With his tale now a possible Oscar contender, Aron Ralston talks to Helen Barlow about how he gave director Danny Boyle and actor James Franco the final cut on the remarkable mountain survival story
When Danny Boyle first wanted to make a movie of the astonishing survival tale that Aron Ralston chronicled in Between a Rock and a Hard Place, the adventurer declined the offer, believing a factual docudrama would get closer to the truth.
Then Boyle made Slumdog Millionaire, a fictional movie that veered close to harsh reality and, of course, went on to win the Best Picture Oscar.
Luckily Boyle was still interested in telling Ralston's tale.
Nevertheless, the challenge of making a big action adventure where Ralston was stuck beneath a boulder for most of the running time was quite daunting, even for the Oscar-winning director.
Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog's Oscar-winning screenwriter, who had trained as a documentary director, wrote the screenplay with Boyle.
"We not only had a big responsibility to Aron, we had to tell his story balancing what actually happened with the demands of drama," Beaufoy explains.
"Of course, the major challenge was that we have one man who really doesn't talk to anyone and we had to be able to go to the depths and flaws of his personality to tell his story. We knew he had to then sit in the audience and watch, and we could only do that because Aron was incredibly open about himself and why he was in that canyon. It was his destiny. He always had this sense this boulder was coming to get him."
Although an experienced outdoorsman and mountaineer, Ralston had set out for a hike in a remote area of Utah's canyon country in April 2003, without telling anyone where he was going and with few supplies - though he was armed with a handycam.
Eleven kilometres into the canyon, he dislodged a boulder that crushed and pinned his right hand and left him stranded in an isolated gully.
Five days into his ordeal, suffering from dehydration and starvation, he realised it was now or never.
With a cheap blunt knife he sawed through his forearm, breaking two bones, and set himself free. He then hiked to a miraculous rescue.
When Ralston watched Boyle's movie, titled 127 Hours - the duration of his ordeal - he cried. But not during the scene when he chopped off his forearm - "I was eating popcorn by then," he chirps.
It was during the scenes where Ralston, deftly portrayed by James Franco, recorded his last will and testament for his family, where he said goodbye, that made him bawl.
"What happened to me in the canyon it was an experience of being connected with my family and my friends through the video camera, " Ralston explains, "so frequently in the film you see James turning on the video camera, talking to my family. That, for me, is really what saved me, what helped me survive and then to get free.
"That combination of love and the desire for freedom, that if you are disconnected from those things and in some ways feel trapped and disconnected from love, that is where it is so dangerous, thinking thoughts like 'no one is ever going to love me', or that 'this is too hard', or that 'I can't deal with this'."
In all the delirium he had a vision of his unborn son that helped pull him through. It became a vital part of the movie, as Ralston had married and was about to become a father as the film went into production. And yes, he had a son.
Ralston notes he's not the first to be in such a position, citing New Zealand mountain guide Rob Hall, who died on Everest in 1996.
"He was talking to his pregnant wife on the phone just before he perished on Mt Everest," Ralston notes.
"His last dying experience was to reach out and connect with his wife. These things are so universal. I really hope that people can look at this film not as a one-off. As Danny says, it is not a super-human story, it is a human story."
Still, Ralston admits it was essential that Boyle show his actual experience, the gory bits included.
"He does it so compellingly and it transports people into a state of empathy. People are holding their arms and almost biting through their own fingers. But really for me, had the scenes been anything less, it would have kind of whitewashed what I went through. Had it been anything more it would have probably been gratuitous. So I think that Danny really struck a balance. If we had 10 people passing out at every screening it would have been too much. A couple is okay," he jokes.
Boyle employs a variety of sound effects during the amputation, amplifying the bone breaks with a gunshot and the nerve-cutting with an electronic vibration.
The ultimate pay-off for audiences is Ralston's exhilarating moment of freedom. "When the film screened in Toronto, hundreds of people lit up with euphoria at the triumph, not only of the story but of the human spirit," Ralston recalls.
"It reminds us we can get to those places, which in the beginning seem almost horrifying. It is so liberating to feel that, which is just really a taste of what I felt."
To build up the tension, Boyle shot what he calls "an action movie about a guy who can't move", at a blistering pace.
"It would be catastrophic if it remained inert," he says. "We made James work six days a week and kept pushing and pushing, so that sense of restlessness would bleed into the film and make it bearable to watch."
Franco was up for whatever it took. "Aron is a very accomplished climber and had scaled all the peaks over 14,000 feet [4276m] in Colorado, but in the film he is just trapped in canyon," he grins.
"So I didn't have to learn how to climb, but I did go to climbing gyms and went on a diet to lose some weight. "The emotional scenes were the hard part. Danny, Simon and I worked with Aron, who took us through everything he experienced. He even acted it out for us. But the most valuable things were the videos he made in the canyon. He usually only shows them to family and friends and this was gold for an actor, as I got to see in the moment as he was in the middle of it, not knowing he would survive. Aron made it up until an hour or two before he got out and I thought I was watching a guy accepting his own death. He wasn't wallowing in self-pity or anything.''
For Ralston, Franco's portrayal surpassed his wildest expectations.
"James is not doing an impression of me but he still captures all the nuances - my exuberance, enthusiasm and the charm I might be able to muster at times. There's this sociability mixed with the solitary self-introspection, self-criticism and moments of delirium. It all comes through. James has been hyperactive in his career and during one of our first conversations I realised he likes to be busy, like me.
"When my friends found out what had happened to me they were flabbergasted - not that I'd cut my arm off to get out of the canyon, but that I'd been able to survive standing still for six days not doing anything. I don't have any talent for acting or art or poetry like James, but we do have similarities and share a similar sense of humour. He's probably better looking though."
LOWDOWN
Who: Aron Ralston, mountaineer and the subject of 127 Hours starring James Franco and directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire)
When: Opens at cinemas February 10
Also: Ralston is coming to NZ where he will attend a special Q&A screening of the film at Auckland's Rialto Cinemas on Feb 5.
-TimeOut
