On January 8th, 2012, Los Angeles journalists visited The Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills to attend the press day for Joe Carnahan‘s new film, The Grey. Carnahan was joined by actors Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo and James Badge Dale for roundtable interviews to discuss what Carnahan calls “a very stripped down survival story.”
As much as the marketing plays up the wolf-punching aspects of this film, it’s actually a much more interesting project than that gimmick might have you believe. “There’s no cars, no computers, no iPhones in it,” a stoic Neeson said. “It’s just sparse. Man versus nature. Man versus himself.” But it also evokes some pretty heavy questions about faith and fate. Carnahan didn’t want to be too overbearing with these notions, so he gave the movie an existential undertone that is hard to ignore. Even the predatory wolves our heroes battle aren’t depicted with any special treatment. “I treated the wolves in this film as a facet of, and thereby a force of, nature,” the writer/director said. “But I don’t think they’re any different than the blizzard, or the river, or the cliff side, or anything that the guys encounter in this film that is simply nature.”
Carnahan was proud of the way he was able to separate himself from his previous work, calling attention to the oftentimes “cartoonish” nature of Smokin’ Aces and The A-Team (which also starred Neeson). He said The Grey is “quite violent” and thinks the violence is “very realistic,” especially an early death scene that is one of the film’s quietest moments. “You see a lot of people killed in films – you don’t see a lot of people die…I wanted you to feel, when you lost these guys, that it was real.”
The making of the film seemed almost as intense as the plight of its characters. A forty day shoot in Canada (doubling for Alaska in the film) meant the digital effects guys back in Los Angeles didn’t have to create fake snow – Neeson reveals “all the weather was all real. All the storms and all the rest was absolutely the real deal. And you can’t fake that.” The cast and crew shot in minus forty degree temperatures the first week, so cold that both Carnahan and actor Dallas Roberts suffered from frostbite. Dermot Mulroney told us the weather was so intense that their outdoor speakers were freezing up, forcing Carnahan to give the actors ear wigs (small radio receivers) as they walked through the swirling winds so he could communicate with them for shots in which the camera was up to four hundred yards away. Neeson trained to deal with the elements by taking freezing cold showers every morning before the shoot and he confessed, as a rare smile crossed his face, that he didn’t tell the other cast members about his methods. “Certain secrets you keep to yourself.”
Despite that little omission, Neeson and the rest of the cast bonded in various ways over the course of the shoot. Mirroring what happens in the film, the men would often pontificate on weighty subjects like their own mortality and the meaning of life. “I think we got a little overly philosophical,” admits Dale. Grillo detailed how Carnahan would play sounds of bull elephants over speakers and make the actors run through the snow, pretending wolves were chasing them. (There weren’t many real wolves used during filming – they’re mostly animatronic and CGI creations). Mulroney also sheepishly told us about a prop assistant who would break out his phone and show the cast pictures of naked women in between takes. “So that was something to talk about,” he said with a grin. “Stuff like that. Exactly what you’d think.”
Near the end of our conversation, Carnahan said he “heard that there’s going to be wolf protesters” at the premiere, but doesn’t think protesting The Grey is an effective use of their time. “If you watch the movie, the wolves do OK,” he joked. But then he turned very serious. “Don’t attack this movie, because it’s not going to encourage people to go out and shoot wolves. If anything, these guys crash in a territorial area they don’t belong in. And my feeling is, from the human perspective, ‘if you’re in my backyard, pal, and you mean me harm, I’m gonna get rid of you.’ And that’s really what it’s about. [The characters in the film are] in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Regardless of any potential protesting, The Grey hits theaters Friday, January 27th. Read our review of the film here.