Deepwater Horizon' filmmakers aim to honor, not exploit, disaster's victims

Mike Scott, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

on August 19, 2016 at 7:42 AM, updated August 19, 2016 at 8:37 AM

Perched some 50 feet in the muggy Louisiana night air, at the edge of a nearly full-size replica of the massive Deepwater Horizon oil rig, Mark Wahlberg and Kurt Russell are watching their step. Teetering on the edge of a platform as cameras roll, the actors are struggling to launch a life raft as part of a fiery scene in which their characters -- based on real-life men aboard the rig when it exploded in 2010, killing 11 and triggering the BP oil spill -- prepare to plunge into the Gulf.

They heave on a rope designed to trigger inflation of the raft. Nothing. Then they heave again. And again. The cameras continue to roll, the flickering orange light from a stadium-size video screen bathing the whole scene in a hellish light. Finally, the raft obeys -- but not soon enough. Director Peter Berg wants them to do it once more. And so they reset and go again.

Clearly, making a disaster drama like "Deepwater Horizon" is not for the weak of heart.

Down below, however, in the surrounding swamp that has reclaimed much of the abandoned Six Flags New Orleans amusement park, where the rig set was built in spring 2015, a hazard of another sort awaits. And this one potentially has even sharper teeth than those of the uninvited alligator co-star Gina Rodriguez witnessed being relocated from the set a few nights earlier.

It is the fear of exploitation, a word that unfailingly raises the hair on the backs of producers' necks whenever Hollywood swoops in to make a narrative version of a real-life tragedy such as the Deepwater Horizon disaster. In this case, it's a hazard to which the filmmakers are keenly aware -- and just as keen to put to rest once and for all.

"We've been concerned about it from the beginning," producer Mark Vahradian said in a corner of a noisy mess tent erected to feed the film's crew in the shadow of the towering oil rig set. "Every movie that's about a real-life event where people died can be perceived as exploitation. In our minds, this was an opportunity to give a voice to the men, to memorialize those men who never had their day, who were forgotten amidst the oil spill part of this."

As "Deepwater Horizon" prepares to hit theaters on Sept. 30, delivering that message is now as important as ever.

Initially, "All is Lost" filmmaker J.C. Chandor was signed to direct Summit Entertainment's "Deepwater Horizon," with a broad vision described as more all-encompassing of the disaster and its lingering environmental aftermath. When Chandor departed the project shortly before filming in early 2015 -- with the deliberately vague "creative differences" cited as the reason -- "Lone Survivor" filmmaker Peter Berg was brought on board to assume the helm. Immediately, the scope of the story narrowed.

Gone was the focus on the lingering environmental fallout from the spill or any sense of corporate finger-pointing and fault-finding. After all, that had been covered extensively in the media, Berg said.

Instead, a decision was made to focus on the disaster's human toll -- and specifically on those stories of the 126 men and women who fought for their lives in the oil-fueled inferno on the night of April 20, 2010. Most prominently, that includes the story of Mike Williams, the rig's chief electronics technician, whom Wahlberg portrays in the film.

"You remind yourself every day why you're doing it and who you're doing it for," Wahlberg said between takes on that balmy Louisiana night, catching a breather on a makeshift patio outside his trailer on the Six Flags set. "That's the people who lost their lives, everyone who was affected by it, certainly Mike and his wife and daughter.

"They seem to lose touch, some of the media, with the human elements of the story, and they focus on the environmental disaster, which is obviously horrible -- but you're talking about 11 people losing their lives. That's pretty substantial. I feel like that should always be the most important aspect of it."

Unlike many fact-based movies, a decision was made with "Deepwater Horizon" to avoid composite characters -- in which one character represents the traits or actions of multiple people as a way to streamline the storytelling -- so as not to short-change the memory of anyone. Pictures of the 11 men killed in the explosion were hung on the walls of the film's Chalmette production offices as a reminder to the cast and crew about why they were really making the film.

"That's it," Berg said in reference to the pictures of the fallen as his film was gearing up to begin filming. "That's the heart and soul of this film. I don't know how many hundreds or thousands of people are going to move through this office by the time it's done, and it's very, very important to all of us -- and me -- very important that we never forget that this is a human story."

Victims' memories will be honored, not exploited, by upcoming film, he promises

In talking with the cast and crew of the film, that theme comes up time and again. So do such words as "authenticity" and "honesty." It's something Berg knows a thing or two about, as director of 2013's fact-based military film "Lone Survivor," which also starred Mark Wahlberg -- and which also recounted a deep human tragedy.

In that spirit of authenticity, survivor Williams – who caught Berg and company's attention as the "star" of a powerful "60 Minutes" piece about the disaster -- was brought on board as an on-set consultant. Oil-field workers were hired to help build the oil rig set and to appear on-screen as extras. Rodriguez, who portrays Deepwater Horizon worker Andrea Fleytas, was dispatched to Houston's oil country to take classes in Fleytas' area of expertise, to make her appear that much more convincing on-screen.

Off-screen, screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan and Matthew Sand pored over court transcripts -- as well as a blow-by-blow account of that fateful night published by The New York Times -- to recreate as much of the events of the disaster as accurately as possible.

"We literally have volumes and reams of documents about who was where when, literally within square feet of where they were standing when things happened. So this is a very accurate depiction," producer Vahdrian said.

The production also took pains to reach out to representatives of the families of all those who perished in the disaster and involve them in the process. That included inviting them to the set to visit the actors who will be portraying their loved ones. For those nearly 100 Deepwater Horizon survivors who weren't a part of the film, the production had someone on staff for the bulk of the shoot to act as liaison, answering their questions and helping assure them that their suffering wasn't being exploited.

Still, though, there are skeptics -- those who think the movie is only using a tragedy to make money. And that's understandable.

But if the "Deepwater Horizon" filmmakers accomplish what they set out to accomplish, any such fears will be assuaged on Sept. 30, when the film is released nationally into theaters.

"They want to know you'll get it right," Vahradian said. "I think that's a concern. They just didn't know what to expect at the beginning, and we wanted to make it clear to them we're not here to exploit the deaths of their loved ones. We really wanted to shine a light on it, shine a light on what they do."

Video Links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yASbM8M2vg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnrIE8TrgSA