Caffeinated Clint
On “Smokin’ Aces”, and of course, “The Flash”
Ryan Reynolds cruised into Australia this week to plug his new movie “Smokin’ Aces”. Whilst questions about his recent break-up with Alanis Morrisette were out of bounds, anything to do with his film career wasn’t. In this one-on-one interview with Moviehole, Reynolds talks about his explosive new movie, a movie he’s producing called “Schooled” and whether he’s still onboard “The Flash”.
Have you done any of your own stunts in the past, and in particularly in ‘Smokin’ Aces?’
Smokn’ Aces wasn’t overly stunt heavy. There was a lot of gun training. I spent about two months with a British Special forces officer that taught me everything you’d never want to know about these godless instruments of death. So it was pretty full on.
How did you get through those scenes and that one in particular where it just seemed like it was raining bullets?
Yeah, I mean at one point I think I just threw my gun and I remember the armour was upset that I threw it because these guns are really expensive and you don’t want them to malfunction so you gotta treat them really well and he was pissed that I threw the gun. But the director Joe Carnahan was so excited because it was sort of like here’s this guy expressing the futility of firing a hand gun back at a 50 calibre rifle, it was like yeah, there’s nothing you can do. But it was pretty intense and hard on your nervous system to be around that kinda gun fire all day.
Playing the more dramatic role do you get tempted to throw the occasional one liner in?
Yeah. My mind naturally goes there. But you have to be judicious where and when you’re going to use that. Um, I try to use that power for good instead of evil. It’s fun when you do a movie like Blade, because it’s a free-for-all and we had such production delays because we were making stuff up as we go.
I wanted to ask you about that actually. So a lot of that stuff came from you?
Oh yeah. They just let us go in a room, I mean that scene wasn’t even in the script. It was supposed to be just a quick little thing but, um yeah, in Smokin’ Aces not so much. I really felt that it was important to have Messner be the moral centre of the movie and the one guy that is grounded. I think that if I let that get away from me, you know, we’d lose the movie in a sense. He’s kinda the one piece throughout that keeps us grounded.
Did Joe come to you with the script and is that the role he wanted you to Play?
I don’t know if either of us knew that yet. But we met and we swapped Hollywood horror stories, both of which were quite colourful and we had a good time and we kinda hit it off and I was a huge fan of the script and everyone in the movie worked for free. Nobody got paid.
Wow.
Yeah, it’s not a big budget so, I just wanted to be a part of it. I was ready to play a Tremor Brother or anything and he called me about an hour and a half later and he said look Id love it if you took a look at Messner. And I said wow, okay, I kinda just pictured Messner as a Ray Liotta. And he was like no I was think of Ray for Carruthers. I read it, I called him back and I said I’d love to do it.
What was it like playing alongside Ray?
He’s a great guy. I mean, he’s the meanest man you’ll ever love. In a good way, and he’s um, the challenge in shoot was just finding a chemistry that read in the eyes as opposed t the words, because we don’t say much about how we feel about each other or like whether he’s a father figure or a brother figure or something in between and you just gotta see it in us busting each other’s balls in the beginning and hope that tie that binds will last. And I think it did.
You are credited with a producer role on ‘Schooled’. First of all, what is that project and second, is producing something you’d like to do more of in the future?
Yeah. It’s just a script that we developed for Disney and um, it’s kinda of a Van Wilder or something like that, but from a teacher’s perspective. You know, seeing that the teachers have there own clicks and there own groups and that the teachers are endlessly immature as well. And it’s not something that I’m going to perform in but I just love that idea and that concept.
Now that David Goyer’s left ‘The Flash’ project does that mean you’re off the project as well?
Um, you know I was never officially on the project so…it’s just something that most of the fan boys have felt like there’s a strong similarity between Ryan Reynolds and Wally West. So, I certainly know of Wally and have read all the comic books and I’d love to jump in there and play him. I don’t know where the direction of the Flash is going to go from here though. Shawn Levy is taking it over and they may decide that Barry Allen is the one that they want in there, an older version of the Flash, and that is something that I wouldn’t be interested in playing. But if it was Wally I would definitely be curious.
SMOKIN’ ACES is now showing
– Davin Sgargetta
