Ski Flicks
Local videos celebrate mountain life
By Ed Bushnell
Photos by Wade McKoy
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| Schroder Baker, living the high life. |
In the past, ski moviemaking was possible only to those who had made a serious and successful career of film production. Now, everyone with a few thousand dollars to burn and a lot of time on their hands can express their creativity through the ski movie medium. This season, four local production companies offer videos that capture the essence of skiing in and around Jackson Hole.
Teton Gravity Research founders worked their way into the “serious and successful” category from humble beginnings. Some people were surprised when this group of Jackson skids formed the now well-known production company and burst onto the ski video scene with the impressive 1996 movie The Continuum. In the years that followed, the skiing only got better, and the videos pushed the limits of comprehension—how could we mortals identify with tiny specks carving 11s down massive Alaskan peaks, or jibbers exhaustively spooling out their half-pipe inventions?
With the 2003 release High Life, TGR achieves a level of humanity not often seen in ski videos these days, by celebrating the camaraderie felt between skiers. You start to know the people who are featured, which makes it all the more impressive when they ski the amazing lines we’ve come to expect in a TGR movie.
High Life is a blend of retro and ultra-modern, old school and new school, skiers, snowboarders, and even snowmobilers—basically an 80-minute statement that the spirit of alpinism transcends categories, genres, and stereotypes. Some of the best footage involves free skiers incorporating terrain-park tricks into big-mountain terrain.
The gender barrier is also attacked, as TGR is prone to do, this time with a wicked segment of phenomenal snowboarder Victoria Jealouse set to Heart’s Crazy on You. We’ve come a long way since the late 1980s, when Kim Reichhelm is shown skiing lines that resulted in head wounds and a blown-out knee during her only segment in License to Thrill.
High Life was filmed in a variety of exotic locales, with a lengthy Europe segment and a lot of Alaska skiing. But TGR stayed loyal to its local ski hill, showing significant footage of Jackson Hole including a saliva-inducing segment of the ski area after a massive snowfall. To order, log on at tetongravity.com.
If it is levity you’re after, don’t miss Jeff Leger and Matt O’Donnell’s latest ski video, Committed. It reintroduces zany humor to the ski movie genre, and is reminiscent of Greg Stump’s early work.
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| John "JK" Klacziewicz throws a front flip for TGR. |
The plot revolves around a renegade doctor who rescues ski bums gone crazy in the summer heat from lack of skiing. The doctor, along with naughty nurse Fluffy Pillows, feeds the ailing skids Pow-Zac and throws them in a sanitarium, where they spend their days alone with their powder-filled hallucinations. The movie is short (28 minutes), but there are no expendable shots. Big cliff drops, impressive helmet-cam footage, and long, uninterrupted, and intricate runs are this film’s strengths.
Shot solely in the Tetons, most of the footage is at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, Grand Targhee, and the backcountry of those areas. These may not be among the best skiers in the world—as with TGR’s movies—but they’re still damn good, as well as quite crazy. Bonus points are given to Leger for not being afraid to show the falls that follow the many impressive airs. To order, call 307-413-1476.
Speaking of impressive falls, Darrell Miller’s new video, The Precious, has what must be the best fall of the year, where a skier has an unfortunate encounter with a tree just above a formidable cliff. The skier falls off the cliff, mostly hidden by a deluge of snow, and emerges shaken but unscathed at the bottom of the run.
Miller’s movie is all about the locals. Anyone who has spent time in Jackson Hole’s ski bum society is bound to recognize at least a handful of names and faces on the screen. Tourists who don’t know anyone in the movie will still get a good sense of the Jackson Hole ski culture.
Miller’s movie features what I believe is the first commercial video footage of a snowboard descent of the Grand Teton. Miller also has footage of other Teton Mountaineering excursions on Mount Wister and the Middle Teton. The mountaineering segment makes a nice coda to the video.
The quality is a little raw, and the spelling is creative, but Miller’s movie gives the best sense of what it’s like to be a skier living in Jackson Hole. To order, call 307-413-1754 or log on at www.stormshow.com.
A fourth home-grown video is from Demian McConnell’s Vision Quest Productions, and features impressive paragliding footage. Ambulare Cum Dias (To Walk with the Gods) was filmed in Jackson Hole, Hawaii, and Salt Lake City. An avid paragliding pilot, McConnell shot much of the footage from a bird’s-eye vantage point as he piloted his wing. As a result, the viewer feels at times as if he is thousands of feet in the air.
The most impressive segment of the video takes place at the Palisades Reservoir near Alpine, Wyo. Pilots are towed behind a truck, gaining hundreds or thousands of feet of altitude above the reservoir, then engage in crazy acrobatics, oftentimes collapsing their paragliders on purpose then recovering (in most cases) just before splashing into the water. To order, call 307-734-0342 or log on at www.jhvisionquest.com.
Most of the videos and DVDs are also available through local retailers.
The Jackson Hole Skier is a free visitors’ guide published annually and distributed at hundreds of locations throughout Jackson Hole, Cody, and other regional communities. To receive a copy in the mail, send $5 to Jackson Hole SKier, P.O. Box 1930, Jackson, Wyoming 83001.
Copyright 2004 by FPI (Focus Productions, Inc)., P.O. Box 1930, Jackson, Wyoming 83001. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publishers.
Publishers: Bob Woodall & Wade McKoy, dba Focus Productions, Inc. (FPI)
Editors: Mike Calabrese, Wade McKoy, Bob Woodall
Art Direction & Ad Design: Janet Melvin
Advertising Sales:
JACKSON: Ike Faust, 307-690-5908, 307-733-6995 email: mail.focus@wyom.net
DUBOIS & PINEDALE: Janet Melvin 307-733-6995
CODY: Guy & Barb Hull 307-527-7808