Ryan Reynolds says he’ll never complain again about difficult filming conditions, now that he’s survived the sanity-testing film shoot of the thriller "Buried." That’s because during the entire in the movie, Reynolds (as Paul Conroy, a civilian truck driver for the U.S. military during the Iraq War) is trapped underground in a coffin. The movie begins with Paul waking up to find himself in the coffin, with little else but a lighter and a cell phone that has a dying battery. (He later finds other things in the coffin, including a glow stick.)
As Paul frantically calls for help, he becomes entangled in a nightmare of bureaucracy, as he finds out how he got in the coffin and that his burial may have political implications. Except for images on his cell phone and in Paul’s flashbacks, Reynolds is the only actor seen on screen for the entire movie. Reynolds talked about "Buried" at a New York City press conference, where he revealed why the tension-filled movie has been his most psychologically challenging role so far.
Were you before or are you now at all claustrophobic? And if so, how did you deal with that fear?
Claustrophobia is a primal fear that exists within everybody. This is probably most human beings' worst nightmare come true, to be buried alive. I couldn't help but feel that when we were shooting. We were using a coffin. There were very few tricks actually used. The greatest tricks were sleight-of-hand engineered by Mr. Rodrigo Cortés [the director and one of the producers of "Buried"]. For me, I was enclosed in there, and I had moments of utter panic that were soothed in various ways.
One woman was playing all the roles, practically, when we were shooting. I had a microphone very close to my chest, and she could hear a panic attack starting because she could hear my heart accelerating when we were shooting. There were times when I couldn't get in and out of the coffin with any kind of ease, so I just had to stay in there. When you have 50 to 60 pounds of wood on your chest pressing against you, you start to have moments of panic. She would talk about wide-open spaces, meadows, trees, things like that, esoteric stuff that would chill me out and allow me to keep doing the job. I loved it. Lots of moments [of claustrophobia] though.
What preparation did you do for your role in "Buried"?
Prep-wise, there's not a lot you can do. This guy's experiencing something extraordinary. I couldn't actually imagine what that was like. So for me, most of the prep happened moments before. I wanted to get inside and see if the shoe fit, I jumped in the coffin, "Yep, it fits. Let's go. Let's shoot" That was really it.
The prep I did was layering in some unlikable traits with the character as opposed to him being this wonderful human being. There needs to be something that draws you in that this is a real person, someone you may not want to have a beer with if he ever gets to the surface. The human condition is to empathize, because of that no matter who he is, we want this guy to get up to the surface, so we can hug him, punch him out, or do whatever. Whatever our personal feelings with this guy, you want him to live, because we're human beings. That's how we operate.
Did you lock yourself in a closet to prepare for the role?
No, we didn't do any of that stuff. I'm a big guy. I make most things look like children's toys. I tend to lean more toward claustrophobia than most.
"Buried" touches on so many important issues. Is there one issue that stood out in for you?
Gosh, there's a lot of issues. For me the movie speaks more about communication and how we feel so safe with that, we feel like we're connected 100 percent of the time, all the time, all the time. And we are. We have BlackBerrys, mobile phones. There's a hidden enemy — and in this case. It's not a terrorist, it's not limited oxygen supply, it's not a coffin. It's bureaucracy. That can kill a person. It's killing Paul Conroy in this film. That to me spoke volumes about the world we live in. "Press one for help in Spanish, press two for help in English." You can't get a human being on the phone any more, even in an emergency.
Have you ever had any post-traumatic stress experiences or things that freaked you out that you drew from in order to play this role in "Buried"?
I didn't really have a lot of post-traumatic stress instances in my own life that I can draw upon that would even remotely help me in a situation like this, but I think we've all had moments where we felt out of control, and I've certainly had my moments where I felt like I was out of control. You try to tap into that to the best of your ability and put it on the screen. For me, the primary goal in this situation was to be as honest at every moment in the film as possible. There's no right or wrong way to say a line or perform a scene. I think as long as it's truthful, the audience is going to stay with this guy. That was my only job. And the rest of it went to [Rodrigo Cortés] to put it on the screen.
You have such a diverse résumé of films. What do you do differently to prepare for something like "Buried," as opposed to something like "Green Lantern"?
A movie like "Buried" is so psychological and so terrifying, and it's really a more of an emotional preparation. A movie like "Green Lantern" is spending five months doing gymnastics, and when you're 6-foot-2, that just shouldn't be done. I've been lucky thus far. I have an ability that I've used throughout my career.
I'm fortunate to have that, but most of it is dumb luck. I had a career that allowed me to do a number of different things early on, and because of that I never had this meteoric success early on. I wasn't a 19-year-old kid on the cover of every magazine. I was in the industry but I wasn't of the industry. It really allowed me to have an outside perspective and I was able to mature in a normal way, like a career should. In my early 30s, where I am now, I'm afforded an opportunity to do a movie like "Buried" and then a movie like "Green Lantern" in the same year. I'm going to keep trying to do that as long as they'll let me.
"Buried" was shot over the course of 17 days, but it actually takes place in only a few hours. How did you keep that sense of immediacy and impending danger over such a stretched-out shoot?
I'll tell you one thing: We shot this film chronologically, and that almost never, ever happens. Because of that, we really had a great sense of where we just came from and where we were going at any given point. I don't know if a film like this would be possible if we weren't given this gift of being able to go in order.
Did you feel like the emotional aspects of "Buried" were more difficult than the technical aspects?
Well, frankly, the technical aspects were not my problem … I was the unofficial gaffer of the film, so I had to light myself in a lot of the scenes, and I had to create that sense of atmosphere using just the lighter or just the cell phone or just the glow stick or whatever is available at the time.
Rodrigo shot an action sequence inside the coffin at one point. You have all sorts of elements. You have a mysterious visitor who shows up; you have fire in one scene. Basically, in the space of 35 seconds, he turns a movie about a guy in a box into "Indiana Jones." An in those moments, it's very difficult because I have to light the scene, I have to create these elements at that point. And I have to break down and lose my mind and scream and shout or whatever is happening. It's kind of balancing those things and trying to hit all of those points. You just try not to think about it so much. I take the information that Rodrigo gave me and said, "I’m just going to try to get as many of those things he asked for into the 10-second window and hopefully some of them will stick."
Can you talk about the scary "unexpected visitor" that Paul Conroy had to deal with in "Buried"?
Without giving too much away, you can’t prepare too much for that unexpected visitor. What I’ll say about that is that I was deeply amazed by Rodrigo’s ability to engineer — in this particular moment that we’re talking about in the film — an action sequence inside a coffin. I just felt that was epic in a certain way. I never expected that, reading the script, even. It was the most terrifying script I had ever read.
I still didn’t see this being an action sequence. And it took him a while. He talked me into it. I said, "Really? We’re going to move around inside the coffin this fast and with this much violence." And once you see the film, you realize there’s a universe inside that coffin. It’s not just this small thing. You start the movie off knowing nothing about this guy, Paul Conroy. He’s made 10 phone calls by the end of the movie, and we know everything, including the details of our special visitor.
For more info: "Buried" website
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