Transcripts

SPEAKER 1: If we did this documentary when they came off the ice, I don't think you'd get the same reactions from the people than if we did it seven years later because the team members matured over the seven years and had time to reflect about what they did out there, how they changed, and what was important to them. And I probably wouldn't get interviews from Anne Dal Vera or Sunniva Sorby about how they matured, or how Anne Dal Vera talked about the possibility of committing suicide out there because the mental struggle was so difficult. She had tendonitis, had problems with her ankles, and she admitted that it was real tough. It was a mental struggle and that it would be really easy to just walk over there in the cold-- 60 below zero-- and just sit there and commit suicide.

SPEAKER 2: And that's not something that you think she would have said right after coming off the ice.

SPEAKER 1: Absolutely not. I don't think so. I think she needed time to reflect about things, about the expedition, and about what they were about to do because their goal was to cross Antarctica. And what the team came across with is that they just made it to the South Pole because of injuries and circumstances. And so in some people's minds, it would have been a failure. And so that was hard to talk about. So you have to have time to reflect about that.

SPEAKER 2: You got some of the team members to confess some of their frustrations to you. Do you want to share some of the thoughts that they shared with you. And were you at all surprised to have them be so honest with you?

SPEAKER 1: The film really takes the viewpoint of Anne Bancroft's diary, and she's kind of open about how she was feeling at that time, how she was feeling about the other team members. Ann reflects in her diary that sometimes the team members weren't pushing as hard as they could, but that's the dynamics of a group. And to be a leader, I think you have to get the people behind you and give them a little sermons and pep talks to keep everybody going. And then you, as a leader, have to be up almost every day so that you can get to your goal.

SPEAKER 3: Day 39-- I feel like the good weather is a gift, so it is difficult to remain calm. I have difficulty when I don't really see people push. This will sound bad, but I've wished several times they'd just toughen up. I do feel like I have to be so gentle with them.

SPEAKER 2: Some of the team members even questioned Ann's leadership skills, though, in terms of not being able to pull together this fundraising.

SPEAKER 1: Absolutely because this was Ann's dream and then she picked three other women to go with her. And so she was in the driver's seat trying to raise money. And she was dividing her attention between two different areas-- raising money and also getting in shape to do the expedition. And they went down to Punta Arenas, Chile, which is the starting point to go to Antarctica. And they didn't have all the money together. Some of the team members were appalled by this, and they even kind of tell us that, well, how are we going to do this? But I think what it really comes down to is that they had passion. Ann had passion because she didn't have the money, but she knew something was going to work out. And she went down there with the passion to Chile and then made the expedition work.

SPEAKER 2: You intercut the women's story with a parallel story of the two British men who were crossing. Explain the contrast, I guess, between these two expeditions.

SPEAKER 1: I think one of the goals of the documentary was to investigate how women would approach something very physical, like crossing Antarctica as opposed to how men would approach it. And to do that, I kind of juxtaposed a two-man British team that was basically doing the same thing that Ann and her group was doing at the same time and have them talk about it and have Ann talk about it and have the audience decide what the differences were.

SPEAKER 2: Well, what do you think the difference were?

SPEAKER 1: Ann Bancroft and her group decided that it was very, very important for all four women to make it to the South Pole instead of evacuating two women and two women sprinting off to go to the South Pole and cross Antarctica, which was their ultimate goal. And the British, even though they were not as well-equipped and they were in lack of food at the appropriate time, they decided to continue on from the South Pole, even though they weren't as physically fit as the women were and just push on. So I think it's the journey as opposed to the destination. And the men thought the destination was their goal, and the women thought the journey was their goal.

SPEAKER 2: Which approach do you admire the most?

SPEAKER 1: I think it's the makeup of the team that you have to consider what's important to you as a team, whether it's the journey or the destination, and what you want to get out of this because some of the team members said that we do this to see when we crack and what we're made out of. We push ourselves to the extreme, just like a lot of people in our business and in business in general, push themselves to extreme because they want to do it. They want to see if they can do it. And that's why people do these things-- cross Antarctica, go to Mount Everest.

SPEAKER 2: So was the women's expedition a success because they made it to the Pole, even though they didn't make it all the way across?

SPEAKER 1: From the women's perspective, because it's a women's story, I think that was the right answer was for all four of them to make it because they started as four and they ended it as four. And that was important to them,

SPEAKER 2: Did you get the sense that it haunted them, though, in any way?

SPEAKER 1: I think it did haunt some of the team member because Ann Bancroft wants to go back to Antarctica and cross it, and she's going to try that later this year. And Sunniva Sorby is going to do the same thing.