TORONTO – Filming in hip-deep snow and extreme winds on a remote mountain in Smithers, B.C., had Oscar-nominated actor Liam Neeson worried about the future of his latest project, “The Grey.”
“Beautiful, beautiful place, covered in snow, minus 30 degrees on our first day, and I remember thinking after we did our first scene, ‘We are never, ever going to finish this film,'” the Irish star said in a recent telephone interview from Manhattan, where he lives.
“It was just unbearably cold, and we were on a mountain top too and there was quite a bit of wind. Cameras, equipment occasionally seized up because they just couldn’t handle the extreme cold. But we got through it and I’m stunned.
“I was with our producer last night and we were looking at each other and saying, ‘My God, can you believe we did this?’ And we shot it in 39 days, too, which is incredibly fast.”
Opening Friday, “The Grey” stars Neeson as John Ottway, a troubled sharpshooter hired by an Alaska oil refinery to keep wild animals from attacking workers at the plant.
When John and an oil drilling team survive a plane crash in the remote north, they struggle to protect themselves from the harsh conditions and a giant pack of blood-thirsty wolves surrounding them.
“I’m at pains to point out – real wolves, in general, will do anything to avoid mankind, but ours are movie wolves,” said Neeson, 59, noting director and co-writer Joe Carnahan screened Steven Spielberg’s film “Jaws” for the cast and had them read copies of James Dickey’s wilderness survival thriller “Deliverance.”
“They’re kind of almost mythological, you know, the way Steven’s shark, Great White was, in ‘Jaws.’ Yes, it was a Great White, but it was also something else, you know?”
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Based on the short story “Ghost Walker” by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, “The Grey” co-stars Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo, Dallas Roberts, Joe Anderson, Nonso Anozie and James Badge Dale.
Neeson first heard of the project while promoting the 2010 action-comedy “The A-Team,” also directed by Carnahan.
Having already done several action films in recent years, including “The A-Team,” “Taken” and “Unknown,” Neeson felt comfortable with the genre.
“With the success of ‘Taken’ three years ago, they just started sending me quite a few action scripts, and I keep pretty fit,” said Neeson.
“Well, I guess it appeals to the ego in me and I think, ‘Well, as long as my knees hold up I’ll keep doing them, you know?’ And disperse with other stuff too, of course,” he continued with a chuckle.
“It just takes longer to recuperate from these little injuries. During ‘The Grey,’ there was a couple here and there, but nothing to complain about or make a fuss about.”
Neeson was also attracted to his character’s depth.
“I so wanted to avoid being the stoic hero, you know?” he said. “When you discover him at the start of the film, he’s going through a bit of an emotional crisis.”
But as the film goes on, “he’s fighting to live and fighting to save the lives of these other guys, too.
“It’s like the old saying, ‘How do you make God laugh? You tell him your plans,'” added Neeson, who received an Oscar nomination for his role in Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List.”
“The Grey” was also shot in Vancouver and Whistler.
To get the scenes on the Smithers mountain, Neeson said the cast and crew had to drive at least half an hour from their hotel (“which boasts an incredibly good sushi restaurant and an incredibly good pizza parlour too,” he noted) to a base camp, where they got into Caterpillar tractors to go further up.
“There was absolutely no computer graphics involved,” said Neeson, whose other film credits include “Michael Collins” and “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.”
“All the wind you saw was all real. We just took the elements as they occurred that day.”
Neeson said he spoke with a couple of wilderness experts to get tips on what his character would do in such a situation.
But nothing could prepare him for the scenario he faced when shooting the crash scene in a section of an airplane that was rigged so it would revolve at high speeds.
“It certainly terrified me because I’m not a fan of roller coaster rides and stuff like that, never have been,” said Neeson. “My kids would beg me to go on a ride and I’d say, ‘Guys, I love you to death but there’s no way I’m getting on that thing.’
“So when I saw the gimbal that was made in the studio in Vancouver that would rotate at quite enormous speeds and that I was going to be strapped into the seat, I was terrified, to say the least.”
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