LOS ANGELES, April 29 (UPI) -- Alex Parkinson says he wanted his film Last Breath to respect the audience's intelligence. Based on the 2019 documentary that he co-directed, Last Breath, on DVD and Blu-ray Tuesday, is a survival thriller about a deep sea rescue mission.
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Parkinson explained how he adapted his own documentary about the 2012 rescue of stranded diver Chris Lemons as a feature film. In the documentary, the diving crew explained deep sea diving procedures to the audience, but the narrative movie had to deliver that information through character dialogue.
Parkinson, who co-wrote the script with Mitchell LaFortune and David Brooks, had crew members Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson), Dave Yuasa (Simu Liu) and Lemons (Finn Cole) discuss the upcoming dive, along with the surface crew who will be monitoring them, in the beginning of the film.
"It could've been quite clunky and quite forboding about 'Wouldn't it be terrible if your umbilical snaps and you were stuck without any oxygen' type thing," Parkinson said. "I was really keen to respect the audience, treat them with intelligence and immerse them in this world so when it got to the incident, essentially people weren't asking questions about how things work."
The umbilical cord refers to the tether that connects deep sea saturation divers to the diving bell on which they live for weeks, providing them oxygen. While doing maintenance work on an oil rig on the North Sea Bed, a storm caused Lemons' umbilical line to snap.
Parkinson wanted to use basic enough terminology so the audience could feel they've learned the technical procedure, rather than spewing a lot of jargon at them. The ship on the surface is drifting in the storm, and Dave must return to the bell before mounting a rescue mission.
"I really want the audience to feel intelligent," he said. "You don't need to know how it went wrong but you need to understand what's gone wrong to the extent that it's drifting away, he hasn't got any oxygen and they can't get back to him because the ship's out of control."
The documentary did not feature an interview with Lemons until over an hour in to build suspense as to whether or not he survived. Since an actor plays Lemons in the new movie, the film could include his perspective much earlier.
"You don't know whether he lives or dies until the same point in the film, but you see what happens in real time as it unfolds," Parkinson said.
Some dialogue between Lemons and Yuasa just before the umbilical snaps was added to establish Lemons' goals in the rescue. Yuasa tells Lemons to get to the diving manifold, where Yuasa can find him when he returns.
In reality, the divers already knew the steps to take in an emergency. They have the conversation in the film, however, so the audience knows what comes next.
"I thought it's a great moment of acceptance as well where Chris accepts what's coming," Parkinson said. "He knows the umbilical is going to break. There's no way around that. You've got to prepare yourself for that and mentally you do everything you can to save yourself."
Parkinson also gave Lemons a flare to light him at the bottom of the tank where he recreated the fateful dive. In reality, Lemons was in pitch black ocean and only found the manifold by chance while walking in the dark.
"Does anyone want to watch a black screen for four minutes, hearing somebody?" Parkinson said. "The flare is so cinematic as well. For me, it's a touch point and it feels like the end of The Thing when they've got those red flares at the end."
Parkinson left out some of the story's authentic details from the Last Breath remake for dramatic purposes. For example, the documentary shows how the diving bell is pressurized with helium, making the divers speak in high pitched voices.
He was concerned helium voices would distract from the drama of Last Breath.
"You couldn't have them talking in helium voices throughout because it would be ludicrous," he said. "It may be accurate but there's no drama to be had in Donald Duck doing all this stuff."
Parkinson also decided the cast didn't need to adopt accents. Allcock is from Yorkshire and Yuasa is British, but Harrelson and Liu use their North American accents. Cole is British and does not attempt to sound Scottish.
"I didn't want any of the actors to impersonate who they were [playing]," Parkinson said. "It was about getting that essence of who people were which they all did."
The screenwriters also added a subplot about the company forcing Allcock into retirement. Allcock retired voluntarily last year, but Parkinson said the retirement added an important dramatic element.
"That was a perfect narrative vehicle to understand that Chris has to be on his own," Parkinson said. "He won't have his father figure anymore."
After the rescue, the trio went back to complete the job weeks later. Lemons continued diving until he was promoted to dive supervisor.
"He actually works on the ship the incident happened on quite regularly," Parkinson said.
Yuasa is also still diving.
Parkinson, meanwhile, is preparing another feature film. While not officially announced, he started developing a documentary about an article he read and decided to go straight to the narrative movie this time.
"It would work really well as a feature doc but I think it would be served equally well if not better as a feature," he said. "Just because you can have a bigger scope and scale to it basically."
