Travolta, Phoenix Offer ‘49’ As Tribute

“Something bigger than us.” That was the theme evoked again and again by the cast and crew of the new firefighter film, Ladder 49. With a marquee led by the recently A-listed Joaquin Phoenix and buoyed by screen veteran John Travolta, the movie captures a lifetime’s passage of firefighting for the members of one ladder in the Baltimore Fire Department as seen through the eyes of Phoenix’s character, Jack Morrison. A sweeping timeline highlights the brotherly bond formed by the men in the firehouse, where duty takes precedence, but often clashes with their lives out of the uniform.

For a production in which spectacular recreations of buildings aflame were so crucial, the budget was surprisingly moderate. Shot entirely on location in Baltimore for three months, the most elaborate scenes focus on both house and commercial fires. Firemen and pyrotechnic technicians were on hand to advise on the accuracy of scenarios and contain the large, visceral blazes, which highlighted concerns about the heavy risks that define a firefighter’s life.

“Once you go in that door with the smoke, you look back and you don’t even know where you came from,” says actor Kevin Chapman, who plays firefighter Frank McKinney. “And that’s a terrifying feeling.” But from donning the fireman’s suit to rigging in the water hose, authenticity was pursued with dogmatic scrutiny from inception to wrap.

“It had to be absolutely real,” director Jay Russell comments, who originally turned down the script because he was hesitant to assume responsibility for an accurate portrayal of firefighting under the shadow of 9/11. But heartened by the memories of a father and best friend who had served on the force, he resolved to approach the script with a focus on realism, a process that began with careful casting.

“This is why Joaquin was perfect for the role, because the number of actors that are willing to commit themselves to such a level of intensity, for his generation, are very few,” says Russell. “We needed a character who was willing not to look heroic all the time.”

Travolta was also a natural choice for Russell as the tempered Captain Mike Kennedy, who was inspired by a lieutenant that the actor trained with in the six weeks prior to shooting.

“I saw that this man managed his group with care, with order and with laughter—but he was strong,” says Travolta. “And I thought if I could take all of those and combine them, that would be a leader.” But the largest commitment to truth for most of the actors came from the firemen themselves once the cameras began to roll.

“They let us know real quickly that they have not liked the past movies portraying them,” says actor Morris Chestnut. “They didn’t want the cheesy, heroic things. Just a real day to show ‘what we go through.’”

Responding to pressure from firemen wanting their craft portrayed accurately, Travolta voices the general sentiment of the actors, admitting that “it was nice to have that boundary, to have them check us and know when we had to do a scene again because it wasn’t the real way.”

To carry out their mission of accuracy, the cast spent up to a month preparing with the Baltimore Fire Department, both in the firehouse and in their homes. Jacinda Barrett, who plays Phoenix’s wife Linda Morrison, spent time talking with the wives. As a daughter of an Australian fireman, she observed that the worry of a child is untranslatable to that of a wife’s.

“My parents really shielded me from the dangers of my father’s job,” says Barrett. “In the movie, the firefighters are so connected with each others’ families that they bring the work home with them, and [as a wife] you can’t help your fears.”

Besides emotional prep and character study, the men underwent firemen’s training in order to sustain the physical demands of the role. Chapman spent his days in the academy and his nights running with the firefighters, which culminated in experiencing firsthand the horrors of the job.

“The captain told me, ‘Okay, go in there, there’s a [dummy] baby you have to find,’” he recounts. “I went in there, tore that place apart. You have about three inches of visibility once you’re in smoke, and I couldn’t find it. The captain took me back in and showed me the door I had smashed to get into the apartment. The baby was right behind there. And my daughter had just been born 9 months before, so when I saw that my heart just cracked.”

But Chapman admits that Phoenix bore the brunt of the training, alongside other cast members Robert Patrick, Jay Hernandez, Billy Burke and Balthazar Getty, who trained on the engine, in the firehouse and in simulated fires.

Despite the gravity inherent to the job, the training wasn’t without its antics. “You’re away from your family three to five months out of the year,” says Chapman. “You get a little giddy.”

The giddiness resulted in pranks that ultimately made it into the movie, with settings ranging from priest’s confessionals to a naked strip bar.

Chestnut, for one, claims innocence. “I did not pull any pranks,” Chestnut says, “because you get paid back whatever you give.”

Untold goes the explanation for a sudden toss of a fireman dummy off a six story building to the abject horror of a producer talking on his cell phone below. Also untold remains the origin of Jay Russell’s nickname, “Spanky the Monkey,” which haunted the director throughout the entire shoot.

Lightheartedness and weightiness exist side by side in the movie and are switched on and off with the sudden gong of the bell signaling fire. The reality of the harshness of the job was again evoked when the firemen and crew reunited in Baltimore for the opening screening. An awards ceremony was held at the event, where many of their mentors were honored.

“You know, we come in and shoot, but then we wrap it up and go home,” says Russell. “While we move on to the next project, they will still be there doing this every day, and looking out over their faces, I thought to myself that in all likelihood, we’re going to lose one of these guys someday. And that’s just—” He abruptly stops.

When asked if there were certain moments that were personally hard to play, Travolta immediately relates his most difficult scene.

“There’s this one part that I could not get how to play this character, and I wrestled with it for the whole shoot,” he says. “But when that moment comes, and you say that line which is ‘I love you,’ or ‘I don’t love you’, or ‘I’m going to stay’, you find the truth within the character. And it’s the burst of emotional energy, that moment of truth, that gives a spark to the actor’s face that everyone can understand.”

It’s with a certain humility that both Phoenix and Travolta talk of the large scope of the movie and its potential impact.

“You know, when we got in and talked to Jay, we all decided that this was going to be more than what we thought,” Phoenix says. “It was something larger than us and we had a responsibility to put it out there.”

Although the cast and crew insist on the stand-alone quality of the film, for many it illuminates the sacrifice that are given across many vocations. The “unsung heroes” section on the movie’s official website is filled with submissions from fans drawing parallels between their heroes and the firefighters of Ladder 49.

Travolta sums up the ideals that went into the creation of the movie. “Everyone left their ego at the doorstep and felt they could finally give back something,” he says. “It’s humanity. You guys write the important stories and we just play them.”

—Staff writer Effie-Michelle Metallidis can be reached at metallid@fas.harvard.edu.