What drew you to want to make this film?
Chai Vasarhelyi: Alex is fascinating. And he’s a good friend of ours. And it was clear that a film like this should be made. Before we knew that he was planning to free solo El Capitan, we were flirting with the idea of a character study. Alex and I set up a time to meet, and he came to stay with me in New York. It was there that he told me that he was working on free soloing El Cap. And that changed the game a little bit.
What drew me to the story was the very, very simple fact that when he was a young boy, it was easier for Alex to go climbing by himself without a rope that it was for him to talk to somebody else and ask them to go climbing with him. That little kernel was something that I could empathize with, that I felt like a lot of people would empathize with. It was so unlikely for someone like him—given his talent, you could never really imagine that he came from that place. There was also the story’s aspirational quality: If he can do this with his fear, what can I do with my fear?
What was Alex like as a subject to profile?
CV: Wonderful because he’s so candid. He is a very candid, honest, intelligent person. He’s one of the best-read people I know. He’s incredibly engaging, very open about his own limitations, and also very open to thinking about the questions we asked. And he’s so intelligent that he’ll come back to the question if he doesn’t know the answer. He’s very engaged that way.
What were some of the biggest challenges that you faced in making the film?
CV: Clearly the danger and the ethical questions around the danger: Is this film something we even want to do? And if so, how do we to negotiate those lines in a way that both honors Alex and the way that he would love this climb to be captured? And how do we get the emotional moments that we know are needed so that this is more than just a climbing movie? As a filmmaker you know you’re there for those real moments, and they’re sometimes the most difficult moments for the subject.
In terms of the risk risk, Jimmy definitely shoulders most of it because this is his world. His career is to make an assessment of risk in exactly these types of circumstances. My weight is more about: Are we doing the story itself justice in a way that respects the state of mind that you have to be in to free solo a mountain? Alex is so studied and prepared and he’s got a process. So how do you respect the process as well as film the real moments that are important? How do you make sure you can see his eyes before he does the climb because that’s what allows an audience to engage? That was probably the most difficult part—negotiating a way to make a film that was meaningful within the very real danger of his endeavor.
Do you feel that you saw his emotional state changing as you filmed him? Did you feel that you could tell when he was moving into a deeper, more grounded state in preparation for the climb?
CV: It’s not quite like that with Alex. He gets delighted like a kid at the prospect of a climb. And once it’s executed, he’s giddy. It’s the only time you see him like that. Giddy is a good word except that it’s too understated. He is sublimely happy. There are two things about Alex. One is, equanimity. He’s very even all the time. But when he’s planning to do something, it triggers happiness. Even now when he watches the movie you see the smile come because he starts to relive it.
I do believe that in the course of making the film, which also coincided with the time he’s had with Sanni [McCandless, Alex’s girlfriend], he’s really evolved emotionally as a human. That’s very much a testament to her. She has given him an emotional vocabulary that’s impressive. There’s also this slightly psychological process you go through when making this type of véritédocumentary where you have to talk about your feelings a lot.
What was your own first experience with Yosemite and El Capitan?
CV: I first saw El Cap years ago, with Jimmy on one of our first dates. We weren’t living in the same place so a lot of our encounters started when I was going to Los Angeles and he would be in San Francisco so I would go there. He was giving a National Geographic talk in Yosemite and he said, “Why don’t you join me as my date?” It was the perfect way to see Yosemite: with Jimmy and through his eyes. I always call it where unicorns live. You can imagine the dinosaurs walking in the valley. It’s just an incredibly magical place.
And what did you think when you saw El Cap?
CV: It’s absolutely enormous. Jimmy and I went and sat in the meadow and looked up at the lights of the people spending the night on the wall. It is unfathomably large. And what’s so unique about Yosemite is you can walk right up to it.
You’re married to a climber and now you’ve made two feature-length documentaries about climbing. Do you climb yourself?
CV: No. Jimmy and I ski together, I’ve skied since I was very, very young. I’m happy to hike, happy to belay our children. But no, rock climbing has really never been part of my life, I prefer to go for a run. But I think that being married to a climber has made me very interested in the emotional questions around climbing. I’m interested in the female voices around it because that is something I actually personally live. And in my filmmaking process, I tend to really like looking at things that I have some sort of personal attachment to. I think it brings out a sincere and informed way of looking at things. So it was very important to me to explore Sanni and Alex’s relationship and to understand how she lives with the risks he takes and how he sees it. The questions were vivid.
What do you think it is about climbing itself that makes it so fascinating for people?
CV: I think it’s about doing anything really well. With climbing there’s something very visceral: Everyone is born climbing, everyone knows that feeling. Also the exploration associated with climbing is incredibly romantic and enticing and also aspirational. It makes us think about: What are the frontiers of the human spirit? That’s the larger theme around Free Solo. But I think it’s the same for the scientists who are on the Tibetan Plateau or the photographers who capture the last aboriginals. I think there’s something about frontiers that’s more general. A lot of different things can inspire you.
What for you is the larger message of Alex’s climbing?
CV: How we live with fear and the process by which we can overcome it to achieve our dream. Alex is not a maverick, he’s incredibly methodical. It’s his process that made it work. That’s something tangible. But it was also like going to the moon. What Alex did was such an outrageous dream. And the way he worked for it is incredibly inspiring.
What do you think that audiences will take away from watching Alex do that climb?
CV: I think first and foremost they’re going to be terrified. That terror is something that we as filmmakers are totally desensitized to at this point. I’m looking at things technically, cinematically: Is this the right shot? But the experience I’ve had so far with audiences is that people are absolutely terrified. The film is a very visceral experience for them, which makes me very happy. I think that it does make you question in some way what you are doing with your life: “Alex decided to do this, so what am I doing?” I think it’s a way of calling deliberate attention to the choices that we make. What’s a meaningful life and why?
Do you have a favorite moment in the film? A moment that really stays with you?
CV: There’s that moment when he’s questioning what motivates him and he talks about his mother pushing him and this idea of perfection and then he says, in such a thorough way, “I guess it’s also the endless pit of self-loathing.” When he said that, I though, “Yes, that’s something I can understand, this idea of your self-doubt and how that may motivate you to do something outrageous.” When I heard it in the interview I was floored because it’s not necessarily something he would normally say. It was a very true moment.
What also stays with me are those incredibly candid moments with him and Sanni because those are tough and yet they’re very, very honest: the way he listens to her, says he understands, and still talks about what he needs. And then clearly the moment when he gets to the top is so amazing, it stays with you forever. That conversation they have on the phone when he tells her that he loves her. Is that the first time that he’s told her he loves her? You don’t know. Somehow the achievement itself allows him to open up emotionally.
How do you yourself experience fear and deal with it?
CV: For me, the unknown is scary. It’s both beautiful and scary. I broke my arm a ton of times as a kid, I was very active as a child, and there was a point when I wanted to be a doctor because I wanted to know exactly what was going to happen. That was how I looked at fear. It’s funny given what I’ve done with my profession because I’ve put myself in a lot of situations I can’t control. As a filmmaker, in general you like control because you’re telling stories. But somehow the process of visualizing the unknown always makes me feel more comfortable with fear—which is funny as it pertains to Alex because clearly that is his process too. I think fear visualization is a very real tool. Looking into my fear and seeing what’s there has always helped.