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March, 2011-- There aren't a whole lot of magnetic particles
left on my VHS tape copy of Greg Stump's seminal ski film, The
Blizzard of Aahhh's. It's been played so many times, it's
all but worn out. With Blizzard', Greg Stump provided
a template, a direction for modern skiing, and at a crucial time
when the sport had seemingly stagnated under the overwhelming
weight of so many fur-collared one piece fart bags on jet-setters
in sloppy, rear-entry boots. Bridging the gap between Warren
Miller's joke fests and straight up ski porn, Stumpy brought
together all the core elements that have always made skiing such
a cool thing to do: Big mountain adventure, good times, camaraderie,
thus inspiring a generation of skiers… and ski filmmakers.
And so it is that the Blizzard
of Aahhh's has been called by many the greatest ski movie
of all time, and it's not an overstatement to
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say that legions of fans have been
patiently waiting some 25 years for a sequel. As one of 'em,
I was super stoked when the opportunity came my way last week
to attend a "focus group" screening (and fund-raiser
for our local disabled sports group) of Stump's much anticipated
Legend of Aahhh's. I was so psyched I even took a photo
of our tickets to the sold out show, and sent the picture to
a couple of friends. Look what we are going to see tomorrow night!"
It had been years since I first heard that Stump had this project
underway, |
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working with the original Aahhh's
crew of Scott Schmidt, Glen Plake and Mike Hattrup, and It would
be interesting to see what the old master had come up with.
Stumpy introduced the movie, explaining
that what we were about to see was an edit, but "pretty
much the final version." Indeed, the title card that was
on the screen while we waited for the film to start noted the
edit number, and that this version had no
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intermission. "I'll manually
pause the film about in the middle," explained the man behind
the curtain of Aahh's, standing right there before us.
It was great to see Stumpy in this
setting. We've seen the guy at the SIA ski trade show in Vegas,
flanked by what looked to us like adult film stars, as well as
admiring onlookers, and we've chatted him up once or twice, but
to see Stumpy, in person, introducing a new ski film, well, that
was one for the memory banks.
Billed as a documentary style look
at not just the history of skiing, but rather as a detailed look
at the history of ski films, Legend of Aahhh's turns out
to be something of a metafilm; a documentary about documentaries.
It's one part a fun look back at from where |
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we came, through the ski films
of the times and the reminiscences of the various athletes and
filmmakers, and another part "The Making of Blizzard
of Aahhh's." This works well because the two parts complement
and add context to each other, while blending seamlessly into
the overall storyline. As he should, Warren Miller gets a lot
of screen-time, and his comments are, of course, very insightful.
Maybe it's because Mr. Miller is getting older and less guarded,
or perhaps it's due to Stump's skill as an interviewer, but for
once we get to see a little different side of the Master Ski
Film Maker. My favorite part in this was when Mr. Miller looks
at the camera and says very pointedly, with absolutely no trace
of his trademark folksiness, "You and I both know that this
business was invented by John Jay." There was just something
about the way he said it, almost defensively, and it piqued my
interest.
As it turns out, John
Jay was a freshman in college in 1935, skiing weekends at
what is said to have been the first rope tow in the U.S., located
at Woodstock, Vermont. Jay started using the family camera to
shoot ski scenes to show later at home in his parents living
room. He went on to make a series of ski movies, including what
was almost certainly the first Canadian Rocky Mountain powder
ski p0rn ever filmed, Skis
of Skoki. On John Jay's website I also found an interesting
account of his first showing of a ski film in my hometown
southern California. It was on a hot and cloudless August night
in 1940, on somebody's tennis court in Pasadena, a full moon
washing out much of the first half. What a great story, and I
would have never known of John Jay if it were not for Legend
of Aahhh's. 1940!! I had always heard the stories of Warren
Miller traveling around with his 16mm projector and narrating
ski films in the '50s, and, like most I suspect, just kind of
assumed he was the first to make a business out of ski filmmaking.
John Jay was a true visionary, and I'm glad to have learned of
his enormous, yet apparently unheralded contribution to the popularization
of skiing.
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Legend of Aahhh's continues through the Miller years and
into Stumpy's first attempts at filming his teenage friends,
ballet skiing and performing entertaining stunts. And then comes
1985's Time Waits for Snowman, followed by Maltese
Flamingo and The Good, The Rad, and The Gnarly, Stumpy's
first three films before Blizzard'. In these memorable
movies, Stumpy documents the now bygone era of Hot Dog skiing,
and there are hints of what is to come, skiing's extreme era,
more or less kicked off with his 1988 masterpiece, The Blizzard
of Aahhh's.
Many of the clips every fan remembers
are shown, and many memories of the making of the film are shared
by its stars, Schmidt, Plake and Hattrup. The latter entertainingly
busting on Stumpy, revealing for the first time a major bit of
artistic license taken by the director in 'Blizzard's "plot."
Yes kids, believe it or not there was actually a time when snowsports
films had plots. |
Stumpy doing
the meet and greet at the merch table
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Speaking of which, it is at this
point that the plotline of Legend of Aahhh's starts to sputter.
Okay, we got that 'Blizzard was a seminal ski film, a turning
point. And it was really fun to look back and hear the anecdotes
from its production, but what follows are loosely organized segments
from TGR, Matchstick, etc. I get where Stumpy was going here,
illustrating the progression of ski films and how we got to where
we are today. That's all well and good, but Legend is a film
badly in need of an ending. Instead, what we got, was what seemed
like about 20 minutes of continuous park air, mostly filmed against
beautiful sunsets. While I thought the ending was, to coin the
appropriate '80s era phrase, running on empty, it was my 17 year-old
stepson's favorite part. "That movie got really good at
the end," he said as soon as the lights came up.
Metafilms are not easy to pull off,
what seems important to the filmmaker isn't always all that for
an audience, and Legend walks this line less than 100% successfully,
and yet as I talked to as many people as I could out in the lobby,
during the intermission and after the show, nearly everyone really
enjoyed the movie. Indeed, the audience seemed engaged from beginning
to end, and I too enjoyed it immensely. Personally though, I
would have liked to have seen Stump pull it all together in the
finale by featuring Blizzard's three stars, Hatt, Plake and Schmidt,
who, along with Stumpy himself, are the actual Legend(s) of Aahhh's,
out on the snow somewhere, getting some turns, hanging out. Maybe
a spring tailgate ski at a ski area, or a backcountry road drop.
Something showing the boys still out doing it, having fun. Maybe
this is just my own filters; almost certainly that's the case.
I guess what I really wanted was an ending that wasn't really
an ending. It's too soon for that, even if my old VHS tape is
worn out.
gregstumpproductions.com |