127 Hours - Meeting Aron Ralston
Danny Boyle is back in the director's chair this week with his new movie 127 Hours, his first film since the massive success of Slumdog Millionaire.
127 Hours brings the story of climber Aron Ralston to the big screen as he almost lost his life in Utah when he got trapped.
The idea for a film was first mooted when Aron Ralston approached John Smithson, a leading documentary producer. Ralston was a great admirer of Touching The Void, the theatrical documentary that Smithson had produced, and at this stage the film was envisaged as a documentary feature.
"I was thrilled when I was able to persuade Aron to consider a film and to grant me the rights to his amazing story. It was at that point that I introduced the project to Pathe and Film 4" recalls Smithson.
Pathe and Film 4 immediately saw the potential and felt that Danny Boyle was the perfect director to bring the story to life. Francois Ivernel, Executive Vice President of Pathe, sent the materials to Danny, who in turn sent his producing partner Christian Colson, who produced Slumdog Millionaire, a copy of Ralston’s book.
Boyle, however, did not want to make a theatrical documentary but rather a fully fledged dramatic feature. Colson confesses he was not immediately sold.
"I put it down and thought, well that’s an incredible story but there’s no way to make a movie out of it -- and that’s what I said to Danny," he remembers. "Danny then sent me a treatment he’d written that was only six pages long, but it spelled out his whole concept for telling the story, full of extraordinary intercutting and visual ideas.
"As soon as I read that, I changed my mind entirely and said, ‘Let’s go, let’s do it.’ It was a huge storytelling challenge but Danny had found ways to keep it continually exciting and emotionally satisfying, providing a first-person experience for the audience."
Colson met with Smithson in London and a deal was made to make a fully fledged dramatic feature film based on Boyle's treatment, with Smithson staying on as a producer.
Boyle immediately began work on a full screenplay, completing two drafts before he and Colson approached Simon Beaufoy - with whom they had worked on Slumdog - to join the team as co-writer.
The first task for Boyle was to really get to know Aron Ralston and that process began where Aron’s life as he had formerly known it essentially came to an end: Blue John Canyon, Utah. Boyle Colson and Smithson made an initial trip in July of 2009 with Ralston to hike and climb through the slot canyons that will forever be entwined with Ralston’s heart.
This was vital to Ralston because he wanted the filmmakers to have a deep familiarity with that raw, rugged landscape that still means the world to him before they went any further.
At first, Ralston was unsure about Boyle’s more imaginative approach. "It was emotionally difficult for me, because even though I knew we were making a drama, I resisted departing from the facts of my story," he admits.
But ultimately, the idea of getting at the deeper truth through a visceral, gripping style of storytelling began to excite Ralston, and he openly invited the filmmakers into his most personal memories and innermost feelings.
He says: "I lived this story and it will always be a central part of me, but I realized that to make a movie that would allow the audience to feel as though they had been through it too would take some brilliant storytellers."
Ralston became close with Simon Beaufoy as well, hiking with the screenwriter in the high country of Colorado. "We scrambled around the mountainsides and talked about my background," he recalls.
"Simon’s an outdoor guy himself, so we had really cool conversations and I think he was able to pick up on some very important aspects to the story."
Holding nothing back, Ralston also shared with the filmmakers the intensely private video 'messages' he recorded while trapped in the canyon, hoping to leave something behind for his friends and family should he perish.
"That material was brilliantly helpful to us, and to James Franco as well," says Boyle.
Ralston was equally excited by their collaboration. "Working with Danny was a phenomenal experience," he says.
"He’s so insightful and creative and also has been very sensitive to how personal this story is. He had already put in an enormous amount of research and preparation before the first time we even met.
"And I’ve been really appreciative of how inclusive he’s been. Through all the rewrites, meetings and interviews with actors, he’s included me more than I ever expected."
Ralston provided the filmmakers with tons of information that allowed them to recreate many of the astonishing physical details of his battle for survival, from how he slept using rigged ropes to how he saved his own urine to drink.
"We wanted to remain true to the core reality of Aron’s entrapment," notes producer Colson. "So we recreated the exact equipment he had in his backpack, the precise amount of water he had, the blade quality of the knife, his every little strategy. We felt we couldn’t, and shouldn’t, mess around with those elements."
Yet, even as they got to know Aron better, Boyle felt it was essential to make his own personal connection to the material. "Aron has told this story many times in his own way, but I knew to make a movie I would have to puncture that bubble and get inside it to tell my own version of his tale," he comments.
"The wonderful thing about Aron is that he truly allowed us to do that: it’s Aron’s story, but out telling..."
Boyle was drawn to one of the underlying threads of Ralston’s story; that of a man who had never really reached out before, who was an individualist to the point of not realizing the power of his relationships with people.
"Aron was the perfect specimen, self-sufficient, independent, athletic, resourceful, but not the perfect man," says Boyle.
What moved Boyle so much is that when Ralston was truly left alone facing death, he could only think of other people in his life - past, present and future - and how much that mattered to him, how much it made him want to live life one more day.
"Aron saw himself as a soloist but when it came down to what drew him back towards life was the pack, the herd, the community.
"For me, that became the idea of the film. ‘I need help’ says Aron when he finally stumbles upon his rescuers near the end of the movie. Yes he does. We all do. That’s why we live in crowds," says Boyle.
Later, watching Boyle on the set made Ralston realize that Boyle truly was making the story his own, in the best sense of the phrase. "He was in the flow of every moment. Once I saw that, I was giddy. I was like, wow, he is so into this!"
The way in which Boyle set out to approach the film was the only way Ralston could imagine those six days reflected on screen. "I was alone but I was trying to reconnect with my loved ones through memories and fantasies and even out-of-body experiences.
"It was some pretty trippy stuff as I became more dehydrated, sleep-deprived and desperate. All these things were just stripping away the layers of my mind until all that was left were the emotional connections," Ralston says. "Danny was really able to bring those experiences out in the film."
It was a wildly surreal experience, Ralston confesses, to see the most profound experience of his life re-enacted by James Franco and the crew and being on the set left him reeling back into all that he had seen and felt in those six days.
"It was as if my 2010 self was able to look back at my 2003 self and watch myself escape the canyon," he says.
The film brought Ralston back to Blue John Canyon on an especially momentous date: the 7th anniversary of his entrapment. "Having Aron there on this anniversary was obviously very special for him, and I think the realness of that added even more to the texture of the film," says Colson.
For Ralston, the experience was something almost inexpressible, as he took a hushed, private moment to give gratitude to the rock, to the canyon, to all the wonders of life he’s taken in since that unexpected, life-altering day.
"It was very personal," he says. "I had as good as died in that spot, but when I got out of there, it was a rebirth. One life was over, and another began.
"It really was remarkable to me that we would be shooting in Blue John Canyon at this time, during this exact week of my renewal. It reminded me of how an end can also be a beginning."
The day he freed himself truly was a new beginning for Ralston. In one of the film’s most powerful scenes, based in reality, Aron hallucinates a figure out of an uncertain future: a boy who might be his own yet-to-be-born child. During production, that prophecy came to pass as Ralston’s first son was born.
Now with a family of his own, Ralston says that he believes everything in his life led up to that singular moment of reckoning. "I always had this gravitational attraction to the edge between life and death, and this was the culmination," he says.
"At some point, I think I was bound to get to a point where it went too far, on some mountain or river or canyon.
"At the same time, there was this upside that everything I had done in my life, everyone I had known, now became a resource for me, something to draw on in order to survive and afterwards, to flourish."
Ralston will always be in awe of what he experienced and how it changed everything. He says, "It was a watershed.
There was what came before that day in Blue John Canyon and then there was everything that came after it. It stands as one of the greatest blessings that I’ll ever receive."
127 Hours is released 7th January.