While Australian actor Sam Worthington sips Champagne on the red carpet in Venice next month, the mountaineer he portrays in the new movie Everest will be in Nepal, huddled in a tent at the foot of the world's eighth highest mountain.
The mountaineer is Guy Cotter, chief executive of Wanaka's Adventure Consultants, who will miss not only the world premiere of the movie at the Venice Film Festival from September 2-6, but also the one-off charity screening in Wanaka on September 10 and the United States premiere, in Los Angeles on September 12.
Mr Cotter was not complaining when he spoke to the Otago Daily Times this week.
It is just that the premieres clash with his plans to take eight clients to the top of Mt Manaslu.
The movie Everest is about events in May 1996 that Mr Cotter was a part of.
He was at Everest base camp when his employer Rob Hall and his climbing party of more than 20 got into trouble in a severe storm.
Mr Cotter took on the job of co-ordinating the rescue of about 100 climbers caught by the weather, and that brings him into the latter stages of the movie.
Asked if he had found it frustrating not to be able to go to the assistance of those trapped on the mountain, Mr Cotter said when the storm struck he had only just arrived at base camp and was not acclimatised.
''So there was nothing I could do.
''I couldn't go up higher on the mountain to offer assistance.
''As it was, even if I was very well acclimatised, I would have still been too late to be able to go through all the camps to get up to the mountain to do anything realistic.
''It was frustrating, but someone like myself was needed down below to help out and make things happen.''
Mr Cotter communicated with the various teams on the mountain and co-ordinated the distribution of oxygen tanks.
''And of course there was the drama of talking to Rob up there on the south summit.
''I had the unenviable role of having to tell him the rescue we had organised wasn't going to get to him because they had encountered bad weather and high winds.''
Ultimately, Mr Hall, New Zealand guide Andy Harris, of Queenstown, and two Adventure Consultants clients were among eight climbers who died on the mountain.
''It was a very dramatic period of my life, and until last year I hadn't really revisited it,'' Mr Cotter said.
Mr Cotter acted as adviser to the Everest film-makers.
He has seen the finished result, and has no major issue with the way he or events 19 years ago are portrayed.
''I think they have done, overall, a pretty good job of keeping it authentic.''
Mr Cotter said director Baltasar Kormakur had decided not to go with the ''good guy, bad guy'' formula of many such films.
He had recognised there was so much drama going on anyway that ''he didn't need to create it'', Mr Cotter said.
However, he had not shied away from showing the ''foibles'' of individuals.
''I think what comes out of it is not necessarily whether there are good or bad people, it's just that we all have weaknesses that are exposed in times of extremis.
''That's where this film is quite honest, because it kind of puts it out there without making its own judgement; it's up to us as the viewer.''
Because there were so many people involved in the events of 1996, the film had ''shortened a few things''.
One point of difference between the film and reality was the way the helicopter rescue of climbers came about - ''the first time something positive happened through it all''.
''That was portrayed differently in the movie for reasons that they decided.
''But apart from that I was comfortable enough.''
Mr Cotter leaves for Mt Manaslu today.
It will be the company's first expedition to Nepal since the devastating earthquakes earlier this year.
Money raised at the Wanaka showing of Everest will go towards earthquake relief in Nepal.
Mr Cotter said he had been to the summit of Mt Everest four times, had turned back short of the summit to help people a couple of times, ''and there's every likelihood I'll go back''.
At a glance
• New Zealand guides Rob Hall and Andy Harris, along with six others, lost their lives in a violent storm on Mt Everest in 1996.
• The dramatic story has been made into a blockbuster film starring Australian Jason Clarke as Hall, Keira Knightly as Hall's wife Jan Arnold, Jake Gyllenhall as American guide Scott Fischer and Sam Worthington as Wanaka guide Guy Cotter.
• The movie opens in New Zealand next month.
