Butt shelves explained by #AlexOLoughlin – Whiteout interview with Tribute.ca (2009)

Hot Blooded

Alex and Gabriel in an interview with Tribute.ca

Tribute: Being the hot-blooded dudes that you are, how do you fare in cold weather, in real life?

Alex: Love it.

Gabriel: I like being in snow. I love snowboarding. It’s one of my favourite hobbies.

Alex: I miss it. I don’t think I can be here all the time, but it is kind of antithetical to where I live in Los Angeles, California. And it’s, I’m not a lizard, you know.

Gabriel: You’re not?

Alex: I know I look like it?

Gabriel: Yeah.

Alex: I do, I have kind of like reptilian behaviors from time to time, but it’s……..

Gabriel: Your eyes. It’s in the eyes.

Alex: I know, when they go yellow? That’s jaundice man, I’m drinking too much.

Tribute: That’s a whole other movie. [laughs]

Alex: That’s a whole other movie.

Tribute: When you get the script and you know what you’re in for. Were you guys a little bit nervous and a little bit freak about spending all this time in Northern Manitoba? I mean, it’s cold country up there.

Alex: No.

Gabriel: They eat human flesh out there, don’t they?

Alex: They do. They shrink heads in Canada, in Northern Manitoba.

Gabriel: Do they?

Alex: The only part of Canada where any violence happens, Northern Manitoba.

Tribute: I have not read that anywhere.

Alex: Terrifying.

[Laughs]

Alex: I was excited, because it’s a new climate …. it’s extreme too, if anything. I kind of like extreme stuff, so it was exciting.

I’ve never been to temperature like that. So I was excited about it. I knew we would have all the gear too.

Tribute: Yeah, I mean you are bundled up and everything.

Gabriel: They provided us with long johns. It’s all you really need. Long johns and some hot pockets.

Alex: That’s so not true. We had ‘arctic goose’, or whatever you call it? Mountain wear, for minus 150, you know.

Gabriel: It was 50 below. It was freezing. When we were working outside, it was pretty harsh.

Alex: You put on like four layers, before you even leave your trailer. The thing is we do all the stuff and it is freezing, oh my god.

But then you walk back and hop into a warm trailer and put your feet up and listen to some Bob Dylan and, you know really we can’t….

Tribute: Well don’t you have this thing you get into a hot tub and get warm and the you run out naked and you’re running around – it’s called the 300 sprint club or something like that?

Alex: I did that.

Tribute: Could you please explain and tell us about this?

Alex: Sure. It’s called. What’s the club called?

Tribute: The 300 club, ‘Naked Sprint – 300 club‘.

Alex: Oh, that will do. And so what happens is that you get naked, but you leave ….. I had a hat on.

I think we all had hats, little furry hats for our ears, cause you’ve got to look out for your ears. And we had boots on, because at that temperature, your skin will stay on the ice if you try to run across barefoot.

And you just run, ……. and run as fast as you can.

Gabriel: [Laughing]

Alex: To a point, and then you turn around and run as fast as you can back.

Gabriel: And you hope, that the image doesn’t need to be CGI’d.

Alex: Yeah, which it did.

Gabriel: [Laughing]

Alex: Cause it was cold. But it was a good time. It was invigorating.

Do you want to know the coldest part of my body after that run, was actually the lower shelf of my bottom.

Tribute: The lower shelf?

Alex: Yeah like, cause like I have an upper shelf, or a roof. An ass roof.

 

And then your ass does its thing, and then you have the lower shelf before the leg, essentially starts.

That shelf, I got like a little chilly chill bite on it. It was the way the wind came around. I can’t explain it.

Tribute: You did quite well, right there

Alex: Thank you. But all of had the same, “Is your lower ass shelf cold?”

Tribute: This is going to be your new thing. I think we can do a movie, just about the lower ass shelf, I think.

Alex: I’m open to reading the script.

Tribute: Now working with the lovely Kate Beckinsale. I tell you, that girl’s a tough cookie. Tell me about your experiences working with her.  Gabriel, you want to start off?

Gabriel: You know, she is extremely lovely. She’s hilarious. She sort of made me laugh throughout the entire shoot.

So I had a great time, I had a good friend. It was cool.

Tribute: [To Alex] And your experiences with her?

Alex: Same, I mean the same we had. You connect with different people in different ways and she’s ……..

Humour is a big part of her life and I think that as an Australian, it’s a big part of my life as well. It’s one of the first things you have too. It’s sort of a survival technic, where I come from. You’ve got to be quick-witted to keep up with what’s going on, otherwise you just get left behind. And so Kate, we, all of us, laughed a lot, we had a great time.

She’s a good leader too, sort of naturally. She has an Alpha thing. She just naturally takes on that position and leads and people follow and so it’s good.

I mean it was kind of nice to be in a film, where you don’t have to think about that stuff, because it’s taken care off.

Tribute: Now there is a lot of rough and tumble in this film, there’s no question. Did you guys end up doing a lot of your own stunts? Because that looked pretty wicked out there. Especially that fight scene you had.

You’re all bundled up, you’ve got wind blowing, fake snow coming in your face. What was it like to shoot stuff like that? Because you both have done stunt work in shows and movies before. What was the experience working on this one?

Gabriel: It was a bit challenging here and there, but you know, if you’ve done stunt work before, it wasn’t too bad. We learned the choreography and we’re pretty athletic, the two of us and you know, the fight sequence that we had.

It was challenging in that there was cement underneath the fake snow. But other than that, I don’t know, I didn’t find it to be too……

Alex: No, we had a great stunt team too and we had great choreographers. There was a lot of the stuff that we could do ourselves, but they did a bunch of stuff for us and they especially put it all together.

That’s their department. You know some people are better at that stuff than others, and Gabe and I, it comes naturally to us and so we love doing it. And that makes their job easier. I think together, we came together and made it look good.

I did the …. the difficult thing for me was, I hurt my wrist, because of the cement. You’re used to falling on crash mats and stuff. And I’d see the snow and think it’s safe to fall. But I did the big cable pull at the end, which is where the whiteout ….. You know I kind of…….

Gabriel: Are you going to give it away? That’s great.

Alex: I just gave the movie away……. So I did a stunt where I had to get pulled by cable and I ….

Gabriel: We both were all pulled by cables.

Alex: Were you pulled by cable? Cable pull?

Gabriel: Yeah, into a pole.

Alex: Oh, that’s right.

Gabriel: I broke my ribs.

Tribute: Really?

Gabriel: In the movie.

Tribute: Oh no, I know, but……

Alex: You okay now?

Gabriel: Yeah, I’m alright.

Alex: Did you get any bruising at all? I hurt my neck.

Gabriel: I don’t bruise, I don’t bruise. I don’t sweat and I don’t bruise.

Tribute: Yeah, good for you.

Alex: He’s like a pig.

Tribute:  [laughs] Now perils of artificial snow too, we were saying that before. That is disgusting that stuff. What was that like getting it in your face and nose?

Alex: It’s like, if you went to a party, and there was cocaine in one bowl and there was starch and sea salt in the other.

And you went to that bowl and put your face in it and inhaled through your mouth and nose. That’s kind of like what it was like.

Gabriel: It’s a bit like confetti. If Rip Taylor just came up to you and say, “Hi”, all day long. [Throwing confetti in your face].

Rip Taylor in “It Ain’t All Confetti!”

Alex: I think my analogy was much better and much more heterosexual.

Tribute: You guys can fight it out. Congratulations, good job. A pleasure meeting the both of you.

Gabriel: Take it easy.

Alex: Rip Taylor, with confetti? I love it.

Link to the interview

Link to our recap of the movie Whiteout