The Guardian
Interview: Andrew Davis on The Guardian
"Yeah, they should say from the director of <B>Holes</B>," Davis joked. "It's interesting because The Guardian, I wish it was a bigger hit because when they saw the movie, some friends of mine said, 'They're going to say now "From the director of The Guardian."' But I don't think it made enough money for them to say that yet. I don't know. The Fugitive is a movie I'm proud of. It came about because of Under Siege and I was able to go back to Chicago and do my thing. I had a lot of support and the script was very loose and we were able to really create something on the scene there with that movie. So I'm proud of the fact that I had so much to do with it. At the same time, when that movie came out, somebody looked me in the eye and very seriously said, 'You oughta retire. You're never going to make another movie this good.' And I sort of laughed at him. We're trying."
Davis wasn't the only one living up to the past. Star Kevin Costner has had some bad experiences on water, but he jumped in head first on The Guardian. "I think on Message in a Bottle, there were some situations where he was a little uncomfortable being underwater in that. But we had top, top people around him and he knew what he was getting involved in. He was a trooper. It's very rough to be banged around like that. You get seasick. And it's cold and it was windy and stuff was blowing in your face and you can't see or hear. And it's scary. But he knew that that's what these guys did and he was portraying them so he got to go to a comfortable place after being beat up versus having to get in the helicopter and fly for three hours so he accepted it."
To achieve the film's deep sea rescues, Davis relied on CGI technology to add the Ocean to his green screen water tank. "I've walked away from other big effects movies because it's just so mechanical and the director's so removed really from what's happening in so many ways. But with this project, first of all, I was challenged as someone who loves the sea and the water and having been a sailor and a lifeguard myself to portray this properly. And also, the fact that we could create a postage stamp sized piece of what we were trying to do in broad strokes. We had a little postage stamp piece of the Baring Sea which was just as violent and windy and crazy as it would have been like to be out there. And we could control things. And I think the fact that we relied on a real world rather than a synthetic world of documentary footage and real waves and real storms and real rescues allowed me to feel like I was a part of what was going on all the time. And designing shots completely from scratch where you can sort of literally sit down and design how you want to fly over the water, where the helicopter's going to be and how the camera's going to move. That was a lot of fun. We worked hard to give it a kind of documentary quality and not to get too jazzy with our effects shots because it would take you out of the reality of how people are able to photograph these things."
Being an academy movie, The Guardian has many familiar aspects of training and teacher-student dynamics. But don't call it cliché. "I think we were criticized unfairly by having images and scenes that you've 'seen before' and my response to that has been if you do a western and you have a horse and a bad guy and a jail, a pretty girl and a sheriff, people are going to say, 'Well, I've seen that before.' In these kinds of environments where you have to push people to their limits and you have to work to a certain standard and you have to have a certain level of discipline and tragedy, those things are going to come back. I think the fact that the coast guard isn't looked at as something that has that kind of rigorous background is part of the story we were trying to tell. I think it's interesting to see what they have to go through. It was interesting to me to learn about the scope of what these men and women have to bring out to rescue people in terms of being medics. They have to be navigators, they have to know all about the equipment on the helicopter. They have to do everything in the water. So it's quite daunting what the training involves and I think showing that training, even a glimpse of what they have to go through with the psychological aspects of can I do this, do I want to do this is compelling."
As for the financial success Davis mentioned earlier, The Guardian was no flop, and DVD will help the film live on. "My films are playing all the time. My residual statements are pretty mind boggling in terms of Above the Law is on TV every week. I think that what's happening now is, actually we did pretty well compared to what's happening at the box office right now. We opened to $18 [million] and I looked at the chart the other day, we're amongst the top 10 movies of all that are playing at all anywhere worldwide. So the numbers are interesting because this is a movie that older people like also. They don't rush out to the theaters all the time. They wait to see it at home, they buy the DVD, they watch it on television. So I think you're right, there are movies that will live on and on and be played on network television and cable and people will rent and share with each other for years."
The Guardian DVD is available January 23rd.
For trailers, review, posters, stills and additional info, go to The Guardian Movie Page.
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