The Big Picture: The finer points of the Indie ski film

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Corrugated roofs lined up below us like the rusted windrows of some ancient scrap metal harvest. The town hummed with Thursday morning activity. Carpenters in ladder-rack pickup trucks commingled with snow-tire bicycles ridden by bearded baby boomers. A Bernese-dog walker slipped on an ice patch, looking back at the sidewalk like a mother scolding a cheeky child. It was exactly as I remembered it. Crested Butte is the kind of place where nothing ever changes—a town built upon the bedrock notion that a good thing is rarely worth tampering with.

Such sentimentality is rare in the ski film business, which in a sense was the reason we had come to The Butte. I had been tasked with guiding The Big Picture crew—Chris Logan, Parker White and filmer-editor Sean Logan—around the backcountry drainages to the west of town. I had become familiar with the area during my years as an athlete with Level 1 Productions, the same outfit from which this crew had defected in this inaugural season of their web series. They are only the most recent seditionists on a growing list of skiers to shake the foundations of film-company power structure by pursuing independent projects.

Skiing politics were far from mind as we filled our six snowmobiles at the pumps outside the Gas Café. Inside we ordered Hurley breakfast sandwiches from a guy in a checkered cycling casquette. I knew him and his cap from visits long ago, but if he recognized me he gave no sign. For a moment, I experienced the passing feeling of a man who has returned home to find that he has not been missed—of one who has just discovered that the sovereign bond between person and place is a thing of the imagination.

I have never actually lived in Crested Butte, but as we made our way through the graveled corners that lead to the Irwin Lake-Kebler Pass Trailhead, I remembered how much of my own history had been written in these high alpine meadows that had once blossomed for silver miners’ eyes. How many long days and cold-finger sled rides had I spent in Irwin, chasing a dream that was the chase itself? As we pulled into the big lot lined with new snowmobiles and old trucks, I realized for the first time that this would be much more than a ski trip for Parker, Chris and Sean. It was a rite of passage.

Watch: The Big Picture – Zero/Done

Photographer Sammy Steen and I unloaded the snowmobiles from the two-place trailer and topped them off with two-stroke synthetic that we borrowed from Adam Delorme, who’d just pulled up next to us. The three of us had been asked to come along in the same way that Wes Anderson usually hires on a few of his buddies to write, act and generally bolster the illusion that he’s not running the whole show.

“Look at these pricks, parking like they own the place,” hissed a voice from across the lot as we buckled our boots. It was a scruffy local of the old-truck-new-sled variety, making no bones about the fact that we did not belong with our logo-wrapped snow machines and fancy ski gear. “Says the guy who lives in an Anal Expedition,” Sammy said under his breath, with reference to the Expedition brand pull-behind trailer next to which the man was standing. Back in Breckenridge, Tanner Rainville had schooled us in the endless appellative possibilities of putting the word “Anal” in front of the names of RVs and campers: Tornado, Warrior, Passport, Cougar, Jamboree, Searcher… You get the idea.

We strapped our skis to the sleds and took off at full throttle. The trail was smooth granular that gave a feeling of flying across a glassy lake on a Jet Ski. The screaming wind drowned out the motor for a few minutes until I spotted a pull-off in a bower of aspens for a quick break. Before long, we were back on our way, linking bar-wrenching turns in the blower snow and mounting the short hill climbs that gave way to open clearings below the pillowed escarpment known as Moonscape. Some of the aspens still had their leaves, which hung in tattered clumps like fruit after a frost.

Delorme earned his keep as self-described Sledneck Turbo by breaking trail through the fresh foot of snow. Sammy and I held back at first, well aware of the onus of the borrowed snowmobile. The guys at Tall T Productions had been generous enough to lend us the sleek machines with the proviso that we were liable for any damages incurred. It had seemed like a perfect arrangement, prima facie, but as I jumped on the Ski-Doo I remembered that borrowing a snowmobile is more dangerous than taking your best friend’s wife out for a dinner date. In both cases, the penalty for mere suspicion of foul play can far exceed that of the actual crime. A certain risk quotient never hurts though.

After a while, we emerged into the gully beneath Moonscape. “Damn,” said Parker as we hit the kill switches and drank in the view, which offered probably 100 mini-golf lines of every shape and size, “I might have to take back all that trash I’ve been talking about Colorado.”

It was true, Parker had never minced words when it came to his distaste for Colorado’s terrain, which he had written off as mostly groomers and low-angle pow turns. More recently, he had found equal cause to distrust the people of the Rocky Mountain State when a schizophrenic Breckenridge homeowner threatened his life in a dispute over a parking space.

Parker’s recantation was to be short-lived, at least as it related to Coloradans, because no sooner had he spoken the words, than someone was yelling down the gully at us, “Get out of here! This is our zone.” We had raised the ire of a local snowboard crew, so we did the only logical thing and rode right up the gut of the slide path through their midst. I saw one of them mouth the word “faggots” as we passed. We were getting ready to start up the bootpack when their spokesperson caught up to us.

“Hey guys,” said the ginger-bearded messenger, “we need you to stay off of all those lines at the end of the ridge. We’ve been waiting for snow for two weeks, and we can’t have you guys skiing them.”

Chris spoke first, “Ok, just show us what you want to hit, and we’ll stay off of it.”

“All that,” he said, indicating most of the half-mile-long ridge with a sweep of his arm. “Also these pillow stacks right here and that field goal through the rocks.”

“You’re kidding right?” There was a dangerous calm in Chris’ voice that I knew, on the strength of experience, usually precipitated a Jekyll-like transmogrification from the mild-mannered Dahrkness into a head-cracking whirlwind known as Dahrkwing McFuck.

“You could’ve at least bought us breakfast before you had your way with us,” Sean said to the ginger-beard.

Having expected us to be pushovers, he shrunk backwards on his seat. When he spoke again, it was obvious that he’d changed his position from diplomat to wartime consigliere. “Listen,” he said, “you guys aren’t from here. I don’t give a shit where you’re from. If you knew what was good for ya, you’d just roll out.”

“You couldn’t roll a tire down a hill, buddy,” Delorme said. “You have no idea who you’re talking to, bro. I wish you did.”

“Well, wish in one hand and shit in the other. See which one fills up first.”

This effectively ended the exchange as the kid fired up his sled, boondocking off through a stand of pines. Such big-dick pissing contests are par for the course in any backcountry locale, where tempers often run hot over territory disputes. If years of filming have taught me anything, it is surely that you have to take your shots when and where you can get them. The only real rule out there is that you can’t hit a jump built by another crew, and even that clause is sometimes subject to interpretation.

We scurried up the bootpack before the slow-boarders could rally their troops, and skied a couple of the lines that our new buddy had laid claim to. The powder had drifted into steep veins separated by towering intrusions that jutted upward from the cliff band in red rock minarets. Halfway through our second hike, I felt a weight lift as we found a comfortable cadence in the middle of the winding climb. As we dropped in there were many daps at the top and cheers from the bottom—just a few homies making some turns in front of cameras that seemed almost incidental. Anyone who believes that “no friends on a powder day” bullshit probably works in a cubicle. If anything, powder days bring the skier closer to his friends by routing out his enemies.

Watch: The Big Picture – Zero/One

As the sun began to sink and the light grew flat in the gathering umber, I watched with disbelief as Parker and Chris continued to hike, noticing for the first time how efficiently our crew worked together. No waiting for light or squabbles over angles and line choices; no “Where are you and what are you doing?” b-roll interviews or faux candid photography; and none of the contrived Warren Miller mahalo vibe which breeds footage that can be chopped and edited according to documentarian precepts: “Fun-loving ski bums embark on wild goose chase in Sahara Desert” or “Poster boy Benny Blumpkin attempts first-ever quadruple cork on record-size tabletop.” Such tautological formulas are the bread and butter of mainstay production companies, who sell the soul of skiing in the form of storyline pap that gets soccer dads hard and might even leave your sweet old grandma feeling frisky.

Of course, the plot-based ski film, in all its classic forms and modern iterations is just a means to an end. Especially now, in an age of increasing production costs when ski movies sell for as little as $10 a pop on iTunes, directors of big-time ski films toil under the millstone of reaching an ever-broadening audience in the face of shrinking margins. But as a former athlete whose career lived and died in an era when freeskiing films catered, in the main, to the freeskiers who watched them, I was glad to see that The Big Picture boys still had respect for pure forms. The nearest thing to a plot in Sean Logan’s edits is a shot of Parker wearing a Batman costume at the bar, which informs the story a lot more than any hep narrator or high-five montage ever did.

Industry grievances notwithstanding, it had been quite a day. We had walked all over the locals, stacked a few shots and had a damn good time. It was dark when we loaded up the snowmobiles and headed into town for cheap margs and Mexican food at Teocalli Tamale. Afterwards we drove back to our one-room apartment in Gunnison where I fell asleep on a bed of couch cushions spread over the linoleum kitchen floor.

The next day we headed back to Moonscape, rebating some of the lines that the snowboarders had hit. The session was interrupted when Delorme’s trick shoulder came out after a legendary cliff sender bail that would have made Seth Morrison proud. Dahrkness had to pull on AD’s arm for ten agonizing minutes before the thing slid back in, at which point old Sledneck Turbo rode his faithful horse off into the sunset with the air of a gut-shot Montana cowboy. Our crew had shrunk to five, for now.

Later on, Sammy had somehow figured out that there was a bluegrass show in Gunnison, so we shotgunned a few beers back at the spot and caught a free shuttle down to the Last Chance to see the Infamous Stringdusters. The shuttle was packed to the gills with an older group of rhinestone cowgirls that looked like they had come straight from a Tellers Union meeting at the local hayseed savings and loan.

“Well, hello,” said the one whose lap I was pretty much sitting on, “you boys look like a good time.”

“Don’t judge a book by its cover. We’re all multiple felons,” I said.

“So you do know how to have a good time,” she said, touching Sammy’s thigh with ribald affection. “Aren’t they cute Brenda?”

“I don’t know sweetie, maybe you should take his word for it. They do look a little bit… rapey.” This got a big rise out of the rest of the girls, who were passing around a flask with an engraving of a bull elk that said, “The Buck Stops Here” underneath. “I’m just kidding, dear. I’ve got two daughters named Ana and Glory that are about your age,” Brenda said.

“Well, here’s to Honor and Glory,” I said in a South Boston accent. “May they never be tarnished by any rapey boys.” No one laughed. It occurred to me that these girls had probably never met anyone from Boston. Or maybe rape jokes are a one-way street.

There was more off-the-mark humor at the Last Chance, where a curly ’fro fellow spun yarns and one- liners of Israelite vintage on the smoking patio. After a while, I began to suspect that he wasn’t Jewish at all, but wore the ’fro for the comedic impunity in the same way that Jerry Seinfeld’s dentist had converted to Judaism “for the jokes.” We were all shitfaced by the time the Dusters took the stage, so we formed a circle and stomped our Doc Martins until the lights came on and the music stopped.

Outside, we found Sean Logan talking to a pretty girl. We wasted no time mumbling in her ear about what a great “cinnamon-tographer” Sean is and how his sister Devin had just won a big piece of Cossak silver at the “winner Olympics in So-She.”

“This’s the other brother right here,” Sammy told her proudly with his arm around Dahrkness. “Whole family of talented sons-a-bitches.”

“You guys are not brothers,” she said, looking skeptically between the siblings, whose skin-tone difference has long been fodder for genealogical debate and milkman humor.

“Well, there’s a funny story to that story, babe,” said brother Dahrk, leaning forward to spit on his own shoe.

“Have you ever seen that movie Face Off with Nicky Cage and John, uh, whosis name… John Leguizamos? Leguizamo? Leguizamos.”

“No,” said the girl, turning to leave.

“You got something against Cage? Everyone loves Nic Cage, dawg!” Dahrkness shouted after her as she moved off into the night with quickening steps.

“Thanks a lot guys,” Sean said. “Can’t take you skids anywhere.”

We were alone. All was quiet except for the electric hum of a single streetlamp, which flickered in and out like a dying lightning bug. Suddenly a white Tahoe caromed out of a nearby street, stopping on the rock-strewn macadam in front of us with the sound of an aluminum boat transom running aground. This is it, I remember thinking, we’re all going to be shot. We’ve pushed our luck as far as it can go in this town, and we’re going to be gunned down in the street by some local militant.

But our would-be assassin was only a drunk Mexican named Luis, who conveyed to us through the tinted glass with hand signals that it would be his pleasure to drive us home. Which he did, with a screeching of tires and clanking of empty vodka bottles on the floor—Luis couldn’t speak a lick of English, but he had a lead foot that was undeniably American. After nearly 20 minutes of canvassing Gunnison town proper in a high-speed series of izquierdas and derechas, we found our apartment without injury to anything but a couple of parked cars.

You don’t leave a designated driver out in the cold, so we had Luis in for a drink, which led to a few more. By the time the eastern glow crept through the rayon blinds, it was obvious that we had found a kindred soldier in our Freeskiing Revolución. Many fine things were said with the understanding that they would not be remembered, in language that was as cryptic as it was powerful. Luis took a special shine to P-White, who he called El Rio Blanco with an affection that bordered on veneration. As a kind of final initiation rite, Parker gave the man his brand-new sterling silver ring, which Luis may well have been wearing when he was very probably fired from his construction job some two hours later.

Watch: The Big Picture – Zero/Two

Luis was gone when we woke up, along with most of our revolutionary spirit. But such wars are not won or lost in a single bout with the bottle. So it was that on a day when I felt the hungover weight of the world bearing down on me like a 10-ton Jose Cuervo truck, that Sean Logan somehow rallied the rest of us into the backcountry to film. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t have happened if the boys were still filming with Level 1. But I’m not saying it would have, either.

Somewhere on the sled ride out there—as we flew past a guided snowmobile tour group like the peloton of a two-stroke Iditarod—it hit me that these kids had really figured it out. I had brought them to Crested Butte with the intention of teaching them something in the snowy vales of the Elk Range where I had earned my own stripes with Level 1. Was it possible that I had been looking through the wrong end of the lens all these years?

Parker and Chris had left L1P on good terms at the peak of their careers. There had never been an ultimatum or even a question of absolutes: big budget vs. vertical integration, annual output vs. immediate gratification or mass appeal vs. personal dignity. That wasn’t at all why they went out on their own. What they had gone searching for, what they had found, was the autonomy of a blank canvas. It’s hard to beat a day spent skiing powder with your best friend, filmed and edited by your own flesh and blood to the music you listened to in the car on the way to the hill.

For this reason, the do-it-yourself ethic will continue to gain prevalence despite, or maybe because of, the inherent risks of combining business with pleasure. As Hunter Thompson wrote, “Old whores don’t do much giggling.” A crude way of putting it, although such wisdom has to resonate with those that live within the framework of someone else’s movie—as far as philosophies go, letting a third party dictate your story is not really a philosophy at all but a lack of one. I think what Thompson was really getting at had already been said some years earlier, by a little-known Greenwich Village poet by the name of Robert Zimmerman. Bob was never much of a skier, but he knew the staying power of a good lyric and he hit the nail on the head when he said, “You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you.”

Note: This article appears in FREESKIER magazine Volume 17.2. The issue is now available via iTunes Newsstand. Subscribe to FREESKIER magazine.