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I find that what's most interesting about this story is the way you see the personalities of the men begin to shift under pressure. At first, you see a group who really work well together because so much is at stake in the War, but then even that starts to fall apart Things start to really become confusing, because nobody knows who to trust, or if they can even trust what they are seeing and feeling themselves That's a very interesting dramatic situation for an actor.
The secret joy of doing military movies is that you re-enact your childhood to some degree, except this time you have a real costume and a script that doesn't involve you winning everything.
There's a little bit of Hamlet in this. A little bit of the Scottish play too.
I love that in the movie its up to each person to come up with their own interpretation of events. Is there some netherworld presence at work on the sub or is there a more logical explanation for what's happening? It's up to you to make up your own mind. You have to suss out whether things are really as they appear to be.
on a submarine as an effective set:
Well, I think that for starters, you can’t escape. If you put any kind of environment where you have characters that have conflicting agendas and they can’t escape from one another, you know at some point, it’s going to unravel. So, with a contained environment, there is the promise of friction. And that is where the drama comes from.
(A submarine is) distinct from the haunted house, where you ask yourself in the back of your mind, 'Why don't they just break a window and run into the cornfield? After they've been hacked and slashed and have a shovel sticking out of their back, why don't they bust open the root cellar?
There's also the added delicious aspect of there being literal physical pressure all around the vessel, and that pressure is the only thing that keeps it together. And then, the psychological pressure within the boat is the thing that rips it apart.
on his character, Lt. Brice:
Brice is an ambitious career officer and always figured he would go on to become a captain of his own ship But then he makes a terrible choice that kind of unravels his psyche and sets off this harrowing chain of events I think his conscience preys on him to the point that he just stops functioning It eats at him and eats at him until his behavior becomes more and more questionable, until he's not even sure what's real and what's inside him. It turns out maybe he wasn't made for command.
Q: You must get so many scripts thrown at you these days, what was it about this one that caught your eye?
I’d been reading this and I couldn’t really put it out of my mind and I gave it another read, and I thought, this is really creepy. This is quite spooky. And there is an opportunity for me to play somebody who unravels bit by bit by bit and somebody who gets to - at the outset, thinks he’s a decent human being and then be - forced by virtue of these circumstances where he doesn’t perform well or he makes a terrible, terrible decision to have to look at himself and see something that he reviles, that redefines him for himself.
Q: So was it a big challenge for you?
It's really tricky to get a really clean bead on how close to the line to play it. Especially when you're shooting out of sequence, it's tricky to whether to turn the heat up higher or tone it down.
Unless you have a really, really iron grip on how the movie is going to feel, trying to pick the tone and level at which you . . . freak out becomes really tricky.
Q: Do you relate with the Brice character?
I think on some level, that’s a fear that exists in everybody, that if we’re tested, we won’t make the courageous choice. We won’t make the decision that we - that would make us heroic. We make the decision that would reveal us to be all too human. And so when this character, at the beginning of the movie, takes part in this spontaneous violence and doesn’t stop it, he has to - it redefines who he is.
It’s really tricky. It’s so hard, you know, to really, to get a really clean beat on how close to the line to play it. You know whether you’re really tipping your hand or whether you’re just showing that there’s something really boiling inside you that at some point is going to burst but you don’t know what it is or why. It’s very tricky about that, especially shooting the stuff out of sequence too. A lot of those choices you make and you think, and you make the choice to have the heat, that kind of psychological heat at a certain level, at a certain point, and then you realize, Oh you know what? I should turn that back a little or I should turn that higher.
Q: Having done a lot of research can you imagine how explosive it would be to
bring a woman on a submarine?
I think Brice sees that Nurse Paige threatens the boat because she's splitting the men's focus. But it's also his ego that's at stake. She steps on his toes as the commander, and he knows he has to do something about it, even if he turns the whole boat against her.
on his co-stars:
It was great and a lot of fun. Matt is a very good chess player....you’re trapped in there and the chess just added to the tension mostly because I hate to lose and Matt’s a good player. It was hell.
Q: Poor Olivia Williams, the only female in the movie. I hope you didn’t give her too hard a time.
on the set:
When you were on the set, you really felt like you could go down at any moment I mean, if you blindfolded someone and brought them onto our set, they'd believe they were on a submarine.
It was massively practical. And horrendously heavy. It was around 120 feet long, built in 25 foot sections. And they could link sections together so you could run through them with a steadycam or whatever. I was built on a big gimbal that would tilt and shake and shudder - just monstrous
hydraulics beneath it.
Q: Was it claustrophobic?
It’s just awful. It’s like six guys standing in your face all day long. Talk about getting in your personal space. It becomes a real issue and it gets tense.
Q: Did they send you to training?
Yea, we did some training. Mostly it consisted of going to a couple of lectures where a guy who spent some time, a lot of time, in a submarine, told us what it was like during the fifties and sixties on a submarine. You know, it’s very close and tight and stinky and oppressive emotionally as well as physically. Then, he had second hand information about what it was like to be down there during the war, which was considerably tougher, because you’re under a phenomenal amount of pressure.
Q: How claustrophobic was it shooting the film then?
Q: Did the tight workspace make you closer with the cast?
Q: Did you hear the sounds? Did the sound of the subs - the creaking and the things brushing up against one, did you hear that on set?
Oh, no. It accentuates what’s good and it accentuates what’s not good. You know, it’s just like any relationship, the more contained the environment, the more the good stuff appears and the more the bad stuff will reveal itself.
on research:
I did a lot of [research] - watched a lot of tape and David provided us with a tremendous amount of archival material to dig through. And it was pretty informative, learning about all submarine commanders and how they pretty much had to expect not to return. Many more sank than what came home. So, when you embark on a journey like that, or you consider the kind of men that would embark on a journey with a pretty reasonable expectation of not coming home, it kind of informs you about their sensibilities. So with that, I kind of gave over to the script.
on the story's spookiness:
Q: Are you a fan of this genre of film?
I don't go to suspense movies. I'm putty in the hands of a good storyteller. The scares just make me
uneasy . . . I go to sleep usually thinking, 'Oh, it was just a movie' and then halfway through the night I'm being chased by some nine-legged demon with a fork through its eye.
A lot creeps me out. I went to a movie last night that was a little scary and instead of walking out the main exit we walked out the fire exit. It was well lit, but I heard clunking on the stairway above us and that freaked me out. I’m not good in a dark alley.
Q: Do you have a favourite movie from this genre - this story type?
Q: Was it ever creepy on the set?
We're just pretending. The only thing that was really spooky about it was the specter of (director) David Twohy marching around outside and threatening to make us do it again.
I wanted somebody who could playa classic American hero with a flawed twist," he explains. "I knew that anyone who could carry off JFK would be able to embody everything that Brice wants to be in life, even if he hasn't quite succeeded."Below
QuotesWhat Bruce Greenwood has to say about Below
BELOW is a psychological thriller about men who make a terrible choice and have to live with it in a confined space as their sanity begins to unravel and the ultimate, even otherworldly, consequences of their mistakes become more and more uncertain.
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A: It was just watching this character unravel. Here was this guy who really thought he was one man and very quickly realizes that he isn’t that guy and tries to deny that day after day while everything around him begins to unravel.
Tribute Magazine 10/02
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A: Oh yes because you shoot it all out of sequence. It was hard to keep track of just where he was falling apart and when he was keeping it together so yeah, it got tricky.
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A: Yeah. I think we all do. I think that's a fear that we all have, that if we're tested, maybe we won't make the right choice.
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A: Oh yeah, and not least of which because of the classic seaman's
superstition of women bringing bad luck. That's what instantly polarizes
the crew. You realize that some of these men are really into superstition
and some are not. And that's what really defines the polarity that goes on
throughout the movie. My character initially refuses to believe in
anything otherworldly, but as he unravels, the more vulnerable he becomes
and that fence gets taken down.
Dimension Films Press Notes 10/02
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A: Bless her heart, she had to endure a lot. A lot of guys in a small room and it becomes a locker room pretty quickly....She was fantastic and we had a lot of fun together.
Tribute Magazine 10/17/02
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A: Yeah, basically you'd get there early in the morning and they'd batten down the hatches. David really wanted us to have that feeling that you surrounded by pressure. It was tight.
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Tribute Magazine 10/02
A: Yeah, we did some training. But mostly it consisted of going to a couple of lectures where a guy who'd spent a lot of time in a submarine told us what it was like during the 50s and 60s on a submarine. It's really close, tight, stinky and oppressive emotionally as well as physically.
JoBlo.com 10/02
Dark Horizons 10/10/02
A: Well, like if all of us here would stand on this table -
Q: It would break probably -
A: Yes, it would break and we’re standing on the floor and we had to stay there for the next eight hours, snarling at one another. And then there’s another ring of people behind you with cameras. It was tight.
Dark Horizons 10/10/02
A: It accentuates what's good and it accentuates what's not good. It's just like any relationship, the more contained the environment, the more the good stuff appears and the more the bad stuff will reveal itself.
JoBlo.com 10/02
A: We heard - You heard something like it. For example, in that [mimics noise], you know, David might have been pounding the hull or something like that so we’ll all look at the same time. Or he just might have been saying ‘the bong.
Dark Horizons 10/10/02
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A: As a viewer, I get really, really tense. I mean, I find it hard it, I find it really hard to watch, but I’m not - I’m really easy prey for a suspense movie.... I get very uneasy and very nervous.
Q: Do you grab onto somebody? Anybody?
A: jump. I jump and I grab the person in front of me. It’s really kind of embarrassing.
Dark Horizons 10/10/02
Arizona Republic 10/17/02
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A: Like I say, I don’t go to them, because I’m just too - they scare the shit out of me. I just don’t. I don’t. I don’t -
Q: I was just wondering if you remember the last time that scared the shit out of you.
A: I mean, it could have been Casper, okay? But you know they’re not good for me. I just get too - I’m too easy an audience, you know what I mean? I just get too drawn in. It doesn’t take anything, you know -for me -
Dark Horizons 10/10/02
A: I think only really the kind of creepiness that you invite. You know, because we wanted to get that vibe going, so yea, you kind of invite a little spooky, creepy vibe into your whole experience of making a movie. So, I don’t know to what degree we invited that creepiness - I do have to agree with that. It was actually there.
Dark Horizons 10/10/02
Arizona Republic 10/17/02What David Twohy has to say about Bruce Greenwood in Below
Dimension Films Press Notes 10/02