USA TODAY International Edition
JOSH BROLIN BRINGS HEAT TO ‘ONLY THE BRAVE’
Actor, crew pay respect to story, spirit of Arizona’s Granite Mountain Hotshots
Josh Brolin invented the game “Silent Rock” between scenes on the set of his action drama Only the Brave.
The rules are simple: Sit in a circle with your fellow actors playing ace forest firefighters and trickily lob a rock at your neighbor, hoping it’s fumbled.
“You toss it so they don’t know what’s coming,” says Brolin, grinning. “When you drop the rock — and there’s no way not to drop the rock — you have to do 25 situps, push-ups or squats. How nobody lost teeth, I have no idea.”
Some might call this game moronic. But not only did “Silent Rock” give the cast the opportunity to build firefighter camaraderie, it also represents a big part of what makes Brolin, 49, in peak demand in Hollywood: You just don’t know what’s coming.
It’s a feeling that compelled director Joseph Kosinski to cast Brolin as Eric Marsh, the charismatic leader of Arizona’s Granite Mountain Hotshots firefighters in
Only the Brave (in theaters Friday).
“The most fascinating actors are the ones who give off this unpredictability: You don’t know exactly what’s going to happen next,” Kosinski says. “Josh has that quality inherent in him. That’s what makes him so watchable.”
During an interview at the Four Seasons hotel, Brolin brings this, along with his partially shaved eyebrow and aggressive hairstyle — “Brolin meets Bieber” he calls it — remnants of his Cable character in the just-completed Deadpool 2.
“Three days ago, I was getting my (butt) kicked in Deadpool,” Brolin says. “I was being chucked up against walls, punched, thrown and all that stuff. I’m hurting right now.”
Only the Brave provided its share of physical challenges, training with co-stars such as Miles Teller and Taylor Kitsch, to pull off the depiction of the Navy SEALs of wilderness firefighters. But the true story of the Granite Mountain crew, who were overcome by Arizona’s 2013 Yarnell Hill fire, killing 19, was more emotionally challenging.
It was particularly close to Brolin, who served as a volunteer firefighter in Arizona in the 1990s. He fell hard for the firehouse brotherhood, “the firehouse tacos and the constant ribbing.” He vowed to make sure his new crew paid respect to the story and spirit.
“We’re actors. We’re not hotshots. That’s a given,” Brolin says. “But everyone is carrying their 45-pound packs, even at 11,000foot elevation. Let’s not skimp even half a percent.”
He’s sustaining that effort professionally with an impressive rollout of top-tier movies in the next year. That he’s sparring with Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool 2 (out June 1) is just half the story of Brolin’s sudden comic-book dominance.
Brolin is looming so large that he’s the chosen one to portray supervillain Thanos, who battles an army of Marvel’s biggest heroes starting with Avengers: Infinity
War (May 4).
“I wasn’t this hardcore fan,” Brolin says. “But there’s something about playing the baddest guy in the universe, which is very cool to me.”
“The most fascinating actors are the ones who give off this unpredictability: You don’t know exactly what’s going to happen next. Josh has that quality inherent in him. That’s what makes him so watchable.”
Director Joseph Kosinski