A Focus on Preparation Paid Off for ‘Everest’

David Breashears--co-director of the Imax film “Everest,” opening today in Irvine and other cities--has stood atop the world four times. The 42-year-old has also won four Emmy Awards for cinematographic achievements in documentaries and mountaineering footage. On his most recent trip to Everest, he co-directed a Nova special, “The Death Zone,” about the effects of high altitude on the human body. It aired last week on PBS.

The Boston-based Breashears’ previous trip to the 29,028-foot summit, as leader of the Imax expedition, coincided with the tragedy of May 1996, in which a storm and bad judgment took the lives of eight climbers, including guides Rob Hall and Scott Fischer. Breashears and his team were instrumental in the rescues of Beck Weathers and other survivors.

In 1985, Breashears took Dick Bass of “Seven Summits” fame, then 55, to the top of Everest. In 1983, on his first successful ascent, Breashears transmitted the first live images from the summit.

To make “Everest,” the standard 85-pound Imax camera had to be radically modified. Among many requirements, the weight had to be lessened by half so it could be carried at altitude. Batteries, film and camera body would have to withstand temperatures of minus-40. Large knobs would facilitate operation with the brain- and motor-impairment at high altitude. Cost: $186,000.

One of three featured climbers on the Imax team was Jamling Norgay, son of Tenzing Norgay, the first climber to reach the summit along with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953. Breashears spoke to Benjamin Epstein from New York.

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Question: All that could go wrong apparently didn’t go wrong.

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Answer: We had this thing so worked out. The film, for instance, is Mylar-based instead of acetate-based--it’s tear-proof, it doesn’t crack in the cold. The final test had been at minus-50 degrees. In the end, I was much more concerned about human error in hypoxic [oxygen-deprived] condition, about loading the camera improperly. There’s a point when you get to be more concerned about your own performance than a piece of machinery.

Q: Despite successful testing, what remained your greatest concerns about the machinery?

A: The Imax camera uses 500 feet of film in 90 seconds, 5.5 feet of film per second--you need a very robust mechanism to advance that film. When that thing comes up to speed it’s really moving. A camera jam can wreck parts--and that’s it. We had a spare camera at base camp, but you can imagine how useful a spare camera is at 27,500 feet. We had one camera on the mountain. After all that time and effort, when we’d overcome the tragedy, pulled our team together and went up, it would have been unimaginably heartbreaking if the camera had jammed up and been inoperable on summit day. We made a camera that is very light, but we were right at the limits of what that camera could do.

Q: “Very light” is, of course, a relative term. The camera’s body alone weighs 26 pounds.

A: What I call a camera is loaded with film and has a lens--that weighs 42 pounds. With battery, 48 pounds. Except for summit day, we used a 75-pound tripod and head, which we were not willing to take to the top. On summit day, we balanced the camera on the camera case or, at the summit, a monopod.

Q: What proved the single most challenging aspect of the project?

A: For that, we’ve got to go back a ways. It was getting to the point of saying to [producer-director Greg MacGillivray], “Yes, it is possible; yes, I will do this.” I had to weigh what kind of team I could put together, weigh 15 years’ climbing and filming experience on Everest--and maybe say, “Greg, you’re wasting your money, let’s not do it.” Once you talk the talk, it’s time to walk the walk.

Q: Or climb the climb, as it were.

A: By the way, you can walk the walk, you can surf the surf, but can you summit the summit? That’s my pet peeve, turning ‘summit’ into a verb. Like the Olympics: “The U.S. team is about to medal,” or “they medaled.” Summit is a noun.

Q: Now that there is a lighter Imax camera, wouldn’t that be the camera of choice for all Imax films?

A: Lighter isn’t always better. It has inherent drawbacks. It’s less stable. You get vibration, and when you’re talking about an image 80 by 100 feet, you can’t have vibration. If you have the resources to transport the heavier camera--cars, vans, helicopters--it’s better. A lightweight camera will be in demand for, say, a parachutist, or mounting on a race car.

Q: John Krakauer has been in the spotlight for his best-seller about the Everest tragedy, “Into Thin Air,” Ed Viesturs (who has reached the top of Everest five times) will no doubt gain some celebrity from the Imax film, and people are calling you Mr. Everest. It’s like climbers are becoming stars.

A: We’re very uncomfortable with that. Climbers don’t set out to be famous. People might think we went out and made this film thinking it would naturally do well. But you have to step back to 1994, when no one cared very much about Everest. We were way in the vanguard of what was about to become intense interest. We didn’t know [there would be a tragedy and subsequent media glut.] The question then was, “Will anyone come to this film, would anyone care to see it?” This was a very risky enterprise, and not [only] in terms of dangers on the mountain.

Q: Your 1985 climb with Dick Bass has inspired a number of clients to pay other guides fees as high as $65,000 to be taken up Everest--a phenomenon blamed at least in part for the events of 1996. Won’t the sheer grandeur of the Imax images exacerbate the problem by attracting even more summiteer wannabes?

A: People go to films for a vicarious thrill. There is so much written and so much shown on Everest, it’s [already] such a part of our consciousness. The name conjures up superlatives--the ends of the earth, supreme this, the human spirit conquering that--it’s a great metaphor for human achievement and human striving.

The reason people have gravitated toward it lately, to paraphrase the words of Alexander Pope, is that a little learning is a dangerous thing. They are driven not by knowing or seeing more about Everest, but by [psychological] needs. They may have an underlying need, not to go climbing, but to prove something: “I’m an ordinary person but I did something exceptional.”

Q: In Hollywood films, dead bodies are a dime a dozen. I can’t imagine the impact of a dead body in an Imax format.

A: We don’t have any. We didn’t film during the tragedy. We could have, but we didn’t. From the day we got that radio call until we went back up that mountain, we didn’t run one frame of film. That would have been dehumanizing, both to the subject and to the person who feels stuff like that has to be recorded. It’s one thing to sit there with a video camera, but an Imax camera is very big, very noisy and very intrusive. It has presence.

If it happens, we have to document it. Is there some law out there that everything must be recorded on film or video to legitimize it, to make us remember it?

Q: No doubt detractors will say such footage would have made the most gripping Imax film ever.

A: Stills were taken. Beck Weathers was interviewed when he got back. It’s spellbinding, compelling--but it’s done tastefully. We touch on the tragedy as it affected our team. What does it mean for us? Should we go back up? Why are we here?

People were traumatized, shaken by those events. The moment would not seem as real in Imax. Stills bring out the drama in that situation--something too dramatic to be covered in Imax. And there’s nothing more riveting in this film than seeing video of Beck. . . .

I don’t know, it just didn’t occur to me. A guy had just come back from the dead, let him rest a little bit. Maybe I’m not cutthroat enough. I can live with that.

Q: You made the rounds as spokesman for “Everest” the [National Geographic] book and now for “Everest” the film. What has been the single most difficult question put to you thus far?

A: I did 25 interviews today, 150 before that. The most difficult questions are the ones that relate to [the tragedy]. We were involved in a profound and emotional way, we were up there in that storm, yet we really weren’t involved. My team performed very well in the face of those events, and I take a great amount of pride in that. But to see the tremendous achievements of my team, a monumental achievement in Himalayan filmmaking--in any filmmaking--get kind of lost in the cracks. . . .

My least favorite question is one which you avoided, and I appreciate that: “What was it like to. . . .” You finish it.

Q: Come across [the bodies of] Scott Fischer and Rob Hall.

A: People aren’t being voyeuristic, or morbid--there’s a natural curiosity. There’s real compassion there, to think of people having to come across their friends in that manner. They just can’t understand when they ask how tricky it is to answer. It’s a very personal thing.

Q: A decade from now, do you see yourself more as a climber or more as a filmmaker?

A: It ain’t gonna change. I’m going be deciding if I’m a climbing filmmaker or a filmmaker who climbs for as long as possible. Lately, I’d have to change that to an “adventurer who makes films or a filmmaker who is an adventurer” because many of my plans do not involve climbing. They’re just as adventurous, nearly as demanding, but you don’t have to go to 26,000 feet.

My compass does not point to Hollywood. I’m much happier out from under the spotlight, on the Tibetan plateau with a 16-millimeter Arriflex, where 400 feet [of film] lasts 11 minutes.