127 Hours: Director Danny Boyle Says You'd Cut Your Hand Off, Too (Interview)

By Mary Anne Potts; Photographs by Chuck Zlotnick, Fox Searchlight

For his new film, 127 Hours, British director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting) takes on the story of Aron Ralston, the then-27-year-old hiker who, in 2003, was canyoneering in Utah’s remote Blue John Canyon when his hand became pinned under an 800-pound boulder. He had told no one where he was going. After five days with just his own urine left for hydration, Ralston had one last option—to cut off his hand. He did it with a cheap multitool. And he survived.

To make the movie, which is based on Ralston’s best-selling autobiography and stars actor James Franco, the film team trekked into Canyonlands National Park and even camped out at Blue John Canyon. The three-foot wide slot canyon was far too hard to access for the majority of filming, so they built a replica on a soundstage, carefully mapping out each contour of the stone.

Here, Boyle talks about camping out in canyon country, the transforming power of life-or-death decisions, and what he believes we’d all do when caught between a rock and a hard place.

What was it like to work on a film that requires so much hiking, climbing, and rappelling in such a remote part of the country?

Danny Boyle: It was shocking. We camped for a week in the actual location in Utah. As I lay in my single-man tent at night, it was so quiet, it woke me up. It was unnervingly quiet, with no sirens going off, no people arguing. I realized then that it had been 33 years since I last went camping. My take on this film was not so much that it was a wilderness film. In some curious way, even though it’s about one guy in the wilderness, it’s actually a film about people. And the film has an urban rhythm more than a meditative wilderness rhythm.

Where the Wild Things Are: Nature Calls the Shots on a Wild Rumpus in Australia

Director Spike Jonze’s new live action movie, Where the Wild Things Are takes on the ambitious task of bringing a boy’s boundless adventure fantasy to life in the real world. But where? To capture a stunning mix of extreme landscapes, Jonze’s team spent five months on location along the southernmost edge of Australia in Victoria. Here they found the rain, hail, whipping winds, and even rogue waves to be welcome, if daunting, challenges (particularly for the actors in the Wild Things costumes, which weighed up to a hundred pounds each). We caught up with production designer K.K. Barrett and producer Vincent Landay, both longtime Jonze collaborators, to learn more about where the action happened, close calls, and how nature called the shots.—Mary Anne Potts 

You considered many destinations—Argentina, Hawaii, New Zealand. Why Australia?
K. K. Barrett: We wanted to create a world that would be relevant to the story and a child’s imagination. And a world that Max could invent on his own and that the audience could absorb as new. Australia seemed to have the greatest diversity in a tight distance: Most of the locations were about 45 minutes to an hour and a half from Melbourne, and they were all so extreme. Max’s imagination drives the story as he's changing and inventing new worlds. He’s constantly taken aback by them and then accepts them and makes them his own. So each location needed to represent that.

What's New (And Good) This Month - July

10,000 Lakes Music Festival (July 22–25): Over 60 bands. Four stages. And beautiful northern MN.

Tour de France Ends (July 26): Amid scandal, no doubt. But will it involve Lance? Read our daily udpates.

The Cove (July 31): All the buzz at Sundance, this enviro-doc will make a serious splash. (Stay tuned for our interview with the director going up later this week.)

Your Turn: Do you know of something cool going on this month? Post a comment below.