| By Fred Topel
In Theaters Sept 30
|
Months in the Bahamas, diving in the clear, blue ocean, tanning on the decks of speedboats and getting paid for it all. Man, actors sure have it tough. But the stars of Into the Blue did have to pay their dues. For all the safety precautions taken, there was no avoiding the sharks.
Ashley Scott recalled, “Every time I was down there, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m swimming around with a bunch of sharks.’ You never get really that comfortable with it. You don’t really know what to expect. They’re sharks. They can bite you whenever they want. I was always a little concerned, but nothing really happened with me. I was pretty lucky. I think they gave me a free hall pass. They left me alone.”
Scott plays a vacationing bad girl who finds herself on an underwater treasure hunt with her boyfriend (Scott Caan)’s buddies, played by Paul Walker and Jessica Alba. Walker and Alba were practically fish themselves, with Walker an avid surfer and Alba growing up a swimmer.
“I'm really comfortable in the water and so that really wasn't a problem,” she said. “I've been swimming since before I knew how to walk because my mom was a lifeguard in Mississippi when I was baby. That's so random. So she taught me to swim because she was always so nervous that I would fall into the pool and not know how to swim. So I've always been really comfortable in the water.”
The athletic Walker gained a new scar on Into the Blue, one that he relished. Coming up from a dive, he hit his head on a low cave ceiling. “Everyone wanted to bandage it and doctor it up right away,” Walker said. “[Director] John [Stockwell]’s like, ‘No! No! It’s good for the character, it’s good for the movie.’ Everyone’s like, ‘No, man, you should probably go back. Maybe get some stitches.’ I’m an actor, so they pamper you and treat you like a prima donna and I was like, ‘Well you know, whatever, I’ll just clean it up and we’ll just keep going.’ And I was putting ointment on it, just so it would heal up faster because otherwise I was afraid I’d have this festering wound throughout the whole movie. But no, it went away.”
For all the glamour of looking great in the sun and enjoying the warm waters, filming was tough. The actors just had to keep the end result in mind. “After the sharks and the cold water and the seasickness, then we watched dailies,” Alba said. “I was like, 'Oh, okay. This is why I'm doing it.' I knew that it was going to be a beautiful, suspenseful movie and that's what it is. It's a popcorn movie and it's fun and 60% of the movie it seems like takes place under the water, and I think that it's rare and cool. I like it.”
Into the Blue features an odd six degrees of separation in the casting. Alba and Scott worked together on Dark Angel. Alba and Walker auditioned together for a previous film that never came to be. Alba calls their relationship “like a brother/sister kind of thing,” which might have made it odd for them to make out in Into the Blue.
“Well, it wasn't a love scene,” she said. “I mean, we weren't really like tonguing each other or anything. I think that what sold the relationship was their obsession for each other and how young they were and new the relationship was. Then all of a sudden they are hit with this reality where he's choosing money and fame and all of this other stuff and he's getting sidetracked. That's kind of the point. They've been together for two years and she's like, 'Okay. Now what?' He was like away and this other thing seemed more appealing to him.”
Walker recalls a more contentious relationship upon first meeting Alba. “We had a few drinks and Jessica and I were arguing. The first time we met one another, and yeah, I had to bow out a couple of times, like it was touché, you know, and I liked that about her. It was just petty, stupid stuff. And the director was sitting there at the table, and he was so uncomfortable. The guys like, ‘I’m trying to put these two together. This obviously isn’t working out.’ We’re arguing and bickering about this and that. But, I got that about her. That’s just her personality, and I’m the same way. Like immediately I found that I could push her buttons. I knew what was going on and she started doing the same thing right back, and so when they told me they were considering her, and even better yet, that she was considering playing the role I was like, ‘Aw yes. I know her. I think she’s got it.’”
Even though Scott and Alba were friends before, Scott found the whole crew open, so she did not need a Dark Angel clique to get by. “You know, it was a small island,” Scott said. “You go on set with a crew, or you go on location with a crew, you always tend to become friends. It becomes a camp situation where everybody kind of hangs out together. It was nice to have known her before because it was just comfortable. It was just easy. But my husband, fiancé at the time, came down a lot so that was great. We got to kind of be on vacation, paid vacation, you know. And dive together which was cool.”
Into the Blue surfs into theaters September 30. |
