From the first time I read John Krakauer's book 'Into Thin Air' in the early 2000s, I always thought this great adventure story would make a really good film. It has all the ingredients - a great location, disaster, interesting characters, and all forms of human emotion.

The effects that interest me are not the guy flying through the sky, but creating reality - reality that you otherwise can't go and shoot.

All too often on film sets, what happens is everybody gets worried about an actor being sick, a car not turning up, or the weather not being right rather than what we're ending up with onscreen.

I'm never going to go and test myself on Everest, but I sort of understand the psychology of people who might want to.

I think that it's rational to fear your own death or to fear harm to your family.

No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.

You know, my hair is very upsetting to people, but it's upsetting on purpose. It is important to look old so that the young will not be afraid of dying. People don't like old women. We don't honor age in our society, and we certainly don't honor it in Hollywood.

I have come to regard November as the older, harder man's October. I appreciate the early darkness and cooler temperatures. It puts my mind in a different place than October. It is a month for a quieter, slightly more subdued celebration of summer's death as winter tightens its grip.