Denzel Washington, what about that chemistry you have with Paul Patton?

Washington: You know, Tony Scott said, "You know, I got this girl, you don't know her, she hasn't done anything, but she's right for the part." I read with her, and I was not nervous, but just like, "Well, you know, she hadn't done anything." ... But she's a lovely girl, and she's a sweetheart, and she has—he was right, she has that quality that you want to care about her, or you want to take care of her.So do you have déjà vu a lot?

Washington: I don't know. You know what? I don't know, I had one today. I'm sitting, I'm going to get the mail out of the mailbox, and I'm walking around, and I'm out in the street, and by my front gate, and I said, "I got a feeling somebody's gonna drive by." So I just stood out there. And a white truck comes by, and it stops, and it backs up, and it's Eddie Murphy. And I just had a feeling somebody was getting close—"ah, just give me another second"—and it wasn't 10 seconds and he drove by and gave me the whole scoop on Dreamgirls.This is your third time with Tony Scott, and you've also worked with his brother Ridley Scott recently. What's that like?

Washington: Yeah, third time with Tony [Scott], third time with Jerry [Bruckheimer] as well. And you know, needless to say, we've had tremendous success. I like working with Tony. I hope to do more movies with him. I must be the first person in the business to work with Tony Scott and Ridley Scott in the same year. You know, obviously Tony and Jerry know what they're doing, and when they call me up and say, "Hey, we've got this idea, and this is what we want to do," then I listen.The shoot was originally scheduled for New Orleans before Katrina hit, and then you were going to Seattle, but Tony said you insisted on sticking with New Orleans to help the hurricane victims. Is that true?

Washington: I don't know if that's completely true. I insisted? Maybe I did. Did I? ... I wanted to help the victims. ... OK, number one, I didn't insist. This is Tony Scott's decision. It's his movie; he wanted to make the film in New Orleans, before Katrina. Post-Katrina, he looked at other locations that he didn't feel comfortable about. He felt New Orleans was the place, and I may have said, "If that's what you feel, then let's do what you want," you know. But I insisted—it's really the filmmaker's decision, not the actors.What did you do when you got to the city?

Washington: I went all around the city. I'm glad to have been a part of helping them get their film community back in there. There's tremendous devastation that was, you know, a lot of listening to people's stories of what they'd been through. There's a long way to go there, and I'm glad to be a part, in some way, of helping to spend money down there and put people to work.How did you try to wrap your head around the space-time continuum in this film?

Washington: Tony and Jerry had to somewhat convince me that this could work, and the original screenplay, I was like, "Hmmm, I don't know, fellas." Tony was saying, "Look, we want to steep this in facts about surveillance, what it's capable of, and pushing that envelope," and a lot of what we're doing and what you see, they are capable of. I don't know about the multi angles and all of that, but we do have the technology. As you all know, if you Google Earth, you can look at somebody's house. We do have the technology where you can look through somebody's house. They use it in Baghdad as we speak, or in Iraq. Where you see a heat signature. Where it's going now, or has already gone—I don't know—is that by gathering your genetic information, DNA and all of that type of information, they can then identify you as opposed to me. So [they] can look at your house from 18 miles above, see your signature, know what your makeup is, know that that's you, in the bathroom doing whatever, you know what I mean? So in the bombings in London, it wasn't just video surveillance, it was more than just video surveillance that got the job done. So it does raise the question, how far are we willing to go, or is it already too late? Who knows? Who knows?How would you compare working with the Scott brothers?

Washington: Uh. I don't know. Tony likes to draw. He's an artist, so he draws a lot of storyboards and all that kind of stuff. Maybe Ridley does, too, but I don't see them. It feels like he's more seeing what happens moment to moment and adjusting. But I don't know what type of preparation. I know Tony more because I've done three films with him. As it will all turn out, we'll see. Obviously Ridley knows what he's doing. He's made some good pictures. It's good working with him.Do you believe in romantic destiny?

Washington: I guess so, yeah. Why not? I mean, people—it has happened to people. Didn't happen to me—like I've known them before—but I guess, why not? Why not?What kind of training did you do to play an Alcohol, Tabacco and Firearms agent?

Washington: Tony, like myself, likes research. He always tracks down real guys who do—we did it with Man on Fire, we did it with Crimson Tide, and we did it with Déjà Vu. There was a guy, he was an ATF guy who was instrumental in figuring out the Oklahoma City bombing. We used that—we used his methods and applied it directly to this film. They found small pieces of plastic in the destruction of the federal building, they identified it, tracked it, found out it came from barrels, found out where they were made, found out where they were purchased, and they already had [Timothy] McVeigh at the time, but they were able to connect him to those things. We took that directly and applied it to our story. When he would get very tired, working 20, 30 hours at a time, he said if you brush your teeth, it's like getting an hour's sleep. I put that in the movie. I brushed my teeth in the scene. So I like, and as Tony likes, finding real people, and you know ...What was it like working with Jim Caviezel?

Washington: He's intense! He is intense. He's obviously very good, and you know, I was kind of surprised, like, "Oh, OK, he's investing in the dark side." He was willing to go the whole way. He's a very spiritual man, and [a] very intense individual, and very good. And it's that same intensity that can be applied to the good side of things, or to—you know, his character thinks he's right, even for spiritual or religious reasons, he's a zealot, he's a nut. The character. The character!

Jim Caviezel, what did you do to research this part?

Caviezel: You know, I picked up several—I wasn't very specific, I picked up several—oh, I don't know, probably about 15 different cases that I watched and read and picked. What I found, though, was there was a difference between the sort of, like, the serial killer and the Unabomber type. One is more sexual, and the other one is more destiny, and the other one has sexual power or some sort, but both narcissistic nonetheless.How do you personally feel about blowing stuff up and shooting guns?

Caviezel: Personally feel? You know, I look at it this way. I look at a script. You have to have a good guy, and you have to have a bad guy. And so, if you have no bad guy, then you have a good guy that becomes gooder—excuse my grammar.You did a time-travel movie called Frequency before. Did that help you with this at all?

Caviezel: You stay with the character, you do the research. You have to be honest and tell the truth of what those kind of guys are like. And I think that for playing a bad guy bad, is playing him that says, "Oooh, I'm Dr. Evil." I enjoy evil versus saying I'm the good guy here, Denzel [Washington] is the bad guy working for the government, and they left us down here, and we are—but at the same time you have to see through that, because this guy, he wasn't part of that area, he was using it.There were some dangerous stunts you did. Did you get hurt? Like on the scene on the airboat?

Caviezel: Yeah, I got hurt on that one. Yeah, I got hurt on that pretty good. ... And it's hysterical, the first time I get on that airboat machine, I was like how are you gonna—do we need a tow truck here or something? They said, "No, Jim, this is like ... you're in the water, and then there's an island there, and then you go over the island, and now you're back in the water." And they work. But where they're weak is, if you have to turn. And if you're at full throttle, you can't—you need about 10 percent to turn, you're blowing air, so if you're at full maximum, you have no excess air to turn it, so you want to go about 90—you know, full speed, you want to go about 90 percent, always reserve that in case you have to turn it, and it's just a handle here. And there's nothing holding you down, so if you get hurt, hello, goodbye!... I got some really bad wrecks, and my knee, but you know. ... At least my shoulder wasn't dislocated.What do you think of parallel universes?

Caviezel: Eh. I mean, look, Tony Scott came in to me, and he said, "This is not science fiction, Jim, it's science fact." Then he gave me a cornucopia of magazines and said, "Here you go." And wow. I started going through it, thinking, how are they gonna even figure this out? But then I thought, you know, 20 years ago, who would have ever thought of the Internet? They would've thought the guy was crazy. And technology should be used for good, but sometimes we don't think about whether it could be used for bad. And should you stop? No, I don't think so, but I think there has to be—we have to be responsible, and understand that a guy like—even without technology, if a man had a gift of understanding—having a sixth sense, like Denzel, and abusing it, what could he get away with, how many people could he kill? Have you ever had a déjà vu moment?

Caviezel: Yes, I did. I remember the very first one I had in my whole life. I was like 8 years old, and I was coming home from school, and I remember this vividly because Fridays were my favorite moment, after school, because it was the beginning of free time. And after cartoons on Saturday morning, I went outside, and I loved walking out and slamming my foot down and saying "cartoons is over." That was back in the days when you got up early and never slept in, because you wanted Saturday morning cartoons. That was before a VCR and whatnot, and so we were out playing, and playing this game called Snake in the Grass. And we all got to be up; I didn't have to do my homework that night, and we were out playing, playing for hours. Got done, walked the hill, and it hit me. And I knew, that moment I would never forget. And I didn't know what it was, but later on the phenomenon kept coming up over time. Other people have experienced that, so I think Jerry Bruckheimer made a great call in putting that on his film.Can you talk about Outlander and Unknown?

Caviezel: Just go see them both. The Outlander one is going to be big, Unknown is great; it's done incredible in Japan and Spain, and several countries in film festivals and whatnot, it's done extremely well. Smaller film, you know. Outlander is a lot bigger, kind of like Braveheart and Highlander, somewhat, and really not.

Tony Scott, tell us about working with Jim Caviezel.

Scott: Yeah. I didn't know what I was really looking for, because, you know, there's the terrorists, and you can always go archetypal, and that can tend to be too bored. I always do my homework and did research and read transcripts on McVeigh after he was caught, and BTK and some others, and I honed in on McVeigh. And I was searching for an actor, and I had someone else in the back of my mind, and then J.C came in. I sat with him for two minutes and realized this was him. Was the movie originally set in New Orleans?

Scott: No, Long Island. I felt that the city should be a full character in the movie, and I'd never been to New Orleans, and so I saw the city in a time warp. It's very romantic, it's very strange, and it seemed like a perfect backdrop.You were set to go in fall of last year, but then Katrina [hit] last year. Did you have a fallback plan?

Scott: I knew the city would recover, and I thought, "Let's go back." I wanted to incorporate more post-Katrina into the story, and I did, but then I got shot so down ... But we did incorporate Jim's character into the 9th Ward, and, uh ... but it's hard getting back there, because people didn't want to go back there because of insurance and all that stuff, but the vision of the city in this moment ...Were you kind of shooting two movies at once because you had the surveillance stuff going on at the same time?

Scott: Yes, what was hard was that we had to shoot into the main line. ... We shot for 14 weeks, we shut down for two weeks. ... I had a very good continuity girl. She became a very neurotic continuity girl, trying to keep a balance. It was a tough one.How challenging was it to deal with the obviously necessary exposition scenes to deal with string theory and parallel universes?

Scott:I always wanted to make this movie science fact, not science fiction, and we had this authority called Brian Greene. He's the American Stephen Hawking, and Brian came in, and he brought it to a level that people in the general public could understand it as well as me, because I'm not a big science-fiction or time-bending buff. So I suppose he dumbed it down, but he didn't just dumb it down, he made it accessible. All those routines, the ones that Adam [Goldberg] did, are his that we had on videotape, the folding of the paper, and the discussion and talk. We had it for the writers, we had it for Adam. ... And so one of my biggest concerns for the movie was that [it's] 40 minutes in that room. It could have been 40 minutes of talking heads. ... I hoped that it brought it to life and that it did work.What extra stuff do you have for the DVD?

Scott: This is PG-13, and when you get the DVD you can see it as an R. There's a lot more stuff with Caviezel, more stuff in the lab. There's not much more in terms of the love story; that's all on the screen. Editing is a process. ... They will have a director's cut with additional scenes and an additional point of view, a different tone. It's a big tone difference. ... I was contracted to bring in a PG-13; I don't know why. ... All my other movies have been Rs, hard Rs. ... This one felt like it didn't have to be. It wasn't a story that didn't need language or didn't require any more violence than it had in there.If you had your druthers, which version would you prefer, this one or the DVD?

Scott: Being political? This one. ... Ridley's film, Kingdom of Heaven, the long version was so much better. I don't like long movies, but the longer version was better. Storywise, it's hard to make sense of it. No one makes toga movies better than my brother. In the history of movie making ... nobody touches him, none of the greats, in capturing that atmosphere, the mood, and the danger the period. ... Gladiator, the guys in the woods, the Huns and stuff, it was fantastic. ... He's a master. ... It was so disappointing, for him and for me, and it had to be cut down, and it's the nature of the business. You get one screening a night, for three hours, as opposed to two.You've worked with a lot of these people before. Can you talk about working with Denzel again?

Scott: I think he's committed. ... He lost some 30 pounds of weight, which shows a level of commitment in Denzel, There's a certain gravity and seriousness to Denzel, and also tremendous likability. He and I can get on because we've done three movies together, and I trust that he can keep delivering the goods, and that trust comes out of research, so there's a tremendous amount of research. We found role models to this character. ... It's very hard talking to actors about how they should do the lines, and there were many cops, many FBI agents Denzel met.

Paula Patton, how creepy was it to shoot with different cameras on you that you don't know are there?

Patton: It is a bit of a challenge, because you want to make it as honest and realistic as possible, so you want to be the way you'd be at home in your underwear, by yourself. They don't really want to see you picking your nose, but you want to be that comfortable, you know. I think it's a challenge as an actor to make sure that you don't overdo it. ... You never know, really, where they are. It allows you to feel as if you're by yourself, and that helps a lot, instead of having a big camera in your face, you know.You filmed the car scene in the Mississippi River?

Patton: The car was not in the Mississippi. I wouldn't be here today. [Laughs.] But we did do one thing in the Mississippi. ... Where the water was calm, when I come out of the water, and then when they pull me out of the Mississippi, that was actually the Mississippi River. And that was the one time ... I'll do anything for Tony, because he's so charming and so wonderful, and it's hard to say no to him. But he said, "OK, Paula, do you mind going in the Mississippi River?" [Laughs.] Now, the whole time we're listening to people tell ... is that the Mississippi River is, like, the most dangerous river, they've lost so many lives. And I'm like, "That Mississippi River right there?" So the Coast Guard, they dropped me into the water, and the current is so fast that my legs immediately [went] like this, and I'm hearing them going [struggling sound] to pull me out of the water. Now I'm like, "These are two big guys. And if they're making that noise, we're in trouble." So that was a scary moment. But the other thing, to answer your question, was in this tank. But I was pretty frightened of it, because this is the biggest tank in Hollywood, in America. There's another big tank, I think, in Mexico. And it felt like being in the ocean. It's 50 feet, at least, deep, and 50 feet wide. And it just feels like you're in this massive water. I mean, they've got boats on it, you know, to get you to the right area. So it's pretty intense.How intimidating was the shower scene?

Patton: [Laughs.] You know what? That's when you just go, "I trust you, Tony. I trust you to do the right thing by me." And I really don't know how many cameras were going, because actually, when I saw the movie, I didn't remember there being a camera from up above. I was like, "Oh! I think he snuck that one in on me!" [Laughs.] We had talked about it. My idea of nudity—as of now, so don't hold me to this; this is how I feel at this moment—is that if it makes sense for the film and it's not in a sexual way ... Because I feel like you can do sex scenes that are really sexy without having to see nudity. ... I think he did it really tastefully, and for a very short period of time, and short enough that my parents won't want to kill themselves. I think. It works for the movie, because you are being a voyeur in her world, and so it sort of happens that you see her like that. So I said, "OK, Tony, I trust you!"What was the working dynamic between you and Denzel like?

Patton: I met Denzel when I had to do my last, final read for the movie. That was the first time I met him. And then after that, we did talk a little bit, but we didn't talk about our characters. He's not a rehearsal guy. He prepares on his own, and I prepared on my own, and he likes to then get into the scene and see what happens. ... I think that's why he's such a captivating actor, Denzel, is because he's always in the moment, and he always believes whatever he's doing, and that's why we believe it with him, because he just is in the moment and feels it. I tried to learn from him.Were you intimidated by his career, which includes two Oscars?

Patton: Absolutely. I really had to sort of pump myself up to get in the room with Denzel, to be honest with you, the first audition, because I thought, "This is overwhelming. This guy has won two Oscars, and I'm going to act with him now for an audition?" You always feel that away from the set, but you can't bring that to the set. When you go home and you watch all his movies, you're like, "What am I doing? Did they make a mistake? Why am I here?" [Laughs.] But when you sit down and you have to start working with him, he has to just be a human being, and he has to become that character for you, or else you're going to get swallowed up and lose yourself. [Laughs.]Did you have any deja vu moments while you were on the set, like imagining doing a scene with Denzel once before?

Patton: Perhaps in a dream! But not the scenes that we were doing. [Laughs.] No, I didn't have a deja vu moment on that movie, but we, of course, had all those deja vu jokes. Ever had a deja vu moment personally?

Patton: Yeah, I think we've all sort of had them in life. You feel like you've been somewhere before, and you know you haven't, but it just feels eerily familiar. The same thing with a person that you meet. You sometimes just look at them and there's a connection. And they're like, "I don't know you," but you're like, "I know you, I'm sure of it!" And you wonder what that is. We've all had it. It's strange. It's an odd sensation.You said Denzel was spontaneous on the set. Did he do things that really threw you?

Patton: He was always throwing things at me. But I guess the one that surprised me the most is that ... we had talked about maybe in that moment when we kiss, that "maybe we should, or maybe we shouldn't," but we didn't. ... He doesn't like to plan out anything. And so we were doing the scene, and he goes in for the kiss. And I was a little bit taken aback. I bit his lip. It was like, "Oh my God!" And I thought, "OK, now Denzel thinks I'm a bad kisser. Great. Great!" So that was one of those moments where I was like, "I wish I was a little more prepared. I would have put lip balm on." [Laughs.]

Jerry Bruckheimer, this is your sixth time with Tony Scott. What do you think of him as a director?

Bruckheimer: You know, he's a real artist. He's a painter; he's a fabulous filmmaker. All his movies look brilliant because it's him. No matter who the cinematographer is, it's really Tony who's setting lights. He's setting the angles. He sets everything. ... He's the hardest-working man I know. He just doesn't stop.How do the Scott brothers differ?

Bruckheimer: Ridley's the older brother. He's professorial-like. He's very calm. He's done it all, seen it all, nothing rattles him. Tony still has that energy. Not that Ridley doesn't, but it's just a whole different kind of way they operate. Were you concerned that some of the science and string theory stuff was too complicated to explain in a movie?

Bruckheimer: Yeah, we kept trimming it. We worried about it in the script, and we trimmed it in the script, and we saw it on screen; we kept trimming it. Kept condensing it. I think the audience needs it to try to understand. It's hard to understand, ... I understand a little bit of it. I sort of understand it. I understand the branching theory. I understand the parallel universe theory. ... We're in this room right now, and there's another universe going on where we're in this room talking about something totally different. How do you jump between the two? ... The branching is pretty simple. We're on a river, significant event happens in that river, which creates the tributary, and you forget about the river you were just on. So all knowledge of that is gone. So that's what the physicists tell us. And I understand when you look in a mirror, you're looking in the past, because it takes X amount of time for the light to hit your eye.

Adam Goldberg, you had a world's leading expert in string theory, Brian Greene, as a consultant. Did you become an expert yourself because he was there explaining things to you?

Goldberg: I don't have the proclivity for that kind of thinking, and I was an expert and could explain it for maybe two weeks, but it's all out the window. I spoke to Brian when things were not adding up and I did not understand the theory. Of course, I became more and more immersed in it, but at [a] certain point we were throwing a lot of different theories out there that all were subject to interpretation.What was the most fascinating aspect of it all to you?

Goldberg: I think the whole bending of time thing. I'm not equipped to explain it, and unless you see [it] in equations some people don't understand it, but the idea of warping space is interesting, and you have to have the energy to keep a wormhole open so that it doesn't break apart and keep it open so that the molecules don't disintegrate what is passing through it.Do you have any experiences with déjà vu?

Goldberg: I think it has something to do with excessive drinking. You know, you say something and then you hear it again a few days later, but don't remember it ... it's not that scientific at all. I think it's all based on dreams, something you remember that you've dreamed. Bill Marsilii, you wrote this mostly over the Internet with Terry Rossio. How did you deal with some of the elements of time travel?

Marsilii: One of prevailing rules of time travel is that you can't change the past. Time is another character in the movie. It keeps outwitting him each time he tries to change it. It was tough to deal with the time-travel conventions, but it was ultimately more rewarding. You dealt a lot with the real science. How did that come about, and did it hamper you at all?

Marsilii: There weren't any great moments that we let go because the science did not fit. Once you accept these goggles, for example, that can see into the future, then we made it see how much trouble we could get into with them. ... With the science we did everything we could to show it realistically. We did not want to go into what Star Trek fans call "technobabble," because the more you explain it, then the more you don't understand it, which is why [Denzel's character] gets angrier and says things like "I'll speak slowly so the Ph.D.s in the room can understand." It can be frustrating to try to wrap your minds around that.Why four days and six hours for the time gap?

Marsilii: OK, I'm telling you a secret: The big reason for four days and six hours, the only reason for the six hours, was so that you could have the bad guy driving at night and the good guy driving during rush hour.