Jeremy Renner Says Snowplow Accident Book Is At Final Edit Stage – Red Sea Film Festival
Jeremy Renner has revealed he is doing the final edit on his book about lessons learned through his near fatal snowplow accident, in a conversation at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival.
“It will be two years in January, and I am very proud to overcome a great adversity in my life,” Renner said of the accident in which he was crushed by his own snow-removal tractor on New Year’s Day 2023 at his home in Nevada.
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“I’m forever grateful for all the love and support I’ve gotten from the people all around the world, that I never knew existed that propel me to get better. It’s the only thing that really defines me in my life at this point,” he continued.
“I don’t look at it as a limitation even though I am 25% titanium, so f**k Iron Man, I’m Titanium Man… I’m writing a book about it now. This whole trip, I’ve been doing the final edit on it, so it’s kind of all kind of fresh in my brain, because I try to push it away a lot of times.
“There so many wonderful gifts that come from being tested to your limits of death, because I did die, and I came back, and I came back for a reason. It had nothing to do with me, if was my choice, I’d have rather have stayed, but I came back, and I’m glad I’m back. The freedoms and the gifts bestowed onto me because of the great tests, you know, of crushing 38 bones, eye comes out, the terrible things that happen in a crushing injury. That’s said nothing at the end of it, I can see that now coming out of it.”
The Hurt Locker, Avengers: Endgame and Hawkeye star, who is in Saudi Arabia for the first time, praised the country’s progress in building a film industry in the wake of the lifting of its 35-year cinema in 2017.
“It’s pretty exciting. It on the the precipice of a big, big shift here. I think there’s supposed to be 2,500 screens in the next five years, by 2030, that’s huge, huge,” he said.
“If any country can kind of do that, move that fast, move the needle that fast. I think it’s Saudi Arabia,” he added, to applause from the mainly local crowd in the room. “I’m pretty excited to see what happens here.”
Although Renner is visiting Saudi Arabia for the first time, he is no stranger to the Middle East, having shot The Hurt Locker in Jordan and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol with Tom Cruise in the United Arab Emirates.
He shared an anecdote on the latter film, revealing how Cruise had terrified him by checking his phone as they hung from Dubai’s mega-high-rise, the Burj Khalifa, for a central stunt in the film.
“Tom was hanging out the building. It felt like a mile high in the sky, this thing. You look down and see the skyscrapers and it looks like little Legos, that’s how high this building is.” recounted Renner.
“I’m hanging out, in a suit with a belt on, this guy’s holding the rope, and he’s [Cruise] looking on his phone. ‘Hey dude, maybe you want to pay attention?’… I literally could have fallen out of that building, slipped by and Tom made like four phone calls, before I hit the ground.”
Renner is among a raft of stars attending the Red Sea Film Festival in the port city of Jeddah this year, alongside Michael Mann, Michael Douglas, Michelle Yeoh, Catherine Zeta–Jones, Eva Longoria, Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo and Sarah Jessica Parker.
In its fourth edition, the festival has returned to Jeddah’s historic Al-Balad neighborhood this year, which was the site of its first edition but has been under renovation over the past two years. Renner said he had ventured out into the old town the night before.
“I wasn’t interested in going out. I wanted to stay in my room, but I’m so glad I went out… to this cool 125-year-old building… to feel this old architecture. I got to sit at a table with really interesting people, some I knew, some I didn’t, and I got to talk about the culture and what this place was like five years ago, and what it is now, and where it’ll be another five years,” he said.
“That was so inspiring. I don’t know how or who in the government really opened the doors, the borders and the idea of art and all this stuff to happen to this community. But I think it’s so wonderfully smart.”
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