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Features
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Trial by Water
For actors Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis, the making of Open Water came down to thirty days of treading water, two days battling sharks and one day of nudity.
Monday, August 9, 2004
By Todd Gilchrist
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The central conceit of Open Water is that two vacationers are stranded and left for dead in the middle of the ocean. Shot using digital video on location in different bodies of water around the globe, one would expect that their story primarily exists as an archetypal man-versus-nature conflict, and leaves landlocked the shades of character development. Not so, as actors Daniel Travis and Blanchard Ryan were eager to explain during recent interviews with FilmStew.
“We took a big chunk of time before we actually started shooting, to talk about background and things like that,” explains Travis, who makes his feature film debut with Open Water. He says that much of the character conflict was already on the page long before he or Ryan signed onto the project.
“Once we actually got into the water and started shooting, 98 percent of that was scripted,” he says. “There may be three or four spots where there’s a word or two that is changed, but [writer-director] Chris Kentis wrote very well. He gave us the freedom to try whatever we wanted, but we always ended up always using what he had envisioned in the first place.”
Ryan, who previously appeared in a handful of independent films and low-key comedies like Super Troopers, found that she thrived on the inversion of gender roles that the pair makes over the course of the film. “In terms of the development of our relationship, I think in the beginning, they’re a very traditional couple,” Ryan says.
“She really likes to be taken care of, and leans on him,” she continues. “Even when she doubts some of his advice, she sticks with it. She’s very traditional, and he really enjoys taking care of her and nurturing her and making sure she stays safe.”
“For both of them to be in a situation, where he cannot protect her and she feels vulnerable, is really threatening to both of them. I think that’s the launching point for so many of the emotions that come in over the course of the film.”
Travis says that despite their real life friendship, he had no idea that Ryan was up for the same film as him until well into the audition process. “We didn’t know that we were both auditioning for the film until we got to the callbacks and saw each other there,” Travis recalls.
Since its unveiling at Sundance earlier this year, Open Water has enjoyed the kind of widespread acclaim and word-of-mouth buzz that no amount of overworked PR people could create. Even though the term “breakthrough performance” has been liberally used to describe the work of Open Water’s leads, Travis and Ryan insist that their purpose was not to use the film as a springboard into Hollywood. “We were just making a little movie so we could get some scenes for our reel,” admits Ryan sheepishly. “We had no idea.”
Before production began, tricky issues such as nudity and swimming with real sharks were dealt with contractually so that filming would run smoothly. Still, both Ryan and Travis admit there was a bit of hemming and hawing when it came for those kinds of scenes to be shot.
“Before we got to the callback stage, after the original audition, Chris [Kentis] and Laura [Lau] sat us down and said, ‘This is non-negotiable: there’s going to be nudity, there’s going to be swimming with sharks, there’s going to be long days in the water, and not many creature comforts,” recalls Ryan. “And, ‘If you aren’t comfortable with any or all of that, we totally understand that, but don’t go forward in the auditioning process, because that’s non-negotiable.’”
“It was odd, you know,” adds Ryan. “I was like, ‘Okay, that’s fine,’ because I hadn’t been offered the part or anything yet, and then when I was offered the part, that had already been negotiated. So it was an interesting thing; everyone says, ‘How did they talk you into that?’ but it wasn’t [a matter of coercion].”
The nudity required in the film proved to be a particularly sticky subject, especially since conventional wisdom dictates that it’s never really “necessary.” Travis’ theory is that the filmmakers included it to give the couple a sense of intimacy that would inform the rest of their exchanges.
“I think it was [necessary] because you spend such a small amount of time with the couple before they actually enter what is a harrowing circumstance, you need to establish that they’ve been together for a while,” he suggests. “Chris and Laura very specifically wanted to portray a realistic aspect of a couple and not the sort of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo separate beds aspect of it.”
“You had a very short amount of time to be able to feel for these people, or at least get involved with them before they went into the water,” he adds. “That was sort of one of the aspects or one of the ways that they ended up doing that.”
Most of the skin-baring scenes went to Ryan, who has strong feelings of her own to share about their inclusion. “We had to show that they were a little disconnected from each other,” she says. “They love each other, but just never spend any time together.”
“My thing about the nudity is that nudity is never ‘necessary,’” Ryan maintains. “I don’t think that there is an artistic reason for it, but I don’t mind it and I think it worked. I think it’s a good shock; the beginning sequence can be kind of, ‘okay, we’re watching, we’re with you, but what’s going on here?’”
Ryan is no fan of movies that show longtime couples on vacation in the tropics dressed for bed in their pajamas. “I mean, [in the movie], the air conditioner’s broken, I think it makes total sense,” she says. “I feel very comfortable with it. I don’t walk around like that, but when you’ve been with your boyfriend for a long time…”
Although the actress did find herself somewhat apprehensive on the day of filming that particular scene, she, like many actors before her, found courage in a 40-ounce bottle. “I was nervous as all get-out,” she remembers. “We drank a bottle of vodka before it. I have never done that before, and hope I will never have to do it again, but you know, for this film, it is what it is.”
On the other hand, Ryan says she was stoked at the idea that Open Water was going to adhere to the natural behavior of sharks by allowing them to roam their normal habitat and respond accordingly. “I think in the film, it’s [demystified],” she suggests. “It’s not like you stick your toe in the water and a shark comes up and rips you apart and eats you.”
“We’re in the water for hours and hours before a shark even shows any curiosity towards us,” she adds. “Then, as we really start behaving like a wounded animal, when the panic sets in, until it’s dark, when they usually feed, that we’re really in any danger at all.”
“Sharks are amazing, beautiful creatures, and if we weren’t fascinated by sharks and loved scuba diving, we wouldn’t have made this movie.”
| For his part, Travis feels the filmmakers worked hard to make sure their actors’ comfort level and understanding of the animals was high, so that when time came to take the proverbial plunge, they wouldn’t have any apprehensions. “Working with the handlers that we did work with, there was an attempt to demystify the sharks to us before we got into the water,” he says. “Because these particular shark populations were known to the shark handlers, the potential for danger was as slight as it could be, given the precautions that we took.”
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Still, the first moments Travis and Ryan spent with live sharks were a bit daunting. “The first day of shooting, when we pulled the boat up and turned off the engine and 45-50 sharks showed up instantly before we put any bait in the water, that was a little different than we anticipated,” he admits. “I had been fascinated and excited about the prospect from the beginning, so I jumped in first with Chris and shot my single shots first, because somebody was a little more nervous,” Travis adds, looking in Ryan’s direction.
The actress fully cops to her reticence: “I was so nervous. And they don’t get out of your way when you want to get in the water. There are these big, gray shark fins sticking up everywhere, and you’re like, ‘Okay, I guess I’m getting in here.’”
| Ironically, as Travis and Ryan worked their way through 30 shooting days bobbing up and down in the water and two more fending off sharks, their haggard appearance at night was a cause of concern among some of the other vacationing couples. “We were this tanned couple who was obviously staying in the same hotel together, eating in the restaurant, not speaking one word to each other,” remembers Ryan with a laugh. “We always wondered what the people around us were [saying], like, ‘They shouldn’t have gotten married, those two. I don’t think it’s going to work out.’”
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Travis concurs, adding: “We were completely tan from the neck up and completely white all over everywhere else. I’m sure that people were trying to figure out what we were doing every day.”
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