Ray Mendoza
speaker
64 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Ray Mendoza’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
He saw the, you know, I like to use the watch analogy, which Alex saw all the little cogs that are moving, or most writers just see the big cogs in the watch. He saw like every little moving part, all the connective tissue. And I was like, interesting. Because I was watching how he shot it and what he was focusing on. And I was like, shit.
And that stuff has always been there for all the other guys. They just didn't see it. And so, yeah, editing, he kept it in there. I think he noticed this weird verite, kind of grounded, just really almost like you're just documenting your style of action. that he really liked. So he gave me a call. It was like, Hey, uh, I'm editing this thing and it's fucking really, really awesome.
Uh, I would love to do like a full length movie like this. Uh, it's going to be minute by minute, real time, no time compressions. Um, if it didn't happen, it's not going in the movie. Uh, we can't, we can only slide the window. Uh, we can't expand it or fragment it. Do you have any stories? Uh, and I, you know, I know there's a lot of stories. Um,
But it also had to be like a bunch of check marks based off the budget. It needed to be somewhat contained, which this story was. And so I had asked my friends and I asked myself if I was ready to do that, just even just emotionally. And I knew my friends were going to have to be involved, so I needed to make sure they were on board.
And the only way we were, like I said, the only way we were going to do it was... we had to represent it accurately as possible because it was somewhat going to be, it was my only chance. I'm not going to get another chance at doing this. And so Alex was like, that's the way I want it. And I was like, perfect. And they were like, let's do this shit.
Yeah. I mean, I think, uh, I've talked about this a lot and, you know, with lacking narrative, lacking dialogue where, you know, I, I wouldn't argue, but I think every character has an arc. They treated them like that. They had arcs. Um, But, yeah, I think we like to treat, and even myself, when I go in and watch a movie, I like to treat it like I have some intelligence, like I'm not an idiot.
I don't like being spoon-fed stuff. So there's a lot of subjects in the movie, sure. So I think we want to treat everybody like adults. And it wasn't so much on the why, you know, why the war had happened, You can go down a rabbit hole on why you think the war happened. From oil to weapons of mass destruction, you name it, government corruption. I've read, heard, and seen them all.
Well, that's not for you to make that decision. I don't need to throw my hat in the ring on why. Because it doesn't matter why. Nobody gave a shit about why when we did it. But now they care about why when I make the movie. So for me, it's more about the what. What is combat? What happens after stuff like this? What happens when you're young?
uh it's your first time and you get a grenade thrown in so it was more about the what what does it feel like what does it sound like um and that's that was kind of our focus um and uh if you want to know why then go yeah you know internet's a powerful tool you should go look up why you can't go to that um yeah what's that moment like and not in the movie in
Yeah, that was, I think, when we all, when we, after the IED and I drug Elliot into the house there. That was for me about the time where I was like, yeah, if they wanted to rush this building, you know, we'd take a few of them with us. But yeah, we'd be done. Uh, we all knew that we were, uh, our position at that time was, was crippled. Uh, if they wanted to, yeah, we were done.
And I, I remember like we all think the same cause we're always, you know, we were put when we train, we, you know, we simulate a lot of these, uh, there's no way to predict, uh, two guys getting blown up. But, you know, we do these, these down man drills and we do mass casualty drills and, uh, you know, how to prioritize and execute. Like, all right, these are the priorities.
If you have a mass, you know, multiple injuries and your position is compromised, here's what you're supposed to do. Uh, and a lot of that is just this theory. Um, Because then you don't know what the enemy is going to do. So you can train so much. And we train the failure in a lot of things. And they're like, all right, what'd you learn? We do it again. And then they'll add something new.
So we were constantly training the failure to kind of anticipate those things. But there's just something you can't anticipate, which is like being concussed. You can have a checklist, but if you're concussed, now we're talking about a physical attribute that is not opinion-based. It's a very physical injection of something.
It's something being inserted that's physical that you can't manipulate or power through sometimes. When you realize that in a moment of being concussed, you know, half your force has been cut down and with one explosion, uh, you feel this real sense of vulnerability. Um, And yeah, other than just like, hopefully the movie described it.
I have a hard time describing what it is, which is kind of why I made the film. You know, some people paint, some people write poetry, some people write songs or write a tune on a piano or guitar. For me, I like doing it. I can do it in movies. I can convey it.
through pictures uh versus talking about it um i can talk about it like i said i can handle it i just don't have the words to describe it it's just too specific of an event to describe how i was feeling and it's not just one emotion it's fear anger regret like fuck i should have worked out harder damn it i can't drag elliot up the driveway
And you're just like, I can't do anything about it now, but now I have regrets. Because I should have more on leg day type thing. So yeah, you know, it's a lot going on there.
Yeah, I mean, there's some things that, like, there's, like, basic, I think, operations that happen. Magazine changes, I'll give you an example. Magazine changes. I don't remember doing magazine changes, but I did them. at the end because they had me three magazines in there and I was like, I don't, I was like, oh shit, I don't remember going through this.
So there's like things like that, those mundane things that you do because you've done it thousands of times. So your brain is like, okay, you're operating on low bandwidth right now. I'm taking over. And you're just on autopilot. You're doing some of those basic things and you're not even aware that you're doing it. So now you're just focusing on the things that you normally don't do.
Like I'm not a medic. Uh, I mean, I, while everyone was doing like live tissue training, like I was probably dropping bombs in some desert somewhere doing training on aircraft. So, uh, I just didn't focus on, I got basic stuff, but I'm, so now I'm like, I, I can't worry about all the other things.
Showing 21–40 of 64 · page 2 of 4
← Previous
Next →