127b hours

127b hours

Wednesday, 29 May 2013

REAL STORY OF ARON RALSTON

Aron Lee Ralston
(born October 27, 1975) is an American outdoorsman, engineer and motivational speaker.
He is very widely known for having survived a canyoneering accident in south-eastern Utah in 2003, during which he amputated his own right arm with a dull multi-tool in order to free himself from a dislodged boulder, which had trapped him there for five days and seven hours. After he freed himself, he had to rappel down a 65 foot (around 20m) sheer cliff face to reach safety.[1]
The incident is documented in Ralston's autobiography Between a Rock and a Hard Place and is the subject of the film 127 Hours.



Background

Ralston was born on October 27, 1975, in Marion, Ohio. He and his family moved to Denver when he was age 11. He is a graduate of Cherry Creek High School in Greenwood Village, Colorado. He received his college degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, finishing with degrees in mechanical engineering and French, with a minor in piano. At Carnegie Mellon, he served as a resident assistant, studied abroad, and was an active intramural sports participant. He left his job as a mechanical engineer with Intel in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2002 and moved to Aspen, Colorado in order to pursue a life of climbing mountains.
He had the goal of climbing all of Colorado's "fourteeners" — peaks over 14,000 ft high, of which there are 59; solo and during winter (a feat that had never been recorded). He has subsequently achieved this goal in November, 2001. In 2003, Aron got caught in a Grade 5 avalanche on Resolution Peak, Colorado with his hiking partners Mark Beverly and Chadwick Spencer. Nobody was seriously injured.
In August 2009, Ralston married Jessica Trusty. His first child, Leo, was born in February 2010.[2][3][4]

Accident

On April 26, 2003, Aron Ralston was hiking through Blue John Canyon, in eastern Wayne County, Utah, just south of the Horseshoe Canyon unit of Canyonlands National Park. While he was descending a slot canyon, a suspended boulder he was climbing down became dislodged, crushing his right hand and pinning it against the canyon wall.[5] Ralston had not informed anybody of his hiking plans, thus no one would be searching for him.
Assuming that he would die, he spent five days slowly sipping his small amount of remaining water, approximately 350 ml (12 imp fl oz) and slowly eating his small amount of food, two burritos, while trying to extricate his arm. His efforts were futile as he could not free his arm from the 800 lb (360 kg) chockstone. After three days of trying to lift and break the boulder, the dehydrated and delirious Ralston prepared to amputate his trapped right arm at a point on the mid-forearm, in order to escape. He experimented with tourniquets and made some exploratory superficial cuts to his forearm in the first few days. On the fourth day he realized that in order to free his arm he would have to cut through the bones in it, but the tools he had available were insufficient to do so.
When he ran out of food and water on the fifth day, he was forced to drink his own urine. He carved his name, date of birth and presumed date of death into the sandstone canyon wall, and videotaped his last goodbyes to his family. He did not expect to survive the night. After waking at dawn the following day (Thursday, May 1) he had an epiphany that he could break his radius and ulna bones using torque against his trapped arm. He did so, then performed the amputation, which took about one hour with his multi-tool, which included a dull two-inch knife. He never named the manufacturer of the tool he used, other than to say it was not a Leatherman but "what you'd get if you bought a $15 flashlight and got a free multi-use tool".[6]
After freeing himself, Ralston still had to get back to his car. He climbed out of the slot canyon in which he had been trapped, rappelled down a 65-foot (20 m) sheer wall one-handed, then hiked out of the canyon in the hot midday sun. He was 8 miles (13 km) from his vehicle, and had no phone. However, while hiking out, he encountered a family on vacation from the Netherlands, Eric and Monique Meijer and their son Andy, who gave him food and water and then hurried to alert the authorities. Ralston had feared he would bleed to death; he lost 40 pounds, including 25% of his blood volume. Fortunately, the rescuers searching for Ralston, alerted by his family that he was missing, had narrowed the search down to Canyonlands and flew by in their helicopter. He was rescued six hours after amputating his arm.
Ralston has said that if he had amputated his arm earlier, he would have bled to death before being found, while if he had not done it he would have been found dead in the slot canyon days later. He believed he was looking forward to the amputation and the freedom it would give.[7]
Later, his severed hand and forearm was retrieved from under the boulder by park authorities. According to television presenter Tom Brokaw,[8] it took 13 men, a winch and a hydraulic jack to move the boulder so that Ralston's arm could be removed. His arm was then cremated and the ashes given to Ralston. He returned to the accident scene with Brokaw and a camera crew six months later on his 28th birthday to film a Dateline NBC special about the accident and to scatter the ashes of his arm where he says they belong.

127 Hours


127 Hours is a 2010 biographical survival drama film directed, co-written and produced by Danny Boyle. The film stars James Franco as real-life canyoneer Aron Ralston, who became trapped by a boulder in an isolated slot canyon in Blue John Canyon, southeastern Utah, in April 2003, and was eventually forced to amputate his own right arm to free himself.
The film, based on Ralston's memoir Between a Rock and a Hard Place, was written by Boyle and Simon Beaufoy, produced by Christian Colson and John Smithson and the music was scored by A. R. Rahman. Beaufoy, Colson and Rahman had all previously worked with Boyle on Slumdog Millionaire. The film was received well by critics and audiences and it was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Franco


On Friday, April 25, 2003, Aron Ralston (James Franco) prepares for a day of canyoneering in Utah's Canyonlands National Park as he drives to the trailhead at night. The next morning he rides through the park on his mountain bike, aiming to cut 45 minutes off the guide book's estimate for the time needed to reach his destination. He is on foot, running along a bare rock formation when he sees two hikers, Kristi (Kate Mara) and Megan (Amber Tamblyn), apparently lost. Ralston convinces the pair that he is a trail guide and offers to show them a much more interesting route than the one they had been trying to find. He leads them through Robbers Roost area narrow canyons, including a blind jump into an underground pool, where the three film themselves repeating the plunge using Ralston's video camera. As they part company, Kristi and Megan invite Ralston to a party they're holding the next night, and he promises to attend. However, they doubt he will show up.
Ralston continues into Blue John Canyon, through a narrow passage where boulders are suspended, wedged between the walls of rock. As he descends, one boulder is jarred loose, falling after Ralston to the bottom of the canyon and smashing his right arm against the canyon wall, trapping him. He initially yells for help, but the extreme isolation of his location means that nobody is within earshot. As he resigns himself to the fact that he is on his own, he begins recording a video diary on his camera and using the larger blade on his pocket multi-tool to attempt to chip away at the boulder. He also begins rationing his water and food.
As he realizes his efforts to chip away at the boulder are futile, he begins to attempt to cut into his arm, but finds his knife too blunt to break his skin. He then stabs his arm, but realizes he will not be able to cut through the bone. He finds himself out of water and is forced to drink his own urine. His video logs become more and more desperate as he feels himself dying. He begins dreaming about relationships and past experiences, including a former lover (Clémence Poésy), family (Lizzy Caplan, Treat Williams, Kate Burton), and the two hikers he met before his accident. After reflecting upon his life, he comes to the realization that everything he has done has led him to this ordeal, and that he was destined to die alone in the canyon.
After five days, Ralston sees a vision of a little boy, which he assumes is his unborn son, a blond boy of about 3 (Peter Joshua Hull), through a premonition. He discovers that by using his knowledge of torque and applying enough force to his forearm, he can break the radius and then the ulna bones. He gathers the will to do so and eventually severs his arm with the smaller, less dull knife on the multi-tool. He fashions a crude tourniquet out of the insulation for his CamelBak tube and uses a carabiner to tighten it. Aron frees himself on Thursday, May 1, 2003 at 11:34 A.M. Mountain Standard Time. He wraps the stump of his arm and takes a picture of the boulder that trapped him as he leaves it behind. He then makes his way out of the canyon, where he is forced to rappel down a 65-foot rockface and hike several miles before, exhausted and covered in blood, he finally runs into a family on a day hike. The family sends for help and Ralston is evacuated by a Utah Highway Patrol helicopter.
The film ends with shots of Ralston from his life after his ordeal — including several of Ralston's further adventures in climbing and mountaineering, which he continued following the accident — and of the real Aron Ralston with his wife, Jessica, whom he met three years later, and their son, Leo, born in 2010. A title card that appears before the closing credits says that Ralston now always leaves a note whenever he goes anywhere alone.

Cast

Aron Ralston himself and his wife and son make a cameo appearance at the end of the film.

Authenticity

The scenes early in the film of Ralston's encounter with the two hikers were altered to portray Ralston showing them a hidden pool, when in reality he just showed them some basic climbing moves. Despite these changes, with which he was initially uncomfortable, Ralston says the rest of the film is "so factually accurate it is as close to a documentary as you can get and still be a drama".[4] Franco is never shown uttering even an "Ow"; Ralston wrote that this is accurate.[5] Other changes from the book include omissions of descriptions of Aron's efforts after freeing himself: he had to decide where to seek the fastest medical attention; he took a photo of himself at the small brown pool from which he really did drink; had his first bowel movement of the week; abandoned a lot of the items which he had kept throughout his confinement; got lost in a side canyon; and met a family from Holland (not an American family), Eric, Monique, and Andy Meijer, who already knew that he was probably lost in the area, thanks to the searches of his parents and the authorities. Aron did send Monique and Andy to run ahead to get help. Aron walked seven miles before the helicopter came.[6]

Production

Danny Boyle had been wanting to make a film about Ralston's ordeal for four years.[7] Boyle wrote a treatment for the film and Simon Beaufoy wrote the screenplay.[8] Boyle describes 127 Hours as "an action movie with a guy who can't move".[9] He also expressed an interest for a more intimate film than his previous film, Slumdog Millionaire (2008): "I remember thinking, I must do a film where I follow an actor the way Darren Aronofsky did with The Wrestler. So 127 Hours is my version of that."[10]
Boyle and Fox Searchlight announced plans to create 127 Hours in November 2009.[11] News of the World reported in November that Cillian Murphy was Boyle's top choice to play Ralston.[12] In January 2010, James Franco was cast as Ralston.[13] Filming began in March 2010 in Utah. [14] Boyle intended to shoot the first part of the film with no dialogue.[7] By June 17, 2010, the film was in post-production.[15]
Boyle made the very unusual move of hiring two cinematographers to work first unit, Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak, each shooting 50 percent of the film by trading off with each other. This allowed Boyle and Franco to work long days without wearing out the crew.[16]
Franco admitted that shooting the film was physically hard on him: "There was a lot of physical pain, and Danny knew that it was going to cause a lot of pain. And I asked him after we did the movie, 'How did you know how far you could push it?' ... I had plenty of scars... Not only am I feeling physical pain, but I'm getting exhausted. It became less of a façade I put on and more of an experience that I went through."[17]
The film had two official taglines: "There is no force more powerful than the will to live" and "Every Second Counts." The latter appears on the film poster, which is designed to resemble the vase-versus-faces optical illusion. On the poster, the viewer sees two inward-thrusting rocks or, more subtly, an hourglass.[18]

Release

127 Hours was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2010, following its premiere at the 2010 Telluride Film Festival.[19] The film was selected to close the 2010 London Film Festival on October 28, 2010.[20] It was given a limited release in the United States on November 5, 2010.[21] It was released in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2011 and in India on January 26, 2011.[22][23]
There were many published reports (not all confirmed) that the trailer and film made audience members ill. The Huffington Post, in November, 2010, wrote that it "has gotten audiences fainting, vomiting and worse in numbers unseen since The Exorcist - and the movie has not even hit theaters yet."[24] During the screenings at Telluride Film Festival, two people required medical attention. At the first screening, an audience member suffered from light-headedness and was taken out of the screening on a gurney. During a subsequent screening, another viewer suffered a panic attack.[25] Similar reactions were reported at the Toronto International Film Festival[26] and a special screening hosted by Pixar and Lee Unkrich, director of Toy Story 3 (2010).[27] The website Movieline wrote a (punningly titled) account, "Armed and Dangerous: A Comprehensive Timeline of Everyone Who's Fainted (Or Worse) at 127 Hours."[28]