After being discharged from the Navy in 1946, I took the $100 mustering-out pay and purchased an 8mm camera. During the next two winters, my friend, Ward Baker and I took off to live in the Sun Valley parking lot in the now-infamous tear-drop trailer, pulled behind my old Buick.
We filmed each other to try to improve our skiing and then during the spring and summer, we filmed each other surfing. Throughout the summers, we showed the skiing footage to summer/surfing friends and to cover up my less than perfect photography of that era, I’d make jokes about what was filmed. And in the winter, I showed the skiers our surfing exploits with similar jokes.
All of a sudden, I was being asked to free tuna casserole dinners if I’d bring my projector and show the films.
I was on to something big … tuna casseroles in that era were the best I could expect.
Soon, I really wanted a Bell and Howell camera. Somehow I was lucky enough to have Chuck Percy, then president of Bell and Howell (later to become Senator of Illinois), and his friend Hal Geneen, then comptroller of Bell and Howell (later to become CEO of IT&T), as my ski school students in Sun Valley Ski School.
They were most generous about advancing me the use of the camera until I could pay for it (which I did three years later) and with the exception of lots and lots of grueling travel and sometimes round-the-clock work ethic, my professional movie-making career was born.
As a budding entrepreneur, it was obvious I could even charge to show the film if I could afford a hall. Plus, I needed some better equipment for editing and showing the film but I couldn’t borrow enough from any one friend, so I borrowed $100 from four friends and after paying them back, thus began my debt-cycle life!
I didn’t have a real clue at the time, that I was headed this way. I was so broke that for a few years, I had to frame houses in the spring and summers to make the rent and all the expenses that came up. And every spring, I’d have to hock my car with the bank to be able to pay for the film processing. Then sometime during the winter, after 4-5 months of traveling and showing the film, I’d pay off the bank and be ok for the rest of the winter. I’d book the film showings in towns near ski resorts so that I could film all day for next year’s film, and show the current film at night, sometimes making $11, sometimes much more, but it was enough for gas, a $4 motel, food and film. One year I counted up having stayed in 210 motels and hotels and having showed and personally narrated the film in over 130 cities and resorts.
Let’s see…if I remember correctly, the first fall/winter that I showed the film was 1949/50 when I had my first booking in Southern California. Soon thereafter, someone in Port Angeles, WA heard about it and booked me. So I scrambled and booked shows in Seattle and Vancouver, BC. It took me three days to drive up old Highway 99 and three to return, sleeping in the back of my truck all the way. For that I made about $8 in Port Angeles…but in Seattle and Vancouver I made a total of $615 and I was really on my way. The next winter I had many more theaters but the driving took a great deal out of me. By the third winter, I was booked from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, in high school auditoriums for $1 a seat…so I was switching from driving to flying to the shows so that I could meet the seven night a week schedule.
Terribly funny falls and amazing camera angles gave birth to extreme ski filming which later morphed into extreme all-sports. In a recent ESPN program, they indicate that they have just discovered that I began this athletic/film genre! Someone told me once that you work all your life to achieve success ‘over night’…not true, I’m 81 and it really only took 56 years of it!
The humor used so successfully in earlier years to cover poor photography became an important part of the ‘cult’ aspect of the film’s following. I use cult in the healthiest definition … as we worked hard to maintain a family film without tackiness, profanity, violence or sex appeal because our audiences ranged from small children to grandparents…all hooting and laughing at simple antics & opportunistic, dry-witted narration.
This continued on every autumn (plus filming and showing the film in resorts during the winters). The thousands of miles I traveled every year, and the hundreds of miles I skied every year, allowed me to meet amazing people, who like me, thought the freedom one experiences skiing is the best feeling in the world. And after 500 films, shown in hundreds of cities each year, I became more convinced that the most important people in the world were those who have stood in lines at the box office and shared the wonderful rush of skiing’s freedom with me.
1983 when, after producing over 500 films, I went into partnership with some fellows who were well known for their concert tours and who thought they could make my tour more efficient. After five years of that, I was pretty sure that they didn’t understand the uniqueness of the business I’d developed because they wanted me to take a couple weeks of voice lessons. The one thing that so many people say is unique about me is my voice, and they wanted to change it. I guess they just didn’t get it.
When I balked at that, we each sold our halves of the company to my son Kurt who I thought would be able to carry it on as it was established and grew. I was tired by then and thought I’d put a year or two into helping Kurt get started by continuing writing and narrating the annual film and then retire.
That didn’t happen. It was obvious that the film still depended upon my voice and involvement though I did try to retire once in ‘95, then again in ‘98. But I’d lost the authority to direct the film in the established way in which it had evolved so successfully. It just worked.
Kurt then sold the company to Time Warner and though they continue the film today, and though the company still bears my name, it is no longer my film. My last involvement was minimal during the film called Impact. In the 2005 film, Higher Ground, they use a bit of my old narration out of old films to try to keep with tradition. While you may believe I actually narrated Higher Ground, I did not. I'm sorry about that, for all you wonderful and loyal film-goers. Thanks so much for your loyalty (and for helping me with my lifestyle!). Because of you, I've had a wonderful life. And realize that when you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. My life is a good example of that.
I’ve learned so much in my 81 years. I am now having the best time writing a book about the attitudes of aging (aging, is, after all, better than the alternative!) called ‘What Are You Doing with the Rest of Your Life?’ At 81, after lurching from one near disaster to the other, untold voyages, treks, road trips and experiences, I feel as though I am a reputable authority on aging in the most positive way!
Soon, I hope to start on my autobiography…the only trouble is that I don’t know yet how it ends! Guess I’ll wait on that.
I am now enjoying time writing, planning, visiting with friends and skiing whenever possible. As a way to pass on my deep-felt and long-practiced beliefs in business ethics, and support young people who want to be in business, my wife Laurie, my step-son Colin Kaufmann, and I have developed the Warren Miller Freedom Foundation to teach ethical principles of business and entrepreneurship to young people. I feel fortunate to have been able to lead my life, and am now enjoying sharing my knowledge and perspectives in my writing and in our efforts through the Foundation - giving back to tomorrow’s entrepreneurs whatever I can.
-Warren Miller
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