On the set with Alexander Skarsgård
David L. Williams, director of Beyond the Pole, recently took the time to answer some questions for the Examiner where he talks about the film and what it was like to work with Alexander Skarsgård.
The film, which is based on a 6-part radio series, is about two explorers, Brian and Mark, that are setting out on the first carbon neutral, vegetarian, and organic expedition ever to attempt the North Pole. As a world first they have high hopes of getting into the Guinness Book of Records and, if all goes well, of saving the planet from Global Warming. Unfortunately, they have never done anything like this before. They hadn’t reckoned on the polar bears, the competitive gay Norwegians (one being Alexander Skarsgård), or on Mark’s rapidly loosening grip on reality.
Williams, who co-wrote the film with Neil Warhurst, was inspired to make the film after he read James Lovelock’s theories of Gaia and how the planet’s ability to support us was threatened by industrialization. This marked the beginnings of his awareness of the idea of global warming. He later saw Al Gore’s film, The Inconvenient Truth and was deeply moved, but felt that there wasn’t anyone in the theater that wasn’t already convinced of his argument. So, David and his partner Helen decided to make a film for the “unconverted”.
Shooting took place in both the UK and Greenland. They spent two weeks roughing it in Greenland 800 miles from the nearest village. Their single communal bathroom consisted of a bucket with a bin liner, riding to their filming locations for a half an hour via dogsled, and having local hunters accompany them to ward off the locals…polar bears. David states:
“Plumbing is rudimentary in Greenland (there is none – everything freezes), so first dibs on the bucket became something of a sought after luxury. These things become extremely important by day 10 I assure you. After a full, greasy breakfast (you see what I mean about getting to the toilet first) it would be straight onto the dog sledges and out onto the sea ice. This was one of my favorite parts of the day and would have been as romantic as it sounds had it not been for the fact that working dogs can poop while they are running. There were 20 dogs pulling each sledge, and most of our journeys were at least half an hour.
Click here to read the rest of the article at The Examiner
Here’s the trailer for the film.
I can’t wait to watch this! How I wish to have an Askarz human blanket too **wink wink**.
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If the movie is as funny as this interview, It’ll be worth seeing. Alex must have been wondering what the h*ll he’d walked into. “Sod it ,lets just get the guy who’s been Mr Sweden 5 times”! LOL!
I wonder if Alex ever got to use the bucket first.
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“Gorgeous in every sense” … Yes he is.
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