One heck of a life story

Most unfortunately, I didn’t get to talk to the man about it, but it’s been said that filmmaker/entrepreneur/legend Warren Miller, has spent his near entire life in pursuit of a free lift ticket.

Or perhaps more specifically, in the pursuit of freedom in general, in its many incarnations.

From the early days in the late 1940s, living in the parking lot of the birthplace of the American ski resort — Sun Valley, Idaho — to traveling the country and the world on a pair of skis, filming and screening his ski films, to settling down in the San Juan Islands of the Puget Sound.

Miller is one of the originals, it seems, to have lived the coveted “ski all winter, surf all summer” lifestyle. As a filmmaker he’s produced at least one ski movie every year since 1950. He’s credited with creating the entire genre of film: the ski/snowboard, action sports film.

And now, he’s fully retired from the business. While a new Warren Miller film comes out each year, he doesn’t have a hand in it anymore. He’s reportedly spending his days fishing, playing golf and still skiing the world, at his leisure. Hence the reason why we didn’t get to talk to him for this article.

But in his 1998 book “Lurching from one near disaster to the next,” a memoir of sorts, Miller, then 74, describes himself as a “14-year-old trapped in a senior citizen’s body,” looking down at the tips of his first pair of fat skis on a lift to the top of a mountain somewhere.

A few sentences later, he goes on to note: “We’re all kids when we’re on skis.”

Now, 10 years after that book was published, as the Admiral Theatre readies to showcase the 59th Annual Warren Miller ski-feature signaling the start of winter, that sentiment still rings true.

It’s right there in this year’s film: “Children of Winter ... Never Grow Old.”

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