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I still wish Carnahan's vision of a Sam Spade type caper starring Harrison Ford had come to fruition.
Joe Carnahan burst on the scene in 1998 with Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane, an indie film with big-time ambitions. Those ambitions were realized four years later with Narc, a critical smash that brought Carnahan some big-time scripts. He followed it up with the cult hit Smokin’ Aces and the big-budget disappointment The A-Team (which some of us insist is really much better than its reputation suggests). His latest effort, The Grey, may be his best: a sharp survival story pitting Liam Neeson against the howling wilderness of Alaska. He recently sat down to talk to the press about working on the picture and the conditions in which it was filmed.
Question: What attracted you to this film?
Joe Carnahan: I was coming off of Mission Impossible 3 – and when I say “coming off,” I mean I was quitting before I got fired. My friend had sent me this short story called “Ghost Walkers,” and it was so antithetical to what I was dealing with at the time. This was just a stripped-down survival story. The simplicity of it really appealed to me. So I optioned it and spent the ensuing six years writing the script.
Q: Did you always have Liam Neeson in mind for the lead?
JC: You know, I didn’t. I had a younger man in mind, but what I found with the younger actors is that it was hard for them to conceive of wanting to end their life. Whereas an older man who had lived life and seen the highs and lows finds it easier to wrap his head around not being here anymore. Liam was a wonderful accident. I happened to be talking to the producer about the script, and he came up and asked about it. He’s very understated, and he just said, “Is there anything in it for me?” So I let him read it and it was serendipity, it was great.
Q: How about shooting in the Alaskan wilderness?
JC: It was really difficult. I had partial frostbite in the tips of my fingers. At first it’s cool, and then after a couple of weeks it’s not cool any more. We put Liam out there in the snow and packed it on his face and everything. There’s no make-up on: he was just that flushed. The most basic things – moving from place to place – become these Herculean tasks. You just can’t motivate yourself to move. It was extremely difficult… but at the same time, it was very necessary to go out there and earn it. As opposed to shooting it in Glendale where it’s 80 degrees and everybody goes to their trailer between shoots. I think you would have spotted it in an instant.
Q: The violence is a little dialed back from some of your earlier films. Is that deliberate?
JC: It was. I think it’s quite violent, but the violence is very realistic, as opposed to something like Smokin’ Aces, which is intentionally over the top. This was different. From the very first – the James Badge Dale scene on the plane – we wanted to convey that tone. We’ve seen a lot of people killed in the movies. We don’t see a lot of people die, and I wanted to get back to that. Something affective and real. That’s part of why I cast the guys I cast. I wanted a certain freshness and reality to them. I didn’t want anyone saying, “Oh it’s that guy from The Hangover!”
Q: Did you camp out there?
JC: Oh yeah, I stayed on the mountain the whole time. Your shooting day was over at 5:00 PM, period. You had eight hours of light and that was it. You had an hour up the mountain, you had two hours to break out the equipment, and you had five shooting hours. When people ask me if it was cold, I say, “I couldn’t tell, I was looking at my watch the whole time.” It was actually a good distraction to make that kind of schedule. The propulsion of that kept me from feeling the cold. I had a little cabin up there; I didn’t want to go down the mountain because it was a forty-five minute drive back into town on roads where cars routinely spin out and go into the ditch. Plus, I thought the solitude was good. You go out in the middle of the night – 11:00, 12:00 at night – and there is a stillness there I can’t describe. It was beautiful, and you had the sense of being harmonically linked to everything. You hear the slowest sound. You hear a sound a mile away.
Q: Did you debate the film’s big life-or-death questions on the set?
JC: Well, we didn’t want to turn it into a sledgehammer about this stuff – and I’m relieved I haven’t caught more flak on that front – but I think we all have those moments in life when we’re raging at the heavens and wondering why this is happening to us. When 6,000 people are buried in Mexico in a mudslide, you don’t want God to work in mysterious ways. You want answers. And I wanted that character to feel that way: someone who started out without much use for life and then sees these guys stripped away from him. He wants answers… and in his mind at least, he’s entitled to them.
Q: Do you see your career moving towards more independent action films?
JC: I’m a contrarian by nature, and films like this are every bit a part of who I am as films like Smokin’ Aces. I love Three Stooges movies and I love Fellini. I’m all over the place; I think a lot of us are. If something interests me or I fall in love with something, I’ll do it regardless. I’d love to do a women’s picture; something with all women. That would be a challenge.
Q: Would you do something like The Grey with all women?
JC: No, because the movie would be fifteen minutes long. All the women would agree on what to do and they’d all live.
Q: I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but some corners will raise questions about the use of wolves the film: that they’re being presented as dangerous or evil. How would you respond to their concerns?
JC: First of all, if you see the film, you know the wolves do okay for themselves. More importantly, I treated the wolves in this film as a facet of and therefore a force of nature. They’re no different than the blizzard or the river or the cliffs. It’s simply nature. And for all of its beauty – and wolves are extraordinarily beautiful – there’s hostility. Nature is not benign, and that’s the truth. These guys crash in a territorial area, an area they don’t belong in. The wolves simply respond. To anyone angry at the film, I’d say go out to British Columbia and protest the trapping of wolves. Don’t attack this movie, because it doesn’t encourage people to go out and attack wolves.
I still wish Carnahan's vision of a Sam Spade type caper starring Harrison Ford had come to fruition.
I've have had a love hate relationship with Joe Carnahan and his films. Blood Guts Bullets and Ocatane was cool, Narc was excellent and after that I thought he would be the next best thing. Then Smokin' Aces came out and it was terrible, A-team was alright, but I'm actually really excited to see this as it sounds from the reviews that it sort of a back to basics aproach for Carnahan. Really looking forward to it.