- I wouldn't characterize
myself as an entrepreneur.
I would characterize myself as someone who
has found a couple of
different things in life
that I believed in with
every cell in my body
and this is one of them.
(soft music)
- So you're the youngest of four brothers
including a couple who became cops?
- Yeah, well one of them is a Mountie,
works for the Royal
Canadian Mounted Policemen.
The other one was and is no longer a cop,
but yeah my dad was a cop as well.
- Okay so how did you stay
alive as the youngest of four?
- You know you get by on your wits.
That's how you do it.
You don't get by on your fists,
so yeah it was kind of a rough household.
Sort of, I was less like
the youngest brother,
but more like a moving target.
- Okay (laughing).
- It was a lot of, a lot of that stuff.
Got handcuffed to the
fridge a couple of times.
The last time I actually took
the fridge door off with me.
I was that scared and panicked.
Yeah, we're all super close
now, but when we were,
when we were kids,
it was just everyday was a new
and amazing messy stabbing death.
(Lee giggling)
- Well how did that experience
prepare you for life?
- It's weird.
It really did though.
I mean when you're a little
kid and you're in a house
which sort of feels like,
when you're around people
that are five men basically
including my brothers and my uncle,
who were always around, it sort of,
I often felt like I was
walking through some
sort of weird skin covered forest.
(Lee laughing)
Just these huge people everywhere and you
kind of become hyper perceptive.
You start to really sort of think about
how you're gonna survive.
So especially my three
older brothers who were so
sort of physical guys and there was just
rough housing like for
them was always funny,
for me it was like a life
threatening situation,
so you sort of learn to kind of get by on,
well using your mind not your fists.
So I became kind of hyper
perceptive as a kid.
And I know that that
contributed in enormous ways
to the different paths I chose in life.
Particularly show business
and that sort of thing.
I was able to kind of
constantly mimic people
or watch people and look for tiny signs
and big signs of danger.
So yeah, that was kind of,
I think that's how it shaped me mostly.
- Okay so I read that you were
overly sensitive and nervous
as a kid and that you struggled
with shyness and social anxiety.
How did that?
How bad was it?
- I still struggle with those same things.
As challenging as they
are and they're also gifts
that come with those things.
It's that same sort of situation where you
become kind of incredibly
perceptive in ways
in which you otherwise wouldn't.
You're all constantly kind
of sensing both real danger
and non existing danger.
So those are things that
really help me in my work,
but yeah as a kid, it was tough.
I was yeah, I was a kid
who I had a lot of anxiety,
a lot of different kind
of phobias and issues
that I had to sort of work through
and it took me a long
time to kind of recognize
those things as assets as
opposed to liabilities.
- What do you think it stemmed from?
- I think it's you're
standing at that intersection
of nature versus nurture.
I think there's some of it was
just genetics I was born with,
and some of it is circumstance.
I think in any household
it's hard being the fourth,
the fourth kid.
That's the kid that's sort of watching
and learning constantly as opposed
to the trailblazing eldest boy or girl
in any given household.
- When you envisioned
your life as an adult,
was acting the thing that you wanted to do
or was there another career
at five or six years old
that you thought about?
- No I mean I always thought I'd end up
as in law enforcement like my family,
so I didn't imagine that.
Acting was a way to get out of the house.
It wasn't really like a
passion when I was a kid.
It was something that I was already
doing at home to survive,
so you kind of...
I noticed when I was a
kid making people laugh
was a great self-defense mechanism.
It really helped me
kind of navigate my way
through my own home with my older brothers
and my dad and I could diffuse them
by making 'em laugh.
So there was a sort of kind
of sing for your supper
sort of vibe in my house.
That served me in great ways later on,
but as a kid it was a means to an end.
It was just a way to get out of the house.
I could act.
I didn't necessarily want to.
I just knew I could.
- But specifically improv,
you had to improvise and be funny.
- Yep.
- Is that what led you into acting?
- Yeah I mean I loved improv comedy.
I'm never gonna say that I
was the world's greatest improv comedian,
but that's something I've
used in countless ways
on every movie and every
job I've ever done.
So I moved to Los Angeles
to get into improv comedy
and quickly ran out of money
and ended up with an agent,
getting an agent somehow, or talking,
bullshitting some agent into taking me,
and then ended up getting
a job in show business.
- You had success as an actor
as a kid to some extent.
- I always characterize anybody
who works in show business
has success as an actor,
'cause it's a very tough field today.
- But I don't see you as as
the stereotypical child star
with stage parents.
You stayed in school right?
- A hundred percent,
but there isn't a single soul on earth
who would recognize me from
anything in the show biz,
entertainment field that
would make me a star.
I wasn't a star.
I was just a kid who occasionally
worked in show business.
- Well what was it like in high school?
The fact that you were doing this acting,
how did your peers perceive that?
- I hid it largely in high school then.
I never celebrated.
It was always something
I kind of really tried
to keep as quiet as possible.
For me high school was a
situation where I thought
the more invisible I was the
more, kind of, happy I was.
So I just wanted to get
through that shit show
and go live my life.
High school can be a pretty
violent sort of crazy place,
so as a kid I was always
trying to be invisible.
So I never celebrated this stuff,
and a lot of the stuff I did
was shown in the United States,
but not necessarily shown in Canada,
so I could kind of get away with that.
- Ah I see, okay, but
it laid the foundation.
When did you realize that
you could make a career
out of acting and as
a kid did you envision
that you could get this big?
- No never, I mean I never
imagined where I am today.
I think I'd have to be kind
of crazy to imagine that,
maybe not, dream big right.
- Well hey a lot
of student council presidents expect
to be the president some day.
- I guess right and that
how they'd probably,
that's probably the best
way to become a president,
is to want it.
But no everything that
happened to me is sort of,
by sort of an aggregate kind of way.
It was very sort of slow and steady.
So I think I owe that a lot.
I mean I'm grateful for that
kind of momentum being very,
very sort of snail's pace as
opposed to like a rocket ship,
because I've watched so
many people in this industry
come and go in various tragic
ways and that sort of thing.
And fame is a weird animal to
deal with I think for anybody.
So for me it happened so
slowly that it's sort of like
getting into a bath over
the course of a year.
You're not gonna get shocked
by the water be it cold or hot,
you're gonna just
immerse yourself in a way
that's really, really slow.
So for me there's nothing
medioric about fame
or any of that stuff.
I was able to really kind of
assimilate to it in a way that
most people aren't really offered that,
everything's all or nothing in Hollywood.
It's either you're the biggest
star they've ever seen,
or you're done.
I somehow found that.
I got lucky and found that
weird sort of middle ground
where I was able to kind of
just slowly build my career.
(soft music)
- I read that you were actually
supposed to be in college
and you moved to LA without
your parents knowing.
Is that true?
- Yeah that's true.
Well you would never tell,
I would never tell my father
that I was dropping out of college.
- Where were you supposed to be?
- I was supposed to be
at Kwantlen University
in British Columbia, Canada.
And I did go there, for 45 minutes.
(Lee laughing)
And said, "Nope," and I left.
So I was there for a
very short period of time
and then I just thought
I'm gonna go do this thing,
and I'm gonna give it a
year, and if it works great.
If it doesn't, I'll go back
to school, get a degree,
and go join the work force.
- Did your parents find
out when they saw you on TV
or did you eventually tell them?
- No it was about six weeks
into my trip in Los Angeles
and I called them and said
"Hey, I'm in Los Angeles,
"I'm not in school."
And then my father hung up on me.
And then my mom called
me back and I sort of,
she was always kind of
the voice of reason,
and then my father sort of came around.
After I managed to make some money at it
and kind of get my foot in the door,
I think he was much more accepting of it.
But any parent would be like that.
- But at that time, it was like--
- Oh no, no, it was--
- You're taking a huge risk.
- Like I set off a nuclear bomb.
- Was there ever, you're
not gonna make it?
- Yeah, you always think like that.
You never lose that thought.
I just wrapped a film that I'd
been shooting for four months
and at the end of it I thought,
"Well this could be my last."
So you always get that,
you always--
- Well maybe that's the thing
that keeps you good right?
- I think so yeah.
- One of the things.
- If you get complacent,
you're kind of screwed.
- So you didn't have a
lot of money or security
when you went to LA,
but you had your dream?
- Yeah.
- What was the experience like
and how long did it take you
to start to really work?
- I eventually ran out of money.
I mean my family is a middle class family.
My dad was a cop, four kids,
we didn't have anything,
I didn't have anything to kind
of lean on in terms of that.
So you sort of always
had to make our own way.
And I eventually ran out of money.
So I just asked an agency to meet with me,
and I called about 10 of them
and then I finally got my foot in the door
with one really small agency,
and I bullshitted them.
I just said if you send
me out on five auditions,
I don't care what they
are, what they're for,
I promise you I'll come back with one.
If I don't come back with one after five,
you don't have to take me on,
I'll leave and I won't say a word.
- Did you get the five?
- And somehow I got, the
fourth one, I got a sitcom.
- What were the other ones?
- The other auditions were like,
they were like weird like recurring roles
on hour long format show.
Then a sitcom came along which was like
a lot of improv and stuff.
Skills that I had already
acquired so I was able to kind of
somehow get that job.
- When did you consider
yourself a successful actor?
- Well that's sort of difficult.
I mean I don't,
I think I can now say
that I've done pretty
well in the business.
The things I determine as
really successful are things
that you just sort of
have to be the engine on
or things that you generate yourself.
Content you create yourself.
When that kind of stuff works,
sort of like the Deadpool
stuff or any of that,
then I feel like I've really
done something important
or something at least
that's important to me.
But I don't know if I
ever sort of sit back
and think like "made it," no.
- [Lee] But what was that first role
where you made real Hollywood
money and how much was it?
(Ryan laughing)
- I don't remember what.
I mean I did a sitcom for four years,
which was probably still
the best job I've ever had,
because it was--
- [Lee] The residuals?
- No, no, no, it had
nothing to do with money.
The best job I've ever had
because it was a live audience,
it was like kind of what I
wanted to be doing anyway,
which was improv comedy
and that kind of stuff.
There's a live audience that would pour in
and then this sitcom world
is about a six or seven
or eight month at most job a year.
I meant this was a,
you finish your season
and then you're free,
so I loved it 'cause I
would just go travel.
I would go backpacking all over the world.
I would do all these sort of things.
I think I really spent
that money that I made
wisely at the time.
I got to see the world
and have experiences.
But back then when you're
an unknown kind of quantity,
it's not like they throw money
at you or anything like that.
For me, it was a lot more money
than I was making driving a forklift,
so I was thrilled with that.
I could work six, seven months
a year and then go travel
for the rest.
So that's kind of how I did it.
- So I read that you went
through intense physical training
to play the action role
as Hannibal King in "Blade: Trinity."
How did those roles in
the mid 2000's help you
in your career?
- They helped me.
They helped me more
personally than they did
in my career I think.
Roles, like things like that, were like,
"Oh I wonder if I could
make one of those drastic,
"kind of crazy before and after
physical transformations."
and I was given the resources to do it,
which the average people
who were hanging out at home
don't really have the access to,
yeah a trainer, and the
company nutrition program,
and all these things that
I thought were really cool.
And I got to sort of, I got to check out,
so yeah that to me was,
it was fun to set a goal
and hit it in that regard.
So it was less about the
professional propulsion
and more about the personal.
- But all this time Deadpool
was in development right?
I mean do people realize
that it took eleven years?
- Not a lot of people realize that.
I mean it's really is a part
of the narrative I think
of the movie though.
I mean people who are Deadpool fans know
that I was trying to get
this made for almost a decade
before we got the first one made.
- [Deadpool] She's gonna
do a super hero landing.
Wait for it.
(dramatic music)
(pounding)
Woo, superhero landing (clapping).
You know that's really hard on your knees.
- What were the barriers?
Why did it take so long?
- Well if you see the
character of Deadpool,
it's kind of an unorthodox type superhero.
I mean it's R rated,
it's the character that
breaks the fourth wall.
He has cancer.
He wears like a giant
red body condom around.
I mean these are all like unusual things
for a superhero movie.
You don't really ever get to see his face.
Studios say well you're casting an actor,
we wanna see his face,
and Deadpool's so much
bigger than a margin in life
than just some guy who's intermittently
clenching his jaw muscles and
squinting in nice lighting.
So for me it was an opportunity
to really kind of showcase
something that I had been
passionate about for a decade
when I got that first one made.
- Now I think this
really shows me that you
had a keen sense of business back then.
Especially when the visual
effects footage leaked.
- Oh yeah.
- Suddenly.
- Yes, leaked.
- From some anonymous person.
- Yeah we're still
looking for that person.
(Lee laughing)
- But it went viral.
- My best man's on the case.
- It went viral and when that happened,
the next day, they said go ahead right?
- Almost overnight.
Yeah, they green lit the movie.
Not, I mean I think green
lit it, but grudgingly,
'cause it was something for ten years I'd
been trying to roll this rock up this hill
and they kept rolling back on over me.
But grudgingly and I say that,
just because they gave us the
absolute bare minimum amount
of money to make the movie.
And it was such a great life
lesson because necessity
truly is the mother of invention
and Deadpool's one of the
I think one of the most
interesting IP's out there,
because it really meets that
intersection of viral marketing
and sort of like traditional
fan favorite superhero.
So like there's no money for anything.
- [Deadpool] At some point,
we must all join forces, become a team.
Now how many of you
have taken a human life?
(swing squeaking)
What in the ass?
This team (beep) sucks.
- What roles did you play in
addition to actor on Deadpool
one and two, producer and writer,
were there other roles?
- Producer, writer,
and I don't know I worked
really closely on the marketing
with George Dewey who's
my producing partner now,
but at the time worked at Fox.
And obviously the marketing team at Fox,
but so yeah it was kind of everything.
You just sort of wear
every hat and try not
to lose your mind in the process.
Will there be more Deadpool movies?
How far do you think
the franchise could go?
- Well I think it's like
a interesting world.
I mean there's so many
aspects of that world
that are really scalable to me and I think
there's just not enough
ears or hours in the day
for the amount of ideas that
I have and the other creators
of Deadpool have.
We love it and we have a
ton of different avenues
we could go.
I think we just gotta pick one.
(soft music)
- What's the biggest
lesson that you've learned
about the business side of film and acting
in the last couple of years?
- I always just embrace this
idea that you know nothing
'cause you don't.
I mean as soon as you think
you know exactly what,
how it's all gonna go down,
or what audiences are really yearning for,
you can be surprised.
I love that edict,
I like that idea that I believe in film
and any endeavor to be a
process of collaboration.
I think you always have to listen,
and always ask for help and
the best leaders are the people
that hire the best people.
So for me that's the thing that I think
that's the biggest lesson I've learned.
It's like just hire the
best people you can,
people that you connect
with, people that you love,
people that you can learn from,
and that's how you make,
I mean--
- But at some point you decided that you
wanted to venture beyond
acting and get into business.
What made you decide that?
- Well I love marketing
and I love Gin.
(both laughing)
So it was kind of a natural marriage.
- Okay so that's a natural
segue into Aviation Gin
which is your company.
Tell me about Aviation Gin?
- Aviation Gin is a craft spirit.
An incredibly fast growing craft spirit
which I am one of the owners of.
It's been around since 2006.
It was created in Portland.
One of the only,
it's the highest rated
gin in the United States,
which is important.
It scored a 97 in wine tasting magazine.
And it's one of the only
spirits that was created
through the collaboration
of both the distiller
and a bartender,
which is if you think about
it would kind of be the best
possible way to create any sort of spirit.
When you have two people who
are experts in their field
coming together creating the
thing that I think consumers
would absolutely love.
that's the Aviation Gin
in a nutshell or a bottle.
Whatever you prefer.
- I spoke with Andrew one
of your business partners
and he told me that you
were a fan of Aviation Gin
and just reached out to the company.
You just picked up the
phone, is that true?
- Yeah.
- That really struck
me because he said that
in the conversation you
called and you wanted
to buy the company.
- Yeah I did and I was probably told
that I couldn't buy the whole company.
- I'm thinking like who does that?
Like "Hey, how you doing?
"I wanna buy your company."
- Okay I know,
usually that sort of
ends badly, but it was--
- Do you do that often or?
- No, no, I'd never
done it and it was only
because it was sort of, kind of,
in a weird way like the same footprint
of the Deadpool story.
Which is that I just found
this thing that I really
believed in and the last
time I had a feeling
like that was Deadpool.
- So there's a parallel between
Deadpool and this company?
- There is for me and I'm
watching it happen right now.
I bought into the company.
It was a 20 thousand case a year business
and now it's a 40 thousand
case a year business
and that's in less than one year.
- What do you attribute that to?
- I attribute that to just exposure.
Anyone who tries it basically
switches to that brand,
so the more people you can get to try it,
the better your business is.
And you lead with I can never
be as great an ambassador
for Aviation Gin as Aviation can.
So for us, it's that
brilliant intersection
of a product that is better
than anything else on the market
and then also marketing.
We love marketing.
So marketing Aviation Gin has been one
of the most fun endeavors
that I've ever had.
- Which insights from the
film business have you brought
into the gin business?
- Well I mean non traditional
marketing is the biggest one.
I don't, and my partner George and I both,
sort of feel like the paid ad business
is a little tricky these days
and not necessarily something
that catches waves the way
like digital and viral marketing does.
Again it goes back to that same lesson I
learned on Deadpool,
which is necessity is
the mother of invention.
We don't have a marketing
budget the way some of the big
massive century old gin companies do.
Ours is tiny.
Because of that, we have
to think out of the box,
and because of that we have
so much more fun doing it.
So creating Aviation
Gin content has been one
of the great adventures of my life.
It's been so much fun.
- So you have viral videos
that you're shooting
and what other kinds of
things are you doing?
- Tons of viral videos, tons of, not tons,
but just enough that we feel
each one that we do invest in
makes a huge impact.
I mean some of the things that we've done
have had way over a billion impressions.
We did a video with Richard
Branson that was giant,
we did some stuff with
Jimmy Fallon that was huge.
And it's some of it is
leveraging relationships.
I mean I recognize the fact
that I can get into rooms
that maybe unknown guy who
owns a gin company can't.
- You think?
- Yeah so I definitely
use that to our advantage
and I also make fun of
that in our viral videos.
I mean our viral videos
are hyper self aware.
So you often place me in
a position of dum-dum.
You know people come up to me all the time
and they say, "What makes
Aviation Gin so delicious?"
Most of the time I run away
'cause non celebrities frighten me.
- You have a relationship
with Virgin Airlines?
- Yeah with Virgin Airlines.
- Tell me about that?
- That came about pretty organically.
Virgin Airlines is sort of like
if you're gonna look at it as an airline,
it's also kind of the rock star airline.
And I think that they saw Aviation Gin
as this incredibly fast growing spirit
and something that they
wanted to be more on board
their fleet and in all their lounges,
and that sort of thing
and we just thought,
let's do something fun about it.
So we met with the Virgin
team and we came up
with this pitch with Richard Branson
where I'm sort of sitting there
talking to Richard Branson
and basically telling Richard Branson that
or allowing Richard Branson to believe
that I think we're merging.
And he's just, "Oh no, this
is just a partnership."
But as a businessman,
I know all deals are about scale, scope,
not the least of which scale.
We're even more focused
on R.O.I., K.P.I., 3.P.O,
E.P.S., and OMGWTF.
- Ryan.
- Yes Sir Richard.
- Go easy on the business jargon.
- I often love casting myself in the role
of just complete business idiot,
and that's super fun.
Sir Richard Branson is a huge sport
about these kinds of things,
and he's so,
he very much loves laughing
at himself as do I.
(soft music)
- So what's your goal?
Do you wanna see this acquired
or do you wanna grow it exponentially?
- I wanna grow it.
No matter what happens even
if it's acquired tomorrow,
I have to be a part of it's DNA still,
so it's something I truly,
I'm passionate about.
So hopefully I'll get to be a part of this
for the next 40 years whether
I'm the owner or someone else.
- Would you consider expanding
into other spirits as well?
- I probably would,
but I would have to find something that I
really truly believe in.
I couldn't just sort of do it.
I also don't have time
for that sort of thing.
- Yeah right and it's not like,
I mean could you see yourself
expanding into restaurants
and all that or is that too much?
- No, no I don't want.
No I mean it's just it's a matter,
I think you have to have an authentic
connection with something.
I don't wanna just be the
guy who's just acquiring crap
just to acquire crap.
I have to have a really
authentic connection with it.
Otherwise I think the
audience, the people that,
the consumers of whatever that product is,
are gonna know that I don't
have that same sort of fluency
with whatever the product is.
So I have to have a connection with it.
If I don't, there's no point.
So do you have other investments
or is this your main one?
- Oh yeah, I have other
things that I'm invested in,
but I'm not the face of
or anything like that.
- What kinds of things
are you excited about?
- I just I get excited about stuff
that's kind of inventive.
I love ingenuity.
I love anything that's sort
of I think is interesting.
I'm not like a guy that
sits around and sort of
rolling the dice looking
at the stock market
and that kind of thing.
I don't know anything about that,
but with Maximum Effort Productions
is obviously my production company.
We are focused on a lot of
different kind of fun things.
One thing that's a huge priority for us
is again we're always looking to do stuff
that's a little outside
of the box and sort of
bucks the traditional system,
but we found a kind of
a thriller horror story
on Reddit believe it or not.
Reddit NoSleep called
"The Patient who Nearly
Drove Me Out of Medicine,"
which is one of the
most frightening stories
I've ever read in my entire life.
It's a short story about 80 pages,
but it's just engrossing in every way,
and half the time you're reading it,
you have chills going up your spine.
So that's something I'm
really excited about
just because it's a
completely different avenue
to pull source material from which is,
it's pulling it basically from the form
of social media which
is kind of unorthodox.
And then I think with Maximum
Effort we're gonna look at,
we love marketing,
so we sort of are branching
out in that area yet.
We're not at the point where we're ready
to make some kind of crazy announcement,
but it's something we're passionate about,
we love inventive ground
breaking marketing.
And that's something we're
very passionate about,
so we'll see if we move the
ball down the field there too.
- What do you want the Ryan Reynolds brand
to represent long term?
- Oh man I think it's gotta be quality
and to some degree something that
is also inspiring and entertaining,
and fun and doesn't take
itself too seriously.
Like I don't take myself too seriously.
There's an old line from a
movie that you would never
expect to have that much wisdom,
but there's an old line from Van Wilder
which is "Don't take life too seriously
"'cause you'll never get out alive."
And it's true.
I mean that's sort of,
I've held that with me
for almost 20 years now
since that movie, but it's very true.
That's it, you're never
gonna get out alive,
so have some fun while you're here.
- Now that people know you're
invested in this company,
do you have a lot of people
trying to get a hold of you
and offering you business opportunities?
- Yeah, it's not so much that.
I have a lot of people that
are trying to get involved
in Aviation Gin,
so I field a lot of
those kinds of inquiries,
like "Oh, can I buy in?"
Or "Can I invest?", or can I,
pretty much the answer is--
- [Lee] That's a good
problem to have I guess.
- That's a great problem to have.
I wish I could say yes to the people,
but it's a great, yeah, it's
a great problem to have.
- In thinking about your future,
what's important to you?
- Family, a hundred percent.
As anyone will know it's
almost frustratingly so
for some of the people I work with
is that I gotta make sure that my time is,
my time with my family is
prioritized over anything else.
- Is it something that
you could see your kids
involved in one day, Aviation Gin?
- Maybe yeah, I mean I don't,
you always wanna give your
kids every opportunity
possible to sort of sample
different walks of life
and so I don't,
I have zero investment in them doing
anything that I'm involved in
be it show business or Aviation Gin.
I just want them to do
whatever they want to do.
I prefer it not be show business.
Once they're 18, no problem.
- In fact no show business,
go into the liquor business.
- That's where I want you.
- Yeah sure.
(Ryan laughing)
That's what every
responsible parent should do.
(Lee laughing)
- Ryan Reynolds, thanks a lot.
- Thank you for having me,
I really appreciate it.
(soft music)
