Every once in awhile a studio will throw a party prior to watching a junket screening. What they’ll do is have all the journalists who are covering the film get together at some swanky place and then set up an open bar with limited food to eat. What ends up happening is everyone gets trashed and has a great night. What also happens is everyone is in a great mood and usually the questions and answers at the junket the following day are a bit more relaxed.

The last time I went to something like this was for Jackass 2 and I had the same experience. We all drank way too much and had a blast in the theater. But unlike Jackass, this party was much bigger and I saw everyone I know from the online community. They even let in Stanley Kubrick. I mean Devin from CHUD. 

Now I don’t want you all thinking that I get drunk at all these parties and act like an ass. Well I guess I do, but for The Hitcher it wasn’t all my fault.

When I arrived I was prepared for the open bar and I know what I can drink. My plan was for about an hour to sit back with some journalist friends and the members of the cast, have a few beers, and then watch the film. But what I didn’t plan on was the one hour turning into two, and the entire time the open bar kept on serving.

The main culprit was the other screening that was running at the theater. The film started really late, so our screening got pushed back and we all just kept on drinking. By the time most of us got to the theater we were all feeling really good and ready to be entertained.

And this brings me to the film.

I saw it in a packed house of both sober and drunk journalists, and I think everyone had a good time. It’s not like The Hitcher is going to cure cancer or be the next Lord of the Rings. You know what you’re going to get before you walk into the theater, so the big question is does it work?

For me, it mostly did. I thought Sean Bean was great as the highway killer and Sofia Bush was hot as hell as the damsel in distress. Dave Meyers, the director, has got a killer soundtrack to go along with his fun thriller and I think audiences will be entertained. What I also dug about the film was the way it reminded me of the movie Crank. What I dug about Crank was how we didn’t learn that much back story, how that film opened up and the ride was on 100%. That’s also The Hitcher. We don’t get a lot of back story, and I’m glad, as we really don’t need it.

So enough of my ramblings on the film, I sold this article as an interview and here it is.

The day after our drunk screening a crapload of us attended a press conference with all the cast as well as Dave Meyers, the director, and the Producers, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller. I color coded all of the answers so it will be slightly easier to tell everyone apart, but I left the two Producers as bolded black since they are both kind of the same person.

If you want to listen to the audio of the press conference you can click here to download it or right click this link to save it for later. It’s an MP3 without any sort of copy protection so you can put it on an iPod or a portable audio player with ease.

I have a ton of other interviews about to post, check back tomorrow for more.

Q: Any Cheney jokes on the shot gun day?  And second, you did a great job of making it realistic, but the Zack, 15 minutes moment? 

Brad Fuller: You know we had to get Zack out of the room; we had to get him out because we debated how we were going to get Sean in the room. The response last night was obviously -- there was some fun to be had there and we had a great shower scene. (Laughs.) It was fun for Sophia, so I dunno; we just kind of went with it. I mean I wish I could give you a better answer. Anything you want to add to that? 

Andrew Form: No, but it’s tricky, because how do you get Zack out of that room and get Sean in?  Because we had this whole scene constructed where we did want Sean in bed with Sophia and we had to get Zack out of the hotel room. 

Brad Fuller: And you know Sean is going to be in the bed.  You know he’s going to be there.  And you’re waiting for it to happen, so we… 

Sean Bean: There was a scene where I was in bed with Sophia? (Laughs.) Shit. 

Q: And a Cheney moment from the shotgun day? 

Brad Fuller: It’s going to be on the DVD.  

Q:  Sean how difficult was this character to play for you because we don’t really know anything about him.

Sean Bean: It was. There wasn’t a great deal of back history to the guy.  Not a lot of information about where he came from which I thought was quite interesting really, because it allowed me the freedom to create what I wanted and to invent as a person.  And I always thought that it was somewhat scarier that you don’t know anything about him or where he comes from. I always find that the less you know about people, the less you trust them.  I usually like to have something to go on but for this particular movie I would say he was like an angel of death. Wandering the freeways and that quite appealed to me.   

Q: This is for the producers; the fact we don’t know much of the hitcher does that mean will there be a prequel? 

Brad Fuller: No.  I don’t see a prequel happening. As Sean said, give him a blank slate and let him do what he’ll do with it. There was no thinking about a prequel until you brought it up. 

Q: Sophia what are the challenges of playing a girl like this and avoiding the cliché’s? 

Sophia Bush: Right, I think that was a big thing for me and something we definitely looked into in a lot of moments in filming, because I don’t want to be that girl running around whining and irritating, but at the same time I don’t want to come out like Lara Croft with guns blazing, because that’s not quite right either. And I think that it’s something that made it great was or greater for me rather was a lot of what Zach and I got to do together.  Because we spent weeks just working on the chemistry of our relationship and how Jim and Grace behaved and reacted and the ways we kind of messed with one another and the ways partners in a long standing relationship sort of do.  So, what we had, I think this gave me some license to go on the emotional roller coaster instead of just being one kind of woman or another was when Grace wasn’t going to make it Jim pulled her up and when Jim wasn’t going to make it, Grace pulled him up. And it was a very symbiotic relationship, so it allowed me to show both sides.  And it allowed me to flip the scales from her being kind of happy go lucky to her being stripped down and very animalistic.  It let me do that slowly more in a see saw than in one quick flip and I think that’s a more accurate of how people change and how people sort of tap into their strengths. 
 

Q: Dave, this is really a lean film. Was there more stuff that got cut? And how was your relationship with the MPAA? 

Dave Meyers: I had a really great MPAA experience. I didn’t focus on violence in the film even though there is some. I tried to keep everything on thrills and suspense. We cut most of it out before we actually filmed it which is sort of how we kept the budget was extremely low, and yet we still have huge car action and all that stuff. And so, part of the relationship I had with the producers was trying to cut that stuff before we filmed it. And really cutting the fat everywhere we could. I pulled from my commercials and video background and keeping things really succinct. It’s lean and there is only one scene that has only five different versions of it and that hopefully make it to the DVD. 

Q: What scene is that? 

Dave Meyers: Am I allowed to say? 

Andrew Form: Sure. 

Dave Meyers: The motel scene, we shot that so many times I think Sean might be made at me.  He was like, ‘Again?’ 

Q: Dave can you talk about the musical decisions for the film? I enjoyed the scene with ‘Closer’ coming into the scene. 

Dave Meyers: I had a play list that I used to inspire me for the characters of the film. And it came through my exposure of music and what I love and I was distinctly told by the producers I’d never afford any of it. So, the film came out we put it together and we had all that music in there as my own personal thing.  And then one day Brad called me and said, ‘Guess what. The studio likes it and they are going to pay for this song.’ I called Dave Matthew’s people and got a deal on that song. And then I started going and Trent Reznor signed off on it, and then like three or four days ago the studio paid for it, so it was just hanging on it. ‘No, no, no, OK.’ (Laughs.) 

Q: This question is for Sean, how difficult was it stepping into Rutger Hauer’s shoes? 

Sean Bean: I saw the film when it first came out about 20 years ago. And it made a big impression on me.  It was a very well constructed film and Rutger Hauer gives a very good performance and I remember being scared by it, and I thought it made an impact but I really didn’t want that running around my head and cluttering things up when we were making our version of it. So, I think working with Dave and obviously, Zach and Sophie I think we crated quite an interesting new version. And I really didn’t have any reservations or concerns about being compared to another actor. I just wanted to stop and scratch and do it my way. 

Q: Zack and Sophia in the same outfits most of the movie, how many different versions were there? How gross did they get by the end? 

Zack Knighton: I’ll be back in 15 minutes. (Laughs.) It was the same outfit. I wore the same thing every day. It smelled really bad. 

Sophia Bush: Yeah, there definitely got to a point where what did they have? Six?  For continuity sake they had to keep a couple of pairs of all that clothes. 

Zack Knighton: Yeah, but there were different stages, because we shot out of sequence.  

Sophia Bush: There were a couple of days when we would be in sequence and we’d be in the same clothes and he looked at me one day and was like, ‘We smell.’ And I’m like, ‘I know.’  (Laughs.)  It was interesting, but then again we were covered in dirt, blood and filth so we probably would have smelled anyway.  I don’t think anyone noticed, except for us. 

Q: Sophie, Zack and Sean – how is the relationship between you guys and Sean since you had to be scared of him? 

Sean Bean: It’s quite good in a way -- that they were scared of me. 

Zack Knighton: I’m still afraid. (Laughs.) 

Sean Bean: The first scene we did in Austin, Texas was a night shoot, was the scene in the car where they are picking up the garage and we shot the interior of the car which is quite a long scene and it was quite good that we didn’t really know each other by then at all did we? Liked each other or not. 

Zack Knighton: You didn’t talk to us at all.   

Sean Bean: That’s not unusual. 
 
Sophia Bush: It took us a couple of weeks to all get speaking.

Sean Bean: But it actually worked because we weren’t supposed to know each other so I’m glad we did that. 

Sophia Bush: Our first conversation was about how hard you could push the knife into my face.  And I was like, ‘HI. How are you? Feel free to hit me.’ (Laughs.) 

Q: Was it hard to shoot the scenes with the heavy rain? 

Zack Knighton: I can tell you if you shoot in the rain you’re going to have a lot of voice ADR to do after the movie and voice looping, stuff like that. 

Sean Bean: If you’ve got lines. (Laughs.) 

Dave Meyers: I think rain is really restrictive to work in, but In our particular case we had 20 minutes of rain in a car and it couldn’t have been any more challenging to keep it interesting and so that was one of my main focuses. Shooting a whole bunch of angles and catching the nuances of the scene and stuff so that the tension can stay alive and with the sound effects people, every single day I said, ‘I want 100 different tracks of rain. I want rain for this scene that sounds different than rain for the next scene.’ It’s a really subtle thing and I don’t know how many people will really pick up on it, but I was just worried the same type of rain, for 20 minutes, would put people to sleep.