As I have gotten older, I always thought I would be living in a house somewhere in Sun City, Ariz., or Palm Springs, Calif., playing bridge and shuffleboard with a bunch of old people, many who would be on walkers.
I’ve been wrong about a lot of things in my life, but on this, it could not be any further from the truth. My wife Laurie and I live quite an active life on our sleepy island. There are just not enough hours in any day of the week to get done what I want to get done. I think that if I were in the pharmaceutical business, I would invent a pill of some kind that eliminated the need for any more than four hours of sleep a night.
As much as I try to avoid it, I spend far too much time just sleeping. What a colossal waste of time sleeping is.
I have found that in the past few years of my retirement, I have become increasingly excited about writing my autobiography, which will interest my wife and children and I hope a few more people who might like to know more about the history of skiing.
In going through old correspondence for the autobiography, I ran across a letter that was written on an upright typewriter years ago from someone in Russia. He somehow had acquired a 16mm copy of one of my films and was translating it into Russian to show his friends. He used the same method I used to show my films in America and Canada in those days – standing up and narrating the show live.
He had been able to almost replicate my musical score on a tape recorder and just wanted to know if it bothered me that he was doing this. I just wished him well and to keep me posted. I think that somehow he managed to pull it off and did the same thing with some later films.
I have always had the same business model. Rather than try to get a percentage of a later deal, pay me for my time and trouble of making the movie and “good luck” to you.
I had a great time bettering my movies each time I had the opportunity to make another.
I produced my annual 90-minute ski film, and in addition, I also produced as many as 10 half-hour advertising films a year. I recently uncovered a record of the many films I made with the help of Don Brolin and a staff of great people that numbered over 600 different films. Doing business with that many different clients, camera operators, and promoters, I think my batting average was pretty high.
I had one cameraman for a few years whose wife was a stewardess so he was able to fly free. He wound up flying to some “off the beaten path” destinations for me – to places such as Israel, Greece, Scotland, etc. All of that footage is sitting in a warehouse somewhere in Colorado, and the memory of all of those things happening are buried somewhere in my brain. As I continue working on my book, I wonder why it is I can remember someone’s name from my first trip to Europe in 1953, but I sometimes forget my own cell phone number.
Maybe some scientist with a pharmaceutical background is out there working on a pill that will put energy back in your system without sleep, and will not be harmful to your health.
If someone could have invented the electronic computer/cell phone era 60 years ago, who knows where we would be today? This makes me wonder what kind of a life my grandchildren will be living when they are my age? Make the best use of the time you have, especially in retirement.