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Getting the Relationship Right: Sophia Bush says they were determined to show the reality of a relationship and not the typical Hollywood film couple in The Hitcher. "We’re going to keep it real. We’re not going to make everything perfect. It’s not just this sickly enjoyable couple. We bicker at moments and we laugh in a lot of moments, and it’s just really real. I think that the scenes that begin the film are enjoyable to watch because you just get it. Watching us together you understand it. You see how much we care about one another. I think, like I was saying, it gives you a much greater investment as an audience member watching the movie. It’s a lot scarier and there’s a lot more at stake when our lives are threatened. There’s just more at risk.”
The Behind the Scenes Team of The Hitcher: “It’s been amazing working with all of them. [Producers] Brad [Fuller] and Drew [Form] have ‘it’. When people talk about ‘it’, there’s no definition for it because otherwise there could be an instruction manual and everyone would have it. They have it. They understand what a movie like this needs. They understand how important it is to ground it. It’s been so nice to work with them and, I think, for myself and for Dave [Meyers] the director, to have them being his supervisors because he wants this film to be real. He wants it to be believable.
We’ve seen enough horror films. The hero is not going to climb up the stairs in a strange house. There’s no motivation for it. It doesn’t work anymore. Dave has given us incredible license with how deeply he understands the story. Like how much work he put into it before he came here. He just knows what it needs and he gives us the license to change things and feel things out as we go. We’ll start shooting a scene and stop and start reworking it and start thinking about the element that we’re working with and what might make it better or what might make it juicier or scarier or whatever it might be. So sort of the three of them in that triangle have been very incredible because they all have a vision and it’s all very cohesive. Where their differences are, they have discussions that take things even up to the next level so it’s all been very constructive.”
Squeezing in Movies During Her Hiatus from One Tree Hill: “This is a pretty difficult thing to do. With this hiatus, for instance, I wrapped the show and went home and helped finish casting this movie and then came out here. So it was a lot more preproduction, but last summer worked out really well. I went straight from the show to New Orleans and straight from New Orleans to Vancouver, then did a little bit of back and forth between Vancouver and Wilmington once the show started. I’ve actually had to go back twice in the period that we’ve been shooting this movie, back to the set of One Tree Hill. But it’s been great. It’s all working out really well.”
Bush hasn’t had any problem letting go of her character from The Hitcher when she’s on the set of One Tree Hill. “They’re completely different,” said Bush. “It’s something that I actually work on for me. When you’re working on a job, you have to make sure that you have that box that your character is that you can close at the end of the day and let go of and go home and be you. So when I’m kind of double-timing and doing two jobs at once, I have to have two very specifically located boxes far away from each other, with me in between so I have the resources to pull from both. It’s not something that I in good conscience could ever allow to mix because it would jeopardize both projects.”
