While I was talking to EWRussell spoke of an overwhelming experience involving a scene that featured “one of the most intense fires.” According to Russell, it wasn’t pretty. “My nose was dripping, I could barely breathe, my eyes felt like they were going to pop,” the actor recalled. “I felt a rising panic. I just wanted to get out of there. I turned around to say my line and the cameraman was gone, Billy (Baldwin) was gone, there was nobody! The room was completely black smoke. It was a great moment. I said to myself, ‘No one could ever accuse me of not being completely there.’ It was like my fire. I forgot we were making a movie.”
Luckily, Russell wasn’t hurt during the scene, and the results speak for themselves: Whatever you think of “Backdraft” as a whole, you have to admit that the fire sequences are stunning. “The fire was all on-camera,” Ron Howard said. DAY as the film’s 30th anniversary approached. “We had gas stoves and flame retardants and a team of 10 Chicago firefighters standing around us with fire extinguishers at the ready, and sometimes they had to come in. No matter how well planned, [we] We never knew when the fire would leave us. And sometimes it did.”
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