JA did an interview with comingsoon.net about the film.
comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=11396Swimming With Sharks
Source: Edward Douglas September 30, 2005
When you see Jessica Alba on the screen wearing very little in movies like Frank Miller's Sin City or her latest thriller Into the Blue, you might expect her to be the type of sexy but mindless bimbo that has become such an overused Hollywood stereotype. Actually, she's smart and articulate and rather sweet, so when you meet her in person, you feel like treating her more like your kid sister. (Your incredibly hot kid sister, mind you.)
Into the Blue is Alba's third movie of the year, an underwater action-thriller that pairs her with Paul "The Fast and the Furious" Walker as treasure-hunters on a deep-sea adventure that pits them against sharks--real ones, not CGI or the Hollywood producer kind--and drug smugglers. ComingSoon.net talked to the 24-year-old actress on her visit to New York earlier this week about the movie.
CS: You seem to have taken on a lot of very physical roles recently. You really seem to be pushing yourself. Did you take this role for that reason or despite of it?
Alba:You know, I'm with you on that. What's funny is I did the movie after "Honey", so I did "Honey", "Into the Blue", "Sin City", and then "Fantastic Four," and then the movies came out "Sin City", "Fantastic Four", and then "Into the Blue," just out of random coincidence. In my delusional mind during the "Honey" press tour, I actually thought that I was going to be paid to hang out in the Bahamas and scuba dive for four months. Then I realized we're shooting in the winter with wild sharks in every single scene in the water. I thought we were in wet suits, because if we're real divers, we'd be wearing wet suits, but they were like, "It's the summer." I was like "So, in the movie it's the summer, because right now it's cold." And they were like, "In the movie it's the summer and we already shot footage with the doubles so you have to match that stuff." And I was like, "Oh, okay." So I just didn't have a choice. It became a different thing once we did it, but then, the essence of the movie, and why I wanted to do it was because it was a page-turner. I read the script in forty-five minutes, and I was like at the edge of my seat the entire time, seeing what's going to happen next. And I knew it was going to be gorgeous.
CS: Did you learn to free dive just for this movie?
Alba: Yeah, I did. I went to the Caymans, and they have this facility there where they teach people how to free dive. I just went on my own with a couple of friends and I learned how to free dive and I sort of brushed up on all my scuba-diving, and I was kind of a little dive bum for a couple of weeks.
CS: What was it like working with Paul Walker and having some steamy scenes with him?
Jessica Alba: He's a sexy guy so I think any scene he's in is just sort of nominated as sexy. I mean, he's a lovely guy. He's down to earth and a guy's guy. I thought he was going to be a little bit more effeminate and precious diva like the rest of the male actors I usually work with, but he wasn't. He loves fishing and boating and surfing and competing with Scott [Caan] at any waking moment because they just fought all the time like brothers. They were very competitive about everything, so it was fun to sort of interact with them.
CS: Actually, they may have had more physical scenes with each other than you had with Paul!
Alba:I'm with you. I'm with you. (laughs) There was actually this one sequence that I hope it makes it to the DVD, but it didn't make it to the movie obviously. It's so homoerotic. It was like Scott and Paul doing this swim, and then they kind of like did it on top of each other. They're underwater and they have this really pretty music and stuff. It was very funny, so I had to tease them about that.
CS: You have many scenes where you're swimming with real sharks, so did you learn a lot of things about sharks before doing this?
Alba: I walked around with the actual shark wrangler at the Atlantis who does the job that I was supposed to do. I just went around with her and picked her brain, just trying to figure out why [she did it], because she's a petite Bahamian woman, and she's like the main shark wrangler. She said that they would go into the middle of the ocean, and swoop them up and put them in a tank. Usually, they're babies and they grow in the tank. Once they get to a certain size they have to let them out again. They regulate how many they can have in there, and the other divers that are swimming with the sharks and how dangerous that is. There are people cleaning the shark tanks with the hammerheads and the tiger sharks and the bull sharks. These are known biters. I was like, "How do you get that guy to get in there to clean the window? That job must suck!" And she was like "I'm glad I don't have to do it." (laughs)
CS: Did you get to touch the sharks, too?
Alba:Did they let me? (laughs) No, I mean sharks are pretty terrifying animals and they're not very bright, and they're pretty much blind. They don't see you and see the difference between you and a fish, which is why so many people get attacked. So I did hit a couple of them to push them out of the way because, you know, they're dumb. I never wanted them to mistake me for a fish. So if they came within arm's length, I wasn't thinking, "Oh, they're just going to swim right by." I would just be like (makes swatting motion) "Get away!" I was just constantly pushing them away from me.
CS: You would actually strike a shark?
Alba: Yeah, or they would hit me! Paul was bumped by them, and he'd come out of the water and he'd have these raspberries all over his body from them slashing all around him. But he's fearless, he doesn't mind the shark thing, and I was the whole time like…I need my fingers.
CS: Did you ever have any flashbacks to "Flipper" while doing this and did anyone want to throw a dolphin in there as an inside joke?
Alba: (laughs) Yeah, just for the hell of it! No, I actually would have much rather have dolphins, then sharks, to be honest with you. Dolphins are lovely and the one thing that I really didn't see. I knew, but until you're in the water with sharks and you just see that they just move like this (make waving motion with hand) and then when they're hungry and moving fast, it's just a faster version of (waves motion with hands faster). And it's terrifying 'cause it's like (sings "Jaws" shark theme). The theme song is in your head the whole time!
CS: Did you learn anything about real life treasure hunters while making the film?
Alba:I learned that this really exists, and there are real treasure hunters out there. It's a big ocean and there have been lots of storms since that happened and anything underneath gets buried. I mean, the ocean is so vast. There's no way to truly chart where anything is and that's why there's so much still out there.
CS: Was the subplot about the drug cartel added to try to modernize or update the concept of a deep sea diving thriller?
Alba:I think they did. I think that's the way that they are trying to relate it to what's really happening because that's real. That's happening now all over the Caribbean, but there are still treasure hunters out there and there are people like Paul's character who want nothing more in life than to discover it.
CS: Had you ever seen any of [director] John Stockwell's '80s movies like "Christine"?
Alba: No. He's funny. He doesn't even really acknowledge that he's an actor. He tries to brush it off, although he gave Scott a little bit of a hard time, because I think he would have played the Scott character in the movie, so he was kinda poking at Scott more than he would poke at anybody else.
CS: Of the films that you've done this year, which did you consider the most arduous?
Alba:This one for sure. I never knew what scene I was shooting any day, because everything was based off the weather. It was like, "Today is partly cloudy and the scene that we did that was partly cloudy was this scene, so then we should do this that same day." Then the sun would clear out by the time we got out to the middle of the ocean and it would get rocky, so then we had to go under the water, but then that was all murky, so then we had to go on land but we already shot all the on-land scenes. I mean it was unbelievable what we went through every day doing a movie on the water. You really are a slave to what Mother Nature wants at that moment in time.