nacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid will not—we repeat—not be remembered at Oscar time. It's just not that kind of cinema. Rather, the pseudo-sequel to 1997's Anaconda is an old-fashioned B movie, a low-budget horror-adventure content to let pretty people bicker, then die one by one, devoured by oversized anacondas.
If you really need more plot, here goes: A team of scientists—KaDee Strickland, Matthew Marsden, Eugene Byrd, Salli Richardson-Whitfield and Morris Chestnut—heads off to Borneo in search of the titular Blood Orchid, a flower with Fountain of Youth-like properties that could make everyone involved in the expedition very, very rich. However, the flowers bloom for just a short time and exist only in a remote jungle, and so the group hires Johnny Messner—gruff captain of a beat-up old boat called the Bloody Mary—to ferry them through treacherous waters in the rainy season toward the Blood Orchids. Unfortunately, the monstrous anacondas are about to make their presence felt, considerably altering the mission at hand.
Strickland (The Grudge), Chestnut (The Cave), Marsden (Black Hawk Down) and Messner (Tarzan, Angel) recently sat down with Science Fiction Weekly to talk about the Aug. 27 release.
KaDee Strickland, you shot this on location in Fiji. Just how wet and dirty did you get?
Strickland: I lost a toenail. The water was so funky. That is true, and it grew back, as gross as that sounds. We were muddy and disgusting and in rain machines, and we were in the mud.
In fact, you know that sequence towards the end with me, where I have that little spill? When we shot that—it was a full moon, for one—that had local dirt and oil in it, and Dwight, being so amazing, and having been so good to me the whole shoot, I just wanted nothing more than to do what he asked of me. So he says to me, "You know what's in the water? So I want you to come out screaming."
I was doing a couple of takes where I'd have to come out and then [gasps]. So I had to come out with my mouth open. Well, I got a lot of that local dirt and oily water in my system, and the next day it was not pretty. It was uncomfortable, but it was worth it. It really was worth it, because you can't do that movie and not be covered in dirt and rain and stuff.
Had you seen the first movie?
Strickland: I actually didn't remember it that well. I sort of did. I mean, you can't help but remember [Jon] Voight. He just stands right out. We all did such bad impersonations of him the entire time we were shooting. But I had seen the first one, yes, and I thought, OK, let's see what happens. But then when I met [producer] Verna [Harrah] and [director] Dwight Little, it just sealed the deal, because I knew they didn't want to remake the first one, and I knew they wanted to up the stakes. I knew that they really wanted, for the genre, to make a classy film. For the genre, he referenced ...
Any worries about using the word classy and killer snakes in the same thought?
Strickland: Well, you know that one section where we come across the village [and there's a gutted snake with a human body revealed to be inside]? That body with the snake is an actual photograph from National Geographic. It does happen. That wasn't fake. We saw that picture and went, "Oh my God." So that kind of stuff does exist.
Now, what is the challenge to play full out with your imagination, as an actor, when you do a job like this? I think there are films of this genre that are much worse than this, and very corny. I think we've done a good job with the genre, staying true to it. I know that in terms of myself, [who] I can only really speak for, but also having been a part of it, everyone worked really hard to give a genuine response to what it is to be that afraid. We didn't go in and phone it in.
So when I say classy, it was a lot of thought. It was a lot of thought put into the character work. "What do I want to do to make sure that the character started out one way and ended another?" That the audience really invested in what was happening with us so that it wasn't just another B movie, so that you cared if someone went missing. You cared if they couldn't get out. And that's what we hoped to do, and that's what I mean by classy.
What can you tell us about your next film, The Grudge?
Strickland: The Grudge was a wonderful opportunity for a number of reasons. I had just gotten back from doing this. It came to me right when I got back. It was a slew of scripts and stuff, and I was just ready to go to the next job, because I was so juiced up after having done this. It's what I love. So I couldn't wait. I was like, "What's next, what's next?"
I went in for The Grudge, and the director was in Japan, and he was going to put me on tape. I think [producer] Sam Raimi had a large hand in the casting of that film, as did the director. The good folks at Sony were seeing footage of me, so they were very supportive of taking another risk with me. I was just very happy about it. That film appealed to me because there was the challenge of having a director and a crew that didn't speak English. There was the challenge of doing a character that spent most of her screen time by herself, which is really a very intense process, because you really have to be on your Ps and Qs.
But again, in terms of having a director and a crew that didn't speak English, I had a wonderful acting teacher that I worked with here, Maggie Flannagan, who's just brilliant. She used to tell us to watch films with the sound off, and if you understood the performance, then the actor was doing their job. And I thought, "Well, this will be an interesting way of having to do what I was taught." Because if the director didn't know what I was doing, then I'm doing it wrong. Because this was his story, this was his baby. He's told it before, so he's very specific, down to the way you breathe. It was amazing. That was an amazing thing to sort of have to live out as an actor. So I was really thrilled with that.
How familiar were you with snakes before the film?
Strickland: Well, I visited them on the farm growing up and ran like hell a lot. There were rattlesnakes and water moccasins. I almost had one jump in a boat with me once.
Anacondas is rated PG-13, and it feels that way; less gore, little sexuality. Will we see an R-rated version of this film on DVD, with more blood and sexuality and so on?
Strickland: The bra straps came out occasionally. There is a rule that there can be no bra straps. I'm dead serious. In PG-13, we had to watch for bra straps, and eventually it was just ridiculous, because you can't run around the jungle in a tank top and not see a bra strap. But there are rules like that that you have to adhere to. I like [the PG-13 rating] because it does make it more accessible to a wider audience. That's the good thing. That's the upshot of that.
Does it matter to you that there are no anacondas in Borneo?
Strickland: It does matter to me. However, I will not profess to even remotely sound like I didn't know that when I took the job. It was more about taking the job and what that would be like to live out for me. Now, if I'm doing Shakespeare or if I'm doing Chekhov, I'm not going to be so flip about it. I wasn't. If I'm doing a different type of film—look, it was part of a struggle when they called me and said "snake movie." But the thing is that I know what I'm getting myself into, and it's a challenge, and it's great fun, and it's a romp. The audience for this film, I don't think, goes to have the facts checked right.
Morris Chestnut, your co-star, KaDee Strickland, said she didn't get caught up in the accuracy—or inaccuracy—of the details in Anacondas. What are your thoughts on the subject? As an actor, when should you care and when should you let it go?
Chestnut: Well, if we were dealing with serious issues, if, for instance, we did an autobiography on someone, based on their life, or we're dealing with issues such as cancer or things that people would really need to take seriously, then as an actor I would pay attention to it. But this type of movie, where people just want to be entertained by a snake that's running around eating people [laughs], I'm not really that concerned with the accuracy of it. Do I know there are inconsistencies? Yeah, I do. Do I care? No, I don't, because if they go to the movie and they're entertained by it, then I think that was the purpose of this movie.
Did you get any tips from Ice Cube on how to deal with the snakes?
Chestnut: Nah [laughs]. You know, I look at the movie and there's no way, because they had, like, real snakes there, and I'm afraid of snakes, so I couldn't have done that.
That's not a comfort zone for you?
Chestnut: No. Snakes? Not at all. Not at all. I'm very fearful of snakes.
Does it put added pressure on you?
Chestnut: No, because the snake is the star, you know? I really wasn't concerned about that, because I knew I was going be in and out, and I knew that the draw [was the snakes].
Matthew Marsden, we've been asking everybody about the facts as they apply to Anacondas. There are no anacondas in Borneo, for example. When should an actor care about such things?
Marsden: That's a great question. It's funny; there's a scene that isn't in the movie. There's a part that obviously didn't make it, where we spot a flower. We look through the binoculars for a flower, and it's not the flower that we want, but it's a very important find. I have all the technical jargon to say, obviously, because I'm English. So they gave me all the technical jargon. "He can cope with it." That's why we get all the lead roles and all the great classical roles, with the skirts and the togs and everything, because we're English.
So anyway, it was a really tough scene. I was working, working, working because I'm anal about getting my lines bang-on. I don't like fluffing my lines at all. So we get on set and I have to say "vidiumvidificus." The script supervisor comes up to me and says, "We've got the wrong name for the flower, but it doesn't matter." I went, "It does matter! It matters!" I'm there going, "vidiumvidificus, vidiumvidificus, vidiumvidificus." And she tells me this just before we're shooting. How many times did I balls it up? It was unbelievable. I just keep getting it wrong. I can say it now. But I kept going until I got it. And it was cut out of the movie, which was wonderful. OK, I've got to be careful here ...
It is a B movie, right?
Marsden: That makes a difference, I think. You can't go through everything and go, "That's not right, that's not right, that's not right, that's not right." Initially when I read it, I knew straight off that anacondas don't come from Borneo. So that's where you go, "OK, suspension of disbelief."
But they're not from Borneo. They can't smell a female snake's scent from miles away. They can't ...
Marsden: That's great.
You say "That's great." Do you say, "Hey, I know what I meant" and just go for it?
Marsden: No, I don't. You can look at it two ways. You can look at the script and go, "I'm going to take this script, and in this reality, and in what this reality means to me, and I have to find the truth in it for myself." In that reality you can [believe] anacondas are in Borneo. I mean, there aren't 50-foot snakes. It's not like when we did Black Hawk Down. We got everything right, down to the way we held the guns, the way we moved, because we were talking about real people. That's a very, very serious thing. I can't speak for everyone. Every actor has a different way of approaching a role. As far as I was concerned, [on Anacondas] I was given what I was given and I made that work. You've got to make it work. There's a point where you have to [not worry about reality vs. fantasy]. The shoot would have been a year long if every time we'd gone, "Hold on a second. Hold on a second. Borneo. Anacondas. Not in."
What are your favorite parts of Anacondas?
Marsden: I thought Eugene Byrd was really good all the way through. I thought he provided some real great comic relief. I liked when Karl [Yune, who plays Messner's partner] got done in underwater. It's difficult for an actor to sit and watch a movie and be objective. You always think, "Is that the way that went?" You dismantle it. I thought the snake was pretty good. The one shot I really like was the over-the-top shot with the snake in between us. I thought that was really great and smart. There's a few shots in there I was happy with. It is the movie it is. It is what it is. It is of that genre.
Johnny Messner, you're a big, tough guy. What scares you?
Messner: Impotence. That and spiders. Yeah, I hate spiders.
Was the spider that wreaks some havoc in Anacondas a CGI spider?
Messner: No, it was not. It was a real spider. We couldn't use [a poisonous spider] for insurance reasons. But it was supposed to be, and it was a really scary spider. A good thing I didn't have to touch it.
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Also in this issue:
Takashi Shimizu, director of Ju-On: The Grudge
