James Franco and Danny Boyle Talk 127 Hours

Chances are you’ve already heard about “Slumdog Millionaire” director Danny Boyle’s latest film, 127 HOURS—but for all the wrong reasons.

Yes, people reportedly fainted during the climactic amputation scene when the film made it’s world premiere during the Toronto Film Festival earlier this year, and yes, paramedics were called to the Los Angeles premiere when a young woman suffered a seizure about 45 minutes into the film, according to the Los Angeles Times. Far from a cheap marketing ploy, these incidents have detracted from what is undoubtedly one of the year’s finest films.

Adapted from the memoir of Aron Ralston, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place,” the film stars James Franco as Ralston, an adrenalin junkie and professional outdoorsman who, while hiking through Robbers Roost, Utah, had his arm trapped by a dislodged boulder and was trapped in a cave for nearly five days back in 2003. Armed with just a video camera, Ralston contemplates his life, eventually summoning the courage to amputate his arm and escape certain death.

The film was made by the entire team behind the Oscar-winning instant classic “Slumdog Millionaire,” including writer/director Danny Boyle, co-writer Simon Beaufoy, producer Christian Colson, and composer A.R. Rahman, and is one of the best-reviewed films of the year, with the Los Angeles Times saying, “In the end, 127 Hours is one man’s incredible, unforgettable journey; it took the extraordinary alchemy of Boyle and Franco to also make it ours.”

MMM attended the New York press conference for 127 HOURS, where writer/director Danny Boyle and star Jame Franco chatted about the notorious amputation scene, how they portrayed trapped hiker Aron Ralston, their own survival experiences, and their future plans (“28 Months Later?” The “Alien” prequel?)

MANHATTAN MOVIE MAGAZINE: How did you find out about this project?

DANNY BOYLE: So, I heard the story– I was in London, I live in London, I heard the story in 2003. And I had– it’s weird what happened to the Chilean miners recently because in the same way that stories snagged, you know, the way it just snags people. I mean, look, people in Britain were really fascinated. And obviously, we heard the story when Aron came out of the canyon. And I remember there was talk of a press conference. And I remember following the news, tryin’ to think oh, what, that’ll be interesting. So, it was a fascinating story, obviously. And then, I read his book in 2006. And there’s a guy who– Pathe, who are a kinda French company who operate in Britain and France, they’re like a mini-studio. The guy who runs that is a climber, he’s called Francois Ivernel. And he set up this meeting with Aron. And I went to meet Aron in Holland. Anyway, we couldn’t find common ground on [how to adapt the book into film], really.

MMM: Then what happened?

BOYLE: And then we got back together again. And my take on it was always that you’ll never be able to watch– if we depict it correctly, what happened to Aron, you’ll never be able to tolerate it unless you can empathize. And the way we all know that happens is through actors. You know, it’s not really through the slightly cooler tone of a documentary. And so, we got together and started writing a script of it as a first person immersive experience.

MMM: When did Franco get involved?

BOYLE: Part of the process, I think, is that we had to find the right actor. Before we did that, Simon, who is also a climber and has been up Eiger, which is European equivalent of Everest, came in and sorted out our script, and we all worked on it together. And then, we saw a few actors, and we met this guy [Franco]. I remember seeing Pineapple Express and thinking, whoa, great movie, but also thinking, wow, Franco, he’s got real range, hasn’t he? You know, there’s a bit in the film, it’s not like Pineapple Express, but it’s this extraordinary talk show host which is not based on Aron’s messages which we did use for a lot of the material, but it’s something that allowed James to explore the further reaches of what’s happening to his mind and his though-processing at the time.  So, that’s the story really,

MMM: James, what was your first meeting with Aron like? Did he have casting approval?

JAMES FRANCO: Well, a lot of very important things happened that ultimately guided me through the performance. Aron did some of the early work of just walking us through and showing us some of the things that he did. But most importantly, we were at the Four Seasons in L.A., and it was the first time I met Aron, and he brought this ratty VHS tape that had the original reel videos on it, and we all sat there and watched it. And it was incredibly powerful for a lot of reasons. On the video, it’s Aron in the middle of the situation, not knowing that he’s gonna get out. And he made the messages up until, you know, within an hour of figuring out how to get out. And so, I was saying to myself while we were watching it, wow, there’s a guy that thinks he’s gonna die, and in some ways, he’s accepted it. And it was just a guy talking to his friends and family in a very, very simple and intimate way, but also not wallowing in self-pity, you know, doing it with dignity. And that simplicity combined with that knowledge of death behind it was incredibly strong for me, and showed me a way to do the part.

MMM: James, did you ever have to put your own survival skills to the test, and if so, could you tell us the story?

FRANCO: I mean, I’ve been lost—you know, I got lost in Paris, I had to find a taxi and [Laughs] there aren’t taxis at a certain hour, and it was really hard.

MMM: So has this experience changed your adventurous spirit in any way then?

FRANCO: If I hike, I’ll be sure to tell people where I go. But I mean it’s given me an appreciation for my life, for the people in my life, certainly.  [In the first meeting] Aron asked me why I wanted to play this role, and I love the way that it strips down this character and this person, that everything that is familiar in our day to day lives with other people—just emotional dependence, everything that is familiar to us, and also just the daily activities that keep us from looking at ourselves, you know, in a very intimate way—all of that is taken away and it’s a man alone. And it’s a man facing death. And so, I imagined that what we had was a real way to just study what it is to be human, what’s important in our lives, what we hold onto from our outside life, what really gives us strength. And I said in the first meeting, “Oh, Aron, I love all that, and I also like you had the will inside you to get out. And Aron corrected me a little bit; that one of the main things that gave him the strength to get out was his connection to the outside world and his friends and family, and that those videos weren’t just a last message, that they were actually a way to connect to those people. And obviously Aron knew that they weren’t listening at that moment, but that he felt a real connection to those people, and that gave him the strength to survive. And so it’s given me an appreciation for people in my life.

MMM: What was it like having the entire “Slumdog Millionaire” team back collaborating on this?

BOYLE: I mean, we all do think of the film as being very different from “Slumdog,” because that was about millions of people, and this story is about one person, but we’ve discovered strange similarities, in a way, between the two films. I challenge the notion that “Slumdog” is somehow euphoric in a way that this isn’t. People remember “Slumdog” as being euphoric because there was a dance at the end, but we pass through some pretty dark material before we arrived at that point in the story and earned that euphoria. And, in that sense, I think the two stories share a certain similarity. They don’t pull their punches in the darker moments, but the up side of that is at the end of the movie, hopefully, audiences feel they’ve been through something powerful, meaningful and true. And there is a very little dance.

MMM: A lot has been made, obviously, of the climactic scene and how hard it can be to watch. I’m wondering, Danny, what is the challenge to know the line of what can be shown on screen and what can’t? Because obviously, you can’t not show this scene of the movie since it’s the most important thing.

BOYLE: Yeah, it’s the book really. I mean, I remember when I read it the first time, I felt breathless reading it. It’s the most extraordinary bit of writing. And we decided the only way to measure it was not to measure it in the sense of the sensibility of what would the… fashion in the audience be? We didn’t wanna make it for a horror audience, we didn’t wanna make it so that it was watchable by everybody. You know, it was obviously going to be something that had to truly reflect his experience, and the key things in it are that it took Aron over 40 minutes, and that it had a degree of pain in it. But also, that it was a doorway to something else, that it wasn’t an event in itself. And we decided that people would go through this as part of the experience of watching the film. And the euphoria or the exhilaration, the ecstasy you feel at the end of it is deeply earned because you, like him, have been through some kind of intense experience.

MMM: This question’s for Danny. You’re going to be pretty busy until 2012 with non-film related projects, right?  You’ve got the Olympics and you’ve a play that you’re working on. Our readers want know how realistic is “28 Months Later.” Will you direct? And for James real quick, has anybody spoken to you about Ridley Scott’s “Alien” prequel?

FRANCO: Yeah, that’s weird news, huh? Maybe I’ll do Mapplethorpe in the “Alien” movie. [Laughs] I just heard about it on the Internet.

BOYLE: There’s a rumor going around that he was going to be in “28 Months Later.” That was the latest rumor I heard. I’d love to direct another one of it, actually, because I watched the second one. I wasn’t that involved in the second one, and I really enjoyed watching it as a punter, you know? ‘Cause when you make films, you never really see them as like punters see them. It’s weird. You’re entrusted with editing a film for an audience and preparing a film for an audience, and yet, you’re as far away from what they will see as you could ever get ’cause you’ve watched it hundreds of times, and you’ve minisculely produced it. But I watched it as a punter, and I thought, wow, I’d really love to direct the next one. And that’s where that began really. It’s just a question of time and stuff. If I’m still alive after the opening ceremony of the Olympic games, it’s open to question. I’d love to, yeah. Sure.

MMM: James, for you, I’m wondering, the film really could have been very static if it had been done wrong, and it could have been static on multiple levels. What impressed you about the way Danny made it feel like there was motion in the movie? And in terms of guiding your performance, how did you nail the beats properly?

FRANCO: I was attracted to just the setup. I mean, you know, the amazing story and Aron’s very incredible true story aside, just as a performer looking at a script like that was very exciting to me, and you know, frankly, I don’t mind a slow movie, so if this had turned out to be, like, an incredibly slow-moving movie, I probably would have been okay. But Danny definitely decidedly does not like those kinda movies. There are a lot of contrasts in this movie. There’s an incredibly intense situation, but there’s humor. The character is static, but the cameras and the technology they’re using is cutting edge. And this is really, I believe, the most kind of cutting edge mainstream movie that you can find just based on, you know, what they’re doing with the technology, how they’re using the cameras—but to serve the film and the experience. And so, in that way, you get, like, Beckett on speed. When the character does speak, it’s as if he’s speaking right to the audience, so you get incredibly close, like, third person delivery, and then, almost first person where he’s talking to his friends and family, you never break the fourth wall, but it’s as if Aron’s talking right out to the audience. And so, it’s an incredibly intimate kind of thing and that gives it that energy.  So, I personally would have been fine if it had been Jeanne Dielman, but I’m happier with this version. [Laughs]

127 HOURS is now playing in select theaters nationwide.