On the first day of shooting “Into the Wild” in Alaska, Emile Hirsch learned that his role would be more physically demanding than any he’s done in the past.
Neither “Alpha Dog” nor “The Girl Next Door” forced him to trudge through waist-high snow carrying a 30-pound backpack. Then again, neither “Alpha Dog” nor “The Girl Next Door” were directed by the scrupulous Sean Penn.
In an interview with RedEye, Hirsch recounted a scene in the film, opening this weekend, in which Penn made him repeatedly climb “this crazy hill and then walk down it” while wearing the backpack.
“This prop guy had a rope and he was throwing it down, and it started to come near me,” Hirsch said. “Sean was like, ‘What are you doing?!’ Prop guy goes, ‘Oh, I’m going to help him down,’ and Sean goes, ‘What?! Noooooo. No way.’ And the rope disappears, and I’m just like ‘Oh, my god.’ “
In Penn’s adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s best-selling book of the same name, Hirsch plays real-life adventurer Christopher McCandless. Upon graduating from college in the early 1990s, McCandless severed ties with his family and friends, gave away his savings, changed his name to Alexander Supertramp and headed west. He wandered for two years before going off alone into the Alaska wilderness and eventually starving to death.
Penn filmed extensively in the places McCandless tramped, including the wheat fields of Carthage, S.D.; the Alaskan woods; the Colorado River; and the California desert.
For the role — which some say could launch him into leading-man status — Hirsch dropped 41 pounds to mirror McCandless’ final, desperate days in the wild. Hirsch also did his own stunts, scaling cliffs, navigating white water rapids and skinning a moose carcass.
“It was legitimately scary stuff,” the 22-year-old said. “I mean, obviously I wasn’t so scared where I didn’t do it. You want a little bit of fear pumping through your veins.”
Speaking of fear, Hirsch also shared a scene with a grizzly bear. He told RedEye about what it’s like to work with wildlife, the perks and pitfalls of filming “Into the Wild,” and his next project, Andy and Larry Wachowski’s (“The Matrix”) screen adaptation of “Speed Racer.”
You’ve made movies with perks like learning to skateboard (“Lords of Dogtown”) and hanging with strippers and porn stars (“The Girl Next Door”). Were you aware there might be fewer perks this time?
It was so much more fun than anything I’ve ever done. Perks be damned. Well, the strippers were …
[“Into the Wild”] was such an outdoors challenge. There’d be days where we’d just get onto a helicopter and fly onto the side of a snowy mountain. [I’d] get off; they’d fly away. I’d be alone. I’d just be walking around the side of this mountain. I can see this whole snow-covered Alaskan valley. I spent like a week kayaking through the Colorado River. I’d be walking through wheat fields in South Dakota, hanging out with farmers. I’d be in Mexico walking on the beach. Being in that bus in Alaska — that was like my home.“Into the Wild” looks grueling. Were there moments when you didn’t know if you could go on shooting?
Oh, yeah. There was absolutely times where I was convinced I would have a nervous breakdown and not be able to shoot the next day. All the time. It would just be so hard during the day. I was just like, “How can anyone keep going?”
After doing all those stunts, did you feel the urge to top yourself?
Kind of, yeah. Only I’d never do it again. Like, “I lived? Probably shouldn’t press [fate] again.”
Which is a scarier prospect: fending off animals or killing and eating a moose?
That grizzly bear was really scary. I think I’d feel pretty bad about hunting the game, but having a grizzly bear 4 feet away from me — as we did in a certain scene — is so terrifying. But [you have to] give into it and just trust the bear a little bit, which is really hard. … If you can trust the bear and just stand there and have the bear that close to you. … It’s an extraordinary feeling being that close to a grizzly bear with nothing in between us. Except the guy in the bushes next to us with a little Billy club who was his trainer. But the Billy club was [really small], and I was like, “Dude, that’s like trying to hit him with a toothpick.”
Would you work with the bear again?
I would. Hey, I made it out, ya know? Respect the bear. Although I did kind of an unwise move when I was over there and I was about to start shooting: I watched this YouTube clip with this news reporter and she’s sitting next to a bear, casually talking, and the bear just looks over at her and starts attacking the reporter. Like, full rage frenzy, and [the bear] was absolutely still the moment before. So I was like, “You never know …”
Why did you watch that?!
I mean, sometimes you can’t help it. I’d rather know and be cautious.
How is your work in “Speed Racer” different from “Into the Wild”?
Just the exact opposite of “Into the Wild.” You go from the most organic, outdoors movie in nature to I-never-shot-one-scene-outdoors. It was entirely on a green screen stage.
Were you hungry for more adventure?
Sometimes I’d be like, “Come on, come on, just the green? Let me go climb a mountain.”
Now that you’ve done “Into the Wild,” can you take down the guys of that other green-screen movie, “300”?
Take ’em down? No, they’d kick my ass.
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Bring ‘ it’ on
Emile Hirsch does not shrink from the “It Boy” label.
“It is what it is,” the actor says. “It’s not going to hurt me.”
Hirsch, 22, may discover just how “It” he is as his new movie “Into the Wild” treks into theaters this weekend, followed by the blockbuster hopeful “Speed Racer” next summer.
“There’s something annoying about false humility,” he says. “If they’re gonna call me the ‘It Boy,’ cool, I’ve been acting for 12 years. I look at it as a byproduct of doing good work.”
– THE HARTFORD COURANT
