Geoff Stults: Then if the wind changes all of a sudden then that four foot fire is not eight feet. I feel like as a fire grows the heat grows exponentially. I don’t know what the equation is, but it seems to be that how big a fire is if you sit around a campfire, we all know about how hot that is. It’s crazy to me.Īlex Russell: It’s interesting. It’s impressive what they do working in that kind of environment every day. I was so blown away by the amount of energy coming off of these flames even though we were playing firemen that had real firemen to put things out for us. I personally was blown away at, if you look at that fire it’s only four or five feet tall right? It’s not this towering-the heat that comes off of those things when we’re shooting, and you have your back to the flame and you’re like trying to look great for the camera, you feel like your ears are melting. No matter how many times you go shoot that. Geoff Stults: But as far as getting used to it? It’s just hot. It’s definitely there, but it wasn’t anything compared to what they do in their real lives. As much as we could do and still be safe we had a lot of fire on set, especially when you get into the closeup shots. Thad Luckinbill: We had all practical fire sets. SR: How much pyrotechnics were involved? Did you guys have to train to get used to the heat? I said to someone before, six o'clock rolls around or whatever it is, we go home to our hotel, those guys don’t. We were exhausted, we were tired, we were dirty, our eyes stinging with sweat, and all that stuff. We had to.Īlex Russell: And in all honesty gave us a small glimpse of what real hotshots go through. We knew if we were going to do the things that these guys did, and portray the thing that these guys did we had to physically be able to bring it a little bit. I mean it made it fun and entertaining at times and it made it awful and annoying. So we got after it physically, did a lot of working out together, off set too cause it was from day minus two week before we started to the end of it, three months later.

Thad Luckinbill: Yeah, and he wasn’t carrying anything. Brolin like being overzealous, and trying to prove to us that he was in good shape, like come on guy.Īlex Russell: We had to stick with his pace. Geoff Stults: That brought some flashbacks to me cause that was our very first day of filming so what you guys saw was two minutes of that. That scene when Miles is hiking and puking that would have been me. SR: Tell me a little bit about the physical preparation because it looked grueling. Thad Luckinbill: You know it was twenty guys Īlex Russell: It was definitely twenty guys. SR: He said it was great but was it a frat type of atmosphere? SR: Miles said he would never do a film again with 20 guys. I don’t think any specific effort had to go into creating chemistry between us because between that and the three month shoot in Santa Fe we had plenty in common. We didn’t have to sleep with one another.Īlex Russell: In pre-production we did a week of ‘Hotshot Camp’, we would call it, with our technical advisor Pat McCarty, just putting us through it, throwing on the gear, hiking up mountains with chainsaws, all the tools that they have. Geoff Stults: Who would have thought? No, we did more of a boot camp.

Yes, we started out sleeping together.Īlex Russell: You’d think it’d be a King but…. Geoff Stults: First thing he did was make us all sleep in one big bed. Did Joseph take you on a team building event or was that grown organically? I really felt like you guys were friends and you had this camaraderie. SR: You all have such great chemistry in the film.

Only the brave cast