EIGHT BELOW
Q&A with Paul Walker & director Frank Marshall		 Search all of phase9.tv






Movie Interview by Neils Hesse

The London press conference

Frank it looked very cold on screen, and considering that you filmed in Canada, what was it actually like?

FRANK MARSHALL: It was pretty rugged, but it was much different than when I did ALIVE where we had the helicopter in everyday with the crew and the equipment every morning. This time we would get into our snowmobiles and snow caps and went up to this place that sort of served as a sort of Antarctic backlot where we had six locations within 5 minutes of each other on the top of this mountain that had no trees, so any direction you looked there was snow. This made it easier when the weather changed, because the weather was always changing. I wanted the movie to feel realistic, and I don’t do well up in the office on a soundstage so it was nice to be up in the elements.

Paul, we are always told that actors shouldn’t work with children or animals. There were no children in this film but animals clearly were. In the film Huskies are portrayed as being all loveable and loyal beasts. Is that how they really are or can they also be ferocious and frightening?

PAUL WALKER: Some of them are real sweet but they’re a working dog first and foremost. They’re not like a Golden Retriever who just wants to please and be petted at all times. They don’t require a lot of human contact - they just want to work. We all had our favourites and those were mainly the ones that were highly socialised. I don’t think that they’d make the best house pets especially not in Southern California where I come from.

Paul, are you as comfortable as your character was with dogs?

PAUL WALKER: Yes, where I grew up there was always a couple of cats and at least 2 dogs.

FRANK MARSHALL: Yeah I don’t think that you could fake that. I don’t know if it’s the same as owning a parakeet, but one of the most important questions that I had for Paul when we first met was do you have a dog? And when he said yes I said that you’re ninety percent of the way there because that bond and that relationship between man and dog, I don’t think you can fake. It was really important for the character and certainly the minute he got up there I could see that he was very comfortable with the dogs.

Paul most actors get some rehearsal time with their cast members before they act with them, with your canine cast members did you have to bond with them before you did the filming?

PAUL WALKER: That was the focal point, that was the most important thing, not that it was all shot in sequence but everything involving the snow and the outdoors is what we shot first and foremost. The majority of that was all physical acting there wasn’t a whole lot of dialogue, and I think that Frank knew that we the human actors would get our time together, and we went about it day to day depending on what Mother Nature had in store for us, she pretty much dictated what we did on any given day. It was important that I form a relationship with each of the dogs, sure we had trainers but ultimately they had to listen to me when I was giving them basic commands especially with Huskies being working dogs you have to earn their respect, much like you would with say riding a horse. A horse can sense if you are an inexperienced rider, and with these dogs they can sense if you are inexperienced with the sled. It took a long time with some of them especially to earn their respect. I spent up to a month doing 10-hour days just working with the dogs, prior to jumping onto the principal photography bandwagon. Then naturally it was a work in progress and by the end of the shoot I was more than proficient. We got on pretty good. I liked it a lot.

FRANK MARSHALL: I think that’s a testament to Paul’s ability to get to know the dogs because one thing as the director that was important to me was that the dogs were always in the same scenes as the characters and that we weren’t cheating by cutting into close ups of the dogs doing something, and that required Paul to have a relationship with them otherwise they’d be looking out for their trainer. But he was always able to get them to focus. I also knew that this was going to be a challenge to direct the dogs and so we spent a lot of time with them. We actually shot for 4 weeks with just the dogs before we got the actors in, so that we could learn where we could put the trainers and how we could work the scenes to make them feel like they were real scenes. I wanted the scenes with the dogs to be like scenes with human characters, so that took a bit of figuring out.

Was Jason Biggs comfortable with the fact that he was going to have those many affectionate moments with the Huskies?

FRANK MARSHALL: Yeah Jason was a real trooper, he didn’t like the baby food that we had to smear on him, but he was up for anything. I think that one of the nice things that happened was that the relationship that’s in the movie between the two characters became the relationship that Paul and Jason now have. They hadn’t met each other before they came onto the mountain and they’re real buddies now.

PAUL WALKER: He earned my respect right away because he showed up with a broken ankle and he didn’t tell anybody.

FRANK MARSHALL: I didn’t know that he had a broken ankle. Luckily he had these big boots so he’d take out the inside of the boot and put his cast in there, and he was running around, it was amazing.

PAUL WALKER: He hid it as best as he could and I finally busted him, I saw him twisting it because there was so much pressure from the swelling, it was a removable cast essentially and I was like what’s the deal here and he was like, “Ssssh!” That’s when I decided I liked him.

So Paul do you know how Jason broke his ankle?

PAUL WALKER: It isn’t much of a story, he stepped off a curb.

Paul, it’s very much a buddy movie with a difference in that it’s you and the dogs. After looking at your recent movies is it something that you were looking for, you know a change of direction, it’s such a beautiful Disney product?

PAUL WALKER: Not so much I just read it and liked it. I mean to be honest when I heard the storyline the first thing I thought of was the Cuba Gooding Jr movie and not that it was bad but I thought that well I’ve already seen dogs in the snow. Then I read it and I was laughing, I cried and by the end of it I was feeling really good about things. And I picked up the phone called my representatives and said that I like this movie. I said to Frank that this is one of those rare occasions. It’s not pretentious to think it is what it is and if we go out and make what’s on paper, it should be a really decent movie. Frank said that the real pressure comes from knowing just that because then if we screw it up it’s all our fault.

Frank do you find it more exciting working on action adventure films like this or say the Jason Bourne movies?

FRANK MARSHALL: I do prefer directing, whereas a producer I’m in support to the director but as in this case I found a story I was really passionate about and I wanted to be the storyteller and not be in support of that. I like working in these big canvases that are really unusual and showing people a place that they couldn’t go to themselves, and having these adventure stories take place. I also love dogs. This one really had everything and it was a challenge to make as well. I think BOURNE is another genre and category that’s also satisfying and rewarding. It’s kind of a new franchise, with all due respect it’s sort of a new James Bond - I love James Bond movies. I love this character of Jason Bourne but he operates in the real world, he doesn’t have gadgets and fun things to get him out of tough situations. But for me being the director and being out there and being in charge was great and I had a fantastic time.

Paul they say that as an actor you should love every character you portray. Would you say that you fell in love with this character much more than any other character you’ve played because he was very similar to yourself?

PAUL WALKER: It’s just one of those things. I felt like I was along for the journey when I read it so you don’t really think in terms of what similarities there are. I just know that I fell for him and I understood it, and got the story. It reminded me of a lot of things. One of the first thoughts I had was OLD YELLER, which to me is an all time classic. I loved that movie as a kid and this film touched on a lot of the same notes. I’m an animal lover but I think that what was funny was my parents and my friends’ reaction at the premiere when they saw it, and they said, “That’s you!”

Paul in terms of physicality what would you say was the most challenging aspect of the film and also I know you weren’t filming in Antarctica, but it must still have been pretty cold out there in Canada. How did you and your fellow cast members deal with the extreme temperatures?

PAUL WALKER: Well the good thing was that we were equipped, so I had the right parka and I had all the layers. Yeah sure it was cold from time to time but it never got to the point where it was unbearable. It was kind of the fun of the day when we’d get a blast of wind and old Kurt would be there with his electronics measuring the wind chill and at one point we saw more than 30 below Celsius, but it became more of a novelty than any thing else. I think it helped that the dogs were there, they take your mind off the job at hand and it was beautiful. You get caught up in the scenery and the vistas more than anything else. I expected it to be a nightmare and that was a good portion of my first conversation with Frank. I said, “Man we’re going to have to have a mountain of crew not to mention some really tough doctors” and he said, “I know which is why I’ve got the best”, which I didn’t question after looking at his resume. He brought on Don Burgess who he boasted about as being a phenomenal guy and his level of fitness was exceptional. Sure enough there was Don Burgess our director of photography opting out of the ride to the top of the mountain, instead he was snow shoeing up every day and snow shoeing back down as well.

PAUL WALKER: Operating the sled doesn’t require a whole lot of athleticism I think that anybody can do it. You just have to be aware because the terrain is always changing and it is a living machine. You do have dogs that occasionally fight, some of them have an attitude and they don’t always listen. I’ll tell you this much, I got up there and maybe my cardio wasn’t as good as it should have been. I came home and my legs were probably a good 3 to 4 inches bigger around than they used to be. Just going through that snow everyday meant I could have ran a marathon when I got back to sea level.

FRANK MARSHALL: We had one great day when we had the helicopter in while they were searching for the meteorite which was kind of like an accident because the original part they were supposed to go to kept getting whiter and whiter and we needed to see the mountain. We finally found a place so I sent Bruce Greenwood and Paul in and I said, “Just keep going.” They were pretty far away with just a little crew and they were climbing. I could see that even though they were further away they were thinking how many times are we going to have to do this!

Continued on page 2


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