Dan, Joe and Parker are three college students on the last day of a skiing vacation in New England. But when they take the last lift up the mountain, and are accidentally stranded halfway up, they must fight for survival against primordial enemies: cold, wind, rain, snow, and altitude...

Bloody Disgusting: So, you've already finished principal photography of FROZEN, why such secrecy on set?

Adam Green: It wasn't really so much "secrecy", just kind of staying under the radar more than usual. FROZEN is very much a "what would you do?" type of survival movie in the fact that it's a very real predicament with no easy answers to the problem. You need to go into this wondering what the hell is going to happen and trying to figure out what you would do if you were caught in the same situation, so if the story beats and set pieces were made public knowledge this early on, it could potentially ruin the ride for people. So we have been biding our time as to what information we release and when. Even the actors auditioning weren't allowed to read the final act of the script until they had been officially cast. We're just playing it safe.

Another major factor as to why we didn't have the usual on-set coverage and set reports was simply personal safety. This wasn't the typical set where journalists could come and casually hang out and observe or interview the actors. The conditions were absolutely brutal and without the right extreme winter gear, guests could have been in jeopardy. Not to mention the fact that the only way to get to set was by snow mobile and that once you got there, the real action was happening in the sky 50 feet above the ground. There wouldn't have been much to see or do from an outsider's perspective. The nearest warming tent was very, very far away due to the fact that we were constantly shooting wide sweeping shots in 360 degree angles, so visitors would have either been freezing their asses off with us and seeing nothing or sitting in a tent way off in the woods by themselves, so we just did away with set visits on this one. I also run a closed set whenever I'm calling for intense dramatic scenes or dangerous stunt work as the actors need silence and the paramedics need to be able to do their thing if/when something goes wrong. There just wasn't as much room for fun and games like on my previous films and even cell and internet reception was limited so I had to wait until I got home before I could start talking about it. But I missed all of you guys for what it's worth!

BD: The film follows three friends stranded on a ski lift during a storm, correct? Is there anything else you can tell us?

AG: The storms are just the beginning of the dangers they face. The story works in a way where just when you think the situation couldn't get any worse, it does. But I'm going to save any real details until later on down the road as we still have close to a year before this movie hits theaters. What I can tell you though is that everything about this story is not only realistic, but everything you see on the screen is also REAL. There's no soundstage, no green screen, no "Hollywood" magic. The actors (and crew) were really put into dangerous situations and everything you see in the film actually happened like that. I can also put to rest some of the on-line rumors I've seen from people claiming to have read it or worked on it. No, it is not a werewolf movie. No, the cast doesn't discover that they were dead the whole time. And no, Victor Crowley doesn't show up and kill them. I think my favorite rumor was that we were really shooting HATCHET 2 but hiding it from everyone and calling it FROZEN. Although now that I think about it... that is kind of a cool idea and I may do that some day.

BD: Was it difficult to shoot an entire movie that pretty much takes place on the ski lift? How did you shoot those scenes?

AG: "It's just three people in a chair, how hard can it be?" I actually said that myself when I first pitched the concept to the rest of the guys at ArieScope. Holy shit was I wrong. Everything about this movie was a challenge and we had to become very inventive with our solutions. I mean, first of all, how do you shoot the scenes of the chairlift moving when the ski mountain won't allow you to fasten anything to the chairs or the lift cable itself? How do you light it? And when the chair ultimately gets stuck over a fifty-foot drop, how do you get the camera up to the cast? How do you get 35,000 pound cranes and condors up to the set when there are no roads to get there?

Thankfully I had a very brave and innovative crew. We figured out a way to attach several snow-cats to the cranes and condors (some pushing and some pulling) and one by one we dragged them up the side of the mountain. Each one took about a day. For the scenes where the chair is stuck over the big ravine, we shot everything on a Panavision 50 foot techno crane. That enabled us to not only get up to the cast, but to also shoot a lot of 360 degree shots and swooping movements that would make the audience feel the vertigo, isolation, and height.

But the best (and probably most interesting) part was shooting the scenes where the chair is moving up the lift line to the peak of the mountain. Since we couldn't hang any cameras on the chair, we built this crazy rig in front of it that was essentially like a steel work bucket that you'd see a phone company truck use. Then two camera operators would be fastened to the top in harnesses and shoot. When we put the rig together, nobody from the mountain would really fully sign off on it. We got lots of comments like "Well, it probably won't fall." Or my favorite; "I don't see why it would fall." So sure enough, my camera crew just patted Will Barratt (my DP of eleven years now) and I on the backs and said "Good luck with that, fellas." They wouldn't get in it. So Will and I shot it ourselves.

Now, keep in mind, part of the reason I wrote a story like this is because I don't trust chairlifts and I'm scared of heights. So there I am, fastened in a harness manning a 100 pound 35mm camera in my hands and dangling from a creaky steel rig that we put together with masking tape and dental floss earlier that day. Throw in some random gusts of 65mph below freezing winds and I seriously thought I was going to die. But you know what? We got the shots and we all survived to shoot another day. So when you watch the movie and see the scenes of the chair actually moving, know that I was operating my own camera and that I was shitting in my pants the whole time.

BD: There was a blizzard and multiple snow storms that ensued during filming, did it make you regret your decision to make this as your next film? Just how bad was it?

AG: We got hit with pretty severe weather for the first three weeks and then finished the shoot with a real bang during week 5. We started in a blizzard of about 31 inches of snow and then moved on to some nights of sleet, freezing rain, and hail. But then when we switched back to daytime shoots, we got hit with some abnormally warm weather. At first we were all celebrating it, but then we realized that our set was literally melting away and in just three days we had lost SEVEN feet of snow. Our condors were starting to lean sideways and our camera crane could no longer reach the f'n chair. Then, just when we had finished damage control and shoveled enough snow back onto our set, we got hit with the worst blizzard I've ever seen. 38 inches of snow in like 6 hours. It was terrible, but it was what the movie needed and it's a much better looking movie because of it. I mean we originally thought we'd have to make our own snow and hail, but low and behold we got the real stuff. Funny thing is, at that altitude the snow flakes are so big that they look like "movie snow". It almost looks too perfect to be real.

It never made me regret the decision, but I can tell you that I would never, ever do it again. Part of me doesn't even know where I found the courage to do it in the first place. In the weeks before I left I was admitting to all of my other director friends and industry associates that I didn't think I could pull it off. I was terrified. Even funnier is that in the short time since I've been back, I've gone into many meetings where the executives are like "So you must just really love shooting in extreme conditions, huh? We've got this great snow/desert/ocean/cave script that you'd probably love to direct!" Fuck that. I'm so not the outdoors type. I'd much rather be at home on the couch with Rileah, my cat, and my Xbox controller. In fact, that's where I am now and I just got teabagged by an 8-year old with the screen name "EdgarAllanPwn". If you see him on-line, fuck him up for me.

BD: How difficult is it to tell a story that nearly all takes place in one spot? Was it hard to make it an hour and half film?

AG: No, not hard to make it an hour and a half film at all. The best compliment I got when the script first went out was that people said it was one of the quickest reads they had ever had. It actually moves quite fast. In that kind of cold it's not like you'd just sit there and discuss your options for too long. I mean, you're slowly dying with every passing minute. The characters in FROZEN try and take action very quickly. In fact, I'd say there's probably only ten or fifteen minutes of all three of them sitting on the chair together before something happens and the first one makes a move. And the "contained location movie" has certainly been done successfully before. JAWS had three people on a boat for the last hour or so. Hitchcock's LIFEBOAT was all staged on a little raft. OPEN WATER had two people treading water for most of the movie. James Wan's SAW started with the premise of two guys waking up in a room together. I'm not the first one to attempt it.

BD: Obviously FROZEN can't be as bloody as HATCHET, is this more of a thriller? What can you say about this?

AG: FROZEN is survival horror that is very reality based. There's no fantasy. It's not like something supernatural is going to turn up or a slasher is going to jump out of the woods and start chasing them with random weapons. It's scary on a different level because everything about this story could and to a great extent HAS really happened in real life. So any gore and violence you see is done very realistically whereas HATCHET was all about the fun and over-the-top splatter escapism. I guess the big difference... for me at least... is- what would be harder for you to watch and endure? A woman getting her face ripped in half by a swamp monster or a person actually getting a papercut across the bottom of their nose for 30 seconds? Hopefully FROZEN will leave a mark on you and send you home wondering what you would do and how you would survive if it ever happened to you. If you're hoping for jokes, jump scares, and blood geysers, this isn't that movie. But if you want suspense, tension, and 'horror for your brain', this will deliver.

And don't fear. We shot plenty of gore. But this time it's the kind that makes you wince and look away, not cheer and laugh.

BD: BESIDES the weather, what was the most difficult process in filming FROZEN?

AG: God, the logistics and planning that had to go into tackling each day. When you take into account that the chair could not move backwards, we had to be so on our game with everything that once we sent the actors up each night they wouldn't have to come down until we were done. If the chair stopped even a foot too late, we would have overshot our lights (which were attached to huge cranes and could NOT move) and the actors would have to be sent all the way to the peak and around to the bottom to try again. A forgotten prop, the wrong set dressing on the chair, you know... mistakes that could normally be fixed instantly on a typical set would cost us hours of production time and lots of money.

Camera wise, we were shooting with 1,000 foot loads of film and a 290 mm lens on a techno crane 50 feet in the air. Try holding that steady for focus, especially when your subject (a free dangling chair) is swinging around in the wind and can't stay steady.

But the worst had to have been what the actors went through physically. We tried to layer them with body warmers under their costumes as best as we could, but when you're in that kind of cold for that long, eventually the heat from the warmers runs out. Their skin was exposed whenever we were rolling. They had skis and boards hanging from their legs on many nights, which was killing their knees and joints. Throw in how atrophied their bodies became being stuck in that position, not being able to use a bathroom, drink, or eat... it was brutal. But I gotta give them credit. They knew what they signed on for and they took the pain and used it for their performances.

No offense to actors but many are just narcissistic ego maniacs who became "actors" because they were deemed good looking in high school and just want to be famous and go to premieres. I sniffed those people out during casting and went with three very brave and very talented performers who gave me everything they had inside of them every night. One time in particular, Kevin Zegers had to endure an extraordinarily dramatic scene. I had cleared most of the set so it was just the two of us and I lied down on the ground with him while he screamed and cried for his life. When it was over I leaned over him and said "Do you have any more? Can you even stand up and walk right now?" And he choked back "No, Green. I don't have any more." And I jumped up and yelled "cut!" I was so proud of him. It took him a bit to recover, but he went home that night damn proud of what he had done and everyone who had been nearby to watch was blown away and affected by his performance. But that's what this movie needed and that's what they gave me. In fact, more so than anything, the ACTING is what you need to see this movie for. These guys delivered and they delivered in spades. How often can you say that about a genre movie?

My favorite moment had to have been this one night when Emma Bell had to lose her shit on camera. Emma's Mom happened to be on set that night and apparently she was bawling by the monitors having to watch her daughter in that state of hysteria and the crew standing near her didn't know what to do. It's not like I'm a sadist. As most of you know I'm actually a very warm and caring guy. But that's the kind of stuff that you live for as a director. Being able to pull that kind of emotion from an actor and then watch them show what they can really do and really be their best.

And once the movie is out and I can speak "spoiler-free" ...I've got some Shawn Ashmore stories that will blow your mind. He's my new hero.

BD: What inspired FROZEN?

AG: I grew up in the Boston area and we had these low-end ski mountains that just couldn't compare to the real stuff up North and out West. Some of the resorts were so small that they were only open Friday through Sunday. As anyone who has skied knows, it's actually pretty often that the chairlift will stop for no reason with you on it. Normally it's because someone fell getting on at the bottom or getting off at the top and so they need to stop and clear the way for a few minutes. But whenever that happens, this sort of "fear charge" races through the lift and everyone thinks (but doesn't say) "could I jump from here?" Thankfully, the chair always starts up again within a few minutes.

Anyway, one day I was watching the morning news before I went into the office and I saw the weather forecast here in LA. The weather here is always the same, so I usually just find myself looking at the view they have up behind the forecast. That morning it was Big Bear Ski Mountain. All of the chairs were stopped because the mountain was closed. So I started looking closely at the chairs and thinking about how scary it is that those things even stay on in the first place and how glad I am that I stopped skiing after high school. Then I started thinking about the pathetic mountains I used to ski on and how some weren't even big enough to stay open during the week.

I got into work that morning so excited to tell everyone about the idea and how easy I thought it would be to shoot. Well, we already went over how wrong I was there, but I started researching on-line and found countless stories of people who had been stranded on lifts for hours... and then even more fucked up stuff that has happened to them. A few weeks later we were up in Canada shooting Paul Solet's GRACE and I basically wrote FROZEN during breaks on set and before bed each night. I came home with a first draft which for my agents to go out with. Next thing you know... I'm standing on a mountain in Utah wondering what the hell just happened.

This business is so funny because I've had at least three other projects on deck and just about ready to shoot for so long now... and then I write FROZEN and it instantly skips to the front and gets made while everything else has to wait. You just never know what is going to happen or when it's going to happen because things change (literally) over night.

BD: How did you end up working with Peter Block of A Bigger Boat? How was that experience?

AG: There were a few places that expressed interest in making FROZEN, but it helped that I already knew Peter from the Lionsgate days. Out of everyone I met with about this particular project, he was the one most looking to make the same movie that I wanted to make. He was going to let me hire the right actors and not force me to cast off of a flavor of the week TV show or something. We were very in tune from the get go and the process went as famously as it's probably ever going to get. He understood why it was so important for me to bring my key crew members no matter where we shot and he helped make sure that happened. Most producers only care about things like tax incentives and how to save money, but Peter thinks like an actual filmmaker and he understood the value in not breaking up a team that has already been shooting together for so many years. Even more importantly to note is that all of the producers on this movie actually went out there and faced the mountain with us. A lot of time producers are useless and they don't rear their heads until you get into post and they suddenly feel the need to be involved, give notes, and justify their paychecks and job titles. But not on this. You'd be freezing to death and wondering how you're going to make it through the night when you'd look next to you and see that they were right there, too. Not hiding in a warming tent 400 yards away or doing 'important work" in their heated trailer at 3am. They were part of the team and that was so huge for the crew morale. When you turn around and see a producer helping lift the chair up to be attached to the cable you know you're all really on the same team. It may sound crazy but that doesn't happen often in this business. It's always "us" and "them". This movie only had "us".

BD: What's the latest on Dead West and Hatchet 2? Are there any other projects you're looking to next?

AG: HATCHET is the most successful original title that Anchor Bay has put out so you can bet that the sequel is coming. The only thing still up in the air is what my specific involvement is going to be with it. Between GRACE, FROZEN, and a number of other writing and TV projects I've been committed to over the past year I have had no time to do HATCHET 2. Even now I'm already contractually committed to two other films (announcements are coming over the next month or so) that are expected to shoot first, but as we saw with FROZEN, you never know when something is going to push back or whip to the front of the line. My guess would be that HATCHET 2 is going to have to go into production this coming winter with or without me at the helm. We'll see what happens. Everyone involved wants me to return and do it and I hope it works out that way. But creatively I needed to go on and do these other things first.

And as for DEAD WEST, shit, you guys are Bloody-Disgusting I figured you could tell me. What is going on with that one anyway?