'Ladder 49' Star Fights Real Fires
Oct. 1, 2004 — -- Every major star has been burned once or twice, at least in a gossip column. But Joaquin Phoenix is the only fire-hardened celebrity who might show up at your door when your house is burning down.
Taking movie preparation to a new extreme, the 29-year-old, Oscar-nominated actor not only studied with real firefighters for Ladder 49, he graduated from the Baltimore Fire Academy and went on to serve for a month with West Baltimore's Truck 10, responding to real alarms, fires and rescues.
Whether or not it's a hit at the box office when it opens today, Ladder 49 will always be remembered as the first major feature film about firefighters since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — and Phoenix says that inspired everyone to work just a little bit harder.
"We always felt a sense of responsibility," he said. "I really wanted firefighters to be satisfied with this film … and that takes precedent over whether the film is financially successful."
While that statement taken on its own might sound like typical Hollywood blather from a contractually obligated star, Phoenix can back that up with a training regimen that involved getting up close and personal with 1,000-degree blasts of heat.
At a Baltimore "Fire Camp," Phoenix was joined by co-stars John Travolta, Morris Chestnut and Robert Patrick and director Jay Russell, who wanted to use real fire — rather than computer-generated special effects — as much as possible.
In the most daunting drill, known as "The Maze," trainees strapped on 100 pounds of gear and ran through a pitch-black, smoke-filled, debris-packed room, often crawling through burning wreckage to find a way to safety.
"You never learn to overcome the fear of fire, you learn to control it. That's what the training is about," Phoenix said.
"Firefighters will say, 'If you're not scared, get out of the job.' You have to have a level of fear, a level of respect for the fire, if you have any hope of doing the job."
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