Alejandro G. Iñárritu shot Leo DiCaprio in their new adventure film, “The Revenant,” under harsh conditions in snowy terrain from Alberta to Montana and Tierra del Fuego, Chile.
At a post-screening Q&A at Lincoln Ristorante on Tuesday, moderated by Martin Scorsese, the “GoodFellas” director asked Iñárritu how the frigid weather affected the set.
“I’m from Mexico City! It’s tropical,” joked the director, who won the Oscar last year for his last film, “Birdman.” DiCaprio, who’s generating Oscar buzz as a frontiersman bent on revenge after being left for dead, said, “We actually had a machine on set, I nicknamed it the octopus because it was like a giant hot air blower with eight tentacles, and we’d all rush up to it and thaw our hands.”
He recalled a night when the temperature was 40 below, and his eyes and hands froze, and then the cameras began to freeze.
“We were doing an emotional scene, and then this windstorm came, and it was just brutal,” DiCaprio said. “We were out there for an hour, and I said, ‘Alejandro, what the hell are we doing?’ ” Iñárritu advised some of the crew to emulate the actors: “It’s a mental state. Weather doesn’t exist.” Co-star Will Poulter joined the discussion, and Baz Luhrmann, Bob Balaban, Michael Moore and M. Night Shyamalan were in the crowd.