Meru, the new documentary by, of, and for the mountain climbers is a true labor of love [our review here]. In 2011, three lifelong friends, Jimmy Chin, Conrad Anker, Renan Ozturk, set out to tackle one of the most death-defying peaks on t he planet, the Shark’s Fin on the Himalayas’ Mount Meru. And they brought cameras in their pockets. Conrad Anker and Renan Ozturk were kind enough to take some time out of their un-relatably courageous climbing schedules to have a refreshingly un-Hollywood, non-slick chat with me about filmmaking as a natural extension of the adventure, how to make sure the cameras don’t weigh so much that the rations suffer, what most mountain movies get wrong, and an old climbers’ lifehack for what to do with that last rind of Parmesan.
