Recently I was in Los Angeles to cover the press conference for the upcoming thrill ride The Hitcher and on top of enjoy a few drinks with the cast and having a lot of fun watching the film I did a little bit of work as I covered the press conference with stars Sean Bean, Sophia Bush, Zach Knighton, director Dave Meyers and Platinum Dunes producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller.
The six of them chatted up the making of the film and their thoughts for a good half hour and here is the skinny. If you are interested in what Dunes producers Form and Fuller had to say about such projects as a possible Friday the 13th reboot, a Birds remake with Naomi Watts and much more click here because this is strictly Hitcher country… Enjoy!
Sophia Bush – Grace Andrews
Zach Knighton – Jim Halsey
Dave Meyers – Director
Andrew Form – Producer
Brad Fuller – Producer
Brad Fuller: There was some to be had there and we had a great shower scene, it was something that we thought would be. We just kind of went with it.
Andrew Form: It’s tricky, how do you get Zach out of that room and get Sean in? We had this whole scene constructed where we did want Sean in bed with Sophia and we had to get Zach out of that motel room. And you know Sean is going to be in the bed, you know he’s going to be there so you’re just waiting for it to happen.
Sophia Bush: It was just a scene where I was in bed with Sophia.
Sean, how was it playing a bad guy?
Sean Bean: There wasn’t a great deal of back history to the guy, not much information about where he came from which I thought was quite interesting because it allowed me the freedom to create what I wanted and to invent him as a person. It was scarier that you don’t know anything about him or where he comes from. I always find that the less you know about people, the less you trust them. I usually like to have something to go on, for this particular movie I was pleased that he was like an angel of death, a phantom wandering the freeways… It quite appealed to me.
Is the fact that we don’t know much about John Ryder in hopes to make a prequel so we can learn why he is so demented?
Brad Fuller: No.
Andrew Form: I don’t see a prequel happening. As Sean said we just wanted to give him a blank slate and let him go and do what we was going to do with it, there was no thinking of a prequel until you just brought it up, and we’ll now discuss that after this. [laughing]
Sophia Bush: That was a big thing for me and something that we definitely looked into because I don’t want to be that girl, running around whining and irritating, and at the same time I don’t want to come out like Lara Croft, guns blazing because that’s not quite right either. Something that made it great was for me was a lot of what Zach and I got to do together, because we spent a week in Texas working on the chemistry of our relationship and how Jim and Grace behaved and reacted and the ways we messed with one another the way that partners in a long-standing relationship do. I think that gave me some license to go on the emotional roller-coaster so that I didn’t have to be just one kind of woman or another because when Grace wasn’t going to make it Jim pulled her up, and when Jim wasn’t going to make it Grace pulled him up and it was a very symbiotic relationship. So it allowed me to show both sides and it allowed me to flip the scales from her being happy-go-lucky to her being stripped down and very animalistic. It let me do that slowly and more in a see-saw than in one quick flick and I think that is a more accurate portrayal of how people change and how people tap into their strength.
Dave this is a lean film, is there stuff that got cut and what was the MPAA experience like for you guys?
Dave Meyers: I had a great MPAA experience, it didn’t focus on the violence in the film even though there is some, I tried to keep everything on thrills and suspense. We cut most of it out before we actually filmed it, which allowed us to keep the budget extremely low and we still have huge car accidents and all that stuff. Part of the relationship I have with the producers was trying to test that stuff before filming and just cutting the fat everywhere we could. I pulled from my commercials and video background and just keeping things really succinct. So it’s lean and there’s only one scene that has about five different versions of it and hopefully that will make it to the DVD.
The motel scene, we shot that so many times I think Sean may be mad at me.
Dave could you talk about your music decisions? I especially like the use of “Closer” for the car crash.
Dave Meyers: I had a play list that I used to inspire me for the characters in the film and it came from just my exposure to music and what I loved and I was distinctly told by the producers I would never be able to afford any of it. So, the film came out, I put it together and I had all that music in there as my own personal thing and one day Brad called me and said, “Guess what, the studio likes it and their going to pay for this song…” I called Dave Matthews’ people up and got a deal on that song and that started it going and then Trent Reznor signed off on it and then like 3-4 days ago the studio paid for it. It was just hanging on to it and no, no, no, no – okay.
Sean how difficult was it filling Rutger Hauer’s shoes?
Sean Bean: Well I had seen the film when it first came out which must have been like 20 years ago and it made a big impression on me. It was a very well constructed film and Rutger Hauer turned in a very good performance and I remember being scared by it and it made an impact, but I didn’t want that running around my head and cluttering things up when we were making our version of it.
I think working with Dave and Zach and Sofia we created quite an interesting new version and I didn’t really have any reservations or concerns about being compared to another actor. I just wanted to start from scratch and do it my way.
Sophia, Zach and Sean how was your relationship considering your opposing roles?
Sophia Bush: It’s quite good in a way – that they were scared of me.
Zach Knighton: I’m still scared of him.
Sean Bean: The first scene we did in Austin, Texas, it was a night shoot, was the scene in the car where they picked me up at the garage and we shot the interior of the car, which is quite a long scene. It was quite good that we didn’t know each other by then.
Zach Knighton: You didn’t talk to us at all.
Sophia Bush: It took us a couple weeks to all get speaking.
Sean Bean: It was nice because we weren’t supposed to know each other.
Sophia Bush: Our first conversation was about how hard you could push the knife in my face, and I was like, “Hi, how are you? Feel free to hit me.” [laughing]
Lots of rain…
Zach Knighton: If you shoot in the rain you are going to have a lot of ADR to do after the movie.
Sean Bean: That’s if you’ve got lines… [laughing]
Dave Meyers: I think rain is also very restrictive in terms of working with. In our case in particular we had 20 minutes of rain in a car and it couldn’t be any more challenging to keep it interesting. That was my main focus in really trying to catch the nuances of the scenes and the tension in them trying to stay alive. The sound effects people, I told them I wanted 100 different tracks for rain, I wanted rain that sounded different in this scene from that scene. It’s a subtle difference, I don’t know if you will pick up on it, but I was just worried that the sound of the same type of rain for 20 minutes would put people to sleep.
Dave, what was the CG to practical ratio with the car crash scene?
Dave Meyers: It was about 99.9% real. There’s no CG at all in it, the only thing that was done was there were certain rogue cameras when I gambled correctly and put the camera right in harm’s way. We shot each sequence with like 10 cameras and some of the cameras you couldn’t see and some of them we would have to erase. There’s only one major CG scene which is the rabbit, which is pretty much out of the box by now. Everything else was just the art of trying to.
Sophia, how challenging is it for you to find parts that you enjoy as a young actress?
Sean Bean: Yeah, you liked it didn’t you? [laughing]
Any updates on Friday the 13th?
Andrew Form: Well, we’re working on a script right now and I think that next year it’s not in the first two quarters for us, that movie, maybe at the end of the year next year, but right now we are just working on a script.
Director?
Andrew Form: Well, Jonathan Liebesman is attached to the movie, the director of Chainsaw.
Brad Fuller: It depends on his schedule, he’s got a lot of things rolling around right now, so if he’s available and we have a script we would love to work with him again.
Dave, how did you come to the project, is this something you wanted to remake?
Dave Meyers: Brad, Drew and Michael are big fans of The Hitcher and were circling it and found rights to it and I was circling their operation of being a home for video commercial guys making that jump to movies. Then the president of the studio and I happened to be talking about working together a year before and all these stars aligned. I studied the film, there’s character arcs in here, there’s something more special than the typical horror film.
Sophia, what do you think is our fascination with these tough girls kicking ass?
Sophia Bush: We’ve seen so many great heroes in men and your iconic Dirty Harry’s and Indiana Jones, you’ve got that and we’re at a point where thankfully in our sociology we’ve evolved to realize that women can kick as much ass and people want to see it. I think there’s something a little less expected about seeing the girlfriend end up with the shotgun. It’s exciting and it really gives the guys in the audience something to root for but it gives the girls something to root for too. So you no longer have women being drawn to an action movie by their boyfriend, couple are going together because they’re both really excited about the film. It’s something I enjoy, definitely, I really liked the whole end sequence of the movie. We had a good time with that one.
How long was the shoot and how close did you stay to your original script and how long was the shoot?
Dave Meyers: The shoot was 44 days and the structure of the script stayed pretty close, but uh, uh… I don’t know… we pretty much improv’ed the whole movie. [laughing] There was a — there was a green draft, that had a structure, that had certain scenes that are still in the movie. But getting all the way through the movie — and I think one of the biggest things about the scenes in the movie is believability. And so there was a lot of talks, every day we’d show up, and we’re like — we see a block in the scene. We’re like, “Oh, that’s not very real.” You know? And so everyone would go back to their corners, and a lot of times there was — the relationship of our cast, they would find the soul of it. And we’d just sort of help guide it. And it’s why I think there’s an authenticity in the film.
Following up on that, with the script, Eric Red gets credited… Is that a WGA thing, or is that something you guys decided you wanted to do?
Brad Fuller: No, we had two writers write on it, Jake and Eric. And we just submitted both drafts to the WGA, and they came back and Eric Red a credit.
Andrew Form: Yeah, we were surprised by that. We had no idea. I mean, that was the last thing we thought would happen, actually.
Brad Fuller: Yeah.
Sean, do you have an favorite past villains that you pulled from, or inspired this character?
Sean Bean: I just like the old style ones like James Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson. People like that. It’s quite hard to spring to mind.
Gangsters really…?
Sean Bean: I suppose so. Yeah. Yeah. A quite rough… quite rough and ready type. You know, no nonsense to it. You know, I — I tried to play this guy without being too aggressive. So, I don’t know what could really compare with — John Malkovich is someone who I always admire as a villain. And that’s in general. But I think he’s got a very real sort of a languid, seductive quality about him.
The production notes talk about the casting process being unorthodox, could you elaborate on that?
Brad Fuller: Well, Sophia, it was very simple. With Sophia, she was an actress who we had heard about. And for Drew and myself, we seem to get a lot more from sitting down with an actor or actress than actually auditioning them. And that’s how we found Jessica Beale for Chainsaw, and that’s how we found Jordana Brewster, for the other Chainsaw. And we had heard wonderful things about Sophia, and she came in and we just kind of fell in love with her. And we just kind of said, you know, “We’re working on this thing, ‘The Hitcher’. It was early on. And when this script was being developed, she was always the person who we had in mind. And we kind of kept her up to speed on what was happening with it. So, it was always Sophia’s movie. I mean, that was kind of by design. She fit the bill for us. And we thought that she was likable, and at the same time, you know, she can carry that gun and blow his head off at the end. So, that worked out. As far as Zach, Zach had a much more torturous process to getting this role. And Zach was a guy who we really wanted to be in the Chainsaw movie that we had just finished. And for whatever reason, it came down to Zach and this other guy, and the other guy got the role. And we loved him. And you know, it’s — you gotta choose an actor — I mean, Sophia’s really hot. And you gotta choose a guy who’s — you believe is such a cool guy, that he can get — you know, because she can get any guy she wants. But you gotta get a guy who’s like, a real guy’s guy. And when you’re casting actors, that was always a hard thing for us to find. A guy who you believe is gonna drive a four-four-two, and who can land Sophia, and who can be in those situations. And — it was like, Zach kept coming back. And we didn’t want to cut him, and we kept on seeing other actors. For lack of a better term, bigger names, or other people who are more well-known. Because Zach, to his credit, doesn’t have very many credits. He’s got — he did one show, and that was pretty much it. But he just kept coming back. And every time he came back, he was better and better. And by the end of it, you can’t think of the role any other way. He was the only guy who nailed it six times. I think you actually did come back six times.
Zach Knighton: I think sixty-six. [laughing]
Brad Fuller: And then — after the sixth time, it’s like, how do you not give the guy the role? He kept coming back. I mean, no one else had that longevity.
Andrew Form: Tell him what else you did.
Brad Fuller: Oh, yeah. And there was — well, I’ll let you tell them.
Dave Meyers: You tell us that.
Dave Meyers: Yeah, it was crazy.
Sophia Bush: Did you stop drinking beer?
Zach Knighton: Yeah. [laughing]
Brad Fuller: He stopped everything, actually.
Zach Knighton: No, I didn’t — you know, I just — I tried — I realized that I’m not the pretty-boy type, and the type that you usually see in this sort of film. And I just thought that — oh, thank you.
Sophia Bush: But you’re not the pretty-boy type.
Zach Knighton: I just thought, you know, I’d try to improve myself physically and mentally, type of a thing.
Andrew Form: For Sean, too? Does anybody — I mean, cause for Sean it was very simple. It was like — for ‘The Hitcher’, we were looking for a Sean Bean type. You know, we never thought we could get Sean Bean. Right, you know? Kind of like, this great elegant actors who’s gonna play this role, who’s gonna play this role. And we had checked on Sean and his days weren’t working, and it wasn’t good. And Sean had just worked with our partner, Michael Bey, on ‘The Island’. And I think Drew and I went to Michael and said, “Come on, let’s get Sean. Let’s try and figure it out.” We moved some dates around, and then his dates opened up, and we just got lucky. I mean, that was fortuitous.
Dave, coming from a music video background and now doing your first feature film, which one do you enjoy most?
Dave Meyers: I love movies. No. Videos is a — well, I mean, I guess the technical description, you’re marketing the product. And that always keeps you sort of removed from the pleasure of the — I mean, there’s MTV Awards and stuff like that that sort of fill the void. You know, but movies, you are creating the product, and you are the product. And you’re creating something that is then marketed. And that allows you to have a much more possessory relationship with it. And — you know, it’s more true to the directing craft.
What else do you have planned for the DVD?
Dave Meyers: I don’t know. Whatever Brad and Drew let me put on there. You know? There’s a lot of material that we can play with.
The hotel scene I guess.
Dave Meyers: I would like it ?
Andrew Form: All five of them.
Dave Meyers: I think that would be fun to have that. Just to see — we actually have five complete scenes that are, how we address the motel, each with their own flaw.
Brad Fuller: And a couple endings, too. We have a couple endings.
Andrew Form: Yeah, we have alternate endings.
Dave Meyers: We have two endings.
Really?
Andrew Form: Yes.
Dave Meyers: Sean dies in both, but… [laughing]
Brad Fuller: It’s just how he dies.
Dave Meyers: It’s just how he dies.
Andrew Form: It’ll be fun.
Sean Bean: What a surprise. [laughing]
The Hitcher opens in theates everywhere on January 19, click here for more on the film including clips, pics and a complete overview.
P.S. CLICK HERE for that Platinum Dunes producers recap…
