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Director Lee Tamahori Writer David Mamet
THE EDGE offers a unique interweaving of grand scale and hard-hitting action-adventure/man-against-nature elements with thought provoking examinations of the nature of trust, paranoia and character. Nevertheless, the film originated with a very simple idea. "David's screenplay started out with him saying, 'Well, it's going to be one guy trying to kill another guy,'" remembers producer Art Linson. The concept quickly expanded from there. "Within a few days," continues Linson, "[Author, David] Mamet had them in the middle of the wilderness - with a wild Kodiak bear trying to kill them. And suddenly they had to find a way to connect in order to survive." Although set in the mountains of Alaska, THE EDGE was filmed on location in the spectacular, rugged and dangerous Rocky Mountain range in Alberta. While Sir Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin are noted for the intensive and extensive preparations for all of their respective motion picture projects, nothing matched the time they spent getting ready for the rigors and challenges of filming THE EDGE.
Learning and then perfecting mountaineering skills, rappelling down jagged cliffs and getting acclimated to the area's icy waters were all in a day's work for the intrepid and determined stars during their prep period. And once production was underway, Hopkins, Baldwin and the rest of the cast and crew were subjected to some of Mother Nature's less inviting conditions, including blinding blizzards and icy rain storms. Some locations were so steep and perilous to reach that helicopters had to be called in to sling equipment into the shooting location. "I wanted that extreme ruggedness - the almost overwhelming sense that this is big dangerous country," comments director, Lee Tamahori. "The actors had no idea what they were in for...otherwise they might of backed off," Tamahori adds, laughing. "I did say that it wouldn't be a picnic, we weren't going to be shooting on the back of Big Bear. But the truth is, the only way for this to have credibility was to take it to a place that was really incredible and make it look like Anthony and Alec were at the end of the earth."
In addition to working amid the rugged conditions and playing his most physical role to date, Hopkins had to deal with a debilitating back problem. Incurred when he reenacted Richard Nixon's stooped posture in his Oscar-nominated performance in Nixon, the extremely painful pinched nerve didn't stop Hopkins - at least initially. "It was a rite of passage for me as well as for my character," says Hopkins. "For the first eight weeks of shooting the pain became progressively worse. Somehow I was able to put all my energy into the action of this film, braving the elements and the cold, and tried to forget the pain. But as soon as I let go and went back home at night, the pain became worse and worse." Hopkins admitted himself to the Foothills Hospital in Calgary on the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend where he underwent a micro-surgical procedure to remove a ruptured disc. He was back at work filming the following Wednesday, having missed only one day of shooting. He returned a new man - and more than ready for the film's grueling action scenes, including fighting a monstrous bear, running through dense wilderness and being immersed in frigid water. "We tuned Tony up for the action genre," says Lee Tamahori. "Anyone that works with him now has a seasoned action veteran."
While this kind of action and physical role was nothing new to Alec Baldwin, he was nearly awe-struck at the production's picturesque locations. Baldwin remembers shooting a scene at Lake Moraine in Banff National Park: "Tony and I said to each other, people aren't going to believe this is real; they're going to think we're on stage at Fox with matte paintings behind us."
The picturesque locations, David Mamet's powerful script, Lee Tamahori's muscular direction and performances by two of the industry's finest actors add up to a film which holds more than a few surprises. Concludes Tamahori: "In THE EDGE, nobody is truly what they seem. Charles is not a hero and Bob is not a villain. The two lines often blur. What you end up with is an almost perverse buddy movie. A film about redemption and a sense of camaraderie, brotherhood and even nobility."
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Making The Edge | Would You Survive?