Dermot Mulroney didn’t plan it, but he ended up doing two movies back-to-back about human interaction with wild animals in Alaska, and he filmed those movies in freezing temperatures. Those two movies — “The Grey” and “Big Miracle” — are being released in North America just one week apart from each other. “The Grey” arrives in cinemas on January 27, 2012, while the release date for “Big Miracle” is February 3, 2012. (“The Grey” takes place in Alaska but was actually filmed in the Canadian province of British Columbia.)
In “The Grey,” Mulroney plays Talget, a mild-mannered member of all all-male oil-rig crew whose plane crashes in the snowy remote wilderness of Alaska. The survivors of the plane crash — including the group’s de facto leader, John Ottway (played by Liam Neeson) — must then try to survive and find help while dealing with the harsh elements, starvation and a bloodthirsty pack of wolves. In “Big Miracle,” Mulroney plays Alaska National Guard commander Col. Scott Boyer, who is involved in the rescue of a family of gray whales that are trapped by a massive ice formation.
I recently caught up with Mulroney at the New York City press junket for “The Grey.” During the interview, he talked about the differences between these “Big Miracle” and “The Grey,” how some of the stunts were handled in “The Grey,” and how life began to imitate art on the set of “The Grey.” (NOTE: There are some spoilers in this article that are clearly indicated with spoiler alerts.)
How did you deal with the freezing weather you had to be in for “The Grey”?
We were very well-prepared and warned what was going to be expected of us.
Was there any kind of “boot camp” for preparation?
No, there really wasn’t. I got this job in mid-December [2010], and we were rehearsing by January 4, [2011], so I don’t know how you prepare for this. I heard Liam saying that he was taking a lot of cold showers, but I’m not certain if that was for preparation or what.
I had just come from making “Big Miracle,” which was also 10-degree weather, in Anchorage. And that movie comes out [in February 2012] and it’s fantastic. So actually I shot these [“The Grey” and “Big Miracle”] in reverse order [that they will be released].
And then right away, I did “The Grey.” I went home for the holidays for about a week or two weeks and then I went right back into it. So, for me, I had already just done it.
In “Big Miracle,” did you have to go underwater?
No. Drew [Barrymore] did though. Some of that was in a tank and so forth, but still deathly cold water. She’s in a dry suit. There’s great footage of her underwater.
Which had colder weather: “The Grey” or “Big Miracle”?
“The Grey” was significantly colder, but when you get to cold, it’s a whole philosophy. There are types of cold. There’s city cold, there’s country cold, there’s bone-chilling cold and then numbing cold. This [“The Grey”] was just all-the-way cold. Our record low [temperature] was the first day we shot the plane-crash location, and it was 37 degrees below zero with wind, so who knew what the wind chill was.
That scene where Liam comes out of the snow bank, and he finds Joe Anderson, whose pants are ripped off, and then over to [stunt coordinator] Ben Bray, who’s in shock in that amazing scene where he’s saying, “I just need to call Vanessa.” It’s a chilling scene in more ways than one. Those three guys were in those conditions. And Liam is in a sweater only. And Joe literally has no pants on in 30-degree-below weather.
So Joe [Anderson] got frostbite, a little on his fingers. Joe Carnahan [director/producer/co-writer of “The Grey”] says he had numbness for months afterwards. And Dallas Roberts, I know got some [frostbite] on his cheek on that first day. I came through completely unscathed.
How long was the film shoot for “The Grey”?
I think it was 40 days to shoot, so that’s roughly eight weeks. But the extreme weather that we traveled for — we were based in Vancouver, but we went much further north in British Columbia to Smithers, Canada — that was about two-and-a-half weeks.
Can you talk about the use of life-sized wolf puppets in “The Grey,” instead of having all of the wolves as computer-generated imagery (CGI) that is added in after filming?
[Joe Carnahan] does this remarkable job. It’s really actually conceived quite brilliantly, how to meld all these technologies and literally animatronics, where the wolf just kind of moves a little. And then they enhance that with computer generation, where they give it facial movement and stuff like that.
And even hand puppets. The puppet head of the wolf, two guys were holding that and bashing into the back of Ben Bray’s head, or when Liam gets that strike in the leg. So [“The Grey” used] old technology, though puppetry, right up through the most high-tech computer-generation techniques.
[SPOILER ALERT]
Did you interact with any real wolves while you were filming “The Grey”?
I didn’t at all. Some of the other actors did. You’ll see that the wolves are interacting with my character, but for obvious reasons, that was not me. Those are my clothes, and from what I understand, they stuffed my wardrobe with ground beef, so there is a shot of four real wolves tugging and shredding on this carcass. So I was actually not there for that part of the shoot.
And the other guys had very little interaction with the real wolves, mainly because these are not domesticated wolves. The wolves they had were real wolves that don’t take commands, that aren’t trained in any way. They had to be real careful. Basically, if you didn’t have anything to do with those animals on that day, just stay away so there isn’t more distraction for the animal or any kind of danger.
[END OF SPOILER ALERT]
Did you do any research on wolves?
We read up on that. In fact, I just read a story the other day that the first wolf crossed over into California just a couple of weeks ago. They’re coming back. They’re off the endangered species list, have been for 20 years.
But I remember as a kid when they went on [the endangered-species list], I think it was in 1973. There were so few that they were actually put on that list. And then they were re-classified, whatever the other classification is concerned about. But they’re not an endangered species anymore, which is amazing that that could get turned around in 30 years.
How did “The Grey” affect you, in terms of thinking about survivalist techniques? For example, were you into camping before you did this movie? Have you thought differently about what you might carry with you on a plane if you survived a plane crash?
It’s funny, at one time I was in a little boat accident. I had flown to the island and we had to take another boat to that island. And it was that night that I had flip flops on.
So this boat runs into a reef about a hundred yards off of the [shore]. So we had to walk in over coral. That was uncomfortable, painful — picking pieces of coral out of my foot later that night, but I never traveled just in flip flops again. It’s best to wear actual shoes, just in case.
I was so glad in the story that Ottway, Liam’s character, thought to bring gasoline too. I don’t know if you actually tried to start a fire with just rubbing two sticks together. It’s exhausting.
So no, I wasn’t really required to employ actual survival techniques, but we were in real danger in extreme weather conditions. As I said, there were people coming up with frostbite. Working in those conditions was quite dangerous. Nobody came away with any permanent injury.
[SPOILER ALERT]
There’s a scene in “The Grey” where your Talget character had to use a tightrope to cross a chasm, and he’s battling with his fear of heights. Can you talk about the stunt for that scene?
There’s a piece where I actually get on to the wire from the edge and shimmy down. I was wired in for that. And then it’s so brilliantly put together, the way they shot the sequence is quite fascinating. The editing is fantastic, because they string you out and … it’s excruciating.
I’m not 200 feet off the ground. I’m maybe 15 [feet off the ground], maybe 12 feet, with a pad below me. There, I’m not wired. They’re figuring if I fell, I’m falling into a stunt pad that’s designed for that.
So they did release that cable, and I take that first fall, but the actual fall is a stunt man, of course, who took a remarkable blow to the back of the head. He’s on wires too. It’s not just an open free fall through that tree, but that is a human body going through all those branches and coming down.
He’s on a cable, and so it’s controlled, but it couldn’t have been comfortable, right? But he walked away from it. And then they dropped me for four feet or something for the end of the fall.
[END OF SPOILER ALERT]
“The Grey” has a lot of real-time stunts instead of using CGI. What do you think about that?
The problem with computer-generated technologies is we all know so much about it now. And we also have logic. You can’t have 10,000 ships. It’s logistically impossible.
So you know when you’re watching the movie that they’ve been drawn in. There’s an alert that goes off in your brain. And that doesn’t go off in this movie because Joe [Carnahan] was so dedicated to having practical stunts and effects.
We worked with animatronic wolves, which is really just like a fancy puppet, but at least there’s an animal there instead of a bouncing ball or laser pointer or however the do it. I’ve never stood in front of a green curtain and pretended there was a mountain behind me. That was real background.
The only thing [Joe Carnahan] used the green screen for is just a few sequences. Obviously, I’m not up 2,000 feet up in the chasm. So below me is obviously computer-generated background. So when you see my [Talget character’s] glasses fall, they only fell 12 feet in real life, but the CG guy puts it so it’s a really vertiginous shot as the glasses fall into the chasm.
So, to my mind, it’s a seamless hybrid, which is getting harder and harder to do because even the producers or the studio will say, “Oh, we’ll just do that in post-production,” so they don’t have to think the way the director had to think in this.
The physics of it is interesting. I’m literally looking at a model where they’re dropping a guy, a little tiny figure on a string and having it hit the model tree … It’s literally a mathematical, an engineering equation. It’s a great question. I back this movie for that reason: [It has real stunts] instead of somebody just drawing it in and animating it.
“The Grey” and “Big Miracle” are both about wild animals and survival. When you were filming these movies, what did you talk about with your co-stars?
It’s such a peculiar coincidence to do two movies about rare animals in northern latitudes, back to back. What we had was we had experiences were we spent all day and, frankly, all night — we all went out to dinner together — so there was that camaraderie that was developing separate from what you see in the movie — or parallel to it.
There’s a great scene in [“The Grey”] where you see a couple of the guys who are still alive talking about who they miss or what their strongest connection to the outside world is. In Ottway’s case, it’s his wife … [For other characters], it’s a daughter, a sister. So there’s a real strong presence of people who aren’t there in this movie, which I think gives it a much stronger emotional element than you typically find in a movie of this type.
But then, picture us sitting around having these exact same conversations. So we were imitating ourselves. It’s this weird “art imitating life” where we’re sitting around talking about our wives or girlfriends or kids. Most of the cast are fathers. And then we go and shoot a scene and do the same thing.
And a couple of times, there’d be one of those bracing moments where you have this out-of-body experience because you’re doing precisely what the screenwriter imagine someone would do in that circumstance. The circumstances were so real, we found ourselves doing [in real life what was in the script], which only proved his original diagram.
It’s a self-feeding system, a loop upon a loop, which rarely happens in the making of a movie, because you either go back to a fancy hotel or you have the big trailer or the little trailer or whatever it is. You just kind of leave it on the set and you come back. And there was no diving line on when we were shooting and when we weren’t.
Some of the characters’ personalities in “The Grey” change dramatically from the beginning of the movie to the end. What did you think about those transformations and the fact that some of the men are more dangerous to each other than the wolves are?
I love where this movie starts, which is [Joe Carnahan] establishes that these are tough guys, the tough conditions they work in, in one of the toughest jobs known, and they’re beating each other up in the bar. And then he puts guys who are already “up here,” tough guys, in a situation that taxes the tough guys.
So he’s saying that normal men couldn’t handle this, so watch this. He starts the bar high. It’s not like it’s a lawyer and an accountant in this situation. It’s guys who already know how to deal with the elements, who work outside in extreme conditions. So they’re actually the best candidates in this situation. For me, in a narrative as an actor, you already have to surpass 10 on the dial, and that’s precisely what happens.
Can you compare and contrast the sets for “The Grey” and “Big Miracle”?
“Big Miracle” had more controlled conditions. It was also fascinating the way they made this movie. They actually took a piece of the mud flats in Anchorage and built an outdoor set about the size of two or three football fields. So it’s a sheet of ice. And they enhanced that background. So we’re trying not to shoot the city, which is right there and try and shoot into the inlands, which does have mountains in the background and so forth.
So they had a large, practical set, but almost very shot in that set still needed work done to add snow. We had snow, we had wind and all that, but it doesn’t always match, so we had to add it in a few shots, because it stopped snowing in the middle of the day.
And there too, there are animatronic whales. A lot of footage that you see in “Big Miracle” are gargantuan puppets. And then they enhanced that, so that the eyes are either blinking or it looks like a real eye.
So it was a little easier [to film ‘Big Miracle”]. It wasn’t as cold, for one thing. Also, just leaving that set and driving up the hill and going to the hotel. It didn’t have that truly remote feel, even though the story takes place in Barrow, Alaska, which is as far north as you can go in North America. We were merely shooting in 10-degree or zero-[degree] weather in Anchorage, which is southern Alaska.
There too, we were dealing with light, or lack of it, in October and November. So ultimately, their schedule became shooting outdoors up until lunchtime. So up until 4 o’clock when it’s dark, then you shoot on a set.
Did you want to interact with any real whales when you were filming “Big Miracle”?
No, but now I do.
Your Talget character in “The Grey” has a fear of heights. Were there any fears that you had to personally overcome in doing this movie?
I wish there was a story so I could say there was. I like cold weather and had been in it plenty enough to know what to expect. I even had the conversation with Joe [Carnahan, where he said]: “We’re really going to have to play out the sequence on the wire, so it’s just this excruciating moment. You’re afraid of heights, right?” And I said, “Not really.”
And he said, “What?” He wanted that so much, but what you see instead of a fear of heights (like I said I was in a controlled situation and I’m not 200 feet up) is how difficult it was physically to hang on to that wire for that sequence. There too, because of what was being asked of me, I wasn’t really acting, even though it’s slightly different from what it’s meant to portray.
[SPOILER ALERT]
Two of the characters in “The Grey” end up in river rapids. Would you have been able to do that type of scene without fear?
That, I think, would be the hardest thing. That obviously is protected too in everything but their hands and face. That is Liam and that is Dallas Roberts, and they are in that river in those temperatures. I talked to Dallas extensively about it, and he said, “I would have done it a hundred times if [Joe Carnahan] needed me to,” but I think he did it once or twice.
And there’s a camera man who’s even more protected in the water temperature, riding the rapids with him. So all of that footage is 100 percent real. They’re in safety gear for temperature, but they’re not roped off. They don’t have any floatation or anything. And that’s Liam Neeson in that river. It’s mind-boggling. When you know how cold cold is , and then you get wet in it, and this is an actor, and you see that whole sequence … for me, it’s mind-boggling.
[END OF SPOILER ALERT]
What do you think “The Grey” says about faith and religion?
This is really interesting, because at the end, [John Ottway] is blaming God: “Do something! Fuck faith!” But amazingly, these Christian groups are coming out and really supporting this movie, I think simply because it depicts a dialogue about faith and where religion or belief fits into people’s lives — or really when, in this case.
Are you so strung out to that that you look to something bigger to guide you? But the fact that there’s even a discussion of that in the characters is actually pretty rare. Certainly, it’s unusual to find that in a movie that’s a ripping adventure thriller.
It would [happen in real life]. Certainly, that’s the concept behind it. Like I said, we found ourselves having conversations like that. But for me, in the screenplay, when it comes to those discussions for me, as an actor, I’d say is just about as interesting as the 40 degrees below zero and trying to figure out how to get through your day that way. In other words, it had everything for an actor: adventure and a dramatic pull too.
There’s something that is shown at the very end of the credits to “The Grey.” Did you watch the movie all the way to the end?
I didn’t the first time I saw it because I had to leave to get to the other thing. And that was just with a group of eight or 10 executives, which is not the way to watch this movie. You will like this movie at home, but you will love it in a theater, especially the sound design. It just rumbles and rips at you. It’s fantastic.
But the other night, I actually saw it finally with a full audience and stayed through the credits. Enough said … You want people to see that [footage at the very end of the credits], but so many people are going to miss it. Joe was like, “If only you could put a label on the film: ‘Just stay. There’s one more thing you might want to see.”
What can you say about working with Liam Neeson? Was he was a leader off-screen as he is in “The Grey”?
Yeah. He was cast before any of the rest of us were. For me, that goes without saying, that’s one of the biggest draws to work with an actor of his caliber. But obviously, whatever’s going on with his career right now is so fun to see. All of the other actors are pulling for him. And then to get a chance to be in a [movie] cast with him.
The first couple of days, we were shooting in an interior, on a soundstage of the plane, leading up to the wreck. He had set up a chair, maybe an apple box, and he his book and his reading glasses. And it was like, “That’s cool. He’s here. He’s not going back to his fancy trailer. He’s on the stage.”
And then three or four days after seeing that, the chair kept getting closer and closer to ours. He couldn’t help himself because he’s a gung-ho guy, he’s a man’s man, he’s a team player — all of those things that men like about him as a movie star are true to real life. And he, in his quiet way, really was the leader of this cast and the leader in the story. So everybody just naturally fell into their roles that way.
You and Liam Neeson both have Irish backgrounds. Did you talk about that when you worked together?
No, not really. Maybe we did discuss that, but I must say it was refreshing to hear my first name said with an Irish accent, the way it’s meant to be. I’ve never in fact never met an American named Dermot, but when an Irishman says it, it makes up for a lot.
What’s next for you?
I’m on “New Girl” [playing Zooey Deschanel’s love interest], so it couldn’t be more different than [“The Grey”], but that’s one of the reasons why I do what I do, because it’s all different. I still love it, 27 years in. And so I get to do something funny and light. That’s a great cast. We had the table read [already].
How many episodes of “New Girl” are you doing?
I think three. You know how it’ll be: Oh they don’t really like each other, and then they think they like each other, and then they like each other, and then they break up, and then they send me home. I’ve seen the first draft of the script, so they’re constantly tweaking it, do you know what I mean?
I don’t know what the storyline is going to be, but obviously, I come in as the boyfriend of the moment. I think that’s going to be the rhythm of that show, that they’ll bring in guys to be her next [boyfriend] or almost [boyfriend] or whatever.
For more info: "The Grey" website
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