For Josh Brolin, 'Everest' Was A Test Of Acting Limits

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Eight people died at the top of the world in May of 1996 - eight people on two teams who were ascending Mount Everest, including two renowned mountaineers, Rob Hall and Scott Fischer. The story was made even more famous a year later by John Krakauer in his book, "Into Thin Air." Now, a spectacular Imax 3-D film has been made about that tragedy, the people who perished and those who survived. It's called "Everest." Josh Brolin is one of the stars. He plays Beck Weathers, a man from Texas, who was left for dead on the mountain and then miraculously roused himself from a freezing death and stumbled into camp. The film also stars Jason Clarke, Jake Gyllenhaal, Keira Knightley, and Elizabeth Debicki. It's directed by Baltasar Kormakur. Josh Brolin joins us now from the studios of NPR West. Thanks so much for being with us.

JOSH BROLIN: Thank you for having me.

SIMON: I saw the film, loved it, and I'm still cold.

BROLIN: (Laughter) Still cold - so, sensorially, it worked on you.

SIMON: Oh, very much so. And I wonder, I mean, how much of the action - the action - the life and death that you filmed was in a cold and forbidding place? What did you have to go through to bring this to the spring screen?

BROLIN: It was. I mean - you know, part of doing a movie like this, what makes it attractive, is when a director from Iceland comes to your door and says, I want to do 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, you know, the mountain, not Everest (laughter), but a shorter mountain, with just as much snow. And made it as problematic as possible.

SIMON: I read, too, there was also a sequence that you had to film where you got salt up your nose. Was that in studio because snow melts?

BROLIN: Yes, snow melts, and the promise was that we were finally going to go from the Dolomites. We went to Nepal for about eight days, nine days, and 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, like, the great exfoliation of our lives. And it was just horrible. At that point, I was like, I don't ever want to do a movie like this again. I'm going to fire my agent, I'm going to (laughter) I'm going to change careers. It was horrible.

SIMON: And, of course, you played a person who lived, Beck Weathers. Did you meet him? Did you talk to him?

BROLIN: I did. You know, he was left for dead twice and he wrote a book himself called "Left For Dead." And, you know, he was running from this depression that he was talking about. And he found that he did something very well, and that's he could take three more steps than the normal person. Biologically, he was just set up to climb well. And it became a thing for him, 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, do you still climb? Is that something that you still - I mean, obviously, you don't. But he said, no, Peach doesn't want me to climb anymore, so I don't climb. And I said, well, what do you do now? And there was a slight pause and he said, I fly jets now. I like to fly jets. And I go, well, there you go. The personality sticks. No matter what your situation, which his, you know, consequence was he lost half of his right arm, he lost his fingers of his left hand and he lost his nose.

SIMON: And, of course, as I don't have to tell you, there's still controversy attached to this story, even almost 20 years later - who's to blame - all kinds of questions being thrown around. I wonder, how conscious of that where you? What do you think the responsibilities of a movie like this happen to be?

BROLIN: You 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 that are impossible to trust what they remember and what they - how they act. I mean, Jake and I went into an altitude chamber up to about 26,000 feet. And it not only affected us for about 24 hours afterwards, it was impossible to do anything logically. So, you know, 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. You know, it kind of lends to - is there anybody to blame or is this just the inevitability of commercializing climbing - the inevitability of something like this going wrong?

SIMON: I mean, you leave the movie - and of course, I don't have to worry about giving anything away - but, you know, you leave the movie with a sense that several good people have lost their lives. And then, of course, you come out and find out that Everest has never been more congested during the climbing season.

BROLIN: That's what I do think is the drawback. Do 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, you know, several times. And yet, this is the time where, you know, he got some kind of edema. And you don't know, biologically, you have no idea how it's going to affect you. John Hawkes, who was very, very frightened about doing this movie and being in the Dolomites...

SIMON: John Hawkes played...

BROLIN: Doug Hansen.

SIMON: Doug Hansen, the postman.

BROLIN: Yeah, exactly. So, 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 (laughter). And I had quit smoking, I had quit drinking, I had quit all kinds of things. And I was with the gym twice a day. You see this, you know, guy - who's obviously much more biologically set up to climb than I am - just race past me with a big smile on his face. So, you never know - that's what was interesting and what I learned most about mountaineering is not only is it the most dangerous sport out there, but you have no idea what your genetics are going to reveal once you're climbing.

SIMON: Josh Brolin speaking with us at NPR West. "Everest" opens nationwide next week. Thanks so much for being with us.

BROLIN: Thank you so much, what a pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.