Ford, Heche rough it
for 'Six Days, Seven
Nights'
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'Harrison Ford & Heche'
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NEW YORK -- In his last film, as
president of the United States, Harrison
Ford had to deal with Russian terrorists
hijacking Air Force One.
In his latest film, "Six Days, Seven
Nights" (which opens June 12), he's still
having plane trouble, but of a more
mundane kind.
This time out, Ford plays Quinn Harris,
a cargo pilot who makes his living
hopping between South Pacific islands.
It's an easy, relatively carefree life --
until he's hired by pushy New York
magazine editor Robin Monroe, played
by Anne Heche. When an unexpected
storm forces their plane to crash-land,
the mismatched and hopelessly
incompatible pair are left stranded on a
remote desert island.
That's the setup for "Six Days, Seven
Nights," the new comedy from Ivan
Reitman. Long one of Hollywood's
most prolific and dependable comedy
directors, Reitman's credits include a
string of box office hits that began in the
'80s with "Meatballs," "Stripes" and
"Ghostbusters" and carried on with
"Twins," "Kindergarten Cop," and
"Space Jam."
"This is really the first fairly pure
romance I've made, though," Reitman
said. "There's a romantic element in
most of the comedies I've made, but it
was always rather secondary to the rest
of the action. Here, that romance is the
most important element, and for most of
the film, there's just these two
characters on screen.
"And I loved the idea of their being
stranded on a desert island," he added.
"It's one of those mythic ideas that
people love, and it's showed up many
times in literature and in movies because
it offers the chance to live a life where
all the traditional rules are gone. I
always felt that was a great opportunity
for a comedy, and it's also the kind of
movie that hasn't really been done since
the '50s."
Flying Ford
Taking an appropriately old-fashioned
approach to his role, and the veteran
plane his character flies, Ford decided
to do most of his own flying for "Six
Days." "I think that was very important
for the film, as it's so much about the
romance of flying and what it means to
Quinn," the actor explained.
So did the flying come out of being involved with 'Air Force One'? "No, no."
Ford said with a laugh. "I always wanted to fly a plane, and I finally realized
that time was slipping away, and that I'd better get to it. And so about three
years ago, I began to start flying."
The irony of being an international superstar is that while you can obviously
do anything you want in terms of finances, time becomes an increasingly
precious commodity. Says Ford: "I continued to make films, and they kept
getting in the way of finishing my book-learning and test-taking (to become a
pilot). But I finally buckled down and got it done.
"I'm not so much interested in bigger planes or huge jets. I love flying in small
planes, like the one in this movie, which is a DeHavilland Beaver."
Heche 'hit the right notes'
With Ford eager to make the film and cleared by the insurance company to
do his own flying, Reitman's next challenge was finding a suitable partner. "I
had a sense of what I wanted to get out of him as an actor," the director
recalled, "and I needed an actress who could also hold the screen with him."
That actress turned out to be Heche, who was last seen in "Wag the Dog."
"She hit all the right notes for her character: a bit tough, a bit sarcastic yet
very feminine, and she and Harrison had this immediate chemistry," Reitman
said. "So I knew all the back-and-forth (bantering) stuff would work
between them, and that was vital as their relationship.
That left the director with just one more problem to solve. "We had to find
our desert island," Reitman said. "We checked out Bora Bora and then
Tahiti, which is closer to the real location of the story. But it's almost
impossible to get equipment there, and it didn't seem to be worth it. In the
end we settled on Kauai. And the truth is, Kauai is more picturesque and
gave us a broader range of terrain and locations. But it was still a very tough
shoot."
'A very tough shoot'
How tough? "It was one of the hardest
films I've ever made, even tougher than
shooting `Ghostbusters' in New York,"
he admitted. "You couldn't just wake up
in a hotel and drive to the set each day. It was always helicopter or boat, or
both.
"But on the plus side, it's Hawaii, which is part of America, so that made a
lot of the organization much easier. And there are good hotels and houses
there, so the living part of it was easy. It was the physical shooting that was
so hard, especially because a big chunk of it takes place on or near the
water, which is always tough, and over half the locations were inaccessible.
So we'd have to trek through jungle or be airlifted in before we even got
going, and that ate up an hour or two every day.
"And then Anne and Harrison got knocked about quite a bit," Reitman said.
"Even so," he added, the film was, "a great experience, especially working
with Harrison, who's very seasoned at these tough location shoots. He was a
great ally. And despite all the problems, I'd definitely do it again."