About Features Reviews Community Screenings Archives Studios Home
November 2006
TURISTAS: An Interview with Beau Garrett and Olivia Wilde

TURISTAS: An Interview with Beau Garrett and Olivia Wilde
By Wilson Morales

November 27, 2006

Every horror film lately seems to be a variation of something we have seen in the past. Hostel is a variation of “Friday the 13th”, with the only difference being that there’s no serial killer yet, just a killer taking care of his victims, who are mostly travelers of some sort. “Turistas” is somewhat similar but also different in that the location also serving as a secondary character, and wouldn’t want to go to Brazil to film a movie. For Beau Garrett and Olivia Wilde, who star in “Turistas”, going there was not only an adventure, but a chance to bond and get to the cast very well. In the film, a diverse group of young travelers get marooned in a remote Brazilian beach town after a terrifying bus accident. It then becomes a game of survival as the unexpected occurs. Wilde was most recently seen in the FOX series, The O.C, and will be featured in “Alpha Dog” and The Death and Life of Bobby Z”. Garrett was seen in the first season of HBO’s Entourage and will be playing the role of Frankie Raye in “The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer”. In speaking with blackfilm.com, both Garrett and Wilde talked about filming in Brazil, swimming for the film, and their upcoming projects.

Beau, what was it like to be in that “surgery” scene where your character goes through some changes?

Beau Garrett: I didn’t know what to expect watching it because shooting it was such a surreal experience that I should have known I how it would turn out, but I know it’s totally not real, but it was creepy watching it. It was eerie and strange and kind of uncomfortable. It’s me but it isn’t me. It was crazy. It could have been anyone, but it’s me and to see my body and skin, it’s so weird. It looks great and amazingly real.


What did you think of the writing of the female roles?

Olivia Wilde: Well, I think because it was written well, it had the girls being very powerful and overcoming all their obstacles and not running around in a wet t-shirt and walking into the attic with a butcher knife. It wasn’t that type of film. It was smart and well written and we had a good captain, the director John Stockwell was someone we could trust, being in vulnerable wardrobe; being in vicarious situations without many clothes on. He was someone we could trust and we knew he would take care of us. I think when you have someone you could trust and you have good material, then you can feel comfortable. Being out of Los Angeles and what the idea body image is, it was really nice to be in another country and the movie was so much about surviving that you didn’t think too much about your body image. It wasn’t about that. There are moments where you are just like, “I don’t want to put this on again”.


What were some of the memorable images of Brazil?

OW: We want people to go to Brazil. We loved it. We loved the people. People should go there instantly and they should spend lots of money there. I really think that they should embrace it and not be deterred by the film. It’s a cautionary tale, not about going to Brazil, but about traveling without any sort of research and without any sort of awareness about where you are from and what country you represent and what maybe the political climate is that you are not aware of. That’s what you should be cautious about and I think Brazil was even more beautiful than you can imagine.

BG: You would see the sunrise and we would all be quite. You would be on the beach all day but it was so surreal and the people are amazing. The crew was amazing. They embraced us. Everyone was the same. It was camaraderie. It was family.

OW: I’ve always heard about the beaches of Brazil and the women of Brazil but I had never heard of these extraordinary underwater caves in Bahia, which is very different from the other parts of Brazil. Bahia is much more African feeling. You feel more of the Portuguese influence and the architecture and even the people themselves. They look different from the people in San Paulo and Rio. They look very European. It was extraordinary to see that part of Brazil which I never imagined. I think the audience members will be very surprised to see all that cave stuff because it’s not something that you are really familiar with as an image of Brazil. Those caves are all real. All we did was stick a light under water. It’s really that color, it’s really that clear. They were a mile deep and then you would find a pool of water and then it would go another mile down and it would be like Atlantis under water. It’s this extraordinary series of tunnels and it was just the most unbelievable thing I have ever seen and I think that is a load of reasons for you to get down there this year.


Was the water cold or warm?

BG: It wasn’t cold and it wasn’t warm but the longer you spend in it, the colder it gets. We were there in the winter so a lot of the stuff that we had to pretend was really warm was actually kinda cold. The waterfall scene we shot for a while. It was freezing, but it was so beautiful. You couldn’t complain. Because of the amazing location that the film turned out the way it did, I think that Brazil itself is a whole character in the movie and if we had tried to shoot that here in a tank, it would have been a disaster.

OW: I hope that people know that all that under the water swimming stuff is real. That’s why the reaction shots are so realistic and I think the acting turned out well in the film is because all we had to do is react to our surroundings. It was cast so well that the dynamics were layed out for us and the way that John Stockwell orchestrates his films is that he puts you into the situation to simulate the characters. For instance, we were all living in isolation in this ecolodge in the middle of nowhere and we depended on each other in order to do anything. If you wanted to go to dinner, you had to get a band of actors together to find a van to take you there and he (John) totally did it unpurpose because then when we were on set, you had the sense that these people are people who need each other and only had each other and who couldn’t understand anything else and they only had the group and that comes across on screen and I think that also wouldn’t have worked if we shot it here or if we all lived in different apartments all over Rio. We had to really get to know each other in that intense isolated way.


Were you good swimmers before taking this film?

OW: I’ve always been a swimmer. It had been my sport. That helped me out. Josh and I really got better as time went on. By the end, we were so impressed with how long we could hold our breathe and we really took pride in the fact that we could some of the stuff that the stunt doubles layed on us.


Was that really you in the water during the 10 minute water scene?

OW: Yes, that was me. It was scary but it was something that I’m glad we did. Water always appear in a John Stockwell movie and I knew it was coming but I didn’t know it was going to be like that. I imagined beach not specially marked caves, but the swimming was so intense and John is an insanely good swimmer and thank God. We’re very much like brother and sister and once we started, we just competed and tried to be better than the other.


Can you talk about your role in “Alpha Dog”?

OW: Sure. I play Angela Holden and it’s the not the real name. We had to change the name for obvious reasons. I play the girlfriend of the character based on Jesse James Hollywood, who in the film is named Johnny Truelove, and she is like the other characters in the film; grew up in a safe white, suburban California town and got involved in all of this mess of violence and drugs without ever really understanding what’s it really like to live in a “gangster type” community. This movie is about these kids who go to the best schools, have the safest communities, and still end up being very twisted and very violent and she is an example of that. Even though she lives in a cookie cutter suburban home, she’s completely out of control and wild and completely unsympathetic, I have to say, to the situation that happens in the movie. They’re all completely lost and completely screwed as far as being followed by the FBI and everything. I don’t want to give everything away but she’s not very helpful in the end, but it was a very different role than being in Turistas.


What's your role in the "Fastastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer"?

BG: I play Frankie Raye. She's a military brat, who grew up in the military. She works under General Hager, who's play by Andre Braugher and we come in to cooperate with the Fantastic Four to stop these events that are happening in the world and try to save the world. She then becomes a superhero so I've been told. It doesn't happen in the film.


Do you know what superpowers you have?

BG: The character in the comics says that somehow she and the Human Torch are actually related. There's something with her father if you are aware of the comics from what I've learned from few people who are huge fans of the comics. She has a fire power. She burst flames.


How's filming in Vancouver?

BG: Compared to "Turistas", it's night and day. This is a huge studio movie. The trailer is massive. Shooting the film in general... there's so much time and everyone's great. Everyone's wonderful, but with green screen, I've never done that; so that was very interesting to do that.


Having seen your share of horror films, what’s it like to now be in one?

BG: It wasn’t exactly a horror, but more like an adventure. I’ve always like to travel. I’ve traveled since I was young. To experience Brazil as I would cause you have to be that turist. It wasn’t really a horror film to me, but more like a thriller to watching these people travel and be on this adventure with them and how it turns and surviving. I knew it would be a survival like film. I knew it would be a guerilla film. I knew that John would push us to our limit because I have worked with him before so I loved being able to push myself and be in the jungle barefoot in a bikini, cold, wet, tired, and seeing how far I could go.

OW: I definitely try to not call it a horror film. We call it a horrific thriller because it’s got the horror elements in it that I think fans of “Hostel” and “Saw” would really enjoy, but it’s also very much a thriller and that it’s about survival and there’s a lot of actual slow build up, which I think is different than a lot of those films. I always been a fan of horror films, but I’m a fan of old school horror films. I think “The Shining” is one of the scariest movies I ever saw. It’s more about what you don’t see than what you do see and the worst thing you can possibly imagine. It’s not so much blood and guts. It’s more about what you can imagine and in this film it’s different. It’s not about goriness but the psychological effect. When you’re in this situation what’s the worst thing that can possibly happen and what would you do? If you had everything taken from you, what would you do? You follow this Brazilian because you hope he will take you somewhere and safe and you trust him.


TURISTAS opens on December 1, 2006

 

 

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy