Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Quotes from Dick Barrymore


"To make ski movies, you have to have an incredible amount of faith. You have to take what you get in this business. Sometimes we arrive at an area ready to shoot and we end up sitting in bars for days, waiting for the perfect powder day to come. For ski movies, you don't just need a sunny day. You need brilliant, crystal clear, cloudless days so the powder sparkles when it flies." (1978 interview with the Idaho Mountain Express)

"I just get the wanderlust and take my rucksack, jump in a VW van and go to ski areas I've never been to before. That's why I got into this business in the first place. It's exciting. I'm basically a travelogue teller and I just relate the story to skiing." (1978 interview with the Idaho Mountain Express)

"The kiss of death in ski films is having people talk. You should never supply too much information or it will destroy the expectation. It's like seeing the movie before reading the book." (1980 interview with the Idaho Mountain Express)

"I usually whistle to the skiers when I'm ready for them to come at me. They know my whistle. I remember the time Ken, Anne and Susie Corrock and I were filming at Snowbird. I had told them to wait until I whistled before they started down the run. Well, before I could look up, Ken was thundering right by me, and Anne was on her way before I knew what hit me. It turns out there was another guy below me whistling for his friend and they thought it was their signal to go." (1978 interview with the Idaho Mountain Express)

"Skiing is one of the few sports that people will actually pay to sit in a theater and watch. Surfing is another. It's a projected form of vicarious living. Every viewer (and that's usually a skier) can see a film and say, 'Hey, wow! If I work a little harder, I can do that, too!" (1980 interview with the Idaho Mountain Express)

"I like to tell a funny story because people like to laugh. I figure bad comedy is better than no comedy in a ski movie." (1978 interview with the Idaho Mountain Express) "I grew up in the Depression. I saw my parents living on nickels and dimes. I had nothing to lose. With that in mind, lots of people from that time had a lot of drive. It seems like today affluence is taken for granted. Gone are the days of making soup out of ketchup. When you don't grow up with a trust fund, you're under no obligation to succeed. But, really, I haven't done that well. I'm one of the few of that group that's not a multi-millionaire. Right now I hope I'm making enough money on this film on Thursday to go to Mexico for a while." (1980 interview with the Idaho Mountain Express)




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