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Frank Beddor, a former freestyle skiing champion, gradually moved into Hollywood, and eventually became a producer for 'There's Something About Mary'. Beddor is currently hard at work producing 'The Juliet' - an adaptation of Alfred Bester's sci-fi romance short story of the same name - pitched as 'Bonnie And Clyde In Space', with star interest rumors circling around Margot Robbie (The Wolf Of Wall Street) as leading actress. Photo courtesy of Frank Beddor.
For most ski writers, a ski report is composed after assaulting your favorite area in a foot or two of blower pow, and sending your stoke into your editor for clipping. For indie producer and roving TGR contributor Christian W Dietzel, it occasionally entails descending more ideological slopes in the pursuit of knowledge. After spending four days in the belly of New York city’s mountainous Jacob Javits center with Hollywood author/producer Frank Beddor at this year’s Comic Con convention, the pair got to talking about everything from the many mistakes Lewis Carrol made in the original telling of 'Alice In Wonderland', to the past, present, and future of skiing across the silver screen.
Over the past 30 years, Beddor has gone from freestyle skiing world champion to stuntman to veteran writer & producer of films as big as 'There’s Something About Mary'. His Hollywood career, which also includes work on 1984’s ‘Hot Dog The Movie!’, constantly begs the question: will Hollywood ever get beyond its spotty track record of ski-themed flops?
Frank, while many of
your fans know you as the award winning author of
The Looking Glass Wars novels and as the producer of There’s Something About Mary, it’s easy
to overlook that you were formerly a two-time world champion freestyle skier in
1981, and then again in 1982–accomplishments that lead to you to transitioning
to working as a skiing stuntman on
Hotdog!
The Movie
and Better Off Dead.
After you went full-time into Hollywood, you also attempted to bring another
ski sensation to the silver screen, namely your story about the 10
th
Mountain Division (the pioneering group of WWII soldiers who forged the American
ski industry). What happened with this early experience to bring such a ski
drama to life, with that project in particular, and why do you think it didn’t
work?
Beddor’s pitch for his short story on the 10th
Mountain division as The Dirty Dozen On
Skis got him meetings with screenwriting talent as accomplished as William
Goldman–the muscle behind classics such as Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.
Among Goldman’s other unproduced
properties is an adaptation of Jean Vallely’s March 21, 1979 Esquire Magazine
article, 'The Ski Bum As An Endangered Species'. Image via
Blastr.com.
I worked on a short story for the 10th Mountain Division,
and I brought it to two skiing enthusiasts who happened to be Steven Spielberg’s
producers, Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy. They had just left Spielberg
and formed their own company, and I knew that they were interested in skiing,
so I sent them a letter that they responded to. I went to their office, and
pitched them my idea for the 10
th
Mountain Division, which was simply 'The
Dirty Dozen On Skis',
and we took it to Paramount the following week, and I
sold it to Paramount in the room–they bought it that day.
That led to a number of meetings with Hollywood
screenwriters, some of them famous, like William Goldman, who wrote 'Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid'. We
ended up getting Tony Gilroy to write the draft, and the only reason it didn’t
happen is because like many things in L.A. and in Hollywood, the development
process went slowly, we didn’t have a good enough script to justify an
expensive movie, and the World War II genre was just starting to gain traction when
I sold my idea. By the time we got to a place where we were ready to make it,
there had been so many other World War II movies out that there was not the
appetite for it. It was a matter of timing.
In 30 years of
Hollywood history, the last truly commercially successful ski themed film we
have seen was
Hotdog! The Movie,
which you of course worked on (unless one counts something like
Hot Tub Time Machine among that
history).
Hotdog! made around $38
million world wide, which could be argued egged on an era that would influence
the tradition of ski comedies and goof ball winter sport-themed films like
Ski School, Ski Patrol, and Out Cold. What
is your take on the tradition of the Hollywood ski film, and why haven’t we
seen another smash success like
Hotdog!
with it’s cult following since so far back in the day?
The movie poster for Hot Dog...The Movie! Makes the attractions of the film pretty obvious... photo via pastposters.com.
Well, c’mon, the truth is that is was a T & A movie, and in that era, T
& A movies still worked, so you had Shannon Tweed, who was Playmate of the Year–we’re
not talking about A-grade cinema here. They had a couple of really spectacular
ski sequences, so it had humor, it had T & A, and it had some interesting
ski action. Now, I can’t argue that launched a whole genre of ski comedies, but
they were doing T & A before, and those sell. So I think it had some
influence, but I think it was a surprise hit, and I think if they had followed
up with a sequel it would have been successful. It certainly would have been
more successful than the lame follow up they came up with called
Hamburger! The Motion Picture.
What are the
logistical nightmares of making a Hollywood ski film, from your set of eyes as
a producer? Are sets difficult, for instance? If I were that writer or producer
and my script had 40% of its action set in Aspen or the Swiss Alps, what kind
of battles can I look forward to from the development heads looking down on
those sort of locations?
Well, it’s tough, because it’s all about weather, and it’s
completely unpredictable, and it’s very, very difficult to move the crew from
location to location in the snow. When you have bad weather, you have bad
continuity, and if you get socked in, you can’t shoot any of the scenes you had
planned, so it wrecks havoc on the schedule and the scenes because nothing is
consistent. People like to go to blue screens and go on to stages. To deal with
weather–and it’s the worst weather, with altitude and unpredictable elements–it’s
very difficult to have the continuity. So, I would say those are the main
reasons people don’t make more winter-driven movies.
Despite all of the
things in the way, where would you see a ski-themed film with a great story
fitting, if anywhere? Television, or cinema?
You have the same problem with both of them. The scope of
the action would set up better for a film vs. television. I suppose you could
do something set in a ski lodge, and have the periodic set piece scenes that
are outside in the mountains, but I would say a big, action-driven movie would
probably work, like Sylvester Stallone did in
Cliff Hanger, which had a lot of elements. A movie like that,
that’s a heist genre, and in the mountains could work.
You were a former
world freestyle skiing champion yourself, a sport with roots known for its
showmanship as much for its party culture. With inside access drug-themed films
like Scorsese’s
The Wolf Of Wall Street,
or commercial stoner crime flicks like Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, what do you think about the history of skiing and
its inherent party culture as being a commercial vessel for cinematic success?
In other words, what kind of elements would a production need to have to have
any sort of fighting chance to get made? Dropping Jägerbombs in between hits
of the orange sun shine acid while assaulting big mountain faces, or perhaps a
more serious theme like having your protagonist face their daddy issues in act
3 while devising his getaway plan from FBI agent Dirk Donner? What kind of
genre, if any, might work in your opinion?
Frank Beddor in a Skiing Magazine ad circa 1982. Photo courtesy of Frank Beddor.
Well, I thought the movie we were working on about the 10th
Mountain Division, a historical based action/adventure, would work, but I don’t
think dropping into the drug and rock n’ roll hot tub culture would work. Those
movies are difficult at best, it’s not like a satire on the world or a
reexamination of greed like what
The Wolf
Of Wall Street
was, with a very charismatic character, and you knew his
downfall. I just don’t see that being the ideal way to go. I suppose you could
do some action driven movie like ‘the president gets kidnapped on his ski
holiday in Aspen’, and the action star of the day has to come in and save him,
White House Down or some kind of title
like that. I think the most likely scenario would be the 10
th Mountain
Division, though.
In modern pop
culture, we see skiing’s influence both directly and indirectly by phenomena’s
like the X Games and the cadre of extreme sports that have likewise long
embraced the tradition of showmanship as the audience draw.
We’ve recently seen successful Hollywood extreme sport films, such as Ron
Howard’s
Rush, that tend to be built
more on the emotional ride they take the audience on versus the historical
accuracy of the period piece setting. Using the logline of
Rush for comparison (the merciless rivalry between Formula One
driver Nicki Lauda and playboy athlete James Hunt during the 1976 competition
season), do you suppose there is any hope that any of the incredibly rich
history of characters within skiing’s background and the pop-culture that
surrounds the world of extreme sports to have the potential to make a story work?
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From left to right: James Bond cinematographer/fashion mogul Willy Bogner Jr., 007 stunt skiing legend John Eaves, Bridgette Eaves, Formula 1 star Nicki Lauda, and Suzie Chaffee in Kitzbuhel at the Hannenkahm downhill race circa 1986.
Well, I would say these two different things. There is
nobody as famous as those two Formula 1 drivers in skiing; there just isn’t.
Skiing is a small sport compared to racing, which is one of the biggest sports
in the world. Those guys had an amazing rivalry, and by the way, that movie,
way, way underperformed, so it wasn’t the success they expected it to be. One of
the reasons is because the lead character was supposed to be a charming rouge,
but it became a kind of classic story of excess. I think if you were going to
do something, it would be the X Games arena with really contemporary kids like
Shawn White or someone like that.
Now that’s a place where you could do a story.
That’s a place where you could find something an audience could hook into, like
Point Break of skiing is a
possibility, I could see that working, in the X Games, with all the new sports
as a back drop, but you’d have to have really compelling characters. I’m not
sure there was any historical equivalent; I mean there was Spider Sabich, who
had an interesting life years ago and was famous. But it’s such a small market;
no one would likely make a retro movie like that.
What kind of chances
do any ski-themed scripts being winced at by development executives purely
for their potential for box office success in today’s film climate have? How do
other executives think when they hear the coin phrase ‘ski film’?
It’s just a very small percentage. The fact of the matter is
you can make a movie about anything, and if you have the right director, and
the right story, and the right script, you can get a movie made.
Is it true what some in tinsel town
might say, then – that Hollywood don’t ski?
They love to ski. They just don’t like to make
movies of their hobbies, and they don’t like to stand on the set in the snow
and freeze their tushes off. But no one’s pulled off the great white ski epic
that has succeeded, so it’s been difficult. It just doesn’t fit in a genre
that’s established.
Chase scenes from
action flicks like
The Spy Who Loved Me,
or even
True Lies, reflect the normal way we tend to get a
glimpse of skiing making its way across the silver screen in the past 30 or so
years, with the exception being the tradition of goofball comedies that come
every now and again like
Ski School
or Ski Patrol. If you could go back
in time and work on any film with skiing in it in Hollywood history as stuntman
or actor, which would it be, and why?
That’s an interesting question. I think I’d like to work on
one of the James Bond movies, because my friend and former competitive rival,
John Eaves, was the main stunt guy on those films with Willy Bogner, and I
think that would have been a fun experience with really interesting sequences.
If I had to be part of a movie though, that had some meaning, I think it would
be
Ski Racer. That, to me, is really
the only classic ski movie ever made, and of course it would be interesting to
be with Robert Redford and go through that experience.
If a movie like Hot Dog ever got green lit for a remake with some A-list actors,
director, and all star script behind it, what do you think about the chances
about such a remake kickstarting tinsel’s town’s attitude that hollywood don’t
ski in new directions?
Don't get your hopes up...
That’s not going to happen. It’s just not. You’re not going
to get an A-list script, and you’re definitely not going to get an A-list
actor. Nobody is going to do that with an established career for a sequel to
Hotdog! The Movie. I think that movie
could work, but it’s still
Hotdog! The
Movie.
It doesn’t carry a lot of creative weight, it’s a piece of fluff
material that made some money back in the day and somebody might want to make
some more money. But most people in Hollywood I know aspire to at least go into
a movie hoping, and wanting, and desiring to create something that has meaning
to them, and it just feels like that would be to make a couple bucks.
Any other projects you
might you tried to make, Frank, that fans might never have heard of, that
didn’t get off the ground perhaps?
More than most people know. Lets see… there was
the story of Zudnick, the owner of Telluride’s dog that I was working on
producing as a children’s movie, I worked
really
hard on that, but we couldn’t get it made. Then there was the Ski Racer remake, which I had been
developing as an updated version of the original, but not using the same title.
There was also this project I had going called
Gravity, which was a snowboard themed heist flick. It was all the
same story in the end: it’s really tough to get anyone to make a ‘ski movie’.
