Filming back-to-back movies — one about firefighters battling wildfires, the other about U.S. soldiers returning from combat and facing PTSD — the actor Miles Teller had an unusual resource at his disposal: Each time, the man he was playing was on the set.
“Maybe it’s weird if you feel unprepared, but if that’s the case, you didn’t do your homework,” Teller said, in a phone interview, of the two true-life roles, as a firefighter in “Only the Brave” (opening nationwide this Friday) and a soldier in “Thank You for Your Service” (opening nationwide on Friday, Oct. 27).
For the 30-year-old actor — familiar in blockbusters (the “Divergent” series) and independent movies (“Whiplash,” “The Spectacular Now”) — it’s an impressive double act, especially considering he started work on “Only the Brave” only five weeks after finishing “Thank You for Your Service.”
In “Only the Brave,” Teller plays Brendan McDonough, a member of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a fire crew based out of Prescott, Ariz., that became the only municipal firefighting unit certified as a wildfire crew. McDonough served as lookout on the Yarnell Hill Fire in June 2013 and was the only member of the 20-man crew to survive when the fast-moving fire overtook his comrades in the most deadly incident for American firefighters since the 9/11 attacks.
Josh Brolin, who plays Eric Marsh, the tough-minded leader of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, had a personal connection to the story: He lives part time in Arizona and has worked on a volunteer fire department there. His department’s chief was a friend of Marsh’s and attended his funeral, Brolin said in a phone interview.
“It’s a very heightened existence,” Brolin said of fighting wildfires. “You have your shovel, your rhino, and you don’t leave until it’s contained.”
“The tools haven’t changed for a hundred years,” Teller said. “One guy has a rake, another guy’s got a Pulaski [ax]. The chainsaw takes a little more experience. … You do that for a whole season, seven to nine months.”
Teller met McDonough, nicknamed “Donut” by his crewmates, before filming started. “We ate some food, we got some drinks, we went over to the juniper tree,” Teller said, referring to an ancient tree, a Prescott landmark that the Granite Mountain Hotshots kept from burning during a fire just a couple of weeks before the Yarnell Hill blaze.
From that meeting and McDonough’s visits to the set, Teller picked up a sense of the man he was portraying. “I know he has a good heart,” Teller said. “He was kind of directionless [before joining the Hotshots]. He had a lot of things happen in his life.”
The same could be said of Adam Schumann, the soldier Teller plays, dealing with memories of combat as he faces problems on the home front, in “Thank You for Your Service.”
The movie is based on David Finkel’s book, which follows members of the 2-16 Infantry Battalion as they return from duty in Baghdad and adjust to civilian life again. Screenwriter Jason Hall, who adapted Chris Kyle’s memoir “American Sniper” for Clint Eastwood, makes his directing debut.
Hall’s pitch to Steven Spielberg, whose production company made the film, was that “this was a war film that was taking place at home. The war never ends for these guys. That sense of suspense and tension, the emotional rollercoaster these guys are on.”
Hall decided early to make Schumann’s story the focal point of the movie, interweaving the stories of other soldiers as well — following the thread of another story of men returning home from war, the epic poem “Odysseus.”
Hall met with Schumann early on and hooked him up with Teller soon after. Teller went to North Dakota to meet Schumann, Hall said in a phone interview, and they went hunting and fishing together.
Teller, Hall said, “jumps in. He’s very inquisitive. He likes to know what makes people tick.”
Hall said the actor “is someone who I’ve watched do character work in a leading man’s body. He’s able to slip into these characters and lose himself there.”
Brolin was also impressed with Teller. “Miles is an extremely talented guy,” Brolin said. “When somebody is good at what they do, and are willing to strip away their comfort zone, that’s worth it. … He was one of the guys. He didn’t separate himself.”
For Teller, the goal is to do justice to the people he’s portraying. “I really relate to these guys, these working-class guys,” he said.