ShockTillYouDrop.com

Source:Ryan Rotten, Managing Editor

June 27, 2009

"Am I going to get to use that?" questions a chilly, but palpably excited, Steven McQueen on the Arizona set of Piranha 3-D, Dimension Films' remake of the 1978 film poised to make a splash March 19, 2010. McQueen and director Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes) are watching an FX technician demonstrate the use of an underwater flare. And to answer McQueen's question, yes, he is going to use it.

When Shock visits the set, McQueen is in the midst of filming a sequence that will kick off the film's action-packed third act. Today calls on the young actor, grandson to the Steve McQueen, to spend most of his time, with Gossip Girl's Jessica Szohr, swimming in a large tank created for the production (more on that in a future report) with two capsized boats.

"I'm regretting doing my own stunts right about now," McQueen laughs, later taking a break in a nearby warming pool. This is where Shock catches the actor before it's back to the tank for him. Of his experience on the production, he says "This whole thing has been awesome. It definitely has its funny beats and scary beats, it's got a nice romance. The whole 3-D aspect is definitely going to get people into it and make them excited to see movies again."

McQueen, seen this fall on The CW's Vampire Diaries, says Piranha 3-D was the perfect gig to take on after shooting the Diaries pilot. "I play Jake, Elisabeth Shue's son," he explains. "I'm the main kid - and he's got great potential but he doesn't know how to let it out, use it. Out of this extraordinary situation I learn to put that to good use." That extraordinary situation entails a horde of prehistoric piranha freed from their cave when an earthquake disrupts Lake Victoria (Arizona's Lake Havasu in the real world).

"Alex [Aja] is a good guy," he continues. "And as director, he knows exactly what he wants to see. It's been an honor working with him. He's a fan of the blood." No doubt. A week prior to our visit, Aja staged a massacre in the lake which entailed hundreds of screaming extras. "I wasn't working too much of the massacre. I came and visited that day, but I needed to take that time to rest my body from the stunts and the underwater stuff. We've been doing a lot of water training. Before we started I could only hold my breath for up to 40 seconds, by the end of this I could get it up to two minutes, but that's not that long."

With that, McQueen is called back to set to brave the moderately cold temperatures of the tank. But sun, sand, babes...voracious fish? Not a bad way to spend a summer for this actor. Stay tuned for an in-depth report from the set of Piranha 3-D in the near future!