Because there have been so many interviews with Sam for ‘Man On A Ledge’, I’ve amalgamated the ones I’ve found to cover the main points he answered.

All sources (and more info!) can be found on the Forum in the Man On A Ledge thread here:

On why he chose to do ‘Man On A Ledge:

It was mainly the producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura actually. I’ve known him for years and I was looking for something to do with him. I love the movies Lorenzo has made, like ‘Transformers’ and ‘Red,’ and he helped put together ‘The Matrix’ back in the day. I like his movies with Mark Wahlberg. I also like that his primary goal is to entertain an audience, give them their money’s worth – and that’s my primary goal as well. My job exists to entertain an audience, so we just tried to find something that is quick, simple and entertaining. You know what you’re going to get on a Friday night. So, we kind of found one that I was really interested in, sort of an amalgamation of ‘The Negotiator’ and ‘Phone Booth,’. They were entertaining movies so I thought let’s go ahead and make it.

On reading the script:

I’m one of those actors who reads the story, gets lost in it and then forgets he has to do it. As my mates said, “It’s called ‘Man on a Ledge,’ dickhead! You have to get out there.”

The first time he went out:

You can’t prepare for something like that. You can’t practise. It was nerve-wracking, and you see it in the movie. The first time I went on the ledge is the first time in the film when I step out. I just said roll the camera. Let’s see what we get. I was happy I didn’t burst into tears and go into a fetal position, crying ‘I don’t want to do this movie! It’s stupid. Somebody call my agent!’ (laughs) That’s not a very good start for an action movie! She would have lured me in with lollipops. But, we got a good start and just went from there. After a while, you get comfortable, but you never get complacent.

On looking terrified on the ledge:

That’s because half the time I was, to be honest! You can’t get complacent; it’s always in the back of your mind how high you are. I spent three weeks at the Roosevelt Hotel standing on a 14-inch ledge that was 22 storeys off the ground. That’s over 200 feet above Madison Ave., and I don’t deal with height very well. I think anyone with anyone with half a mind would be scared when you’re at 200 odd feet. I get nervous even talking about it!

It’s a lot higher than your brain can imagine. It’s not really a vertigo experience, it’s more of a sense of your brain going, “You shouldn’t be here.” I never really got spinney circles. It doesn’t seem real, almost. It was like a weird painting.

The adrenalin is trying to keep it all together. And you always have a hand on the wall without even thinking about it because your body’s just reacting. You’re in an authentic situation so I think it definitely adds to the dynamics of the scene. I find it that anything that helps with imaginary circumstances is great.

At the end of the day you’re making a movie, but having something that helps to ground it, and being out there on that ledge, it does really help. You can ride the adrenaline, see where it takes you, that’s what I kind of did – rather than contain it.

The journey I had was that he starts off cool, then he ends up crazy. Whereas a normal jumper will be crazy at the start and end up cool and calm. So it was a reverse journey, I just used the adrenaline, especially when we started running around.

When you’re on the corner of the building, you can’t really feel the wall. All you feel is the wind. You’re just out there alone like Batman. Your palms are sweaty, all your body, your adrenaline races. And that never lets up: the adrenaline never stops. At the end of the day you’re exhausted.

I don’t think anyone is a big fan of being 200 feet off the ground [laughs], least of all when you’re up there everyday.

On the safety aspect:

I always put my trust in the stunt coordinator, without question. And I know there’s a safety line on me. My only thing was I didn’t want to feel it, I didn’t want to ever know that I’ve got it on because otherwise I’m just going to be thinking about the line all the time.

I had it real slack, so it was just for a precaution because in the end you do get a bit comfortable up there. It was just when you got cocky you really needed to rely on it. Still, I was sweating a lot and breathing hard.

It gets windy up there. And it gets icy. It’s easy to lose your footing. The ledge is only inches wide. I had two close calls, but was saved by the safety belts. It clicks into place but for that brief second you’re like, ‘Oh! There you go,’ and your whole life flashes before your eyes before it clicks and you go, “That was it?” You hang there like a puppet, and then the stunt team just drags you back up. There was no safety net because when you’re up that high terminal velocity kicks in, so a net wouldn’t hold you.

(Sam said he required 32 stitches when he cut his leg open jumping through a glass window in the film but, of course, he played down the injury): You get yourself back up, get a couple stitches and come back the next day. It wasn’t life-threatening. My nephew gets more (scars) than I do.

It felt more dangerous as we got toward the end. If I died late in the filming, they could maybe have completed it without me!

On how much was shot on the ledge:

The [original] idea was to do a lot in the studio because we had no idea how much you can actually film on a ledge and what I would do. But the more confident I got the more confident the camera crew got and were coming out with me. And that kind of made the camera work a bit more ambitious.

Suddenly before you know it you’re going ‘let’s do another scene’ or ‘let’s try this stunt’ or ‘what else can we do’? We were able to do moments and scenes and stunts that we never in our wildest dreams thought we’d get on the actual ledge. Before we knew it we’d filmed like 80 percent of it out there.

On how the camera crew worked alongside him and filming technique:

If you watch this movie, don’t worry about me, worry about the dude who’s shooting it. (laughs) The more adventurous I got, the more ambitious we all could become. So in the end you could run up and down and those guys could come with you.

You had technocranes going. You had guys on the ledge with you. These guys are hanging off. They’re all harnessed up, but they’re flying next to you. They’re trying to jump out with you.

The main DOP is a guy called Paul Cameron, he does a lot of Tony Scott’s movies. He’s fearless, that guy. He was coming out of the ledge, he was doing stuff on the ledge with this storm picking up. I’m going, ‘I don’t think the lighting is right now Paul, Shouldn’t we go in?’ And he’s going, “It’s fucking amazing!”

And you sit back and they’re the ones going, ‘this is a cool job!.

I actually wanted [the film] to be in 3D, but then, when I watched it, I realized you don’t need it. It has this sweeping arc and you get to experience what it felt like up there.

We built an extra room the top of the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, called a skybox, so they could move the room around to get different angles.

On the pigeons!

The real hairy thing is the pigeons. You’re in their world. And the more you squawk at them,
the more they laugh at you. Basically, you’re the intruder because the ledge is the birds’ home.
I guess my head looked like one big egg to them. I looked like a nest, too.

Helicopter scene:

We couldn’t actually get a helicopter in there. By law, you couldn’t get a helicopter that close. The helicopter itself is CG but they just blew a lot of wind at me. I kept saying ‘Ramp it up, ramp it up, try to blow me off.’ The more realistic it was, the more I have to hold on.

On filming the prison scenes at Sing Sing:

[We filmed in] the old section. Scary place that is. I’ve seen it on Law & Order and things like that but to be there you can feel the ghosts. We were there a couple a days, I think it was. I didn’t need to meet the prisoners. I’ve done that in other movies. I don’t really like prisons. Most people don’t, I guess especially prisoners.(laughs)

Scenes with Elizabeth Banks.. All Scripted?

It was pretty much scripted. We had a lot of chats beforehand, me and her [Elizabeth], about where we wanted to take it. When it comes to it, even though you’ve got a lot of this craziness happening and desperation in a dire situation, in reality, people would start laughing with each other, joke around, flirt, it’s inherent to do that, especially in a pressurised situation. It takes your mind off the desperation.

On his character, Nick Cassidy:

It’s a leap a faith to walk out on that ledge, and it’s a leap of faith to call in the character Elizabeth Banks plays, and at the start he thinks the plan is going on accordingly, so that trait in believing in things straight off is what I liked. It’s just when the plan unravels that it gets desperate and it gets harder, but he trusts in people from the get-go.

It’s a bit of an extreme. I think that’s the conceit of the film. You’re accused of stealing something that doesn’t exist, so the only way to prove it exists is to steal it back. I don’t know if I agree with that, or disagree.

Static action?!!

I thought it was a nice idea to have an action movie where the action is rooted to the one spot.That’s kind of bizarre, so it’s trying to keep the dynamics of those scenes where it is just like a play back and forth between me and Elizabeth. You just then rely on the fact that you’ve got a talented actress to help you through it.

In the case of this film it was all about the pacing, that was definitely an appeal to me. It’s cutting to the other guys doing their stuff.

I wanted a simple movie with a basic premise that everyone could understand and enjoy for 90 minutes.

On working with Jamie Bell:

I’m not going to feel too sorry for him since he got to spend time with Genesis Rodriguez while I’m out with the fucking pigeons.

I’ve known Jamie a while so it was quite easy, and when he came on set, he butched up a bit and shoved me. I said “What are you doing?” He goes “Well you’re a tough guy. I’ve got to be like a tough guy too.” I said “I’m acting as well, mate. I’m a pussycat.” I said “We’re both pretending here.” (laughs)

But it’s good to know someone. You have a freedom with them.

And then, when you’re doing scenes with him, I like the fact that the brothers have a go at each other all the time. That’s real. It wasn’t written that way. It kind of developed over the course.

On working with Elizabeth Banks:

Elizabeth is great. I’ve seen her in her comedies, ‘30 Rock,’ et cetera, so I knew she had a great wit and could banter with me. But then I saw her in ‘The Next Three Days’ with Russell Crowe. I thought that was a sensational performance.

Then when you join the two, you have someone who has gravity and grit, but then also has a sarcastic whit, you know that you can throw anything at her and she’s gonna bounce it each way. That’s a formidable actress.

She reminds me of Zoe Saldana, Jessica Chastain and other actresses I’ve worked with who turn up, they’re consummate [and] they just knock it out of the park.”

On the movie’s premise:

We’re not twisting and rebooting the genre, we’re going alongside movies like The Negotiator and Phone Booth. They’re the movies I look to. I want this one to be next to them at the video store. We embraced the cliches of these movies. We put our own spin on them, but we embraced them.

I thought it was like an early 90s, late 80s action film. I grew up watching all those Die Hard and Beverley Hills Cop movies where you go, yeah I get it, I get what the idea is, now lets go have some fun.

It wasn’t high extreme like Oceans 11. I like the cliché of sticking the thing in front of the camera, and in a genre like this we’ve seen these movies so we wanted to embrace it and also embrace the clichés of it. It’s called Man on a Ledge, you know what you’re fucking getting!

Jamie Bell & Genesis Rodriguez scenes:

But yeah it was a clever idea. And I like the fact that it’s low-brow as well. It’s not all this whiz bang high technology. They’ve got a skateboard and firecrackers and a fire extinguisher, and to me that was the funny aspect of it while I’m throwing wads of money off to slow down the crowd. You look at it and it’s almost farcical but that’s what keeps it light and popcorny I think.

How he choses movies to do:

I pick a movie that I would go and see, to be honest. I read it and go ‘would I pay $16 to go and see it?’ Because my responsibility to an audience is to give them their money’s worth and if this is worth going to see and shot correctly then hopefully we’ve done our job correctly.

On the haircut!

I did it specifically. To me, the movie is like an old ’80s film and I wanted an ’80s style
haircut with the mullet and this is my homage to Martin Riggs, Mel Gibson’s character in ‘Lethal
Weapon. That was my throwback. It is just my little touchstone so I don’t lose track of who my character
is.