For most of us, this time of year is more about watching ski flicks and less about actually skiing. I’m part of that aforementioned ‘most of us’, save an all too brief rendezvous with those infinitely more fortunate. Amidst all the annual hyperbole of “The new (insert filmer) movie is the greatest ski film of all time”, it’s important to revisit certain bar setting classics of ski cinema. I had the chance to do just that this past weekend.
When you live in a town as small as Taos, you pounce at every opportunity to do something that doesn’t involve drinking too much coffee and/or eating too much green chile. With that in mind, I resolved myself to spend a few hours elbow to elbow with turquoise jewelry-clad Texas transplants in a dark auditorium for the Taos Mountain Film Festival. Saturday marked day two of the renowned (read: sarcasm) festival; expectations were low, ticket prices were high. Imagine then my surprise when I learned that the film to be shown at 6pm was none other than Greg Stump’s 1988 masterpiece Blizzard of Aahhh’s. As if that weren’t enough, word on the street was that Mr. Stump himself would be introducing the film along with an extended trailer of the highly anticipated, years in the making Legend of Aahhh’s. Wow.
Now, I hadn’t seen Blizzard in years, and I’m pretty sure my last viewing was on late-night HBO…weird. Anyway, I remembered very little, save probably Glen Plake’s life-saving back handspring over a wind-bridged crevasse. I didn’t know then that it was so revered and influential, but after reading roughly 642 interviews with “pros” where it was cited as their bar-none favorite flick, I guess I blindly accepted it’s greatness. Needless to say, I was psyched and happily coughed up the $12 for a ticket (I do, however, expect to be reimbursed, Jon).
Greg Stump. Wow. I didn’t know what to expect in meeting Mr. Stump, but let’s just say that his surname is accurate; almost cruelly so. Because jokes are always funnier upon explanation, Greg Stump is short. However, his personality is…uhh…”larger than life” (read: annoying). I lurked on Mr. Stump while he was doing the whole meet and greet thing and I was simply dumbfounded. He had a girl at least 20 years his junior on his arm, an expensive—although controversially tailored—suit, and bleached tips. You would have been forgiven for mistaking him for the drummer of some nameless 80’s hair metal band.
Andy Dick sighting? Nope, that's Greg Stump.
Frankly, it was weird.
It got weirder when Greg took the stage.
He made a half dozen inappropriate sexual jokes (highlights include: handcuffing his host for the weekend to a banister, his host being face down…as usual, and grabbing his privates on stage) that elicited uncomfortable laughter from the crowd. He then cued the projectionist to roll the extended trailer for Legend of Aahhh’s, which he was careful to point out would be shown at Sundance…okkkk. Well, the trailer also elicited uncomfortable (read: courtesy) laughter from the crowd. Imagine the most horribly unfunny MSP “skit” ever, multiplied by ten, as executed by a bunch of guys in their fifties. It was painful. Legend is a ski film retrospective that looks at the earliest ski films (Greg noted that they were made by a female director who’s majority of other films were Nazi propaganda…okkk) all the way up until present day. He interviewed a bunch of old guys I hadn’t ever heard of like Warren Miller and Dick Barrymore for the movie, ostensibly so they could talk about skiing as a metaphor for life. The whole thing looked kind of boring, to be honest.
On to the main event.
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It’s raining outside, and it’s cold. When I was a kid, an age before internet edits, I’d be really pumped about this cold rain. It meant that winter was on its way, and I’d be blissfully dreaming that the rain on my window was snowflakes up on the hill. My cocoon of ignorance was uninterrupted because dial-up internet was waaaay too slow for live webcams to actually work, and the computer at my parents’ house was always one virus away from going molten.
