After Into the Wild, Emile Hirsch Couldn't Chicken Out on Kilimanjaro
Emile Hirsch is best known for playing the foolhardy, adventure-seeking Christopher McCandless in the Sean Penn-directed film Into the Wild. This fact was not lost on Hirsch as he ascended Mount Kilimanjaro in January, realizing his outdoorsy cred could take a serious beating if he failed to reach the mountain's summit. Especially if Jessica Biel, Isabel Lucas, and Lupe Fiasco, who joined him on the climb, beat him to the top.
Hirsch and company climbed the 19,341-foot Tanzanian peak as part of Summit on the Summit, an effort spearheaded by Grammy-nominated recording artist Kenna to raise awareness about the billion people who don't have access to clean drinking water. A documentary following the climb airs on MTV this Sunday.
In the course of our conversation, we also discussed why he's not exactly king of the mountain in Hollywood right now, and the specific ways in which Mount Kilimanjaro is like a freshly groomed pubic area.
Mike Ryan: After the initial adrenaline rush of the idea of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro wore off, was there ever a moment in the weeks leading up where you thought, "Holy shit, I actually have to climb Mount Kilimanjaro"?
Emile Hirsch: Yeah. The way I got involved is that I was friends with Isabel Lucas, and I called her when she was working on a movie in Michigan. She told me all about this climb. I said, "Wow, that sounds amazing." Isabel's very sweet: she didn't make climbing Kilimanjaro sound very scary or hard. And I didn't actually know that much about Kilimanjaro up to that point. So it sounded like this almost glorified hippie hike. It could have been a hill to me for all I knew at that exact moment.
So Kenna called me and talked to me about it. I had a series of conversations with him. Each time I asked him more about it, is started to sound like a much harder endeavor. When I found out it is 19,340 feet and that Mount McKinley was just a couple of hundred feet higher, that really blew my mind. I'd seen Mount McKinley when I was in Alaska shooting Into the Wild. You could see McKinley from about 100 miles away, and it was huge. And I always wanted to climb McKinley. We’d be going to set and I'd be looking at it, wanting to run over there and climb it. This was an opportunity to make up for missing out on McKinley.
Unlike McKinley, which is part of a mountain chain, Kilimanjaro is freestanding. Does that make it look more imposing?
Yeah, I could see Mount McKinley from 100 miles away and it was huge! But Kilimanjaro, there's nothing around it so it's even bigger. In a really disgusting analogy, it's almost like guys who shave their pubes to make their dick look bigger. You know what I mean? It looked huge! [Laughs] That's kind of gross, though.
I've never heard Mount Kilimanjaro described quite like that.
I never thought about it that way until just now.
In doing research for this interview, I spoke to a friend who climbed Kilimanjaro a couple of years ago. I now know the definition of "scree" [broken rock fragments on mountain cliffs]...
Yeah! I "screed" all the way down. Once I actually got to the summit, I had this realization that I was running pretty low on water because I had given Isabel a good amount of my water-she was really in bad shape and really thirsty and had already finished all of hers. She ended up drinking quite a bit of it. So I had a near empty water supply and realizing I had about four miles of really, really steep terrain and scree. And I had to just kind of scree down the mountain really fast. It became fun, it became like skiing.
Did you experience any altitude sickness on the journey up?
I was very fortunate in that I didn't really get most of the symptoms, such as really bad headaches. I think what I had, mostly, was a feeling of depersonalization and lightheadedness. And you're like, Man, I feel like I'm almost in a dream. And also an intense feeling of nausea, but not to the point I was retching on the ground or anything. Where that manifested itself was that I did lose my appetite a couple times. When that happened, our guide, Wilfred, had to get on my case. It was like being a five year old kid and my mom was sitting over me with nasty vegetable soup forcing me to eat it again.
Did the personalities or attitudes of anyone in the group change as you went higher up the mountain?
There were definitely variances in personalities, but nothing like a good person turning bad or a bad person turning good. It was much more in a grey zone. Some people would have moments of struggle, moments of negativity, but then the whole groups energy kind of pushed everybody up. I was really amped going into it. As the situation kind of got harder and harder, I actually started to enjoy myself more and more.
Are you ready for my obligatory Into the Wild tie-in question? It's hard to ignore that you were in that movie and then went on a real-life expedition...
I know. It's kind of fun in that it added to the pressure to get to the top.
That would be the lead story from the Associated Press the next day, "Into the Wild Actor Quits Mountain Hike."
"Into the Wild Actor Punks Out-Turns Out Must Have Had Stunt Double Actor After All." I think the same pressure was there for Lupe, too, in a certain sense. He's a rapper! "He didn't even make it to the top. I can't buy that album."
Did you have any Into the Wild moments? Wanting solitary time away from the group?
There definitely were certain moments of that, but they were very few and far between. It would be while I'm walking to the outhouse at night that I'd have my moment of solitude. We weren't really trekking off on our own.
You had outhouses? I just assumed you would have to go behind a bush.
No, they have specific areas. They're almost like coolers at a barbecue, but when you open up the cooler there's shit in it. It's like, "Hey, I'm gonna grab me a turd!"
Did anyone in your group experience summit fever-ignoring all the warning signs of health problems-just to reach the top?
Accusing someone of summit fever is potentially something you might get bitched slapped for so I wouldn't want to name anyone's name. But people should watch the documentary on March 14, then you'll see. You can see for yourself which us really did get summit fever after all.
Did your experience make you want to try this again? Could you ever see yourself attempting something like Mount Everest? I believe the base camp for Everest is so high that it's only 2,000 feet below the top of Kilimanjaro's peak.
Yeah, Everest is insane. A bunch of the climbers had already done Everest so I was always asking them about Everest. It just sounds so incredible. It's a 65-day average climb, so it's not like a weekend hike. It sounds like an amazing experience to go on-I guess once you accept the potential danger, too, though. I definitely want to climb something again in the future.
Is Hamlet your next project? Is that still happening?
I don't think so right now, no. We kind of hit a little road bump. It's hard to get people to shell out the dough for the Bard. It's unfortunate, but true.
Do you turn down a lot of roles? Are you particular about what you choose?
I mean, I guess I am to a certain extent. I don't know. That's a weird thing. I can't say that I'm just sitting around not doing movies. I'm definitely not doing that. I don't think I've been remotely involved even in reading scripts that have gotten made in the last year and a half. I'm not king of the mountain, sitting around passing on it all. Far, far from it. I think the only things that are getting made in the last two years that I've really read were things that ended up happening, but I wasn't really ultimately considered for, anyway.
What would you change about the Hollywood movie-making process?
I'd probably put myself in charge of green-lighting movies and spending the billion dollar hedge funds in movies. And I'd probably be like, "Hey guys, I think you guys should put me in charge of all that stuff."
Source: Vanity Fair