“Hottest Place On Earth”: Matt Damon Recounts Grueling Dehydration While Filming 2002 Desert Movie

Matt Damon and Casey Affleck recount experiencing grueling dehydration while filming Gerry in the “hottest place on Earth.” Directed by Gus Van Sant, with a script he co-wrote with Affleck and Damon, the 2002 film follows two friends, both named Gerry, who go out for a hike in Death Valley and forget to bring any food or water with them. The only two members of the cast, Gerry marked a reunion between Damon and Casey Affleck after Good Will Hunting, also directed by Van Sant, with the two actors recently reuniting for The Instigators.

Damon and Affleck recently had an “epic conversation” for GQ, during which they recounted their experience with grueling dehydration while filming Gerry. Watch the portion of the video below, starting around the 9:16 minute mark:

Damon and Affleck recalled being warned about dehydration while filming Gerry in Death Valley, the “hottest place on Earth,” and how the latter actually ended up suffering through it and even started hallucinating. Read their full recollection of the events below:

Damon
: Of the memorable experiences we’ve had, making the movie Gerry, like, even the three Oceans movies, all that… The play that we did together in London, like, living in Soho and doing eight shows a week with you, doing Gerry and moving from shooting in Argentina and, you know, we wrote that movie with Gus, with the director, the three of us every night sitting around having dinner, Gus just picking away at his guitar and just sitting there and talking about, “Alright, what are we gonna do tomorrow?” That, but then when we moved to Death Valley in July, which is the hottest place on earth. And we decided we were gonna walk to set one day. And we were like… The park ranger was like, “You cannot do that.” And we were like, “No, no, it’s cool ’cause we’re gonna hydrate before we walk.”

It’s like four miles, and the crew vans are going back and forth, and we’re only staying on the main road. And they were like, “Okay.” By the time we got to set, that was where I learned to put my shirt around my head, which kept my moisture in. And you hit the wall of just dehydration ’cause they said that out there, a healthy human being who’s fully hydrated in July in Death Valley has four hours of life. If you don’t get shelter and hydration, you have four hours to live. And we walked and you just tipped over. And it was the craziest thing, where we thought that. We had a walkie-talkie. We said, “Hey.” They said, “We’re gonna shoot.” And we said, “Okay, come pick us up.” And we stood by the side of the road ’cause it was too hot to sit. And you started to talk. You were hallucinating, and you were singing, and I was like, “You gotta get the man up here really quick.”

Affleck
: I thought you were trying to kill me. I thought that you had pretended to call the van and that you. Yeah, and that I was dying and you wanted me to die, and you pretended to call the van. I was like, “There’s no van coming. I bet he didn’t actually push the button. He’s not calling the van.” And the world was going like, [imitating object whooshing] getting smaller, you know what I mean? Closing in.

Gerry’s Grueling (& Unusual) Filming Process Explained

Van Sant, Damon & Affleck Regularly Disregarded Their Script

Van Sant originally planned to film Gerry in Argentina to bypass a potential actors strike, but the unexpectedly cold weather deterred him from shooting there. He also considered Wadi Rum in Jordan, but a travel advisory warning due to potential terrorist activity prevented them from filming there. Ultimately, Van Sant and his team chose Death Valley, California as their primary filming location. By shooting where the film was set, Damon and Affleck actually experienced some of the fatigue and dehydration that their characters faced in the film.

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In addition to the grueling experience of filming in Death Valley, Gerry also underwent a rather unusual production process. Even though the film had a script co-written by Van Sant, Damon, and Affleck, the script served mainly as a guide, and they frequently disregarded it. Instead, the three decided during dinner what they were going to shoot the next day, which Damon describes. As a result, Gerry is a minimalist drama that features little dialogue and focuses more on atmospheric and visual storytelling through its stark landscape.

For Gerry, Van Sant’s style was also heavily influenced by the Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr, particularly his use of long unbroken master shots, and Tomb Raider. Despite his limited experience with video games, the director was struck by how they rarely cut away from the action, forcing the audience to stay with the characters during travel scenes that films typically skip over. Due to this grueling and unusual filming process, combined with its unexpected amalgam of influences, Gerry stands out as not only a memorable movie for Damon and Affleck, but for audiences as well.

Source: GQ