The Source Magazine was invited to an intimate press conference with “Getaway” stars Selena Gomez and Ethan Hawke and director Courtney Solomon. Check out what they had to say about working on the film, which hits theaters today.
“Getaway” is a gritty, heart-pounding action thriller starring Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke (“Training Day,” “The Purge,” “Before Midnight”), actress and international music sensation Selena Gomez (“Springbreakers,” “Wizards of Waverly Place”), and Academy Award winner Jon Voight (“Coming Home,” the “National Treasure” films). The film is directed by Courtney Solomon (“An American Haunting”).
Former race car driver Brent Magna (Hawke) is pitted against the clock. Desperately trying to save the life of his kidnapped wife, Brent commandeers a custom Ford Shelby GT500 Super Snake, taking it and its unwitting owner (Gomez) on a high-speed race against time, at the command of the mysterious villain holding his wife hostage.
Selena, Ethan, what was it like in Bulgaria, in that little car for the entire shoot?
Ethan: The problem was that it was the middle of the night, so it was cold.
Selena: Yeah, we actually liked being in the car. I liked being in the car.
Ethan: It was actually warmer than anywhere else.
Selena: I think what was good, though, was we actually ran it a lot before we got in the car. So we could actually walk around and do the scene over and over again so it kind of seemed fresh. It kind of got too much sometimes doing it over and over [in the car] so it was nice to step out.
And you were really filming as you were driving along?
Selena: I mean we weren’t driving that fast…
Ethan: With the whole movie and the car chases, any way to do a car scene, we did it that way…any way you could think of a shooting a car scene, we did it.
Courtney: We actually had a specific rig for them, so we even did it in ways that people normally don’t do it…it was like 35-40 [mph] sometimes we’d even get up to 60 and they [Ethan and Selena] didn’t know it.
Ethan: They would have never let us do this movie in any city in America. (laughs) There’s just no way. What Selena was saying was true, too, it’s really rare in an action movie where we would do takes of ten pages of dialogue in this – you know, we’re always in the same place. The set, in a way, never changed so you know, we were always in this car. That was fun.
When you saw the script for the first time, what drew you to the movie?
Ethan: I just thought, it’s very difficult to make any kind of action movie that would be unique or worth watching and there was just something so simple about the idea of making a whole movie about one car chase. It had a simplicity to it, that I thought made it unique and fun and one I’d be interested in to see. And in a lot of action movies, it doesn’t matter who plays the part, it’s so much about the explosions and things like that, but in this movie I thought whoever the actors were would have an opportunity to make an impact on the film. And so it became more interesting to me because of that.
Selena: I’ve been wanting to do different things starting with “Spring Breakers” and end up doing some other fun roles and I wanted to do an action movie. So that opportunity to be able to be a tomboy who knows all about this kind of stuff that I don’t know about, I got to dye my hair black, just give me an opportunity to kind of be somebody else and obviously working with Ethan was an honor.
I wanted to ask Courtney about working with the stunt crews because in many ways this is their movie.
Courtney: They were great, we brought over three guys from the US who were fantastic, and then there was this fantastic Bulgarian stunt crew of like, 35 guys who had a lot of talent. They were really great. All the stunts and action in the film are completely real, there’s not one CG shot in the entire movie for any of the action that you see. And that’s sort of an old school way of doing it, the same thing with Ethan and Selena [in the car] we had barely any green screen, about 5% of the film had a green scene and 95% actually on the road moving.”
How many cars did you destroy?
Courtney: I like to say we ‘killed’ 130 cars in the movie. We actually had a literal junk yard at the end of the movie, piled up in this place in Bulgaria where we towed the cars after each [scene]. 58 actually get crashed onscreen.
Of course, “Getaway” opens August 30th, do you think the sales of Shelby’s are going to go up? Did you get the manufacturer’s permission?
Courtney: That was the car we picked for the movie because I think that’s the great American supercar and that’s why I wanted it in the movie. It’s a fish out of water in this Eastern European city and it actually had a face and a character to it. It’s like the third character of the movie. I wish them well, the car did so much great stuff for us and I hope other people can get to enjoy it.
-Shaun Chaudhry
