THE GREY is a drama, a thriller, a horror film…and one of the most exciting films you’ll see this year. I spoke exclusively to star Liam Neeson and director Joe Carnahan about the making of this man versus nature roller coaster ride. Read on to discover how the making of this picture could very well be the subject of its own feature. The Grey is now playing.

One of
the most enduring popular narratives has centered around the conflict between
man and nature. Now comes an engaging new adventure about ordinary
men stranded in the wilderness and pitted against impossible conditions and
even more nightmarish predators.

In THE
GREY, Liam Neeson’s character leads an unruly group of oil-rig roughnecks when
their plane crashes into the remote Alaskan wilderness. Battling mortal
injuries and merciless weather, the survivors have only a few days to escape
the icy elements – and a vicious pack of rogue wolves on the hunt – before
their time runs out. 

“This
is a hard-core survivalist film,” says director and co-writer Joe
Carnahan, whose previous hits include NARC and SMOKIN’ ACES. “If you’re afraid of
wild animals or plane travel, this movie will put you off for a good, long
time.

“THE
GREY triggered something very primal inside of me,” says Neeson, who
initially heard of the project while conducting a string of press interviews
with Carnahan for THE A-TEAM in Berlin and later asked the director about the
project over a lively dinner in London. After seeing the script, he quickly
signed on for the lead, knowing full well that Carnahan would strive for
realism by shooting on location near the sub-artic zone. “When I read the
script, I was 57 years old, and the little boy inside me thought it would be
great to take on such a demanding role,” says Neeson. “I wanted audiences
to say ‘Wow, how did you guys do that?’  At the same time, I was
thinking, ‘Jeez, can I physically do this?'”

“This has been the first film where I ever had to do a ‘stress test'”

Neeson
portrays John Ottway, a sharpshooter who has been hired by the refinery to keep
bears, canines and other wild beasts from attacking oil workers during their
shifts. 

“Boy,
I tell you what,” enthuses Carnahan. “In terms of what I thought the
film was going to be and what it is now, it would be tough to imagine anybody
other than Liam in the role. How this character evolved and later shaped by him
as an actor has wildly surpassed my expectations.  He was able to bring a deeper, more profound
sense of what life and death is about. When talking to younger actors, they
didn’t understand their own mortality. Liam is nearly sixty and, as vibrant and
strong and tough as he is, he understands how we’re all on the clock, every one
of us. We’re all being stalked by time.”

“My
character has a specific relationship to these wolves,” explains Neeson.
“He works on the refinery’s fence line and his job is to make sure the
animals don’t approach the men at work. What weighs heavily on Ottway’s mind is
that, perhaps, the wolves are now coming for revenge.”

Carnahan’s
interest was sparked by a short story by writer Jeffers called “Ghost
Walkers” about oil workers hunted by a pack of rogue wolves following a
plane crash.

Jeffers
crafted a rough screenplay, and Carnahan spent the next four years, on and off,
developing the various characters and narrative.  “It took a lot of time, but the story
sparked my interest in a primal way,” says the writer-director. “It
mirrors what a man holds dear and important, and I also found that evolving as
time went by.”

The “survival
story” became infused with far more existential questions as the years of
rewriting proceeded. “I wanted something that had deeper meaning,
something that questioned nature and life and God. The wolves are part of that.
They’re as omniscient and all powerful as the rivers or the blizzards or
anything else they encounter. I wanted to show these men as interlopers, the
clash of industry versus the natural world. The centerpiece of the film is
definitely these men and their journey. 
But I also wanted it to be more than just an interesting action film in
which the audience knows where it’s going.

 Says
Carnahan, “I always looked at it in a way that each of these characters is
a different facet of Ottway’s own personality — there’s the tough guy, the
coward, the sensitive one, the husband. I tried to metaphorically set it in
that way, but without drawing too much of a line to any one thing. The story asks
simply, ‘Who are you? How do you want to live? 
How do you want to die?'”

From the
get-go, the director insisted on realism, keeping actors hip-deep in snow and
facing bracing winds on the mountain slope. “There were icicles on my
eyelashes, it was that insane,” says Roberts, who portrays Hendricks.
“It was the coldest place I’d ever been in my life,” says Grillo.
“Eighty mph winds, freezing out there for hours. I’d be trying to say a line
and my mouth wouldn’t move.”  Says
Carnahan, “We got kicked off the mountain three times by complete
white-outs. I had partial frostbite on my fingers and toes.”

Conditions
were challenging for everyone on the shoot, to say the least. “You could
only access the set by snow cat or snowmobile,” says Carnahan. “There
were no creature comforts out there.  No
perks.” In between shots on the mountain set, from 7:30 in the morning
until late in the afternoon, there was no lounging in lavish trailers.  Because of the extreme weather conditions,
the cast holed up in small tractor boxes and shipping crates to keep warm.  The male bonding taking place over those long
hours of below-zero temperatures led to some unusual circumstances while
shooting.

Perhaps
the most memorable incident took place when the gang of actors was literally
buried up to their thighs in ice-cold snow, a white-out obscured everyone’s
vision, and the camera operators faced serious problems with a planned crane
shot because the oil needed to move the machinery was frozen solid.

“It
was just a physically impossible time during the first few days,” Neeson
remembers. “We had lines to memorize and our brains were freezing and all
we could think about was how to stay warm.” During that unbearable moment,
hulking British actor Nonso Anozie suddenly launched into a Shakespearian
oratory about the elements from Othello in his booming baritone. “He was just
so exhilarating and it made us all feel so…right,” recalls Neeson.
“It reminded us that, yes, it may be minus forty degrees outside but we’re
actors, damn it, and we’re going to get through this scene no matter what. It
filled us all with this great warmth, and I’ll never forget hearing that man’s
voice for as long as I live.”

Carnahan
watched hours of nature documentaries, read Shaun Ellis’ books on wolf
behavior, and learned all he could about the actual creatures.  Yet he wanted something more mysterious and
fantasy-like. “I wanted it to be realistic, and at the same time I wanted
the wolves to be bigger than normal,” he explains. “By their nature,
wolves are not gigantic animals, yet we found examples of 250-pound wolves that
would actually fight with grizzly bears.”

“We’ve
all seen CGI effects, but we wanted something as close as possible to a real
wolf,” said Neeson.

For Academy
Award-nominated Neeson, it was the chance to reteam with a solid director and a
story touching on extreme emotions that served as the major
draws.  “On THE A-TEAM I learned about Joe’s phenomenal passion
and energy, and, on THE GREY, those qualities seem to have doubled,”
concludes the actor. “He’s also a very funny guy, and I think you need a
sense of humor because in certain scenes you go into some really dark places.
It’s all about survival, about keeping your body and soul together, because if
the elements don’t get you then the wolves most definitely will. When the
camera is turned on and you’re facing those kinds of incredibly intense
situations, that’s what real acting is all about.”