Josh Lucas: Leading the Escape

Hunky, blue-eyed actor Josh Lucas likes to take on a variety of roles; last as a basketball coach in Glory Road and previously as a flier in Stealth, a single dad in Around the Bend, a scary convict in Undertow, a druggie in Wonderland, a corporate "suit" in Hulk and a hot love interest in Sweet Home Alabama. In this week's thriller Poseidon, he's an action hero.. or at least the fellow who leads a group of survivors to safety. His character is a traveling shyster; a gambler.

Josh took a real gamble with his health and safety to film the tale of nature's wrath on an ocean liner. He dove through fire, pulled tendons, got a gash on his face, sliced up his hands, etc. etc. but seems to have come through it all with a good sense of humor and pride in his work. Josh was determined to make the Poseidon situation and dialogue more real and less Hollywood cheesy. Get the on set story of the danger and thrills from the guy who led the escape. Josh comes into the room and picks up our copy of the paperback novel on the table "The Poseidon Adventure" by Paul Gallico and thumbs through.

TeenHollywood: In the beginning, was there any intention to copy or use anything from the original 1970's movie or this novel on which it was based?

Josh: The first conversation I had with Wolfgang was, 'I don't want to remake the original, and I don't really want to make the book either. I want to do what is basically a trilogy, which is Das Boot, The Perfect Storm and then this one, and deal with moving from a big glorified party setting, into basically a claustrophobic hell, and an ascent out of that hell. But not from a spiritual sense, like the book, just sort of pure, survival, that's it'.

TeenHollywood: Was there anything cut in terms of dialogue or additional characters, because it's a surprisingly short film. Did you work on trying to extend your character at all?

Josh: I'll be honest with you, I worked on trying to cut it, because, first of all, we were making this movie during a time of consistent horrific disasters, the world was obviously seeing trauma at a very high level, and I felt like there was no way people are going to deal with this.

TeenHollywood: It was after the tsunami and during Katrina. It must have been hard to make a natural disaster film.

Josh: [nods] I heard an amazing story from Katrina from a police detective who was talking to one of the people he worked with who was stuck in an attic, and the guy ended up drowning. And he was basically on the microphone with him as he drowned. What came out of that for me was you can't have bogus dialogue. They're not going get to know each other in this situation, and if you go back and look at the original, that is kind of the strength of the original honestly is the playful, in a sense, cheesiness of the situation. Richard (Dreyfuss), Kurt (Russell), me and Wolfgang all had constant conversations saying that 'this doesn't work, the dialogue here, because people would not talk during this situation'.

TeenHollywood: Well, that's true. Not a lot of get-to-know-ya time when you're trying to stay alive.

Josh: The sets and the kind of filmmaking that Wolfgang was doing was so violently heightened that you come into a room and there are dead bodies all around the room, and you're not going to have a conversation about where are you from, what's your sexuality (he laughs) like whatever, those strange moments that we were cutting out of the movie as we were going, which I felt actually sort of honored the truth of the situation more than it would have otherwise.

TeenHollywood: Did you think twice about doing this? Some of those scenes were so claustrophobic and you must have been wet for how many months?

Josh: I was wet for five months to the point that actually it's crazy. I'm soaking wet in every single scene. It was one of the things I had a battle with. I would sit in this little silly hot tub, or even a kid's pool sometimes, just sit there and wait until they start to roll the camera and then get out because he's dripping wet from that moment on. But your skin gets so soft that you can cut it with your fingernail. It's gross, it's absolutely amazing what happens to your body when you're in water for that period of time.

TeenHollywood: Everybody talks about all your injuries; saying you got beaten up more than anyone.

Josh: Yeah. Wolfgang the whole time is having a ball. He's 'This is so fun, I'm having so much fun,' and the rest of us were in hell. I was hospitalized twice on this movie for two major different injuries. You can't see underwater dealing with that level of debris. All the oxygen in the water is being created by the different water canons so there's bubbles all the time and it takes your ability to see and cuts it down from five feet to two feet, so you're literally swimming by Braille at times, you're swimming by strobe-lights, because you're just heading for something. When people are swimming close together, they bang off each other and smash into each other. So Kurt at one point swung his metal flashlight back and tore open my eye. And you see it on camera. They cut at the point where the blood explodes and starts pouring down my head. So they shut down production for that day and I had stitches.

TeenHollywood: We're asking everyone. Why put yourself through all of this? And what was the second injury?

Josh: I really like physical filmmaking honesty, I think there's a real sense of physical truth in this movie I think, and it's because he built those sets and put us in the situation, and you see it, there's nothing fake in this movie, we're there. Obviously the boat is not real, but all those environments are real, all that fire, all that water, everything we're going through. The second time I fell crawling up the wall and snapped the muscle in my thumb and had to have surgery, so you have scars on both sides. Look, I never compare what I do, we do, to a real job. But truthfully, this was as close to going to work on an oil rig as you can get. We were hurt, everyone was sick the whole time.

TeenHollywood: When you're doing a film like this versus being on stage, what are the different acting muscles that you use?

Josh: You're not really acting much in this movie. You're reacting, The thing that I really tried to settle into and connect to was who is this guy inside? What can you show through subtle little moments, of this man's independent roguish danger, or mystery in the beginning? All that has to be totally internal because it's not dialogue, and that becomes a really interesting challenge inside of a reactionary environment. At one point Kurt was like 'F**k, my hair's on fire!' It was that sort of thing all the time.

TeenHollywood: Your character Dylan seems angry and unhappy with life.

Josh: Yeah, I think there's a sense of him being a bit dangerous in that he's not totally happy with his life. I always saw him as someone who's not good enough to hustle in Las Vegas and so the fact that he's kind of stuck on these cruise ships. That's why he knows how to deal with getting off of them a little bit. There was a point of self-hatred that he could only play in a place like that.

TeenHollywood: You weren't one of the actors who went on a cruise as research for the film?

Josh: No, Richard did. I said, 'What? What's wrong with you?' I wouldn't go on a cruise. To be in a contained space with a lot of people... no. I heard a story the other day just from someone who'd been on the QE2. They're on the bridge and someone said, 'Do you see that bend down there?' There was actually a bend in the QE2, and I guess they had been hit by a rogue wave at night, 110 foot rogue wave! Basically they drove [the ship] correctly, but it actually bent the boat, and three passengers complained about something during the night, but they rode over it. That to me is like – (shakes his head)

TeenHollywood: Scary! Did you go through underwater training for the movie?

Josh: This was the most difficult, physical water work I've done, and I am a certified diver who's done some of that stuff – but there's no comparison though when you're dealing with what the reality of this filming situation. I had a pool and I would spend time practicing holding my breath, really training yourself to be able to do some of those shots. You see someone swim for a truly long period of time without edits, so that was a big piece of it, but we all did water training, we all did safety training, you really had to be able to deal with it.

TeenHollywood: What did everyone talk about on set and off when not shooting?

Josh: Well, you have two guys (Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss) who have been in this business for such a long period of time, and you ask Richard about the great stories of working on Jaws. With Kurt it was the same thing. I really find it very boring when actors sit around and say everyone liked each other, but truthfully had we not liked each other on this movie it would be have been impossible, because it was so physically difficult.

TeenHollywood: So everybody truly got along?

Josh: Everyone was in collaboration. There's an odd lack of ego I would say, where everyone was showing up and going 'this is extremely difficult, let's help each other through it', which is kind of what the characters also have. And honestly Kurt and I got along ten times better than our characters do. There was just an odd sort of joy, just bouncing back and forth telling stories. He's an amazing man. He's a genuine human being which you don't meet very often in this business. I think acting to him is something that is one of the many things that he loves. It's a lesson to watch his love of his family, his love of flying, his love of all these different things that he breaks down in his life. He's just an absolute treat. My favorite moment with Richard is, he says to me, 'You know I'm very smart.' You get to know Richard, and he's extremely smart. That's the lesson [from] these two men was how they are both intellectually challenging themselves in so many different ways. Richard now is a professor at Oxford University. That's where he went from Poseidon.

TeenHollywood: What's next for you?

Josh: The other thing I'm most proud of is I'm involved with Ken Burns' The War, which is his next documentary; an absolute masterpiece. I'm one of the characters in it who reads the stories, reads the experience.

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.