Does it feel different to be
up there without a rope? It's obviously like a much
higher consequence. People who know a little bit about climbing.
They're like, oh, he's totally safe. And then people who really know exactly
what he's doing are freaked out. I've thought about all camp, like for years,
and every year I'm like, That's really scary. I'll never be content
unless I at least put in the effort. El Cap is the most impressive
wall on Earth. It's 3,200 ft of sheer granite. It's the
center of the rock climbing universe. I was going to get interview questions
about it all the time. Oh, would you like to do that?
You're like, Yes, for sure. See your girlfriend now I heard was awesome.
Pretty much makes life better in every way. It's really hard for me to
grasp why he wants this. But if he doesn't do this stuff,
he'd regret it. Everybody who has made free soloing
a big part of their life is dead now. I haven't been injured in like seven years.
I suddenly start getting injured all the time.
What if something happens? What if I don't see him again? I could just walk away.
But it's like I don't want to. I've always been conflicted about shooting a
film about free soloing just because it's so dangerous. It's hard to not imagine
your friend falling through the frame to his death.
I think when he's free soloing, that's when he feels most alive, most everything.
How can you even think about taking it away from somebody?
No mistakes tomorrow. Starting to get kind of safe.
If you're pushing the edge, eventually you find the edge. I can't believe you guys are actually going to watch.
Jenny, do you copy? Just started climbing. Please welcome professional climber
and environmentalist Alex Honnold and professional climber, skier,
photographer, and director Jimmy Chin, and bestselling author and PBS
series host Kelly Corrigan. Pretty awesome. Hey, everybody.
How are you? Good morning. So we're in a room full of engineers,
and everything that you want to do in life depends in some way on design
and great technology and the evolution of both.
Such that you can do ever weirder and harder things. Such that
a helicopter can land in a different kind of place.
Such that there's a lens on a camera that's lighter to carry
so that you can get another day of filming in. Such that there's some new kind of shoe
that won't pierce through the bottom when you step on the wrong part of a wall.
And so my question is, is there a product or a piece of equipment that you just
marvel at every time you use it? Oh, Jimmy uses a lot more gear than me.
So yeah. Oh, wow. I haven't been asked that question. You're winning.
Well, so when they prepped me for this, they said that Jimmy and Alex challenge you
to ask them questions that they have never been asked before. So one point for me.
We just know she's winning for sure. I mean, I think that's an obvious
one for me would just be the the new digital revolution in terms of
cameras because I started out shooting on you know, slide transparencies and yeah,
that tells you how old I am. But, you know, when the digital revolution
happened in terms of being able to shoot on a DSLR, like film on a DSLR, that
was pretty extraordinary. And it was a huge shift for me
and a lot of people who filmed in the outdoors or in the mountains
where weight is an issue. And for me, because I was a photographer and a filmmaker, the idea that I could shoot
both on one camera using the same lenses just really opened the
doors up for me to be able to shoot a lot more in environments that
usually limited, you know, the amount of weight or equipment
I could carry. And that's really the start of
the feature filmmaking career because we made the film Meru after
the kind of new DSLR came out. And you being able to shoot Meru is the way
that most of us will ever experience Meru. So it's really this consequential development
that you're able to do, what you're able to do, such that we can go
places that most of us will never go, and certainly do things that
most of us will never do. So cheers to the designers on that.
Cheers to you. What about you? What's your favorite?
There must be something like my husband's just a biker, and he has, like,
little things that he just. Actually, it's not so much any
specific piece of gear but I will say I've been climbing
my whole life as well. And basically all climbing gear is steadily
getting slightly lighter, slightly better, slightly smaller, and to
the point that every, every maybe five years or
so I hold my whole rack. You know, basically the assortment
of gear that you use for a climb. And I'm just like, it's so small now.
It's so light, you know, it's like I don't know.
I mean, I noticed it from time to time. So I think in 2012, I first set the
speed record on El Cap actually, which is showing right there.
It's like a 3,000 foot wall. And then somebody broke that eventually
and then I did it again with a different partner years later.
And in the intervening time the ropes had gotten lighter,
the equipment had gotten smaller. Basically everything about it had
changed just a little bit but enough so that you're like, oh, this
actually does make it substantially easier. And so, you know, basically every year you're
like, oh, that's just a little bit better. It's nice.
And how is it getting a little bit safer? Well, it depends how you use the gear.
I mean, yeah, it could. It totally depends. But the thing about pushing the the
edges of a sport is that, yes, you could use the lighter gear to carry
more of the gear and thus be safer. Or you could use the lighter gear to carry
even less of the gear and go faster. And so it's all trade offs.
But, yeah, you certainly could use it
to be to be safer. Yeah. But you don't always, you don't
always use it that way. My great interest in life is
how people affect one another and how those intersections make new,
better things possible. And I wondered if we could
tell your love story because your connection is very meaningful
and it's making a lot of things possible. So tell me about meeting Jimmy
for the first time. Tell me, what about Jimmy makes him? Oh, boy. It's Valentine's Day here.
All right. These are questions we've never been asked.
Actually, I'm very impressed. Yeah, two points. Yeah, Yeah, two points. I hope someone's keeping a little tally. I am.
Audience? Oh, yeah. Good. Good. Yeah. I don't know.
It's hard to say, actually, because Jimmy was already a well established climbing hero,
sort of photographer, videographer, climbing icon you know, even when I was young.
Not to say that Jimmy's old or anything, but... But, wow.
I've never heard him describe me that way. Well, I mean, you know, but the film
Meru was... well actually, so, predating the feature film Meru, which I'm sure a lot
of us have seen on streaming services and things, before that there were
several different cuts of the film Meru because after their first failed expedition,
they made a little piece that was shown through The North Face,
one of our mutual sponsors. And so I saw sort of every aspect of your every
development in their quest to climb Meru. It's fitting that we're talking about Meru,
and it's up on the screen again. This is just a random carousel of
images that goes behind us but it's perfectly timed to what we're
talking about, just sheer sheer coincidence. But so, you know, I was aware of Jimmy's work.
I respected Jimmy's work. I kind of knew, you know, I mean,
he's the Jimmy Chin, you know, he's like and actually, you were on a
couple of the first expeditions that I went on as a young North Face athlete.
You know, he was already well established, like the golden boy, you know,
shooting all the... How much of this can you stand?
No, he can keep going. He's kind of like
"I could stand a little more" This is like the most complimentary Alex has ever been. I'm serious. This is like group therapy.
I mean, what year did you ski Everest? 2006.
Yeah. Okay. So that was basically the year before was the year that
I started climbing full time, really. And then I sort of got sponsored in 2007.
So basically from the very beginning of me being a professional climber,
Jimmy was already at the upper levels of what it meant in the space.
And so, you know, I've always, I don't want to say I respected his work, but, you know,
I always think he does a good job. I knew it. I knew it was coming.
Yeah. What about you? When did Alex first cross your transom?
I first heard about Alex through our mutual friend Conrad,
and I had heard about a couple things that he had climbed and that he had free
soloed Moonlight Buttress in Zion and that he had soloed Half Dome in Yosemite.
And I remember distinctly thinking he's either a total fraud or
the greatest climber of all time. Basically in my mind, because it was
so futuristic in my mind that someone would solo that, that it was certainly
for me, questionable. And that's why you had to make a movie of it. Yes, for myself, we got to
document this and make sure he's actually doing what he says he's doing now.
But then, you know, through the grapevine I heard it was legitimate.
But my initial reaction when I heard about what he'd done was I was like,
there's no way somebody did that. And he's how old? How old are you?
I was 22 when I started doing some of the things. I mean, it was pretty unbelievable for me, I couldn't wrap
my head around it. And obviously I'd been working with some
of the greatest climbers in the world so I'd seen the best of the best. And I
filmed and shot with the best of the best. And this was still hard for me to fathom.
And so then Connor and I, Conrad, I think, introduced us.
We went I think we went on your first international climbing expedition.
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, if you've seen Free Solo, there's, you know, you see a bit of the maybe awkwardness of Alex.
It was like that times ten when I first got to know him. That's fair.
But we were...
But we all grow up. I've seen quite an evolution in the last ten
years, but we started working together. And I remember on that trip we
were on this wall and it was the first time we'd ever... it was the first ascent
of this big, this new route on this wall. And there was this really like kind of crazy
steep pitch of climbing like 120 foot pitch or something, and it was the first moment where I got to see Alex kind of questing off into
unknown terrain like nobody had climbed it before. And that was really eye opening
because it was the first time I really got to see him being focused,
trying something new in a really remote alpine wall. And I remember thinking, okay, yeah,
he's for sure the real deal. Not that I questioned it up to
that point even, but it was, it was pretty impressive to see. And
then I think we just started filming and shooting together
over the years. But actually, I might just add, though,
that the film Free Solo kind of came together through sheer good fortune
and that he and his wife and co-director of the film approached me about doing
a feature film, sort of coincidentally, at the exact moment that I'd finally decided
that I wanted to free solo Cap and I wanted to put the work in
and I wanted to, you know, it's like it'd been something I've
been dreaming about for years and hoping that it would just happen.
And finally I realized that it was never going to just happen.
I needed to actually work on it. And then coincidentally, they approached me
about the film at the exact same time and I was like, oh, this is perfect.
We can make a film about this because actually it helps quite
a bit to have filmmakers involved in some way because there's
so much work involved in preparing for a climb like this,
just to carry all the ropes to the top, to repel in, you know,
basically it helped to have a team because I was like, oh.
They were like your Sherpas. Well, yeah.
Well you know, my friends... Oscar winning Sherpas.
Yeah. I've carried a lot of ropes for Alex. Let's just put it that way, which is fine.
I've carried a lot of rope for you guys too. That's true.
That's true. It all works. Teammates.
Well, can you deconstruct for these guys. Why? Why?
What is it about Jimmy? Is it his nature? Is it his instinct for storytelling?
Is that his relationship with Chai and how that maybe changes the way he edits
or the way he structures a narrative? Well, actually, Chai does all the editing.
I was like, careful. Yeah. No. Like, do you have a thesis about why
Jimmy is Jimmy Chin? Well, I mean, I've always said that
part of Jimmy's success as an outdoor filmmaker is just the
fact that you're able to get to the places that other people
can't shoot as well. I mean, basically, Jimmy can hike quickly.
He can ascend lines quickly. Like basically he can just
get to the place and do the thing without holding people up.
And I mean, basically just getting there is half the battle.
I mean, obviously, you know, getting the money shot and making
it look pretty is something. But just being able to get
there at all is not easy. Well, like I mean, because we've been on a
few expeditions where actually, dude, man, this is perfectly timed. We were in
Antarctica and this is from Antarctica. And you know, Jimmy can ski ahead,
get in position take some cool shots of everybody skiing by
and then sort of still carry on. And you don't have to wait for him.
You don't have to, you know, I mean, I think part of being a successful outdoor
photographer is just being able to do the things well enough to
stay ahead of everybody. Yeah. And why is Alex, Alex?
What about is it his nature? Is there something about the awkwardness
that actually allows him to do this sort of thing? Yeah, it means I can't find
any partners. Yeah. I wasn't going to say that, but
the thought has crossed my mind. There's a reason he was free soloing.
That's, like, not even a joke. I mean, that's basically true.
It is basically true. But I would say, I don't know.
I mean, this last week, it still kind of is mind boggling.
This last week I was in Red Rocks climbing this route called the Rainbow Wall,
which is this pitch. If there's climbers out there, it's like 5, 12...
It's like 1,000 foot tall sandstone cliff. And, you know, that's kind of
like a project of mine. I mean, I've climbed it before, but
I haven't climbed it clean. And I was up there, you know,
climbing on it. And the first couple of pitches
are very difficult for me. Well, not very difficult, but, you know,
they're challenging. And Alex had soloed this route
how many years ago? Like 2010. But I've soloed it several times, actually. Just in case you care.
We like accuracy, Jimmy. Yeah. I mean, you know.
We soloed it multiple times. Yeah. Yeah.
Oh my gosh. Okay, so it's so classic because you go on routes
and you'll climb them and you know, you're still... get to the top
of the pitch and be like, I cannot believe he soloed this pitch.
It's like you just can't register it. And I've thought about it a lot, obviously. I mean, part of it is the skill and the craft of
being an absolutely excellent climber and talented climber. But the part
that's hard to understand is, you know, I understand how you expand your comfort
zone to continue to push the edge of what you do and, you know, also
improve in the craft of what you are doing. And I have seen the process,
literally how he does it. But it's still really hard
to wrap my head around. And you don't meditate,
like you're not a meditator. I thought for sure as I
was studying you that I was going to discover that you
were like this Buddha inside. Yeah, it's easier than you think. Actually so, funny enough, after the
film Free Solo came out and we were doing sort of this
crazy six month movie tour, which I called my deployment to Hollywood
because it was like this insane It's like events nonstop for
months doing things. So during that period, I actually
tried to learn how to meditate. You know, I sit in my hotel room and be like,
"Omm" and, you know, it was fine. Like, it was great. And then as soon as
I started climbing full time again, like, as soon as the film tour wrapped up and
I was back to just normal life, like going outdoors, I was like,
I just don't need this because I spent so much time hiking by myself in the woods
and climbing and doing things. It's like, I don't need structured time
where I just empty my mind because I basically get the same
thing through climbing. Yeah.
So and more importantly, I don't think that having
a cluttered mind is one of my big problems to begin with. It's very empty in there.
You know. I do want to follow up, though, Yes, that's true.
He's very empty up there. But no, I mean, to go back to that question
of expanding the comfort zone, so much of what we do is preparation and preparation.
And, you know, I felt the edges of that where I prepared for something for so long
and was so kind of dialed in to what I was doing,
that I had the comfort to push the edge. And I think skiing Everest was one
of those things where, you know, when I first moved to Jackson, Wyoming,
skiing the Grand Teton was like a huge deal. And it was a big goal of mine
for many, many years. And then once I skied it, I started
skiing it pretty routinely. But then when before I was going to Everest,
I was skiing it like three times a week, you know, and just doing laps on it. And that just, it allowed me to go to
a place that was much more remote and much bigger. And I felt much
more comfortable because of all of that time being comfortable in
what used to be not that comfortable. So I kind of understand it. But the level of... just because I'm not as good of
a rock climber anywhere near as Alex, Neither am I.
But it is the preparation, I think, of just building that gradually.
And just to be clear and kind of fair. I mean, I went through the
exact same process. I mean, with El Cap specifically.
I first climbed El Cap in 2006, I think, and it was my partner and my big goal for the season
just to get up the wall in a day And we got up in hours.
We were completely crushed. It was like the hardest thing we'd ever done.
And then in the plus years since then, you know,
I've gone from barely being able to do in a day, to setting
the speed record, to climbing it multiple times in a day,
to climbing different routes and then eventually to free soloing it.
And so, you know, it's been years of effort and progression and
slowly building up from where we started. Yeah, Yeah. And there's a relationship
between risk and progress. But there's also the very true fact that
people who prepare as much and as well, as conscientiously as you do, die. So
we have a mutual friend, Jim Morrison. His partner, Hilaree Nelson, was killed
in a 6,000 foot drop in Nepal. Probably one of the best in the
business at what she did. I want to know how you process
the fact of that, that there is no preparing your way
all the way out of mortal risk. Well, part of that, I mean, we have
different answers for this because he does things more in big
mountains than alpine terrain. And I mostly stick to rock climbing
and certainly on rock, in a place like East Valley, there are just
fewer objective hazards like that. There's less random risk.
And so preparation, I think, takes you a little further in places that
are less random, you know. But the mountains are super complex
environments and snow science and snow safety and weather and
all those kinds of things. Like they're just more random.
And so fundamentally, there's just a little bit more more chance involved
with those types of endeavors. But surely when you were free soloing,
you were putting your life at risk. Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously.
But that said, you know, you practice it to the point that it doesn't feel
like you're rolling the dice. It feels like you're just doing something
that, you know, you can do. And I mean, of course the rational mind knows
that you're still sort of rolling. You know, there's still some chance
that something could go wrong. But you're just so confident. Like you just
don't feel like anything will go wrong. Do you... I want to come back to
you on this question, but do you have mostly success fantasies
or mostly fear of failure mind? In other words, when you are imagining this
move that you're going to make this achievement that you're going to pursue,
are you thinking how great it's going to be to summit?
Or are you thinking about every conceivable way that it could go wrong, or both?
Yeah, both a little bit. I mean, I definitely spent some time thinking about
how amazing it will be to get at the top and be like, that's so incredible.
But then I also think about what it would be like to fall off certain places.
You know, if you fall off the hardest part of free soloing El Cap specifically,
you'd bounce off this thing 60 or 80 feet below. It'd be a horrible, horrible way to
die in that it wouldn't be a clean fall, but it also wouldn't be...
like it would be a disaster, Like you would hit all kinds of things
and you'd wish you were dead before you hit the ground.
And so, you visualize those kinds of things.
But I think that's important because you don't want that stuff
just popping up in your mind for the first time while you're doing it.
It's like while you're doing the difficult sections of climbing,
you don't want to just suddenly realize, like
man, if I slipped here, it would be terrible. It's like, you know,
that it's going to be terrible and you need to kind of set that aside ahead of time
and then go up there and just perform. How do you deal with loss?
You've lost people. Yeah, I was still thinking
about his answer because I remember Alex talking to me about how
he prepared mentally and going through worst case scenarios all the time,
and I've done it quite a bit too, because it's the only way to understand how
to mitigate the risk to, in some ways... Is to live it out and like...
Well, and it's also just real detail. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
But to anticipate worst case scenarios is, absolutely a necessity when you're
going on expeditions or doing climbs or really in any real endeavor,
just so that you're prepared or not prepared to just deal with it,
but hopefully that you can mitigate the risk or the issue.
But in terms of loss and risk, I mean, I think, you know, in my peer
group or our peer group, we have a specific kind of relationship to
risk, and maybe not exactly the same, but in general, you know, I think first
of all, risk is relative, right? Like when Alex looks like he's climbing
on something that's really terrifying for 99.9% of the population,
it's probably like walking down the sidewalk for him.
But there's traffic on the side. And if, so long as he keeps walking on the
sidewalk and doesn't jump into traffic, he's totally... it's pedestrian for him.
Speaking of when people talk about risk, I frequently talk about like
it's not as dangerous as the city streets in New York or whatever.
Anyway, I just spent two days in New York for a work thing and I was like,
I stand by that because New York City, like every time you cross the street,
you're like, looking in all directions. At any moment you might get
blindsided by a scooter, like some electric thing you can't hear.
And it's all kind of... I was like, New York is pretty sketchy.
And, you know, and the thing about climbing is at least it's
a little bit more under your own control. I mean, when we're talking about preparation
and all training and those kinds of things, I mean, it really is up to you.
And you know, you might botch... like you might make an error and you might...
but at least it'd be sort of an unforced error.
Like at least it would just be on you that you made a mistake that you should have seen coming. It's not like you're going to get blindsided by a scooter
and be like, whoa, never saw that coming. I don't know. I was like, New York...
I mean, you live there, like Jesus. It's amazing that he survived.
I know. For all kinds of reasons. New Yorkers. Yeah.
Um, but I think the way we think about risk and, you know,
what we choose to do is a lot about how we view risk in general.
Because I think, and I've used this quote before because it's from
a good friend of mine, Jon Krakauer, and he said this to me early on in my career.
He said, there are two great risks in life risking too much and risking too little.
And, you know, just looking at life where you're evaluating
the cost of risking too little because there is a cost of not taking risks.
And, you know, where you decide to put that threshold is a very personal decision.
But, you know, if you want to pursue your dreams or the greatest
expression of who you are, which is what a lot of us
are doing, you know, what are you willing to risk
to do those things? And, you know, I think in a lot of cases,
the accidents, or how people die, they can happen in terrain or in situations
that are fairly pedestrian. And it's not when they're functioning
at their top level. And some people buy this, but
and some people don't. But like Alex said, I mean,
essentially life is risk. You walk out the front door and it's risk.
You drive down the highway and it's risk. My wife totally does not buy this,
but I actually, given I spent a lot of time assessing risk
and watching people doing various things that other people think are highly risky.
I feel like I have a pretty good point of view on it.
And, you know, like in a lot of cases, people that we know in our peer group that
die have died in, fairly, kind of for them, pedestrian situations in which
there was an unforeseen and fairly unpredictable kind of objective hazard,
like a small avalanche. Or can I jump in while
we're talking about risk? I mean, there's also something to be said for
making intentional choices about the risks you're willing to take, because
I think that when we're talking about risk, we're talking about risks that we're
approaching totally open. Like this is something we want
to do. We're choosing to do it. We're mitigating risk as best we can,
but we're accepting the risks that we're taking.
And I feel like a lot of the risk that people take in their lives are risks that
they're not really choosing. You know, it's like when people go
out partying on a Saturday night and then they drive home drunk.
They didn't choose like, I'm going to take this risk tonight.
It's like they just went and partied. But then it turns out they
are rolling the dice and they are taking some big
risks with their lives, but they're just not intentional about it.
And so, you know, that's also the other side of like leading a really,
really active lifestyle, like we're climbing in the mountains nonstop.
And so we're relatively fit. And so we're at lower risk of lots of lifestyle diseases.
And that's the kind of stuff where it's like, yeah,
you can choose not to take risks in the mountains,
but if you're leading a sedentary lifestyle, you're at higher risk for other sorts
of things, you know, I mean, like my dad was a professor and he was
relatively sedentary and he died of a heart attack at 55, totally out of
the blue, running through an airport. And you're sort of like, well, I mean, that's
the other side of the risk coin. It's like if you're not being active and
you're not doing lots of things, then you're at a higher risk of just
dropping dead from other causes. And so, you know, I mean, and
not to totally equate them because obviously climbing mountains is more
dangerous than than running through airports. Like that's clear. But at least we're
making intentional choices about the risks that we're that
we're choosing to take. All these years you've been out there, what
are you seeing in terms of climate change? Like, is it evident to you?
Are you feeling it? Well, I'm like, speaking about risks that we
don't care about. Yeah. It's like, apropos. Yeah.
I mean, I think the obvious ones for people like ourselves who spend
a lot of time outside, you know, you are hyper conscious of the environment
and weather and it's part of the reason we enjoy it, just the
rawness of of being out there. But I would say for me, the most obvious
just visually that I think people can wrap their heads around is just the
the glaciers in Europe retreating, I mean, it's... paying attention at all. It's pretty dramatic right there.
The story is right there. Yeah. I mean, every big mountain range in the world,
you can see glaciers retreating. It's like, I mean, I feel like part
of the reason that there's so much reluctance to act
on climate in the US is because we don't really have any
glaciated ranges, like in the US, nobody lives near glaciers. You can't just
see them moving back up the mountain. And so, you know, but like all
of South America, the Andes, I mean especially the tropical parts,
like the glaciers are retreating so quickly that anybody who lives even
remotely near any of those places are like this is insane. Like, it's crazy.
Like, in Europe. Yeah. And I think it's it's much more clear in Europe
because there's ski resorts that, you know, the chairlifts are like very clear markers
and there's no more ski resorts, you know, like they're just gone. They're
just shutting down because there's no glacier to ski on.
And it's just much more reference points to see it because obviously in
the big remote mountain ranges, you can't tell and that unless you've
gone there a lot and the people who have, you know, certainly say that.
You're in an interesting position because you're a filmmaker in nature
and surely there's a pull to show how beautiful it is.
But in showing how beautiful it is, there might be a moral hazard that people
watching your films think "looks pretty good to me". Yeah, well, I mean, the other
side of that is just and I've always thought like people care for,
will take care of what they love. And when you get people outside, just on like
the most kind of basic fundamental level is when you spend time in these wild places
and you feel the effects of, you know, of what they do for you,
at least what they do for me, it will pique your interest
in taking care of these places. How does that uplevel to, you know,
thinking about climate change? I mean, it's a start. I agree.
But also these films, you know, not to jump the gun but the most recent film
talks a little bit about that wildlife. Yeah, and it's about the Tompkins.
Yes, it's about Doug Tompkins and Chris Tompkins and Yvon Chouinard.
But do you know who those people are? Yeah. North Face, Esprit.
Yeah, I think so. Doug Tompkins founded the North Face and later on Esprit.
Yvon Chouinard founded Patagonia, and he recently gave the company
away to fund saving the planet. Chris Tompkins was the founding
CEO of Patagonia. But it's kind of this love
story of Chris and Doug and them spending years of their lives
building these national parks in Chile. And it's a story about conservation. It's a love story, but it's also a story of kind of, second chances
and living that life of deep intention. And we're going to share a little
clip before we finish. I wanted to say that 80% of sustainability
is determined in the design phase, which is the work of everyone here.
So thank you for working with a higher purpose. Or maybe we should say, maybe everyone
should work a little harder on it I didn't say it.
I'm just saying. I mean, with all respect to everybody, but... You can't study you, Alex for that long, without starting
to wonder about this tension between being totally independent
and being interdependent. And you've gone on quite a journey.
I mean, you were a guy alone in a van who did these outrageous things
without anyone knowing about it. And then you were the protagonist
of an Oscar winning documentary. You fell in love on screen
and you became a father. Indeed. That makes it all
sounds super dramatic. And when you live it,
it's all a little more natural. I mean, the other way to frame
that is that I spent a lot of years focusing on being the best
climber that I could be. But fully knowing, I mean,
the thing is, you know, I've always been interdependent,
in that, as a climber, you're always reliant upon partners
and the climbing community. So even when you're living
by yourself in a van you're still climbing with
people all the time. We're still part of this web of climbing.
And, you know, I mean, I was always desperately trying to find a girlfriend.
I just didn't have any social skills. But I always knew that eventually I
wanted to have a family and, you know, sort of settle at some point.
But there were just certain things that I wanted to do first as a climber or,
you know, certain things that I wanted to achieve as a climber.
And so I don't know if it's a total contrast between interdependence and independence.
I just think that there's always been a little bit of both. Yeah.
And I think thankfully for me, they kind of came in the right order
because I think I've done a lot of things. I've done a lot of the really challenging
things that I wanted to do as a climber while I still had tons
of independence in my life. And now I have a wife and a daughter.
And I think that some of those things probably would be
a little bit harder to do now. Not to say it'd be impossible,
but I'm glad that I sort of made the choices I did.
Yeah. What are you laughing about over there?
Oh, I just think it's a lot easier to free solo El Cap before you get married
and have children. It's true. Yeah, well, I mean, I do, too, though.
And that's also why, you know, I think that a lot of people,
when they watch the film Free Solo, they're like, that guy is kind of a douche.
Like, he's kind of callous and he's like not very nice to his girlfriend.
And I'm like, yeah, that's totally true, totally fair.
But to some extent that's an intentional choice that I'm prioritizing something that
I've been dreaming of for ten years and working on for years.
And, you know, free soloing meant a ton to me And then I met my now wife, Sony.
Like when we started making the film, I planted her.
Yeah, you wish, actually. Yeah. But so, you know, just by by sheer good luck.
I met her as we started filming. And so as the film unfolds, you know,
I've been dating this wonderful woman for six months or a year, and you're like,
yeah, she's great. But that doesn't outweigh this ten year goal of mine.
I'm kind of like, you know, I mean, you could throw away a promising relationship
if it means achieving a life goal, you know, even if it
is a great relationship, you know, thankfully and sort of with my wife's
prompting, I didn't have to do that, you know, because I was always kind
of like, well, just throw it away. And she's like, why not do both? And I was
like, you know, that's a good question. Why not do both? And, you know,
thankfully we did. You also met your wife on a film
in a filmed situation. Yeah.
Tell us about Chai. I was trying to make Meru.
I'd actually made two versions of it. They both sucked.
I thought they were both fine. Fine. That's not like a ringing endorsement.
Yeah, exactly. I'm kind of obsessive and a perfectionist. Well, it just didn't...
I knew it could be more than it was. It wasn't quite where I wanted it to be
because I had felt the potential of it. And I knew what I wanted to say.
And it wasn't quite doing what I wanted it to say. It wasn't so much about it wasn't
doing what I wanted to say. It wasn't hitting people with
the way I wanted people to feel. And that's a lot of how I'm inspired by
films is if I have a story where I know how I want people to feel because I feel it
and I want to translate that feeling. That's a lot about how I pick
films and think about films. But I met Chai and she was already a
very well-established filmmaker. She made her first film when she was 22.
She submitted it to Tribeca, won Best Documentary at Tribeca when she was 22,
and then went on to make a lot of other pretty incredible,
kind of more socio-economic films. But she decided I asked her if she would
take a look at the film. As a classic first date kind of line, like,
will you check out my film? Yeah. It looks better in the dark.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Let me turn that off.
Actually, it was really funny because she didn't respond for three months
because she was in Africa making a film and I just assumed she'd totally blown me off.
Yeah, but she did watch the film and classic Chai.
If you ever meet her, you'll understand. But she called me and there was no
kind of like, "hey, how are you doing?" "How's it going?" It was like I picked up
the phone and she said, "Jimmy?" I'm like, "yeah". She's like, "it's Chai". And I was like,
"Hey, how's it going?" She didn't respond to anything. She just said,
"What do you want to do with this film?" And I was like, "Well, I mean, I would like
to make it into a...", you know, anyway. You're like, "I just want it to not suck."
And she's like, "I got you." Yeah.
I'm just trying to get a second date, Chai. Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
And then how did she change it? How does her sensibility and maybe
her femininity affect a story like Meru? Well, first of all, she doesn't...
she's not interested in climbing whatsoever, which is Invaluable because that helps it be more
interesting to those of us who don't know that much about climbing.
I know if I had made the film Free Solo, it just would have been uncut,
three hours free soloing. Okay. And like, this is sick.
But that's a movie I really want to see. Exactly. Oh, people have asked for it.
They're like, you all shot the whole thing, right?
Can't you just cut the whole climb together? All the climbers are like, we want to
see him climb every single pitch. But how many hours would that be?
It's almost 4. It's like 3:56 or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crazy. We could almost,
we could almost do it. But yeah, I mean, she was much more
interested in the relationships and other parts of the story, but I was very
clear that I knew what that film was. I wanted it to be. I wanted to be about
friendship and mentorship, loyalty but I couldn't quite figure
out how to get there. And she immediately came in and said,
"Well, you're way too close to everybody in the film.
In fact, you're in the film, so you have no objectivity and you guys
are just having bro talk" And so she went and re-interviewed everybody.
She did, yeah. And I will say that most of the interviews
from Jon Krakauer I did, but all the other ones with Conrad
and myself and Renan, she came in and she,
like Alex said, she's definitely in the edit way more. Like our division of
labor is kind of like usually it's like 80% of production, physical production, I do.
And she'll do like 20% although her 20% is usually... Usually makes the final cut.
The 20% that gets used. Yeah. And then she does like 80% of
the post and edit. Well you know it's interesting. I write books and if
it took me all day to write a paragraph and then my husband reads it down the line
and says, I think you should cut this. It's like, oh God, you don't
know what went into that. And it must be 10X that
for you. Like you don't... I was hanging under a thing and
I had to fish out my camera. With the film Free Solo, we spent
a month in Morocco doing this crazy thing where my partner and
I climb these crazy walls and I free soloed this crazy thing. It all had never been done before. It's
basically a month of hard labor. And then in the film it's what,
like 60 seconds of b-roll? Basically, like while they're
doing interviews, they just show some kind of scenic shots
of like, people climbing on Brown Rock. It's like it doesn't even
show that it's Morocco. And we were like, we all had
the shits for a month. Like, you know, it's like bad water.
You're sort of like, we were like, We were laboring, We were toiling. It was so hard.
18 hour days back to back to back. Yeah.
It's like, literally I was like, well. I was like, yeah, it doesn't make
the movie. We're like, Come on. Like, what does it take? We're like cutting
edge climbing. Never been done. Everybody, like, funny you bring that up,
because I've never had more pushback from my crew on something getting cut than that.
Yeah. Because we all work so freaking hard.
Like they were like Morocco is like 60 seconds in the movie.
And I'm like, don't even talk to me about it. Talk to Chai. Talk to Chai.
Yeah. It's like, the hardest we've all worked.
And you're like, If this isn't good enough for a movie, then what is?
You're like, come on. Right. This is some of, like, the raddest climbing.
Well, the love story. And I still remember it because the love story,
Chai and I are obviously parents, kids, and I was off on some shoot.
And, you know, they're usually very hurried conversations on
a sat phone where it's like James has been misbehaving.
I had to take Marina to the hospital and you know,
I'm probably in Alaska or something being like "Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh."
And then right before she hangs up,
she says, "Oh, and by the way, I turned Free Solo into a love story"
and then hung up. I'm like, "What did you say? What was that last part?"
"Hello? Hello?"
"Connection's not good, bye." No, she literally hung up. She's like, "Oh, and by the way" "I turned Free Solo into a love story"
and then hung up, and I was like, yeah, I was.... I remember being like, "What was
the last part?" Being like, oh, yeah. And it won the Oscar.
It did. Yeah. Yeah.
Thank goodness they cut the Morocco scene.
Yeah. Thank goodness. Yeah, Yeah.
Before we go, I wanted to take a minute and show a little clip from your new movie,
as promised. Do you want to set it up? Yeah. So this is a film. We've actually started
filming it while we were filming Free Solo, so we've been working on
it for quite some time. We make films concurrently, but again, yes,
this is a film that kind of touches on the story of Doug Tompkins and Chris
Tompkins and Ron Shannon, who were huge inspirations
for me as I came up. They were icons in the outdoor world,
but they were pioneers as climbers, but then pioneers as entrepreneurs, and
then pioneers as conservationists. But it is a big fat love story
and it's... you'll see. Yay for love stories. Let's roll it. In the very beginning, Doug and I were living
in the middle of this paradise, and we said it would be incredible
to save this place. Just save it. Doug and then
Chris, you would see them together and it was like teenage kids.
He was very charming. I thought, That's the man I was supposed
to marry. It was scandalous. These were the original dirtbag climbers and
surfers and skiers who go on to create the outdoor clothing business as we know it.
And then there was the change. On any scorecard. Nature is losing.
They saw nature being destroyed. And if we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves.
The ultimate do it yourself approach to saving the earth. Buying it.
We started to realize it was possible to create a national park with
the idea that we would donate it back to the country.
And they're going, Come on. Nobody does that.
I desire to preserve this place. I think that is as strong a bond
as any two people can have. And then the worst thing that
could happen to me happened. Douglas Tompkins died Tuesday
in an accident in Chile. I was on my knees.
This audacious vision of Doug's, that was like a life raft for me. We need to
finish up these parks. It's now or never. It was so unlikely that you could pull that off.
She became more and more fierce. I ask myself, how can I come this far
without you? But then I remembered. You've been here all along.
Look, look, look, look, look. Doug would be so happy. They define an entire way of life.
Look at this. Incredible wildness as far as you can see.
Before I died. I wanted this life. Something wild. I want to thank you guys for designing
things carefully and with purpose and sustainability in mind. I want to thank you guys for being models of preparation
and attention to detail and ambition and love. Thanks for having us.
Thank you. Thank you, guys.
