Action-adventure vet Russell plays Robert Ramsey, a retired firefighter/politican who's onboard the ship with his beautiful daughter and her nervous boyfriend. Forced into action by unexpected events, Ramsey helps guide a small group of passengers as they attempt to escape the rapidly sinking ship.
The Original vs. the Remake of Poseidon: “I think that, to be honest with you, there are lots of movies that I wouldn’t want to be a part of doing any sort of second version of or remake of or whatever," Russell explained. "This is quite different than the first, obviously. And when you see the movie, you see why it’s different.
I don’t look at the Poseidon Adventure to me as an untouchable movie. It’s not Casablanca but it is…a classic picture in a genre. It’s part of the [fashion] to sort of pretend that these movies that are in a zone that are like fantastic. It’s not. It was the first of its kind and this is Wolfgang Petersen’s version. If you can do Mutiny on the Bounty three times, you can do Poseidon.
Russell says he’s not into sequels or remakes and rarely does one. “I only did one sequel,” said Russell. “We did Escape from LA. We did it 17 years after we did the original. I wanted to do it because I wanted to have the fun of later on looking at me do this part, where you put these movies back to back and you’re just looking at pretty much the same character, but I’m 17 years older but Snake’s not. I get a kick out of that. That was John Carpenter and so that was a lot of fun. But no, I’m not much on sequels. I’m not much on remakes, for the most part. I don’t really like or dislike them. I think that if you read a good script or if there’s a director you want to work with… In this case, that was the thing for me. I really wanted to work with Wolfgang.”
Injuries and Illnesses from Poseidon: “I had illnesses. I had sicknesses. You get cuts and bruises and stuff like that, that’s what you do. But I got H Influenza and the doctor didn’t pick it up so I didn’t have an antibiotic. So for about a month I was very sick.”
Russell says his illness probably came from spores on the set which dated back to 1933. “I don’t know - those old, old sets. H Influenza is a fairly old, old strain. I got rid of that and then I got sinus infections, got rid of that, and then I got pneumonia. I was very fortunate in that I had 10 days off. When we were doing all the stuff in the shaft – I had pneumonia during that. We finished me out and I had 10 days to recuperate. And I did, so I was fortunate in that regard.
I was also fortunate in that the last three weeks of the movie, which was basically all underwater for me, I was healthy. So the last three weeks I was healthy. All of the stuff underwater I was healthy. Everything else I was sick. It’s just one of those movies. I’d never had that happen, but it just was a tough set – smoke, fire, old stuff in the air being kicked up and around water…”
Big Sets, Big Explosions Take Center Stage: Did Russell ever feel he was being upstaged? Russell said, “I look at just the show. What’s the show about? What kind of show are we doing? Now if I’m doing Dreamer, I understand what that is. I understand where the pressure lies, or the importance of, the value of the actor. If I’m doing Dark Blue, I understand that. If I’m doing Escape from New York, I understand that. If I’m doing Tango and Cash I understand who I’m making the movie for. ‘It’s for 15-year-old boys. Let’s make it for them.’
If you’re doing Poseidon, if you’re doing Backdraft, if you’re doing other big movies that have a lot of activity in them, you work with it. And yes, it’s an advantage, especially in this situation to have it live and not have it be CGI, to be in it and doing it. I think what you try to do is be as good a part of that as you can be to help tell the story that that director wants to tell.
You make the decision to go do the movie. Once you make the decision to go do the movie, you go do that movie. You don’t regret making decisions because it’s not because, ‘Oh gee, I’m not getting to do what I wanted to do in this movie.’ Talk that out beforehand. So I understand the question. It’s a fair question. And I thing is that for a lot of people, it probably is difficult because it’s not the world they came from. I’ve always thought that I don’t care how the audience gets the experience of getting their money’s worth in a show, just whatever you’re going to do, whatever your part is in helping bring that about, do that to the best of your ability.”
