Rain towers, dark nights, and Russell Crowe’s very specific form of Hollywood PTSD
Russell Crowe has fought to the death inside the Coliseum, battled criminals and gangsters, led warships into battle, fathered Superman, and portrayed one of the most nefarious Nazi war criminals.
You’d think that, after putting himself through all of this, there’s very little about the movie business that intimidates him, but you’d be wrong.
A rain tower is a piece of equipment designed to create realistic weather effects in movies. A sprinkler system is hoisted into the air on a large pole (sometimes as high as 20ft) while connected to a fire hydrant. Effects coordinators can then control the amount of water that comes down, anything from a light drizzle to a full-on thunderstorm. It’s a simple and practical alternative to painstakingly adding rain in post, which often looks unnatural and forced.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Crowe revealed that he and rain towers did not get along. While he was there to promote The Pope’s Exorcist, one of the Aussie’s recent string of baffling B-movies, he made it clear that his hatred for the machines was linked to a different movie with a biblical theme.
“I’m 58, I’m getting close to being past that sort of carry on,” he said, “I, you see, was Noah, so I have probably post-traumatic stress disorder when it comes to doing rain tower work at nighttime.”
Crowe is referring to Darren Aronofsky’s 2014 epic, Noah. It tells the classic story of the great Flood that was sent by God to purge the Earth of its sin and the efforts of the titular character and his family to build an Ark in order to survive.
As you can imagine, this involved quite a bit of water. Filming was split between New York and Iceland, the latter of which is not somewhere you want to spend the night being rained on. The production also suffered a number of water-related mishaps, such as Hurricane Sandy, which caused a one-month pause in production. Crowe and a friend also had to be rescued by the coast guard after getting into trouble while kayaking.
Noah was a commercial success and fared well among critics, but it wasn’t without its issues. The film was banned in China and a number of Islamic countries, as it contradicted several Islamic teachings. Its lack of diversity was also viewed as a step back, and it was challenged by certain Christian groups over the decision to incorporate elements of the non-biblical ‘Book of Enoch’. Perhaps all this negativity contributed to Crowe’s trauma.
Despite describing it as the “hardest job” he’s ever had to do, Crowe has been very positive about Noah as a whole. “You come out of this movie, and you want to talk…about our stewardship of the earth, our relationship to animals, what is spirituality, who am I in this world, all these fantastic subjects for conversation,” he told The Guardian, “Art that can do that for people is a wonderful thing.”
Just don’t ask him to ever stand under a rain tower ever again.
