Page 59 - Flathead Beacon // 12.16.15

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WARREN’S WORLD WARREN MILLER
AROUND THE TWORLD ON SKIS
HE 1950-60S MARKETING director for Pan-American Air- ways also invented the ski-train-
ing, balancing board called the Bongo Board. In New York City one afternoon, Stan Washburn suggested that I ride Pan-American Airlines around the world and take my skis along and call my next movie “Around the World On Skis.”
Stan backed up his o er with two free coach tickets, so all I had to lose was about a month of my life. With all of my ski equipment, my camera gear, tripod and wife, I set o from Los Angeles to Tokyo.
Not speaking a single word of Japanese and without a translator, we somehow managed to get to Shiga Heights. This was before double chairlifts had appeared in Japan and before snow grooming. Almost every skier I lmed had a small rucksack that contained their lunch and a round- trip, train ticket back to Tokyo.
On the scale of 1 to 10, I would give my cinematic e orts in Japan a 3 or 4 at best. I spent a lot of those early years shoot- ing from the hip without doing su cient background checks on the ski resorts or distances I would have to travel to reach the resort.
After Shiga Heights, we spent two days in Hong Kong and then headed to Munich, Germany. Landing in Munich, my next job was to drive to Grindelwald, Switzerland.
Luck was on my side again, because that was the rst time I saw Art Furrer. If I could credit anyone for inventing ballet and trick skiing, it would be Art. He truly paved the way for all the great skiers who later became the freestyle movement.
I lmed Art a lot, set against the back- ground of the fantastic north face of the Eiger, a sheer granite wall that is more than 9,000 vertical feet high. Dozens of climbers have died trying to climb that
face.
Across the valley from Grindelwald
is Murren. That part of ski country in is probably the most beautiful ski country in the world and access to the fantastic Swiss national railroad makes it easy to get to and well worth marking on your to-do list of places to visit during your skiing career.
By the time I spent three or four days lming Art Furrer, I had made up some ground that I lost by not getting good ski action in Japan at Shiga Heights. In those days the primary marketing tool for my feature-length ski lms were posters. Naturally, that year the title of the lm was “Around the World on Skis.”
As I look at that poster today, I’m reminded that it was taken by Tom Kelly, who made Marilyn Monroe famous by taking her rst nude photograph. The poster is of me standing in a sheepskin leather coat, with a globe of the world on a tripod, and I’m holding a pair of red Hart skis.
Those were the good old days when I selected the resorts to lm, drove, ew or rode a bus or a train to get there and lm, then came home and spent the summer editing the lm, writing the script and setting it to music.
In October, I would say goodbye to the family and then narrate every lm pre- sentation, live on the stage, in about 100 di erent cities.
I was really lucky because I got to ski at and lm many mountains before they became ski resorts, full of condominiums.
As the number of people attending my movies increased, more resorts wanted our company to document their slopes and drive skiers no matter where they were around the world.
This column was originally published in 2014.
FLOORS INSTALLED WITH PRIDE
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Decades of experience, hundreds of local happy customers.
For more of Warren’s wanderings go to www.warrenmiller.net.
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DECEMBER 16, 2015 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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