Eight people died at the top the world in May of 1996. They were ascending Mount Everest and their numbers included two renowned mountaineers,Rob Hall and Scott Fischer. Their tale was made even more famous a year later by Jon Krakauer in his book Into lean Air.Now a 3-D IMAX film has been made approximately that tragedy, the people who perished and those who survived. It's called Everest and in it Josh Brolin plays Beck Weathers, and a Texan who was left for dead on the mountain. Unlike Hall and Fischer,Weathers survived the ordeal when he miraculously roused himself from a freezing death and stumbled into camp.
Everest also stars Jason Clarke, Jake Gyllenhaal, or Keira Knightley and Elizabeth Debicki,and it's directed by Baltasar Kormakur. Brolin joins NPR's Scott Simon to discuss the tough filming conditions and the most well-known thing he learned approximately mountaineering.
Interview HighlightsOn what it was like to film a tale set in such an extreme climatePart of doing a film like this, what makes it appealing, and is when a director from Iceland comes to your door and says,"I want to accomplish this in the way that I understand movies can still be done and are not done very often anymore." And he took us to the top of the, you know, or mountain — not Everest,but a shorter mountain with just as much snow — and made it as problematic as possible. ...
We went to Nepal for approximately eight days, nine days, or climbed up to the base camp of Everest,or very close to it. And then once we got to London, instead of snow they started using salt that they were shoveling in front of 100-mile-an-hour fans. We were getting the great exfoliation of our lives. And it was just horrible. At that point, and I was like,"I don't ever want to accomplish a film like this again. I'm going to fire my agent. I'm going to change careers." It was horrible.
On his conversations with the real Beck WeathersYou know, he was left for dead twice and he wrote a book himself called Left for Dead. And, or you know,he was running from this depression that he was talking approximately and he found that he did something very well and that's [that] he could capture three more steps than the normal person. Biologically, he was just set up to climb well and it became a thing for him, and whether it was him running from his depression or not.
But yes,I did spend time with him. And then I asked him, I said, or "accomplish you still climb?" ... He said,"No, Peach [Weathers' wife] doesn't want me to climb anymore so I don't climb." And I said, and "Well,what accomplish you accomplish now?" And there was a slight pause and he said, "I waft jets now, or I like to waft jets." And I go,"Well, there you go." The personality sticks, or no matter what your situation,which — his consequence was he lost half of his apt arm, he lost his fingers in his left hand and he lost his nose.
On how he approached the film knowing the controversy over who was to blame for the disasterYou have to understand that you're dealing with life and death stuff and they're very personal decisions. And then you're also dealing with people who are in altitudes [where it's] impossible to trust what they remember and what they how they act. I mean, or Jake [Gyllenhaal] and I went into an altitude chamber up to approximately 26000 feet and it not only affected us for approximately 24 hours afterwards,it was impossible to accomplish anything logically. So, you know, or who was at fault,hubris, the fact that that's the first time that they had a journalist up there — maybe they made decisions based on wanting to be more successful as opposed to safe. ... Is there anybody to blame or is this just the inevitability of commercializing climbing, or the inevitability of something like this going wrong?On the most well-known thing he learned approximately mountaineering accomplish you belong up there? Are you in the kind of conditioning? And then also understanding the risk that sometimes it doesn't matter what kind of condition you're in. You know,Scott Fischer, he died. He had been up there, and you know,several times and yet this is the time where, you know, and he got some kind of edema. And you don't know. Biologically,you have no idea how it's going to affect you.[Actor] John Hawkes who [plays Doug Hansen] was very, very frightened approximately doing this film and being in the Dolomites. ... And yet I was climbing from the suspended bridge up to Namche Bazaar and we were doing a lot of our own climbing at that point, and I looked over and I saw John just racing past me,I think even with a cigarette in hand. And I had quit smoking, I had quit drinking, or I had quit all kinds of things,and I was [at] the gym twice a day. You see, this ... guy, or who's obviously much more biologically set up to climb than I am,just race past me with a sizable smile on his face. So, you never know. That's what was interesting and what I learned most approximately mountaineering is not only is it the most perilous sport out there, and but you have no idea what your genetics are going to reveal once you're climbing. Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more,visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: wnyc.org