{"id":800756,"date":"2019-10-27T19:45:24","date_gmt":"2019-10-28T01:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=373675"},"modified":"2019-10-27T19:45:24","modified_gmt":"2019-10-28T01:45:24","slug":"olivero-red-gerard-takes-us-behind-the-scenes-of-the-journey-to-film-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/olivero-red-gerard-takes-us-behind-the-scenes-of-the-journey-to-film-joy\/","title":{"rendered":"Olivero: Red Gerard takes us behind the scenes of the journey to film \u2018Joy\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Red Gerard gets swarmed by friends and family in the finish area after winning the Burton US Open men’s slopestyle final in Vail in March.<\/strong>
Chris Dillmann \/ cdillmann@vaildaily.com<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

An hourlong special on ESPN\u2019s Wide World of X Games on Sunday afternoon provided the best glimpse yet into how Summit County-raised snowboard star Red Gerard approached life and snowboarding in the wake of his 2018 Olympic gold medal victory.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the Nov. 5 release of \u201cJoy: A Snowboard Film,\u201d ESPN detailed the thought process and journey behind the flick in \u201cOverJoyed: A Season Spent Creating the Snowboard Film Joy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The World of X Games special \u2014 which can be viewed on-demand online via Watch ESPN<\/a> \u2014 tells the story of how older pro snowboard stars such as Danny Davis, Ben Ferguson and Sage Kotsenburg welcome and educate Gerard and other young riders, like his good friend Brock Crouch, into the soulful experience of working to bring park-style tricks to the freeride challenge that is the backcountry.<\/p>\n

For Gerard, spending last year filming for \u201cJoy\u201d introduced him to new experiences. Everything from perfecting how to build a backcountry jump \u2014 Kotsenburg ribbed him on his building skills at X Games Aspen \u2014 to the fear of heli-boarding in Whistler, Canada, for the first time.<\/p>\n

Ferguson and Kotsenburg, Gerard\u2019s predecessor in winning Olympic slopestyle gold for Team USA, recruited the then-18-year-old to join them in the \u201cJoy\u201d project, an opportunity Gerard couldn\u2019t pass up. <\/p>\n

\u201cI remember Sage, talking to him saying, \u2018I\u2019m going to go Rambo this season,\u2019\u201d Gerard said in the special, \u201cand I was like, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s on.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the trio\u2019s first time snowboarding in the backcountry together, and it came on the heels of an avalanche accident in April 2018 that nearly took the young Crouch\u2019s life. Despite injuries from the accident that required more than eight MRIs on his back, four teeth surgeries, 200 days of physical therapy, a lacerated pancreas and a broken back in three spots, Crouch was with Gerard and company seven months after the injury at the \u201camusement park\u201d that was the Baldface Lodge in British Columbia.<\/p>\n

After learning avalanche safety \u2014 such as what to do in a tree well \u2014 at Baldface, Gerard and friends trekked to Tahoe, California, where Davis further taught Gerard and Crouch about backcountry lines and safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust sitting on the lake bed with the whole crew, everyone pointing out lines, and all of that, that was pretty new to me,\u201d Gerard said. \u201cTo step in the lines with Danny and have him pointing out lines and me trying to point out a line and him telling me how that all is going to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davis was proud of the progress Gerard and Crouch made in the backcountry, including both of the friends landing 720s during the Tahoe session.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think picking out a line,\u201d Davis said, \u201cand kind of spinning is always kind of a thing, when you don\u2019t get to go manicure the lip, it\u2019s definitely a little bit of a gamble. So to see Red kind of linking up a line and spinning and freeriding, it\u2019s not easy to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The friend group brought their jump-building factory-line process to British Columbia, Japan and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Chiseling out snow slabs in a cookie-cutter style, the snowboarders constructed menacing run-ins and jumps. They battled on the obstacles after a series of rock-paper-scissors contests to see who would be the guinea pig and jump first.<\/p>\n

\u201cA pow jump can break your mind,\u201d Gerard said. \u201cRag-dolling over and over can make a man go psycho.\u201d<\/p>\n

The snowboard stars also brought their curiosity to the \u201cpsycho-scale,\u201d as Ferguson put it, snow-swept natural features in the high-Alpine of Canada. There, they all tempted a towering natural pipe-like feature made famous by an iconic handplant from snowboarder Pat Moore. The friends take turns at it until Ferguson wins the day with a huge, natural double crippler.<\/p>\n

While in Canada, Gerard also conquered his fear of heli-boarding.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember waking up that morning and looking out the window,\u201d Gerard said, \u201cit\u2019s cloudy. \u2018Perfect, we\u2019re not going.\u2019 I was terrified of going into a helicopter, cause it\u2019s like the real deal. That\u2019s what everyone does in filming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
The movie poster for \u201cJoy: A Snowboard Film,\u201d to be released on iTunes Nov. 5.<\/strong>
Courtesy Lauren Machen<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

On the suggestion of a filmmaking friend, Gerard and Crouch headed for Japan, where they experienced jaw-dropping amounts of snow and surreal next-to-road access to powder lines.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve never seen that much snow before,\u201d Gerard said. \u201cJust in the fact that in the U.S. you\u2019ve got to snowmobile out real far to get to the places you want to snowboard, and I feel like a lot of the stuff in Japan you were just were just driving in a car and jumping out and hiking up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The filming lead up to a moment here at home. At the Burton U.S. Open in Vail in March, Gerard won the slopestyle competition and was mobbed by family and friends in the corral. It was just the same as moments in the backcountry in the preceding weeks when friends would mob him after landing a natural jump.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Gerard said in a weird way he thinks the experience of pushing himself in the backcountry helped him win one of the world\u2019s biggest slopestyle competitions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a lot of ways,\u201d Gerard said, \u201cI think it helped me, because my mind wasn\u2019t so focused leading up to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Olympics were cool,\u201d Gerard added, \u201cbut I\u2019ve got to say that one was pretty mindblowing for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Red Gerard gets swarmed by friends and family in the finish area after winning the Burton US Open men’s slopestyle final in Vail in March.Chris Dillmann \/ cdillmann@vaildaily.com An hourlong special on ESPN\u2019s Wide World of X Games on Sunday afternoon provided the best glimpse yet into how Summit County-raised snowboard star Red Gerard approached […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-800756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-27 15:39:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}