All The World's A Stage - The Work of Ralph Fiennes

[Mary Frances]

http://7thspace.com/headlines/319038/film_retraces_george_mallorys_final_adventure_to_summit_mount_everest.html

Film Retraces George Mallory’s Final Adventure to Summit Mount Everest

7th Space Interactive
September 4, 2009

National Geographic Entertainment (NGE) has acquired "The Wildest Dream" for distribution in both 35mm and Imax® in the United States as well as for Imax® and giant-screen theaters throughout the world. "The Wildest Dream" is the third major acquisition for NGE this year, following Cherien Dabis’ Sundance comedy hit "Amreeka" which opens in New York and Los Angeles on Sept. 4 and other cities soon afterward, and "City of Life and Death" which screens at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival and will be released under the National Geographic World Films label in North America in early 2010.

Eighty-five years after George Mallory’s final attempt to summit Mount Everest, "The Wildest Dream" explores Mallory’s obsession with becoming the first person to reach the highest place on Earth. Told through the explorer’s poignant and evocative letters to his wife, Ruth, previously unseen photos and film archive from 1924 (restored from the original nitrate especially for the film), dramatization and a modern-day expedition retracing the original route taken in 1924, Mallory’s incredible adventure lives again. The expedition was led by renowned mountaineer Conrad Anker, whose life became inextricably linked with Mallory’s after he found Mallory’s body on Everest in 1999. Using replica 1920s-era clothing and equipment, Anker sets out to solve the great mystery of whether Mallory succeeded in summiting Everest before he died -- he was last seen just 800 feet from the summit before the clouds closed in and he disappeared into legend. The most heartbreaking clue: All of Mallory’s belongings were found intact on his body, except the photograph of his beloved Ruth, which he promised to leave at the top of the world if he succeeded.

Directed by award-winning filmmaker Anthony Geffen and produced by Geffen and Claudia Perkins, "The Wildest Dream" is narrated by Liam Neeson and features the voices of Ralph Fiennes as George Mallory, the late Natasha Richardson as Ruth Mallory, Hugh Dancy as Mallory’s fellow climber Andrew Irvine and Alan Rickman as Noel Odell, the last person to see Mallory alive. Mike Medavoy is the executive producer. Peter Miller is the editor, and Mark Halliley is the edit producer and writer. The directors of photography are Ken Sauls and Chris Openshaw. Joel Douek composed the music, which was recorded with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and includes the song "Edge of Heaven" by Lisbeth Scott.

NGE presents "The Wildest Dream" an Altitude Films production with Atlantic Productions.

Lisa Truitt, president, National Geographic Cinema Ventures, said, "We are thrilled to release ’The Wildest Dream,’ which captures one of history’s greatest feats of exploration and mountaineering. The film tells a gripping story from many different perspectives -- from that of George Mallory and his beloved wife, Ruth, to the modern climbers who follow Mallory’s last footsteps, seeking to solve the enduring mystery of his last ascent of Everest. The story soars in the hands of talented filmmaker Anthony Geffen and such great actors as Ralph Fiennes, Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson, who voice this tale of adventure and mystery, of challenges met and fears conquered, and of great love. The film is dedicated to Richardson, whose readings of Ruth Mallory’s love letters to her husband are especially heartfelt and moving"

David Beal, president, NGE, said: "With the acquisition of Cherien Dabis’ ’Amreeka,’ Lu Chuan’s ’City of Life and Death,’ and now ’The Wildest Dream,’ we feel that National Geographic Entertainment is hitting its stride in working with innovative filmmakers and finding the right movies for our distribution platform. Each of these films makes its mark as wonderful entertainment, but each project also presents the depth and breadth of the endless supply of the world’s great stories"

Added Executive Producer Mike Medavoy, "What got me so enthusiastic was that this wasn’t just a film about mountain climbing but it was a passionate love story between George and Ruth Mallory that had never been told before. I’ve been really impressed with how Anthony Geffen has blended together Mallory’s story and the original archive with Conrad Anker’s modern-day expedition. We always felt that the project was a great fit for National Geographic, so we’re delighted they will be distributing it in both regular and Imax theaters, which is usually done just for wide tent pole releases and not for specialized releases"

Said Director Anthony Geffen, "Mallory fascinates me because he dared to dream the impossible. In a golden age of exploration, he was the pioneering adventurer determined to reach into the world’s last great untouched wilderness. The Mallory story is still as tantalizing and compelling today as it was in 1924"

Negotiations for "Wildest Dream" were handled by Lisa Truitt, Tiffany Leclere, Angelo Grima and Mark Katz for NGE; by Mimi Gilligan for Altitude Films; and by Claudia Perkins for Atlantic Productions.

About National Geographic Entertainment
National Geographic Entertainment combines into a single operating group National Geographic’s Cinema Ventures and National Geographic Films and World Films, along with Kids Entertainment, Home Entertainment and Music & Radio. In 2005, National Geographic Films (NGF) co-presented the 2005 Academy Award-winning "March of the Penguins, " and National Geographic World Films co-presented the 2004 Oscar-nominated film "The Story of the Weeping Camel" as well as Lu Chuan’s "Mountain Patrol: Kekexili" National Geographic Cinema Ventures (NGCV), released domestically and internationally the 3-D concert film "U2 3D" to critical acclaim and set giant-screen box office records with "Mysteries of Egypt" and "Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure" Adam Leipzig is president of NGF, Lisa Truitt is president of NGCV and Mark Katz is president of NGCV Distribution.

NGE is part of National Geographic Global Media, bringing together all of National Geographic’s editorial platforms to streamline collaboration and support the Society’s mission. Founded in 1888 to "increase and diffuse geographic knowledge" National Geographic works to inspire people to care about the planet. It reaches more than 375 million people worldwide each month through magazines, books, digital media, television, radio, music, film and live events. It funds over 250 scientific research, exploration and conservation projects each year and supports an education program promoting geography literacy. For more information, visit www.nationalgeographic.com.

[Mary Frances]

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=25749


National Geographic Has Wildest Dream
Everest story picked up

By Helen O'Hara
Variety
September 4, 2009

A new film about mountain climber George Mallory and his obsession with conquering Everest, The Wildest Dream, has landed a US distributor in the shape of National Geographic Entertainment - so let's hope it hits these shores too.

Mallory was of course the man who said, when asked why he wanted to climb Everest, "Because it's there". He was obsessed with being the first to conquer the peak, and died there in 1924 along with his climbing partner.

The film's based on letters from the explorer to his wife Ruth, photos, film footage from 1924 and from the 1999 expedition that found his body on the peak. Liam Neeson narrates the film, Ralph Fiennes voices Mallory, the late Natasha Richardson Ruth, Hugh Dancy his fellow climber and Alan Rickman the last person to see the pair alive.

Anthony Geffen directed the film, which is dedicated to Richardson.

[Mary Frances]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/movies/31dream.html

‘Julie & Julia’ for the Rugged: Tracing a Fatal Everest Trek

By Michael Cieply
New York Times
October 30, 2009

LOS ANGELES — Natasha Richardson, working on what was to be her last film, had trouble with a line last February.

Ms. Richardson was providing the voice of Ruth Mallory, wife of George Mallory, for a new documentary, “The Wildest Dream,” about Mallory’s 1924 attempt to climb Mount Everest. And she was supposed to read from a telegram reporting his death on the mountain.

“ ‘I can’t read this,’ ” Anthony Geffen, the film’s director, recalls her saying, as she broke down in midsentence. “ ‘I can’t imagine getting the letter, or Liam’s getting a letter like that.’ ”

Ms. Richardson was referring to her husband, Liam Neeson, who narrates the movie. Weeks later she died of a head injury suffered while skiing in Quebec, leaving Mr. Neeson and their children to cope with the sort of loss that dissolved Mr. Geffen’s take in a puddle of tears.

But Ms. Richardson finally delivered her line, and “The Wildest Dream,” five years in the making, is now jostling for a place among 15 or so documentaries that will be included on a “short list” of Oscar candidates scheduled to be released in mid-November by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Last year almost 100 films from an increasingly crowded field vied for a place on the list, from which the five nominees for best documentary feature are chosen. This year’s contenders are as varied as “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” which follows the life and hard times of an aging heavy-metal band; “The Cove,” about the slaughter of dolphins; and Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story,” about the dark side of big business.

Few demanded quite as much from its cast and crew as Mr. Geffen’s film, which is scheduled to be released by National Geographic Entertainment on both conventional and Imax screens in April, after having qualified for Oscar consideration with screenings in New York and Los Angeles this year.

“The Wildest Dream” is devised as a kind of “Julie & Julia” for the rugged. It follows Conrad Anker, an Everest veteran, and Leo Houlding, his protégé, through an attempt in 2007 to mimic, if not quite duplicate, the ill-fated climb in which both Mallory and his companion, Andrew Irvine, died near the summit.

This required a difficult assault from Tibet, in the north, as Mallory about 85 years ago had no access to a less demanding southeastern alternative from Nepal. It also meant scaling a rock formation near the top, the Second Step, in the way Mallory and Irving would have had to do it — without the benefit of a metal ladder that for years has been giving climbers a leg up.

If Amy Adams’s Julie Powell affected a retro look once or twice while cooking her way behind Meryl Streep’s Julia Child in “Julie & Julia,” Mr. Anker and Mr. Houlding went one better. For part of their climb they wore gear modeled on that used by Mallory and Irvine, including the tweeds and climbing boots.

Mr. Anker said in an interview that his fascination with Mallory had grown since 1999, when he was part of an expedition that discovered Mallory’s frozen body near Everest’s summit.

The expedition found no clear evidence that Mallory had actually reached the top, as Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay finally did in 1953. But Mr. Anker became determined to demonstrate that Mallory’s skills and equipment might have put him on the summit.

To get a film from all of this, Mr. Geffen, who is not a climber, scaled repeatedly to the 26,000-foot mark, about 3,000 feet from the top. He was followed much of the way by a crew of 60, packing five Sony digital cameras that were specially modified to capture Imax-worthy images.

Mr. Geffen said his own fascination with the Mallory mystery — was he indeed the first on the summit? — began during his boyhood in England but deepened in the early 1980s, when he briefly worked with the film executive Frank Wells at Warner Brothers.

Mr. Wells was bent on climbing the highest mountain on each of the seven continents, and made it to the top of all but Everest before dying in a helicopter crash in 1994. “He always talked to me about making an Everest film,” said Mr. Geffen, whose past productions have looked at Jack the Ripper, Apollo 11 and King Tut’s tomb, among many other subjects.

Mr. Geffen said “The Wildest Dream” was financed by private investors for about $7 million. Mr. Anker and Mr. Houlding, he said, were paid for their time on the mountain.

The documentary includes scenes of Mallory and his fellow climbers drawn from previously unscreened footage owned by the Mallory family. It also relies on a small bit of re-enactment, Mr. Geffen said, principally in depicting the discovery of Mallory’s remains, which are now buried on the mountain.

That the film is something of an emotional adventure owes much to Mike Medavoy, a Hollywood producer to whom Mr. Geffen turned with an early version. Mr. Medavoy, now an executive producer of the movie, pushed Mr. Geffen to emphasize the relationship between Mr. Anker and Mallory, and, above all, to work on the love story.

“I look at this almost like a David Lean movie,” Mr. Medavoy said. Though he had never before made documentaries, he now plans to make a regular business of them in a new company to be owned with Mr. Geffen.

In the film the various historical figures are voiced by a cast that includes Ralph Fiennes as Mallory, Hugh Dancy as Irvine and Alan Rickman as Noel Odell, a fellow climber who survived the 1924 expedition.

The New York Times plays a minor role in the picture. During a visit to New York Mallory was asked, “Why did you want to climb Mount Everest?” The Times, on March 18, 1923, reported his answer, the now famous “Because it’s there.”

A version of this article appeared in print on October 31, 2009, on page C1 of the New York edition.

[Mary Frances]

http://www.mounteverest.net/news.php?id=18920


The Wildest Dream: Mallory & Irvine coming to theaters in 2010

MountEverest.net
December 07, 2009


Originally planning to film a documentary on Mallory & Irvine's last ascent, a big team led by Conrad Anker eventually achieved the peak’s latest spring season summits - plus a controversy after they falsely claimed a first free climb of the Second Step.

Two years later, the resulting film is ready for screening, titled “The Wildest Dream”.

Following the premiere at Banff Festival and a charity preview screening in Bozeman (Montana) on December 20th, “The Wildest Dream” will be distributed by National Geographic Entertainment (NGE) in both 35mm and Imax® in the United States, as well as for Imax® and giant-screen theaters throughout the world.

Mallory’s Wildest Dream?

"So what have we come to conquer, only ourselves," Mallory said upon his arrival on Everest. Question is how he would have liked the movie's interpretation:

“The film explores Mallory’s obsession with becoming the first person to reach the highest place on Earth,” a press release by NGE stated. “Mallory’s incredible adventure lives again, told through the explorer’s poignant and evocative letters to his wife Ruth, previously unseen photos and film archive from 1924 (restored from the original nitrate especially for the film), dramatization and a modern-day expedition retracing the original route taken in 1924.”

“Directed by award-winning filmmaker Anthony Geffen, The Wildest Dream is narrated by Liam Neeson and features the voices of Ralph Fiennes as George Mallory, the late Natasha Richardson as Ruth Mallory, Hugh Dancy as Mallory s fellow climber Sandy Irvine and Alan Rickman as Noel Odell, the last person to see Mallory alive.”

Ruth’s missing image a mystery clue

National Geographic describe the film as “a tale of adventure and mystery, of challenges met and fears conquered, and of great love.” The plot exploits the old M&I’s mystery - summit or not?

“All of Mallory's belongings were found intact on his body, except the photograph of his beloved Ruth, which he promised to leave at the top of the world if he succeeded,” the press release remarks, depicting the fact as the most “heart-breaking clue.”

XXIst century review: The 2007 expedition

Anker’s team, also including British Kevin Thaw, Gerry Moffat and young rock climbing star Leo Houlding – who played Irvine’s role - showed up in north side BC rather late in the season in order to film the mountain’s upper slopes with no one else around.

After climbing some sections outfitted like Mallory and Irvine, Conrad and Leo switched to modern gear and supplementary O2 for the final summit push.

The men removed the 90-foot ladder from the Second Step and claimed a first "free climb" of the section, outright ignoring at least two other climbers who had done exactly that - on their own and without bottled gas.

Conrad Anker’s Altitude Everest Expedition originally included British climbers Leo Houlding, Kevin Thaw and Gerry Moffat, plus a filming crew focusing on a remake of Mallory and Irvine’s 1924 ascent.

Anker, starring as Mallory, hoped to climb in 1920s clothes similar to the ones the climber used when he set off for the summit in 1924. Leo Houlding would play Irvine.

Climbing with HiMex's logistics, the climbing team set off from ABC on a summit push mid June, accompanied by 18 Sherpas. On June 13 Anker, Houlding, Moffat, Thaw, and an uncertain number of Sherpas departed the expedition's C4 at 8,300 toward the summit. Guides Mark Woodward and Dean Staples, hired after the appointed cameramen quit, joined the summit group as well.

Summit was achieved at 10.45 a.m. local time, on June 14. The climbers used O2 but performed part of the climb in 1920’s-like clothes. Upon return the team claimed they had also achieved the Second Step’s first free climb – ignoring at least two previous free-climbs of the section – both done without oxygen.

[Mary Frances]

PARADE Magazine
Personality Parade
August 1, 2010

Question:

What was the last film that Natasha Richardson completed before she suddenly died? Carole Leggiere, New Port Richey, FLA

Answer:

Sadly, Richardson was working with her husband, Liam Neeson, on the documentary, The Wildest Dream, which opens this week. Neeson narrated, while Richardson provided the voice of Ruth Mallory, wife of George Mallory, who is believed to be the first man to reach the peak of Mt. Everest. "For me it's not just a film about mountain climbing --ultimately it's a passionate love story," Neeson says in a statement exclusive to PARADE. "It gave me a chance to work with my dear friend, Ralph Fiennes and my beloved wife, Natasha. Shw was as gripped with Mallory's story as was I. This was her final performance, and I know she was very proud to be part of this compelling story."

Neeson, 58, will star in The Next Three Days later this year. To hear more from him and see photos from The Wildest Dream, go to Parade.com/neeson.

[Mary Frances]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/movies/2012474241_conrad01.html


Conrad Anker follows in the high-altitude footsteps of Everest climber George Mallory

Mountain-climber Conrad Anker talks about "The Wildest Dream," a new IMAX movie that re-creates George Mallory's famous and doomed Everest climb of 1924.

By Moira Macdonald
Seattle Times

Most climbing scenes in "The Wildest Dream," said Conrad Anker, were shot three times, "one from above, one from below, one close up," by a film crew that struggled with altitude sickness.

Opens Friday at the Boeing IMAX Theater at Pacific Science Center. For a review and showtimes, pick up a copy of Friday's MovieTimes or go Thursday to www.seattletimes.com/movies.

At the top of the world, Conrad Anker says, the sky is a dark blue-purple. "It's kind of neat to be there and look up and know that you can't get any higher on this planet. It's the apex of Planet Earth, and you're closer to the solar system, the heavens and whatever you will, up there than you are in any other place."

Anker, an accomplished mountaineer once dubbed "the world's greatest adventurer" by Outside magazine, is talking about the top of Mount Everest — a place he last visited with cameras in tow. He appears in the IMAX movie "The Wildest Dream," which documents both the historic summit attempt made by British climber George Mallory in 1924, and Anker's subsequent discovery of Mallory's body 75 years later and later replication of Mallory's climb. The film opens Friday at the Boeing IMAX Theater at Pacific Science Center.

"The story of Mallory is legendary in climbing circles," said Anker, in Seattle earlier this summer to attend the Seattle International Film Festival screening of "The Wildest Dream." With climbing partner Andrew Irvine, Mallory was last seen on Everest some 800 feet from the summit. He had long been obsessed with becoming the first to reach the top of the vast peak, which he described in letters as "a prodigious white fang." (When asked why he wanted to climb Everest, Mallory famously answered, "Because it's there.")

On that day in 1924, the clouds rolled in and the rest of Mallory's expedition lost sight of him, never to find him again. Did he and Irvine wander off course, or did they reach the summit and perish on the way down?

Anker was one of a number of mountaineers invited to climb Everest in an attempt to locate Mallory's body in 1999. A couple of other expeditions, Anker said, had tried and failed. And within 45 minutes on the first day, he found Mallory's frozen body — outside of the designated search area.

"Because he [Anker] was the most experienced climber on the trip, he looked at the mountain a little differently than the historians who thought they might know where Mallory might have been," said Anker's wife, Jenni Lowe-Anker, a fellow climber (though not on the Everest trip). "He looked at it as how a climber would have gone ... he wandered over, looking at where some other climbers had climbed the mountain to get more of an idea of routes. That's how he stumbled on the body. Maybe if they had not had such an expert climber there, they wouldn't have found him."

Everest is, as Anker explained, a different place now than in Mallory's day. Teams of climbers have fastened ropes and ladders in various locations over the years, making the climb somewhat easier. In his summit during the 1999 expedition — his first try at Everest — Anker had intended to reach the peak without using a ladder placed on the notoriously difficult Second Step, just below the summit. But, "to paraphrase Mallory, why did I step on the ladder? Because it was there."

Back a little closer to sea level (the couple and their three sons live in Bozeman, Mont.), Anker pondered the climb for some years, feeling that he hadn't fully conquered Everest. And then a call came, in late 2004, from British documentary filmmaker Anthony Geffen. Was Anker interested, perhaps, in telling Mallory's story — and re-creating Mallory's Everest climb — for a movie?

Anker said he'd been approached by one or two filmmakers a year since the 1999 discovery — "everyone from Ernie and his home video camera to a big studio that wanted to do a theatrical fictionalized interpretation of a movie." After meeting Geffen and his English crew, Anker had faith that this was the right project.

Elaborate preparation ensued, some of which we see in the movie: choosing a climbing partner (young Leo Houlding, whose background was not unlike that of Mallory's partner Irvine); finding camera operators able to handle the physical demands of Everest; getting fitted for 1920s-era clothing and equipment to be used for some parts of the climb, the specifics of which were learned from old photographs and expedition books.

"The difference was, [Mallory and his team] had many layers, up to seven layers on their chest and about four on their legs, whereas [today] we'd have one layer and then a down suit, basically a sleeping bag that you can walk around in. The layers do trap warmth, but they're also restrictive. You don't get the mobility you get with woven or stretch clothing that's now available ... The boots were like leather hiking shoes with leather and nails put in them. They were heavy."

Anker found parallels between himself and Mallory: Both were married men, with three children, and both often found themselves torn between the warmth of home and the call of adventure — with the ever-present possibility that the adventurer may not return. And Lowe-Anker brought her own poignant story to the mix: Her first husband, climber Alex Lowe, died in an avalanche on a mountain in Tibet in 1999; Anker, a close friend, was with him.

"When you look at it, we really don't have that much time here," said Lowe-Anker, who appears in "The Wildest Dream" with her family. (She has written a memoir, "Forget Me Not," about her husband's death and the gradual and unexpected solace she found with Anker, whom she married in 2001. Anker is now the adoptive father of the three Lowe children.) "It really is pretty miraculous. There are certainly a lot of challenges to being human here on earth, but we have to take advantage of our dreams. I think that's the cool thing about this film: You can really feel that passion that Mallory had, for — is this possible? Can men get to the summit of this mountain? And how exciting it was for the entire world at the time, watching him."

Anker, when talking about his exploits, tends to downplay the difficulty. (Climbing Everest, he says, is "not that bad — you just put one foot in front of the other and you go up.") But he does, smiling, admit the challenges of an Everest climb with a film shoot added. Most climbing scenes in the film, he says, were shot three times — "one from above, one from below, one close up" — by a film crew that struggled with the altitude and the mountain's notorious "death zone."

"We lost a sound man and one of the cameramen and a production assistant, just due to altitude sickness. They had to go [back] down the mountain," Anker remembered. "Some members of our team learned to run a Sony Betacam at base camp." Of his own experiences with altitude sickness, he said stoically, "I do well. It's not that bad." (This is, perhaps, part of why he's "the world's greatest adventurer.") And did he reach the summit, without using a ladder? You'll have to watch the movie.

Now with the film's shoot completed, Anker's back to other projects. He and his wife run a climbing school near Everest for Sherpa guides for part of the year, and Anker recently was part of a team installing cameras on the Khumbu glacier in Nepal to document activity for the Extreme Ice Survey, an ongoing project to study climate change via time-lapse photography of the world's glaciers. And he's eager for audiences to see "The Wildest Dream," which, he says, was done "with respect and decency and a sense of dignity."

Sometimes in the movies, climbing gets "misinterpreted," said Anker, citing the Sylvester Stallone movie "Cliffhanger." "They just take liberties with everything, it's just sort of silly. [This movie] will stand the test of time."

Added Lowe-Anker, "I think what surprised me about it was the feeling you had of being there, with the emotions of the climbers, the story pulling you in ... the human story, more than the technical climb. It can touch the lives of anyone."