A new trailer for the Eric Iberg directed Tanner Hall doc “Like a Lion” just came out. It’s a strange and amorphous project that still defies any easy categorization by we of the snark blog persuasion, but things are getting a bit clearer. I’ve already covered my hopes for the project, so I won’t bore you with those details. At this point we can just be glad that Mik D and Candide actually got in front of a camera for interviews about Tanner. I wish Iberg would have lured them with an interview, but tricked them into actually skiing park in front of a camera again. Alas, every dream can’t come true.
I bet they didn’t get the name from this Decemberists song of the same title.
I’m excited.
Not Excited.
The trailer makes this seem like a movie of the week, every cliche about the rebel athlete that’s ever existed rolled in to a long, boring snoozefest. It even failed to shock me, which frankly I expected Iberg to be able to do.
Rogge, what in this trailer made you think, “I’m shocked! I want to see that! I’ve never knew that!” Nothing. In fact, I think you could take every line in that trailer and make it about Lucas Magoon or Terrel Owens.
What would save it? Context and Perspective… and sadly, it’s completely missing. I seem to remember predicting that a while back.
Here is the one saving grace, the one thing I would watch this to see. Gold landed in Iberg’s lap and I bet he wasn’t smart enough to ask the right follow up question. In fact it only makes an appearance here as an expression on someone’s face. The most interesting thing, IMHO, is with all Tanner has achieved, it’s quite obvious to me that he has caused his mom enormous pain. When she looks at his X Games medals, all she thinks about is her disappointment. It’s real, it’s true, it’s ironic, it’s surprising, it’s revealing and it’s dramatic… and instead of that, we get a BS line about how he’ll never walk again. Storytelling without reflection is a series of interesting events without a point or reason to connect with the material. Frankly, this whole movie looks like a waste of time.
^The Cranky Critic, I think I know who you are and I wish you’d post under your real name. Own up to your opinions!
I like it for the simple fact that this story, like Dumont’s Transitions last year, is going to tell the story of a skier that we all know and the general public is sort of in the dark about. Tanner is seen as the ying to Simon’s yang in the eyes of ESPN.
I’m looking forward to hearing Darla, C.R., Candide, and Mik D talk about Tanner. The generation of skier’s that came up after the New Canadian Airforce are the group of skiers I admired for their groundbreaking tricks, new approach, and creative style.
I’m excited for this movie in the same way I was excited for the Transformers remake… because it’s what I really enjoyed as a kid and back then I was too young to understand anything beyond, “That guy is sick!”
no worries brobomb… i am always doing tricky, you think i like to shoot interviews?
cranky critic… maybe i will shock you a little when the movie comes out… maybe not. i just got to do a little dance to make sure the film does get out!
wish me luck… and it is confusing to me as well. i like when half the people hate my shit and half the people love my shit. no inbetween normally…
the goal with this this film is to show tanner as who HE is… if it is cliche a little… that is what happens sometimes with simularities in top level performers, money, youth, etc… but, everyones personal story is different and i thought we should help teach a little history of the sport of someone that has done so much for it.
brobomb…i love this shit!
BroBomb….”where adults come to play”. Thanks for offering an alternative.
Well, if Eric can address me without an alias, then I should be courageous enough to own up to my opinions.
To be fair, I do have a pre-existing bias. I haven’t connected with your (Eric’s) films in the past.
In my opinion, if the goal of the film is to who Tanner is, the the film has to make sense of a story everyone knows well and to expose other relevant points that bring that story into better focus. In short, it is to create meaning from a series of very specific events. Without that glue, all you have is a series of pretty (or maybe in this case, shocking) images.
How do you, Eric or anyone else, show who Tanner is?
There certainly are those who can disagree. They might be looking forward to this movie because it will allow them to relive their past. In an age or conflict, war, environmental disasters, grave uncertainty, something familiar and comfortable is in great demand. I think that’s why Hollywood produces and succeeds with remake after remake. Transformers 2 may be the best example ever. But personally, I find that boring, which certainly doesn’t mean that the people I disagree with are wrong. However, I would rather see something old in a new light. I would rather be surprised to discover something I never knew was there. Certainly, with a story as rich as Tanner’s, that potential exists. Clinging to cliches with so much complex material at hand is a shame.
A lot of that potential to find new meaning comes from the interview. If you say you want the audience to draw their own conclusions, that’s fair, but as a filmmaker, it’s important to allow your audience access to your character’s conclusions. They were actually there and it’s the part of the story we know the least. My opinion is that in documentary filmmaking, the point of the interview is not exposition, but the place from which those conclusions and reflections emerge. Based on what your characters think about their experiences, the audience gets the information they need to create their meaning.
For whatever reason, the interview clips you chose for the teaser were heavy on exposition and short on insight that would lead to such discoveries. But to extrapolate from a short clip that Iberg missed it completely is unfair.
Eric can easily show me up. Did you ask his mom if watching her kid in a hospital bed ever made her feel any regret? Did she, as a mother, ever feel responsibility and wish she may have done something to avert this? Either way, it’s an interesting answer that defines a key emotionally charged relationship–and in my opinion, would be far more compelling than anything Mike Douglas, Candide or Jon Olsson would have to say. Or do you not feel that question is material to your story?
jeff,
i think you will like the movie a lot more than a trailer. and i think you will probably like it a lot more than all the people that like the trailer. we go pretty deep. don’t know if people are ready for this kind of this yet, but i will do my best to dig as deep as possible and show you. only time will tell.
Carrie Miller- Awesome
Great discussion.
I have to confess that I have indeed connected with Iberg’s other flicks, but that from the get go, I wasn’t all that pumped on the prospect of a Tanner Hall biopic. Yes, Tanner is undoubtedly one of the most talented and hard working people to ever step into bindings, but I’ve always been infinitely more interested in Tanner Hall the skier than Tanner Hall the person. I wasn’t sure that his domination over the last decade or so was inherently deserving of an in-depth character study.
Basically, after suffering through countless worthless fluff piece hand job biopics about superstar athletes/musicians I wasn’t pumped to watch a movie about the antics, trials, or tribulations of a guy that by my best estimation (having not said more than a few words to the guy) is a clownshoe. On second thought…maybe it’ll be more Tyson and less Kardashian in which case sign me up.
I don’t know what to expect, but I’m going to watch and do my damndest to do so with as little bias as possible. Worst case, my enthusiasm for Mr. Iberg will temper my lack of for Mr. Hall.