And that's when your "disaster" movie becomes an escape epic.
Yes, and that's what fascinates me. In normal life, you have time to think about things and consider and reconsider. But here the whole world goes completely, literally upside down within a few seconds. Imagine that. You're having a great time on a cruise ship, and it's all booze and singing and dancing and getting laid and then . . . bang! All of a sudden, the monster comes and upends a 4,000-person ship.

Which forces individuals, trapped in a chaotic situation that nobody could be ready for, to make dangerous choices.
Right. The ship is definitely sinking. The captain urges everybody to stay, by the hundreds, inside a big ballroom. He says, Let's close the door—we'll survive inside this big air bubble; rescue will come. But the question is: When? Our group decides not to follow his orders. Instead they try to find their own very adventurous way out of the ship. It's a race against the clock, and the film plays out in real time. The big ship is dying. Can they get out or not?

Why do moviegoers enjoy watching people go through such an ordeal?
It's a cleansing process. It's therapeutic—just as dreams are therapy, nightmares are therapy. You go out of a theater and your knees are shaking and you say, "Thank God it was just a movie." In Poseidon, I try to make every single scene hit you in the stomach, playing with all the basic primal fears people have—of heights, of suffocating, of walls and water closing in.

Was this a physically demanding production for the actors?
It was a very intense shoot for all of them. As a director, it's easier, to tell you the truth. I'm not being constantly pounded by water and getting thrown around by gimbals. But they were thrown into underwater scenes and crashing into things. Josh Lucas, whose character is a mysterious gambler type, got banged up when Kurt Russell, who plays a former big-city mayor, accidentally hit him in the eye with a large flashlight, and we had to take him to the hospital. Josh looked like a boxer working with a cut over his eye.

This is no bathtub toy you put together. Creating the ship had to involve a massive set.
We used Warner Bros.' five biggest soundstages and ten dump tanks, with 10,000 gallons of water each, to flood the inverted ballroom. Every set, except for one, was built both ways: upside down and right side up.

With all those actors sloshing around, there must have been some seriously pruned fingers.
We had hundreds, maybe thousands, of towels everywhere. It was just ridiculous to see these actors—dozens and dozens of people—completely wet, running around on the soundstages. And you have to dry them up and do the next take, then dry them up again and do the next.

Who was the best swimmer in the cast?
I have to tell you, I was very surprised with Richard Dreyfuss. We thought maybe Richard, because he was the oldest of the group, might be a problem. But he was excellent.

Freestyle, breaststroke, or dog paddle?
Breaststroke.

After making this movie, would you go on a cruise ship?
I wouldn't, but that's just me—I'd rather be out on a small boat with a fisherman. It's still so popular to go on cruises. I just heard that Royal Caribbean is building the biggest cruise ever! Will taking cruises be that popular when Poseidon comes out? [Laughs] Now that's a question.