ALL IN THE SAME BOAT `WITHOUT A PADDLE' STARS BOND OVER DANGEROUS STUNTS, HUNGRY BEARS AND RUNNING AROUND IN THEIR UNDERPANTS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

In today's anything-for-a-cheap-laugh Hollywood, it's not easy to build a better buddy comedy.

It can only help, though, if the actors playing pals really become friends. That's what happened to Seth Green, Matthew Lillard and Dax Shepard on the faraway location set of ``Without a Paddle.'' And regardless of how well the film ends up doing with audiences and critics, at least they became buddies for life.

Three months facing imminent death will do that.

``Something about being in a rapid and trying to get your buddy back up on a boat while you yourself are sinking - that kind of instinct doesn't come naturally,'' Lillard explains. ``And to get them safe was more important to me.''

``We had to be fearless about it and had to trust each other and had to rely on each other,'' confirms Green, whose previous closest brushes with mortality involved monsters on the ``Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' television series. ``That builds a great friendship. People on location tend to bond anyway, but you put three guys on location, risking their lives every day, and you get real tight, real fast.''

But Green quickly adds that the movie, in which three childhood friends reunite as adults for a crazy treasure hunt in remote Oregon back country, wasn't always a matter of life and death.

``It was just general exhaustion,'' he apologetically gripes. ``Always running, jumping, moving, bouncing. Getting scraped, getting bruised. We got beat up pretty good, but it's hard to complain about that kind of intense physicality when we're not busting concrete or mining coal. We only do it for three months, then we get to be movie stars for the rest of the year.''

Boxers or briefs?

Filmed in the wilds of New Zealand, ``Without a Paddle'' required its stars to learn white-water canoeing skills, rappel off of high treetops, act in close proximity to an imported (and unpredictable) bear, and spend a lot of time running through cold streams and forests clad in nothing but underpants.

Being image-conscious actors, that latter deal was far and away the most frightening.

``If you've got a small gut in real life, on a 40-foot screen you've got a gigantic gut,'' notes the tall, lanky Shepard about his first lengthy movie appearance in ``Paddle'' after making himself a celebrity nuisance on Ashton Kutcher's reality show, ``Punk'd.'' ``Seth, luckily, eats nothing but chips and candy bars and still has 4 percent body fat. Lillard and I were in the gym for two hours a day, hadn't had carbs in three months and were ornery and bitter about our diets. But that's your job. Your livelihood is based on how cute 14-year-old girls think you are.''

``I do hate Seth Green because, if you take off your clothes and you're a normal-size human being, you're fighting to keep the 12 percent body fat,'' adds the equally statuesque, stage-trained Lillard, whose film resume runs the gamut from ``Scream'' to the ``Scooby-Doo'' movies to the upcoming psychological thriller ``Wicker Park.'' ``Seth pulls off his shirt, and there's this little sinewy body of muscles and abs. He puts on those tighty whiteys, and he's a handsome, doe-eyed, leading man of monstrosity.''

``Don't you find it hilarious that two guys well over 6 feet and graciously endowed are complaining because I can't store heat in the winter?'' compact former child star Green ripostes. ``It's true. I have a really brutal metabolism that affords me the opportunity to eat whatever I want and never sleep. But that's their concern.''

Uh, guys ... weren't we talking about how you all became such good friends on this shoot?

``I will tell you, I think Seth's the quickest-witted, funniest man I've ever met,'' says Lillard, who also shared screen space with Green in ``Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.'' ``Not only that, but he's caring and sweet. I mean, I'm passionately in love with these two men.''

Long pause.

``Not passionately,'' Lillard amends.

Buddy love

OK, let's try this. Dax, if you had to choose which one you'd rather be lost in the woods with, would it be Matt or Seth?

``That's the most evil question I've ever heard in my life,'' replies Shepard, which we'll consider a compliment. ``I would never pick. They're both awesome and wonderful, handsome and dashing.''

Another long pause.

``I think Lillard would be better eatin'. Seth would be easier to carry if he broke a leg. It depends on events.''

Well, at least it's obvious that they're pretty funny.

``I have to say, for the record, that these guys are the sharpest performers I've ever gotten to work with,'' Green says sincerely. ``And this is the most fun I've ever had working on a movie, simply because I was creatively satisfied by them. They're really at the top of their abilities as both dramatic actors and comedians. Every day it was like being part of a great band that was going out and playing live concerts.''

For all of his exaggerated bluster, Lillard is actually pretty humble about the comic gifts that have saved many an otherwise lame movie.

``I never thought I was all that funny, that's the crazy thing,'' says the Michigan-born, Orange County-raised Lillard. ``I think the only reason I've ever been successful is because I'm relatively funny in a stressful situation.''

Which may explain why the bear scenes get laughs. Thousand-pound ursine co-star Bart was flown down to New Zealand from his trainer Doug Seus' home in Utah. While not too worse for the wear of jet lag, Bart also wasn't at the top of his game, which would be concentrating for a full 18 seconds on whatever he was supposed to do before his attention wandered to anything that looked like something good to chase.

``Now, mind you, the bear is jacked up on caffeine, and he works for doughnuts and whipped cream,'' Lillard explains. ``So this bear is on a sugar high as he's walking, and all of a sudden he stops and he looks at us. And you hear the trainer on the other side of the camera going, 'No Bart, Noooo! Don't do it, Bart! Boys, stay calm!'

``The rules around the bear are: Don't look the bear in the eye, don't act nervous or scared, don't do anything weird. And Dax and I are, like, avoiding eye contact by hugging! We see these guys coming out to Bart with little bats, and the dart gun comes out - and you know that that dart probably isn't going to work for five minutes. Plenty of time to eat Dax and I. That was probably the tensest moment in the whole shoot.''

Really fast friends

Maybe not tense, but perhaps most crucial, was trying to make a crazy action comedy that, somehow, could also be about recognizably real guys.

And real friends.

``It's a story about the best of friends who go off in all different directions, come back together and go on a great adventure and find what's important to them in their lives,'' Green explains. ``It's completely outrageous and ridiculous, but never with a lack of reality. It's life-and-death stakes, and I'm in my underpants, but there is a way to do this with grace. You don't have to kick somebody in the nuts or eat dog doo for it to be funny.''

``They take it one step too far,'' Lillard says of most modern comedies. ``The great thing about this movie is that it's not playing to the lowest common denominator. It's got a lot of heart and it's about something. It's about friendship, about real guys going on a real journey.''

``There's a legitimate friendship there, and I think it's really palpable,'' Shepard adds. ``And I do think it's really rare in movies, which makes it the thing all of us are most proud about. It could've been disastrous. Seth and Matt have each done, like, 30 movies, and they chose to open their arms and let me in and show me the ropes. We immediately liked each other, and then through the course of making this movie we ended up having those cumulative, real-life experiences that you have with friends of 10 years - maybe - compounded into this three-month period.''

To conclude, Lillard declares, ``If I could work with these guys every year in a movie like this, it'd be the best.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) `Paddle' ball

The film was all about laughs for pals Dax Shepard, Seth Green and Matthew Lillard

(2) Dax Shepard, left, Seth Green and Matthew Lillard are up the proverbial creek in ``Without a Paddle.''

(3) - Seth Green with co-star Bart the bear