It was just something where, to me, it was not a movie about acting. It was a movie about reacting. They built these sets and dropped us into basically an environment that was so astonishingly realistic that you're not [acting], you're just dealing. I think I felt kind of a great pride in that, honestly.
For me, when I saw the movie, this is a movie that is - yes, it's a big, fun, Hollywood rollercoaster of a movie but truthfully, these people are going through a really horrible situation. They're not flirting and talking about crap like they wouldn't be. That was sort of the achievement every day, was going and figuring out how to get through the scenario and how to help each other through it. I often times went home on the weekend and said, 'Thank God no one was killed.' That's all I can say.”
Asked if he questioned his own mortality while filming Poseidon, Lucas replied, “I really genuinely had moments on this movie where I was like, 'Either I'm going to be killed or someone's gonna be killed.' That is an amazing thing to sit there and deal with when you're making a film.
There was one moment where I really genuinely thought I was going to drown. I got caught on a wire and the safety people had been sent around the corner because they were in the shot and so they couldn't see me. The camera people couldn't see me and there was about maybe two inches of breathing room. It was during the scene with the little boy and I got trapped. Basically my belt got pulled down and I couldn't [get free]. In the beginning panic, I went the opposite direction. I was disoriented and basically I realized I was starting to lose my breath and there was nowhere to go. I had no breathing room so I snapped."
Lucas continued. "I got out of that water and I was like, 'You don't understand! You're putting us in danger and you're only going to get one take. That's all you can have - one take. One take. One take.' Wolfgang goes, 'Great, great. No, I understand. I understand. So you'll do it again.' I was like, 'All right! One more! Let's go!' And it was like somehow his passion for this every day, you'd like him so much you'd want to please him.
His vision is so specific. There's five cameras at all times, so even if Camera D, there's something he doesn't like exactly, he's able to say, 'This is why I don't like it exactly,' and, 'Please go do it again,' and you're willing to go do it again. I absolutely questioned my mortality.”
The Action Takes Over in Poseidon: Josh Lucas explained why the second half of the film is nearly dialogue free. “That was again something that me and Kurt [Russell] and Richard [Dreyfuss] and Wolfgang and all of us sat there and we were like, 'You know what? The situation would not warrant them.' There is an urgency in dealing with this monster. Also the fact that we were watching horrific tragedies unfold on TV in our trailer every day and going, 'No, people are not gonna talk. They're not gonna flirt. They're not gonna play or get to know each other inside this environment.'
We started stripping [away dialogue]. The challenge of that then becomes the internal element of what this person is feeling and somehow figuring out ways to portray it in a situation where there's four fans that create 100-mile-an-hour wind shooting at you with people dropping fake wrenches and different things that they're shooting at you. There's fire. There's all these different things and yet you're trying to say, 'Wait a second. Yes, this situation, you have to be physical and move through it, but what is happening inside of this man, in this man's fear at that point for the fact that he is possibly thinking he's going to die and not have saved everyone.' So it became very much an interesting internal exploration and I think some of it's there, actually.”
The Desire to Be Part of Poseidon: Lucas got involved for one reason and one reason alone: Wolfgang Petersen. Lucas said, “He said to me, 'I want to make the third, finish the trilogy…' The first obviously being Das Boot, and the homages to Das Boot that are so clear in this movie. He said, 'You look at the structure of Das Boot and you have a huge party that goes into a wildly contained, very tough scenario.' That to me, and dealing with his absolute passion for filmmaking, was what I wanted to be around. That, to me, was what every day was about.”
