MOVIES Dane DeHaan suffers for sake of a ‘ Cure’
The actor’s days at thriller’s spa weren’t exactly relaxing
“My reaction was entirely genuine. I was squealing like a pig. Gore ( Verbinski) just dug that and wanted that.” Dane DeHaan on being strapped into a dentist’s chair.
Warning, spa- loving Hollywood: The psychological thriller A Cure for Wellness ( in theaters Friday) turns therapy treatments into twisted terrors.
The Amazing Spider- Man 2 star Dane DeHaan plays an ambitious Wall Street executive called Lockhart, who is on a mission to retrieve his company’s CEO from the seemingly revitalizing European resort.
DeHaan bears the brunt of the movie’s weirdest scenes, from dental torture to isolation water tanks gone very wrong.
The actor says director Gore Verbinski grouped all his painful scenes together.
“There was this one month of torture,” says DeHaan, 31. “It was like, ‘ OK, I finally finished shooting in the water tank, but tomorrow I’ll be strapped in a dental chair.’ This was a marathon.”
Over drinks in the antiquated Chateau Marmont Hotel, DeHaan shared his bizarre Wellness memories.
DRILL, BABY, DRILL!
Dental work at a spa that doesn’t do anesthesia makes for painful moments. DeHaan wore this “intense apparatus” that forced his mouth open while his arms, body and head were strapped to the chair — accompanied by the sound of a high- pitched dental drill.
“I couldn’t move,” DeHaan says. “The drill piece is made out of rubber. “But it’s a drill and it’s coming at me.” DeHaan didn’t know how he’d react to the bizarre situation when cameras rolled.
“My reaction was entirely genuine. I was squealing like a pig. Gore just dug that and wanted that. Two days of that. Those scenes ( messed) with me psychologically the most. It wasn’t good. I’m due to go to the dentist for real, but I don’t want to go.”
THAT TIME HE TURNED INTO A HUMAN CRASH- TEST DUMMY
Lockhart’s rolling car crash, in which he breaks a leg, is shown in excruciating close- up.
The car was placed on a rotisserie- like device, “and they would just spin it around and around and film me getting tossed,” DeHaan says.
The actor was harnessed in to keep from flying out of the car, but he was held loosely enough that his head and arms realistically banged the ceiling.
“My arm actually popped out of the shoulder socket during filming and then popped back in. That was intense and the only time I really injured myself filming.”
TERRORS OF THE ISOLATION TANK
Shooting Lockhart’s trip into a water isolation tank required two weeks of wearing an oxygen hose and a waist harness attached to wires to keep his body floating and horizontal.
Verbinski would talk through an intercom and DeHaan would hand- signal that things were OK, needed adjustment or needed to stop.
During one scene in which the tank fills up, DeHaan signaled that the water pressure was intense.
“I gave the hand signal that ‘ Something is not OK. Can we stop?’ but in the underwater speaker I hear Gore say: ‘ Is he OK? What’s going on?’
“The tank kept filling and I kept feeling all this pressure,” DeHaan says.
“Finally, I gave the ‘ Get me out of here!’ signal and divers dove in.
“But it was two weeks of shooting this in shorts and a fake cast. I was very pruney, for sure.”
THE EXTRAS WERE HANDS- ON
The scene in which Lockhart is roughed up by octogenarian spa- goers wasn’t as torturous as it appears.
“It was these older German people who have never been in a movie before,” DeHaan says.
“They would just smile as they were slapping me. It took a lot to concentration to keep my focus.”