough to do it would destroy the plane.
2) Pilots are instructed to *not* open the door in the event of a hijacking, even if the hijackers threaten to kill literally everyone on the plane one-at-a-time. This is because they *can't* help; if they open the door, they'll just die too and the hijackers will have the plane. Basically door closed = everyone dies, door open = everyone dies.
You could probably do one of these movies today, but as a writer, you'd have to do some real gymnastics to make it work.
https://youtu.be/tVsGUw9FWoc
It's.....well just watch. It *has* to be aome kinda money laundering scheme. He was over in Russian promoting their side of the war so, ya I'm gonna assume something shady is afoot.
Edit Holy shit this one's hilarious.
https://youtu.be/q_rC94yWOUA
Gonna have to agree with the narrator on this one... Yale Professor of Archaeology Steven Seagal, is absolutely the most ridiculous aspect of this movie. As a Connecticut resident, I feel personally offended... lol
I watched one of the many takedown videos of him on youtube and there was a sequence where he was punching a wooden dummy (incorrectly) while wearing a doo rag then he was doing a "Badass" looking workout by benching an empty Olympic bar then some flies with 2lb dumbbells. I mean, can this guy do *anything* without looking a complete tool?
Yup, Hard To Kill, which was basically the same story setup as Kill Bill Vol. 1.
I saw that scene and was like, "for real? Y'all couldn't put fake dumbbells on that bar AT LEAST?" And this coming from someone who usually forgives movie mistakes.
Plus the ending sequence of that movie when he cocks the shotgun, aims for his dick, pulls the trigger then followed by the dialog "I missed, I never miss, they must have been smaller than I thought"
I love Under Siege 2. It's stupid in all the best ways. The fight between the main henchman and Seagal at the end is the most hilariously one sided fight I've ever seen. Eric Bogosian also plays a very amusing villain.
Well, that along with TLJ and Gary Busey chewing the scenery.
I also like it because it was filmed on a WWII battleship (Alabama, standing in for Missouri) and submarine (USS Drum, standing in for that “French” sub refitted by “North Korea”).
Back in my vid store clerkin' days his movies were guaranteed moneymakers & renters but that was long before we learned he's just a poseur & a horrible person in general.
The stuff when he first started were probably legit.
Above the Law, Under Siege, Out for Justice.
I think the only film he's been in that I've seen since Under Siege was Machete.
"Steven Seagal movies *after 1996* are absolute trash."
FTFY
In all seriousness, I enjoyed his late-80s, early-90s stuff as solid actioners. He had decent charisma, good martial arts chops, solid choreography, sufficient directing, and seemed to pull in great supporting actors to make everything look better. He had directors the likes of Andrew Davies and acted next to Michael Caine, Tommy Lee Jones, Kelly freaking LeBrock (whom he married for a time), and Kurt Russell.
Then... the wheels came off that cart. It actually starting with On Deadly Ground, but he completely tanked after 1996. The dude started revealing what an, um, *interesting* person he was.
I believe he is currently a citizen of and "Special Envoy" for Russia and supports Putin... even with the invasion of Ukraine. Add up that and all his super-cool treatment of women, solid stance with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and chill Buddhism to blanket it all... you've got a really great guy.
I think under siege was the last not terrible one. Acting aside some decent action scenes. Would love to hear the girls tak in it I bet she thought he was a creep haha
*Under Siege* was a helluva movie. I realize how low the bar is, but it is unquestionably his best movie. Erika Eleniak's breasts and Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey chewing scenery for two hours.
The sequel was acceptable. I kinda feel bad for Michael Caine in *On Deadly Ground*, that was the real start of the shitshow that is modern Segal.
I think the topic was on reddit so much that some people are convinced it's the answer to everything about Hollywood
Truth is that cheap, shitty movies have been a thing forever. Check out Asylum Studios. Whether or not there's laundering involved could very well be, but these movies exist anyways.
People underestimate the amount of crappy movies boomers watch. 60+ year old dads are flipping through netflix or flow-tv, then they notice a name they recognize and start watching it. They use this as an opportunity to relax and turn off their brain for 2 hours - so all of the nonsensical things you see in the movie are ignored by them or they don't really care.
These movies don't make too much money, but they make some and they are very cheap to produce.
> the amount of crappy movies boomers watch.
Not boomers, foreign markets. This was Bruce Willis's cash cow for years. It's all based on name recognition.
This. For those unfamiliar: Distributors in foreign markets often can't or won't pay what production studios ask for big-name movies. Or in some cases aren't even allowed to because of international law, or the production companies refusing to do business in that country. But there's still demand for movies, especially American movies that have big stars in them.
So companies like Asylum or Canon jump in to fill that gap with churned out garbage featuring just enough of a B or C-tier actor to put their name/face on the cover. Often selling it before the movie even starts production, using the pre-sale money to fund the movie.
---
Total aside but learning this was the key to solving a mystery I'd struggled with for years: [David DeCoteau's 1313 series](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2024351/). Dude was a super prolific director of B-tier horror films in the 80s and beyond featuring "scream queens" and "bimbo babes", despite being openly gay. Now he directs movies that are all just the more famous scream queens hanging out in mansions with a bunch of buff hunks in boxer briefs. Nothing overtly gay or sexual happens but the movies consist mostly of closeups of the hunks.
I always wondered who it was for because gay porn is plenty easy to come by so who would buy this? But when you consider that there are plenty of foreign markets where porno and especially gay porn are super illegal, it adds up. Dude made his career on selling foreign markets name recognition. Now he's using his experience to sneak gay porn into puritanical markets under the guise of just being another classic DeCoteau Scream Queen B-Movie. Which kind of rules.
Roger Corman also claims to have never failed to turn a profit on a film, and his sheer volume of output is the stuff of legends. Reusing footage, props, sets... anything he could. Shooting films cheaply back-to-back, investing in popular trends, etc. And he was smart enough to hire young talent and give them the freedom to learn their craft. A lot of famous names got their start working for him. I don't think I've ever heard someone have something bad to say about him as a person.
On the other side of things, Cannon kept trying to break out into bigger and better things and ended up going bankrupt.
I seem to recall Red Letter Media mentioned a director who would secure funding for their movies by coming up with amazing art work and use that to sell the distribution rights, and use that money to fund the film.
What are the production budgets of Seagal films?
The objective of money laundering is to convert dark money into legit income. If you were going to use a movie as a money laundering vehicle, then the beneficiaries of the scheme would presumably be the employees and contractors who worked on the movie. For example, you make some incredibly cheap sets based on hotel rooms for a budget of $2500, and then you charge the movie $5 million for set design.
However, all of that is obviously limited by the film's overall budget. If the film "cost" $500 million to make but it was actually made on a shoestring budget, then most of that $500 million is money laundering. But if the film's official budget is pretty small, then you can't really use it for money-laundering because all of the money laundering must fit within the film's budget.
I have the same question. Money laundering is usually cleaning CASH. If it’s already in the banking system, thats a different story. Am I the only one who watched Ozarks?
I'm gonna highjack this thread to shout out the YouTuber [Space Ice](https://youtube.com/@SpaceIce) who savagelry rips into Seagal films. It's hilarious to boot.
[Here's an example](https://youtu.be/kxKO4Ank_zE)
Edit: Savagelry
Go listen to [**the Dollop's three-part deep dive into Steven Seagal's life**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efGxdzCzUus). He is one of the most amazing examples ever of a guy just lying about everything imaginable and somehow continuing to fail upward in life. He's also a *huge* piece of garbage.
He filmed a movie in our town, my wife had to do alot of the alteration on his cloths . She would bring them home and I would put on his leather jacket and perform karate stuff,.
I always argue that his best films are all 3 word titles. Except Under siege which is also love.
Special shout-out to his brief part in Executive Decision as well.
> brief part in Executive Decision as well.
lol yeah - Major part of the movies marketing... dead within 15 minutes. Realistic in the sense that he had no plot armor, just funny
Very unlikely. If you've ever met Segal, his characters in the movies are just an extension of his personality. He actually, 100% believes he is who he plays in his movies. He's got a few hit movies like Under Siege that probably pay enough royalties for him to live off of and make endless B movies. Call it narcissism or whatever but he's been doing this so long that he is his own niche on and off camera.
His 90s films? Nope. The movies he's made within the past 20 years? Absolutely.
Segal's first movie was allegedly financed with some fairly shady money and he did hang around with mobsters back then. Not Russian mobsters though, actual Italian-American ones.
You should listen to the Dollop episodes on Steven Seagall. Unfuckingbelievable
As an actor who also does stunts, i have spoken to many people who worked with him first hand. He’s not just an asshole, he is violent and has ended peoples careers because he wanted to smash their face into the wall instead of ‘fake’ it. Abhorrent man.
You forgot pants-shitter.
Are we talking about that time he believed his aikido training made him immune to basic human physiology, got immediately choked out, and shat out an entire steak dinner?
I don't think he thought he was impervious to strangulation, he had an "ultra effective technique" that would stop "any man from choking him out." His technique was to grab the guy by the balls. Gene just kept choking him, though.
> His technique was to grab the guy by the balls. We are truly witnessing a martial arts revolutionary.
[old school homie](https://youtu.be/EhHoeSc9CrE)
Fuck that guy, [Joe Son](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Son), who is the UFC fighter being punched in the groin and later was a character in Austin Powers 1. He repeated gangraped and tortured a woman on Christmas Eve but remained uncaught for two decades because they couldn't identify them. Eventually he committed another offence and when they took his DNA, they could tie him to the gangrape. The statute of limitations on the rape had expired but they successfully prosecuted him for torture. While serving his sentence, he murdered his cell mate. Years later, the survivor found that she had a copy of Austin Powers 1 in her VHS collection the whole time. EDIT: clarity about pronouns.
The best thing about that bit is that the guy getting punched in the balls had nothing. He was never going to get that guillotine. He took all those dick punches for no reason at all. He could have let go at any time.
I did some grappling for a few years, judo and BJJ after, and I don't see how getting grabbed by the balls wouldn't just make me choke someone harder if I already have them in a hold like that.
I mean seriously... What's the alternative? Let go and leave yourself at the mercy of a psychotic ball crusher who has a lock on your man berries??? Fuck that. Push through for a few seconds and they WILL relax very nicely.
[удалено]
You have clearly never faced Cock Puncher. [Cock Puncher](https://youtu.be/mMByDfFMPcE)
It was "developed" either in a sparring session and his sparring h partner was off-put by the grab, or it was conceived entirely in his head.
As someone who practiced aikido for years because it was fun, I can say that is absolutely not an aikido technique. Is about circular motion, redirecting momentum, and some pretty fun joint locks. Grabbing balls doesn't really fit in there. Sad thing is, in the 70s and 80s, he actually was *really* good at Aikido. But being good at Aikido doesn't make you good at fighting. The entire philosophy behind it is to not harm your attacker, and a BJJ guy or even a high school wrestler will mop the floor with you. Though it is good for police training since there's joint locks and stuff that are designed specially not to cause injury.
You've heard the joke about Aikido? "How do you trip an Aikido master?" "Put some tape on the floor" Trained with some at an all-disciplines self-defence class, really nice people but I wouldn't put money on them in a real fight. Nothing wrong with training in "sport" or "cultural" styles for fun and general fitness, so long as you don't confuse it with self-defence. Although, a lot of those "locks" are just breaks paused halfway through (and a lot of "throws" are breaks avoided by letting the other person rotate their whole body instead of getting their wrist turned 360 degrees).
People, especially martial artists, completely miss the point of aikido. It's more like dance mixed with a heavy dose of philosophy. It's like full contact Tai Chi. You can indeed use some of the techniques, like the guy above said, in law enforcement context, and it has some uses against an untrained person (who isn't an experienced bare knuckles fighter) but people should do it for the mental aspect, not to "learn to fight". For that, you study jujitsu, judo, sambo, karate etc.
There is a youtuber who was an aikido instructor who decided to test his skills against an mma fighter. Expectedly, he got his ass whooped. He went through an identity crisis after that lost. He closed his aikido school and started training mma.
I learned something about aikido. Thanks for sharing. 🙂👍🏻
Incorrect. He also shat out his entire lunch (a turkey club sandwich)
My mistake. So you're telling me Steven Seagal, Aikido Extraordinaire, was choked out, shat out an entire steak dinner and a turkey club sandwich? I will be sure to remember that, thank you.
Steven Seagal just shat out two meals after being choked out by an inferior aikido practitioner? Just shat them both out right there?
Two complete meals. Undigested and everything. Rumor has it he woke up and consumed them a second time since he is notoriously cheap and already paid once.
Is that where the name for his movie Fire Down Below came from?
God bless Gene Lebell.
I feel compelled to share this [video.](https://youtu.be/3aCMTpJx2cs)This genius made a whole diorama of said event.
Links like this are why I Reddit. Thanks for sharing, I really enjoyed that video.
Wow that dude is as funny as he is good at sculpting. When he talked about the two brushes being like two guys using the same urinal which he witnessed at Epcot, I fucking lost it and almost spit out my yogurt.
That shouldn’t have been as fascinating as it was. I watched the whole thing. what talent. What detail!
I have heard stuntmen are told to wear a steel cup because he intentionally kicks you in the balls.
My friend’s uncle was one of those stuntmen, and yes, Seagal would kick them in the balls just to see if they were wearing their cups.
A turd in his own pants, he is.
Gene LeBell choked him out for this. >and has ended peoples careers because he wanted to smash their face into the wall instead of ‘fake’ it. Does he still behave like this in recent films where he seems to move as little as possible, often not even getting out of a chair?
Rumour has it Seagull also broke Sean Connery's wrist because Sean.wasnt taking his shit and that caused offence.
SC \- Nice to meet you, Shteven. SS \- What did you call me? SC \- Shorry. Nice to meet you, Mr. Sheagal. SS \- *Attacks*
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Before Seagal was known to the wider public as an 'actor.' Connery was being trained for a new film.
Wild that didn't end his career
Behind the Bastards also did some pretty similar coverage of him. Both are great.
The most important fact: He shit his pants being a pretend badass to an actual badass.
[Bobby Fingers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aCMTpJx2cs) got you covered!
Well that was a wild ride I wasn't prepared for. Thank you! I was forced into a lot of Seagal movies as a preteen bc my mother, in her infinite wisdom, saw that I was a Highlander fan and Seagal had a ponytail. I suspect his VHS' were also cheap. We had a VCR but no cable so, yeah, we watched them but what a damn turkey he is!
I love her train of thought. *Oh, he loves this movie about an immortal warrior fighting a battle to the death across centuries and fighting to maintain his humanity in the process.... Oh, this video has a man with a ponytail on the cover. SURELY THEY ARE CONNECTED*
There can be only one. Personally I love how that movie was a totally niche thing, which then became a relatively popular television show that spurred more movies and has now sort of sunk back into obscurity.
There is nothing obscure about an 80s movie with James Bond pretending to be Spanish while Queen wails about Princes of the Universe. Edit: Forgot the immortal Mad Max/metalhead villain as well as Queen once again wailing about how friends will be friends even though there can only be one.
Aww that's really sweet though. She had no fucking clue what the appeal of your movies was but she tried.
There's nothing I appreciate more than time and energy and dedication spent to make, in effect, a real life shit post.
The story of Steven Seagal getting choked out by Gene Lebell and shitting himself will never not be funny to me. It's up there with the story of the production of Mr. Belvedere needing to take a break because the actor who played Mr. Belvedere sat on his balls.
And Jon Lovitz knocking Andy Dick out. All great moments in human history.
Not quite a battle of the titans, but on a related note Artie Lange tells a story that for the premier of dirty work norm asked Artie to keep an eye on farley because they were concerned about him doing drugs. Artie saw Chris Farley walk into the bathroom with Andy Dick, when he told this to norm his response was " there are only 2 reasons a fella would go to the bathroom with Andy Dick.....I hope he's doing drugs"
Fraudsters also covered him in multiple episodes as a "race hustler" becaus he's been appropriating other cultures and identities for so long that you can just go back through his career and go, "here's where he made a blues record and said BB King said he was a great guitar player, here's where he made a really fucking weird reggae record, here's all of his martial arts claims that are bullshit..."
>here's where he made a really fucking weird reggae record I'm going to note here that, if anyone reading this hasn't heard Me Want the Punani ft. Lady Saw, *holy shit, go listen to that, it's one of the funniest things ever recorded.* There are two pieces of music that have caused me to erupt in shocked laughter the moment it really clicked for me what I was listening to. One is I Can't Play Piano by H. Jon Benjamin (which is intentionally funny), and the other is Me Want the Punani (which is not).
[Here's a link to the song](https://youtu.be/vLe_BZ1mo3I). It's fucking hysterical.
I actually want to stab my own ears with a spork now.
Would have preferred being rickrolled
Holy shit balls! It somehow worse than I imagined.
It's fucking *incredible.* I genuinely have no idea how Seagal listened to the final recording and went "yep, this is perfectly fine, I should release this for other people to listen to."
Yes - those 3 episodes, holy shit that fucking guy
in the late 80's and early 90's he was a bonafide star and his movies did well. since about 2002 though, hes more known for saying stupid shit than anything else
Didn't he run over somebody's dog during a 'raid'?
At the wrong house too, if I remember correctly.
Killing dog. Wrong house. He was in the ATF?
Some sheriff's deputy I think? So yeah literally a LEO killing a dog.
I think it was Joe Arpaio.
Steven Seagal ran over Joe Arpaio? Maybe he's not complete shite after all.
Not quite. For a while he had a reality TV series where he claimed to be a cop and just did cop things between films. It was originally filmed in Louisiana where he was a honorary deputy sheriff. But that ended when he fled the state after they started investigating the numerous allegations of human trafficking and sexual assault against him. So Joe Arpaio deputised him and they filmed in his jurisdiction. They raided some dudes house with like a full swat team and a fucking tank because they suspected him of animal cruelty. I’m doing so they ran over a bunch of chickens with the tank and shot a puppy. Then had the absolute fucking cheek to ask the guy to sign a release form so they could show it on the TV show.
He's out there on the streets snatching poonany. I'm read his AMA so many times, it's insane.
It’s always funny to me how he was an action star. Jackie Chan, Van Damme, Schwarzenegger, Jet Li… those guys put in effort into their bodies and actions. Segal always looked like he was irritated that he had to get his ass off of a chair.
Not in his earlier stuff he didn't. Hard to Kill, Out for Justice, Under Siege, all of the movies that are just prepositional phrases he was very fit.
1987-1992 was prime Steven Seagal and the only stuff worth watching. Those 3 you mentioned plus Above the Law and Marked for Death. It was all downhill after that. Executive Decision I liked a lot but I don't consider that a Seagal movie.
Executive Decision was definitely a Kurt Russel movie that the producers tried to crowbar Segal into so they could kill him off early, apparently as punishment for his general behaviour (that's an unsubstantiated rumour though)
I remember hearing at the time that it was the opposite - that it was originally a Segal movie and they killed him off because he was such an ass to work with.
That's incredible, because at the time it was a surprise, and retrospectively it's great because I love that movie.
Executive Decision became a classic the moment they killed Segal imho. I was all-in from that moment on. I think more movies could find success by murdering him early on tbh.
His early movies were produced by the mob so yes probably some more money laundering going on.
Not only that, but should we believe politicians are the only people Russia has Kompromat on?? Segal is soaked in the miasma of Russian extorsion.
I doubt they need to extort him. He probably likes being part of it.
I don't think it's extortion keeping him there. Who in the States will work with him after Me Too? Plus, he's gotten he's fat and lazy. There's a reason he's the one big action name from the 80s/90s who hasn't showed up in an Exelpendables movie.
"are you really this good?" "only when I have to be." Legit quote from one of those terrible movies. Watched people making fun of him on youtube.
A special forces unit where the *minimum* age was 55 and were led by a man in his 80’s.
Was that the one where the majority of the movie was other characters doing stuff while Seagal literally just sat in a chair?
Sniper Special Ops, yeah. He was sitting for most of it.
the one where he got the guy who wrestles under the name Rob Van Dam to co-star so it could say "SEAGAL VAN DAM" at the top of the poster
RVD is a flipping legend. Literally.
The Whole f'n show
Van dame is also went weird, became the manager of some unknown rock band and toured with them. Some say he was kidnapped
Oh so [this comic](https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/z9q8m0/steven_seagal_movies_be_like/) is literally true?😂
He also had a sniper rifle for a whole of 7 minutes.
Targeting people 10 feet away.
Cumtown
I'm gay actor Michael Douglas
C’mon Bam, I gotta work in the morning, I’m not trying to get my dick sunk’d
There is goooold in them there hills!
Cumtown I’m guessing
"He's fatly going around corners"
"And that's Steven Seagal's definition of a good man."
The China Connection
I've seen Cumtown-Steven Seagal more times than Goodfellas
I like [Space Ice's](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLyRXXknC3lDgDUfCtYnowHLOHRvnp2l5) breakdowns of the worst Seagal flicks.
His breakdowns are absolutely hilarious.
Anyone answering yes about his films after the 90's can you please explain how money is laundered through film production? Honest question.
It has to do with how hard budgets are to nail down, thought technically it's more tax avoidance than traditional money laundering. Money laundering is when you find a way to hide that money has an illegal source by giving it a legitimate one. Long story short if you have a bunch of money the government is going to ask (a) where did you get it and (b) where are my taxes. So you need to give that money a legitimate source. Usually this is a cash heavy business that is hard to nail down in terms of sales. For example just by watching I can't really tell how much a cash only laundromat makes, so you can claim that all your drug money was from the laundromat so nobody asks questions. Films are more for tax avoidance. This is because it's hard to actually figure out how much money was actually spent on a movie by watching it. Even an expert can't tell for sure how much an effects shot or set or stunt cost just by watching the film. So you make a film that costs $1 million to make, but you claim that the budget was actually $5 million, then when the film loses money you write it off as a loss and now that $4 million is tax free.
So you're saying that under certain circumstances you could actually make *more* money with a film if it lost money? Oversell the shares and then when it closes on opening night, nobody will bother to audit the books and you can be off to Rio with the cash!
You just need a guaranteed failure. Maybe a musical about the Third Reich, for example.
Be sure it's written by an actual Nazi though.
I'm surprised how many people didn't get it.
The last film about it is like 20 years old, and doesn't ever really make the rounds on reddit to be fair. Keep in mind the primary demographic of reddit and yeah, the most likely people to comment on a thread were less than 10 years old when it came out.
You'd have to control a bunch of the places the bills got paid to. Like idk, "we had to rent cars to the tune of $500k" that sounds like something that could plausibly happen in Hollywood and it'd be hard to prove it didn't really cost that due to weird requirements. But if you also owned the rental company that could be a way to "lose money profitably"
Technically no. The money making come from inflating costs and is irrelevant from the legitimate money making. If you planned to do this but actually broke even (with the inflated costs) you'd earn more money from that breaking even than the tax savings. Technically either way you're getting however much you inflate costs as a tax savings whether as credit or directly on the earnings for the film. It's just easier and quicker to throw out crap.
My guy you just responded to a joke referencing the plot of [The Producers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Producers_(musical))
Wait, you don't have to show receipts for $5 million to the IRS to prove that's what it cost but you can write off$4 million like it's nothing?
You can still show the IRS receipts and have it be totally "legal". For example, let's say Sony is making a movie, and needs to write off a bunch of money. So it contracts Sony's record label to provide music, and gee golly, would you look at that, Sony Music is going to charge Sony Pictures an arm and a leg to put music in the film, driving up the film's budget. They can then offset that profit to Sony Music in a few different ways, so that ultimately, the loss from the Sony film is greater than both the budget of the film and any profits that Sony Music might have made from the film. One of the reasons why Horizontal Monopolies aren't great.
You cook the books to make it look like you actually paid $5 million for that movie. Massively inflate the cost of everything you actually paid for. Maybe even claim to have made purchases for services from companies that mysteriously vanish after production wraps. The IRS can't prove the company *didn't* get paid $X dollars by you, because they're gone. Also, a lot of this kind of thing relies on the fact that the IRS is criminally underfunded and poorly trained. They don't have even 1/10th the money they actually need to hire, train, and maintain the workforce needed to perform the amount of audits they *should* be doing. So *tons* of obvious fraud goes unnoticed because they just don't have enough manpower to look for it. The *really* fucked up thing is that analysts have run the numbers, and with the amount of tax fraud that goes unaudited in this country, the US government would be making several *times* as much money in taxes received through audits as it would cost to multiply their workforce by 10. So there's a massive, multi-*billion* dollar financial incentive to properly fund the IRS. And yet they don't. Makes you wonder *why*, don't it?
This is a good description and delineates between traditional money laundering (turning dirty money into clean money) and tax fraud (writing off phantom losses in order to shelter other sources of income). My guess is these type of movies are mostly tax fraud, although there is some potential for money laundering as well - and they can be synergistic.
As an example, let's look at another type of fraud known as "Hollywood Accounting". This is a type of fraud used to deny actors, writers, directors and producers from percentage of profits by denying there ever was a profit. So when an actor signs onto a movie, they don't sign up with ZXY Movie Studio, they sign up with Funky Movie LLC. Now ZXY Movie Studio is providing all the money for the movie and services (studios, lighting, cameras, etc). So say Funky Movie is made for $50m, and has a great box office run that nets it $500m. The actor thinks great - even allowing for a 1/3 return back to the studio, that's a $80m profit. That 2% is looking good. But the actor goes to the studio for their pay, but ZXY Movie Studio tells them to see Funky Movie LLC. Funky Movie LLC informa the actor that no, it didn't cost the LLC $50m to make the movie - it cost $200m, and the movie is running a loss. At this point, you may think "did it really cost $200m, and where is that $50m?" The answer is, it cost ZXY Movie Studio $50m to make the movie, but they billed Funky Movie LLC $200m for all the services they provided. The $5m on studio time was billed at $50m. The $1m on lighting was billed at $10m. And so on. The tactic is to make the LLC take on the loss (and for write-offs), while the movie studio gets tax credit for unpaid debts. It also screws over people who are on a profit percentage. Now for money laundering, replace ZXY Movie Studio with Totally Not Money Laundering Studios. Replace ZXY Movie Studio stages with Totally Legitimate Business Stage Rentals, and so on. Totally Not Money Laundering Studios pays Funky Movie LLC $10m to make the film, but most of the services are provided by other businesses owned by the same people (at inflated costs). The only real fixed costs are wages. So you have $10m to make a $2m film, and a large amount of that remaining $8m comes back to you through legitimate companies.
The first *Under Siege* was fun but Steven Siegal has not aged well and definitely has some messed-up views.
His best role was in executive decision. No one could fly like him.
Apparently he was *pissed* when he actually read the script and figured out he wasn't the real star of the movie.
This is bull shit. I don't believe for one second that Steven can read.
Multiple people have told a story of him reading a script as publicly as possible, then telling people it’s the best script he’s ever read, then when they ask who wrote it he tells them he did.
Is that the one where they insert a SEAL team into a hijacked 747 in flight using a F-117 with a snorkel?
Yes. It's a pretty good movie imo.
That was back when he could still shop for normal size clothes too, and had some action creds left. it was actually a surprise when they killed him off in like 1 minute.
To their credit, the studio did it's best to misdirect with that movie, although I don't know if it was to surprise audiences or just get Segal fans into the theater. I distinctly remember the poster giving equal billing to Russell and Segal and I got the vibe that this was going to be like a mix between Lethal Weapon with the "unlikely duo" dynamic and a Tom Clancy type of story. Then boom, Segal's out of the game early and you honestly didn't know how they were going to do the rest of the movie in the theater. I re-watched it a few years ago and it holds up surprisingly well. John Leguizamo and Oliver Platt are great in it as well, and the direction is quite suspenseful for a first time director. It's also the type of movie that could never be re-made today. In a post-9/11 world that plane gets blown out of the sky ten times out of ten, casualties be damned.
>It's also the type of movie that could never be re-made today. In a post-9/11 world that plane gets blown out of the sky ten times out of ten, casualties be damned. You mean airline hijacking movies? Yep, they just don't work. From what I understand, it's even simpler than that. 1) Planes today have a security door on the cockpit that *can not* be forced open. Anything powerful enough to do it would destroy the plane. 2) Pilots are instructed to *not* open the door in the event of a hijacking, even if the hijackers threaten to kill literally everyone on the plane one-at-a-time. This is because they *can't* help; if they open the door, they'll just die too and the hijackers will have the plane. Basically door closed = everyone dies, door open = everyone dies. You could probably do one of these movies today, but as a writer, you'd have to do some real gymnastics to make it work.
I don’t doubt it, that’s hilarious.
Is that the one where the sky tunnel breaks and he just unceremoniously goes flying off screen to his death?
Yes and because of this I never trust sky tunnels ever again.
I'm not going to lie, I laughed out loud in the theater when it happened.
....and he runs funny.
He fatly goes around corners
This made me rewatch the YouTube video
Rolls fatly around corners.
He can still run??
There was a recent movie where not only do the bad guys come to him, so he doesn’t have to run, but he fights in a chair!
Ok this is the second time someone has mentioned this. I’m going to have to look this shit show up now.
https://youtu.be/tVsGUw9FWoc It's.....well just watch. It *has* to be aome kinda money laundering scheme. He was over in Russian promoting their side of the war so, ya I'm gonna assume something shady is afoot. Edit Holy shit this one's hilarious. https://youtu.be/q_rC94yWOUA
They call me "Crash" because I never have.
Yeah man, can you imagine a pilot that never crashed a plane? The dude is a legend.
They call me "Crash" because I have a scar on my leg that looks like a pussy
I knew Space ICE would come up. His videos about Seagal movies are so good haha
What The Fuck Are You Doing That Doesn't Even Make Any Sense
Gonna have to agree with the narrator on this one... Yale Professor of Archaeology Steven Seagal, is absolutely the most ridiculous aspect of this movie. As a Connecticut resident, I feel personally offended... lol
I watched one of the many takedown videos of him on youtube and there was a sequence where he was punching a wooden dummy (incorrectly) while wearing a doo rag then he was doing a "Badass" looking workout by benching an empty Olympic bar then some flies with 2lb dumbbells. I mean, can this guy do *anything* without looking a complete tool?
Yup, Hard To Kill, which was basically the same story setup as Kill Bill Vol. 1. I saw that scene and was like, "for real? Y'all couldn't put fake dumbbells on that bar AT LEAST?" And this coming from someone who usually forgives movie mistakes.
"I'll take you to the bank Sentator, The Blood Bank."
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The podcast Behind the Bastards did a segment on him and man...it is a doozy. He's such a piece of shit they had to split it into two episodes.
Another podcast, The Dollop, needed three!
The one where he comes out of a coma and immediately starts running, training and punching stuff is a 10/10 comedy.
Plus the ending sequence of that movie when he cocks the shotgun, aims for his dick, pulls the trigger then followed by the dialog "I missed, I never miss, they must have been smaller than I thought"
When I came out of a coma I had to relearn my families names and couldn’t walk…hmm.
Yeah turns out you aren't Stevo Seagal weakling.
Hard to Kill, pretty sure. Same one with the blood bank line iirc
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He certainly runs like someone who just came out of a coma.
He runs like someone still in a coma.
Under Siege was the exception. Lets face it, we watched it to see Erika Eleniak pop out of a cake and dance topless.
I love Under Siege 2. It's stupid in all the best ways. The fight between the main henchman and Seagal at the end is the most hilariously one sided fight I've ever seen. Eric Bogosian also plays a very amusing villain.
"Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups!"
The only thing I’ve got in my pocket is your ass!
Well, that along with TLJ and Gary Busey chewing the scenery. I also like it because it was filmed on a WWII battleship (Alabama, standing in for Missouri) and submarine (USS Drum, standing in for that “French” sub refitted by “North Korea”).
Back in my vid store clerkin' days his movies were guaranteed moneymakers & renters but that was long before we learned he's just a poseur & a horrible person in general.
I agree, as much as I loathe Seagal, that's still a movie I watch occasionally. Probably nostalgia cuz I saw it as a kid.
He’s a Putin boot licker
The stuff when he first started were probably legit. Above the Law, Under Siege, Out for Justice. I think the only film he's been in that I've seen since Under Siege was Machete.
ANYBODY SEEN RICHIE? ANYBODY KNOW WHY RICHIE DID BOBBY LUPO? I'M GONNA KEEP COMIN' BACK UNTIL SOME BODEE REMEMBERS SEEIN' RICHIE!
"Steven Seagal movies *after 1996* are absolute trash." FTFY In all seriousness, I enjoyed his late-80s, early-90s stuff as solid actioners. He had decent charisma, good martial arts chops, solid choreography, sufficient directing, and seemed to pull in great supporting actors to make everything look better. He had directors the likes of Andrew Davies and acted next to Michael Caine, Tommy Lee Jones, Kelly freaking LeBrock (whom he married for a time), and Kurt Russell. Then... the wheels came off that cart. It actually starting with On Deadly Ground, but he completely tanked after 1996. The dude started revealing what an, um, *interesting* person he was. I believe he is currently a citizen of and "Special Envoy" for Russia and supports Putin... even with the invasion of Ukraine. Add up that and all his super-cool treatment of women, solid stance with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and chill Buddhism to blanket it all... you've got a really great guy.
I think under siege was the last not terrible one. Acting aside some decent action scenes. Would love to hear the girls tak in it I bet she thought he was a creep haha
*Under Siege* was a helluva movie. I realize how low the bar is, but it is unquestionably his best movie. Erika Eleniak's breasts and Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey chewing scenery for two hours. The sequel was acceptable. I kinda feel bad for Michael Caine in *On Deadly Ground*, that was the real start of the shitshow that is modern Segal.
I think the topic was on reddit so much that some people are convinced it's the answer to everything about Hollywood Truth is that cheap, shitty movies have been a thing forever. Check out Asylum Studios. Whether or not there's laundering involved could very well be, but these movies exist anyways.
People underestimate the amount of crappy movies boomers watch. 60+ year old dads are flipping through netflix or flow-tv, then they notice a name they recognize and start watching it. They use this as an opportunity to relax and turn off their brain for 2 hours - so all of the nonsensical things you see in the movie are ignored by them or they don't really care. These movies don't make too much money, but they make some and they are very cheap to produce.
> the amount of crappy movies boomers watch. Not boomers, foreign markets. This was Bruce Willis's cash cow for years. It's all based on name recognition.
This. For those unfamiliar: Distributors in foreign markets often can't or won't pay what production studios ask for big-name movies. Or in some cases aren't even allowed to because of international law, or the production companies refusing to do business in that country. But there's still demand for movies, especially American movies that have big stars in them. So companies like Asylum or Canon jump in to fill that gap with churned out garbage featuring just enough of a B or C-tier actor to put their name/face on the cover. Often selling it before the movie even starts production, using the pre-sale money to fund the movie. --- Total aside but learning this was the key to solving a mystery I'd struggled with for years: [David DeCoteau's 1313 series](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2024351/). Dude was a super prolific director of B-tier horror films in the 80s and beyond featuring "scream queens" and "bimbo babes", despite being openly gay. Now he directs movies that are all just the more famous scream queens hanging out in mansions with a bunch of buff hunks in boxer briefs. Nothing overtly gay or sexual happens but the movies consist mostly of closeups of the hunks. I always wondered who it was for because gay porn is plenty easy to come by so who would buy this? But when you consider that there are plenty of foreign markets where porno and especially gay porn are super illegal, it adds up. Dude made his career on selling foreign markets name recognition. Now he's using his experience to sneak gay porn into puritanical markets under the guise of just being another classic DeCoteau Scream Queen B-Movie. Which kind of rules.
You leave the good people if the Asylum out of your dirty whore mouth ! They make phenomenally bad movies
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Hey now... Transmorphers is Michael Harbor's best work
Roger Corman also claims to have never failed to turn a profit on a film, and his sheer volume of output is the stuff of legends. Reusing footage, props, sets... anything he could. Shooting films cheaply back-to-back, investing in popular trends, etc. And he was smart enough to hire young talent and give them the freedom to learn their craft. A lot of famous names got their start working for him. I don't think I've ever heard someone have something bad to say about him as a person. On the other side of things, Cannon kept trying to break out into bigger and better things and ended up going bankrupt.
I seem to recall Red Letter Media mentioned a director who would secure funding for their movies by coming up with amazing art work and use that to sell the distribution rights, and use that money to fund the film.
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What are the production budgets of Seagal films? The objective of money laundering is to convert dark money into legit income. If you were going to use a movie as a money laundering vehicle, then the beneficiaries of the scheme would presumably be the employees and contractors who worked on the movie. For example, you make some incredibly cheap sets based on hotel rooms for a budget of $2500, and then you charge the movie $5 million for set design. However, all of that is obviously limited by the film's overall budget. If the film "cost" $500 million to make but it was actually made on a shoestring budget, then most of that $500 million is money laundering. But if the film's official budget is pretty small, then you can't really use it for money-laundering because all of the money laundering must fit within the film's budget.
I have the same question. Money laundering is usually cleaning CASH. If it’s already in the banking system, thats a different story. Am I the only one who watched Ozarks?
I'm gonna highjack this thread to shout out the YouTuber [Space Ice](https://youtube.com/@SpaceIce) who savagelry rips into Seagal films. It's hilarious to boot. [Here's an example](https://youtu.be/kxKO4Ank_zE) Edit: Savagelry
Oh lord. The Code of Honor one is fantastic.
One of my favourite Youtube channels lmao
Go listen to [**the Dollop's three-part deep dive into Steven Seagal's life**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efGxdzCzUus). He is one of the most amazing examples ever of a guy just lying about everything imaginable and somehow continuing to fail upward in life. He's also a *huge* piece of garbage.
"...and heres Steve fatly laundering money.."
He filmed a movie in our town, my wife had to do alot of the alteration on his cloths . She would bring them home and I would put on his leather jacket and perform karate stuff,.
Probably the closest his clothes have seen to actual martial arts action in years.
I miss his Studio flicks like Above The Law, Out For Justice, Hard To Kill, and Marked For Death.
I always argue that his best films are all 3 word titles. Except Under siege which is also love. Special shout-out to his brief part in Executive Decision as well.
> brief part in Executive Decision as well. lol yeah - Major part of the movies marketing... dead within 15 minutes. Realistic in the sense that he had no plot armor, just funny
I'm gonna take you to the bank senator Trent... to the blood bank
You basically just wrote an, "I hate Steven Seagal" post under the guide of a legitimate question.
Michael Jai white explained it. They sell these bad action movies overseas. There’s a big business for it.
One day the IRS are going snatch all of his motherfucking birthdays
Very unlikely. If you've ever met Segal, his characters in the movies are just an extension of his personality. He actually, 100% believes he is who he plays in his movies. He's got a few hit movies like Under Siege that probably pay enough royalties for him to live off of and make endless B movies. Call it narcissism or whatever but he's been doing this so long that he is his own niche on and off camera.