About the Production
“Turistas” is the first American production to shoot entirely in the country of Brazil.
Brazil. Beautiful women, pristine beaches, a friendly, open culture. Alex (Josh Duhamel) is accompanying his sister Bea (Olivia Wilde) and her best friend Amy (Beau Garrett) for their first time abroad – young Americans who have come to exotic Brazil for fun, adventure and the promise of foreign pleasures. On a rickety bus rocketing up a twisting mountain road, they meet the beautiful Pru (Melissa George), who speaks the native language Portuguese, and Finn and Liam (Desmond Askew and Max Brown), in Brazil for the sole purpose of experiencing the beautiful Brazilian women they’ve heard so much about first hand.
After enduring a harrowing bus crash which strands them in what seems to be the middle of nowhere, Alex, Bea, and their band of traveling companions attempt to salvage their day by seeking out a cabana bar on a nearby beach rather than wait an endless amount of time for the next bus to come by. This seemingly small decision will change all their fates forever.
The discovery of the beautiful and secluded beach gives way to a day in the sun and surf, an afternoon at the bar, and a night of exotic liquors and hot dancing with the locals. It’s everything their vacation is supposed to be, until they wake up face down in the sand the following morning, drugged and robbed, their possessions gone, and the trace of very real danger in the air. There are places where Americans can travel without worry or fear, but this remote paradise is not one of them.
The farther the group travels into this mysterious and isolated Brazilian community, the further they are from the possibility of escape…and the closer they come to the dark secret that waits for them in the lush jungle and underground caverns of the Brazilian jungle, and they must fight a primal battle for their lives in the most terrifying of all human traps.
The Journey to Brazil
“Turistas” is the first American production shot entirely in the country of Brazil. The production took residence in Brazil for five months (including preproduction), and filmed at locations including the lush jungles and pristine beaches of Ubatuba and the otherworldly underground water-filled caves near Lencois, which had never before been used as a production location.
“We shot the film in a small Brazilian beach town, called Ubatuba and Itamambuca, half-way between Rio and San Paulo,” comments the director. “And we cast a lot of local non-actors to play Brazilians. There were some language issues as many of the local actors and the majority of the crew spoke little if any English and my Portuguese is terrible.”
Nonetheless, the director found shooting in Brazil, with an almost entirely Brazilian crew, to be a “revelation.” “They worked with a passionate intensity and flexibility that had nothing to do with compensation,” he says. “If they liked you, they would work for hours without any talk of overtime (which doesn’t really exist in Brazil). If you pissed them off, they could just decide they were done with filming that day.”
Upon arriving in the vast South American country, the cast and key crew had some unsettling experiences of their own. “Five minutes outside of the Rio airport, we looked over and saw a boy sticking a .9mm gun into the window of the car next to ours,” recalls Stockwell. One of the Brazilian actresses they auditioned had herself been kidnapped at gunpoint not long before. “There’s a volatility to Rio that is quite palpable. That being said, I love the place and would go back and work there tomorrow.”
Cast and crew alike prepared themselves to take things as they come. “This was not your usual ‘Hollywood’ production,” says Stockwell. “We didn’t have the normal RVs or trailers for the actors; we had air mattresses and tents. There was a free-form quality to the filming style, a willingness to do whatever it took to get the shot, that I found very liberating. We adapted to the Brazilian style of filming. The actors all stayed in a fairly primitive eco-hotel in the middle of the jungle and they all have the bug bite scars to prove it.”
Working with Stockwell, Wilde says his “constant preparedness, major sense of adventure, and a truly creative spirit” were both inspiring and contagious. “We showed up on set every day, with no makeup or hair styling, covered in mosquito bites, ready to improvise, and push ourselves to the limit,” she recalls. “He believes in making situations seem real. And some of the scary scenes are disturbingly real!”
Duhamel concurs with his on-screen sister, “It’s great when the captain of the ship knows exactly where he is going. He was open to collaboration but had a vision that made the actors comfortable. This was unlike any film he had done, so I knew he was really inspired creatively.”
The director worked closely with director of photography Enrique Chediak, to set a distinct look for the film that would change as the characters’ situation becomes more dire. “We wanted to start with a highly saturated, rich chroma look,” Stockwell describes, “a very vivid rendering of the lush greens of the jungle and the dazzling, impossibly blue skies. We wanted to make Brazil look as alluring and inviting as possible – impossible to resist. As the film takes a darker turn much of the color bleeds out and it takes on a sort of desaturated, bleach-bypass look.
A critical location was the “safe-house” tucked away in the jungle where Kiko takes the group of turistas. “Almost all of the locations were practical, found locations,” explains the director. “The jungle house was something we literally stumbled on when we were scouting for waterfalls. It was something out of an apparition – this open-to-theelements, slightly faded but wonderfully decadent hunting lodge in the middle of the jungle.”
The cast and crew were especially impressed by the underwater caves where they shot a number of sequences in the film. The underwater cave sequences were shot in the Chapada Diamantina national park in Bahia, one on the more Northern states. “It’s the most unique-looking place we shot,” says Wilde. “The colonial architecture really brought to life the history of the Portuguese occupation and colonization, and so we spent hours walking down cobblestone streets and eating in tiny colorful restaurants that said ‘slow food’ on the doors. We spent our days off there sliding down enormous waterfalls and dancing in the streets. I miss that town and those underwater caves that shone bright neon blue when the sun hit them at midday.”
These physically demanding scenes – in which the characters make their way through a series of interconnected underwater caves – required the utmost safety and preparation. “I did a lot of underwater training before we began the shoot,” notes Duhamel. “It was a physically demanding role so I spent time preparing for that.”
For the Bahia caves, Wilde wanted the opportunity to do the swimming herself, without help from her stunt double. Once underwater, however, she found herself in the midst of a panic attack as she swam under a cave wall, searching for tiny oxygen pockets to breathe in, with no goggles, air or light. “I should mention that my stunt double, Mehgan Heaney Grier, is a champion free diver who holds the record for diving 165 feet on a single breath!” says Wilde.
“Needless to say, I finally made it out after deciding that I was not going to mess up my chance to have completed my own big stunt, and as I swam out of the rocks, everyone clapped. I didn’t tell anyone I had totally panicked until that night at one of our fabulous family dinners, and everyone laughed so hard! This is what I loved about this experience. We were there to support each other, teach each other, and challenge each other.”
So much of what is captured onscreen paralleled the experience of the actors and small contingent of foreigners who approached the Brazilian experience in radically different ways. “And although we left with our wallets and organs intact, everyone sensed that with one wrong turn, one misunderstanding, one broken-down bus, the experience of a lifetime could have taken a radically different course,” he says.
“We were a supremely lucky bunch of kids doing what we loved in the most beautiful place on Earth,” says Wilde.
Turistas (2006)
Directed by: John Stockwell
Starring: Josh Duhamel, Melissa George, Olivia Wilde, Desmond Askew, Beau Garrett, Max Brown, Raul Guterres, Lucy Ramos, Miguel Lunardi, Andréa Leal, Miguelito Acosta
Screenplay by: Michael Ross
Production Design by: Marlise Storchi
Cinematography by: Enrique Chediak
Film Editing by: Jeff McEvoy
Costume Design by: Bia Salgado
Set Decoration by: Alice Souza
Music by: Paul Haslinger
MPAA Rating: R for strong graphic violence and disturbing content, sexuality, nudity, drug use and language.
Distributed by: Fox Atomic
Release Date: December 1, 2006
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