Isegoria

This Game of Thrones: Long Story Short segment looks behind the scenes:

The Arkham Digest interviews Nic Pizzolatto, creator of HBO’s True Detective:

It seems that some elements of True Detective draw influence from the realm of literary horror. I speak not only of the references to The King in Yellow, but also the stick-like creations reminiscent of Karl Edward Wagner’s story “Sticks”, as well as Cohle’s Ligottian worldview. What drew you to these elements, and how did you go about choosing to incorporate them into the show?

Nic: Sure. That influence is, like everything in True Detective, part of a whole-earth catalog of cultural obsessions, including my own. If your character conveys a vision of cosmic horror, it felt appropriate for me to dramatize the Lovecraftian sense of madness, of a carnivorous universe in which you’re food. And Cohle’s attitude is similar to things Lovecraft said (and Cioran, and Schopenhauer), though we can see Cohle would have a substantial confirmation-bias based on his life story.

The stick lattices are actually things I discovered in researching early Megalith cultures and the mound-builders in Louisiana, but I discovered Wagner’s story and then it seemed even more appropriate to the kind of subconscious cultural associations the killer creates, the atavistic dread that the show tries to transmit. I suppose what drew me to these elements were the show’s themes and characters, and my own interests, which to be fair are pretty broad and discursive. And no one told me I couldn’t do it, you know? If these things are all appropriate to the story and its themes and they can be incorporated organically and become an authentic part of the story, why not? Why not mash these influences together? Provided it’s in a way that doesn’t betray or lead astray the governing genre being served.

The landscape itself is a rather looming presence. What can you tell me about your choice of venue and what it means for the story?

Nic: The landscape is literally the third lead in the show. This is the area of the country where I grew up, and I knew the kinds of environments waiting for us there. Very detailed, prosaic descriptions of setting were a large part of the script: taking these opportunities to witness the contradictions of place and people, to feel a sense of a corrupted, degrading Eden. It was always going to be a rural show, but originally in the Ozarks, which I also know. Out of a few subsidy states, I chose Louisiana for the move because there were all these personal connotations and knowledge of the place I could bring to bear. It enabled me to write landscape that was almost as full as the characters, and that became an important guidepost in the writing: the awareness of contradiction, the landscape as culture.

The show is straddling a fine line between realistic terror and what could be interpreted as the supernatural, or figments of madness. Do you find this a tricky balance to pull off?

Nic: A bit. We have a hallucinating detective in episode 2, which is weird, and the visions themselves are almost religious in their metaphysical nature. But the important thing, I think, is that there is a realistic explanation for everything. Cohle’s visions are accounted for by his neural damage, probably guided in some part by his unconscious associations. There’s no evidence to suggest that the things we’ve seen are the result of anything supernatural. Ritualism, some sort of worship is implied in the murder, but there’s nothing supernatural. Reality is the dread, and that’s probably where the line’s drawn. So we can touch these things and by doing so provide avenues for layers of meaning to settle and refract and resonate, but we don’t strictly-speaking break from the realist mode.

In a follow-up interview, he discusses Thomas Ligotti.

I remember enjoying the original Mr. Peabody & Sherman when I watched Rocky & Bullwinkle as a child.

I also remember Commander McBragg, as another, similar segment — but it originally appeared on something called Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales, and then on Underdog. Only in syndication did they edit it into Rocky & Bullwinkle.

McBragg’s tales follow in Baron Munchausen’s footsteps:

Near the banks of a large piece of water, which had engaged my attention, I thought I heard a rustling noise behind; on turning about I was almost petrified (as who would not be?) at the sight of a lion, which was evidently approaching with the intention of satisfying his appetite with my poor carcase, and that without asking my consent. What was to be done in this horrible dilemma? I had not even a moment for reflection; my piece was only charged with swan-shot, and I had no other about me: however, though I could have no idea of killing such an animal with that weak kind of ammunition, yet I had some hopes of frightening him by the report, and perhaps of wounding him also. I immediately let fly, without waiting till he was within reach, and the report did but enrage him, for he now quickened his pace, and seemed to approach me full speed: I attempted to escape, but that only added (if an addition could be made) to my distress; for the moment I turned about I found a large crocodile, with his mouth extended almost ready to receive me. On my right hand was the piece of water before mentioned, and on my left a deep precipice, said to have, as I have since learned, a receptacle at the bottom for venomous creatures; in short I gave myself up as lost, for the lion was now upon his hind-legs, just in the act of seizing me; I fell involuntarily to the ground with fear, and, as it afterwards appeared, he sprang over me. I lay some time in a situation which no language can describe, expecting to feel his teeth or talons in some part of me every moment: after waiting in this prostrate situation a few seconds I heard a violent but unusual noise, different from any sound that had ever before assailed my ears; nor is it at all to be wondered at, when I inform you from whence it proceeded: after listening for some time, I ventured to raise my head and look round, when, to my unspeakable joy, I perceived the lion had, by the eagerness with which he sprung at me, jumped forward, as I fell, into the crocodile’s mouth! which, as before observed, was wide open; the head of the one stuck in the throat of the other! and they were struggling to extricate themselves! I fortunately recollected my couteau de chasse, which was by my side; with this instrument I severed the lion’s head at one blow, and the body fell at my feet! I then, with the butt-end of my fowling-piece, rammed the head farther into the throat of the crocodile, and destroyed him by suffocation, for he could neither gorge nor eject it.

I only just learned that famed fantasist Lord Dunsany, known for his poetic, phantasmagorical style, also wrote such tall tales, like The Tale of the Abu Laheeb — with a wonderful framing story:

When I met my friend Murcote in London he talked much of his Club. I had seldom heard of it, and the name of the street in which Murcote told me it stood was quite unknown to me, though I think I had driven through it in a taxi, and remembered the houses as being mean and small. And Murcote admitted that it was not very large, and had no billiard-table and very few rooms; and yet there seemed something about the place that entirely filled his mind and made that trivial street for him the center of London. And when he wanted me to come and see it, I suggested the following day; but he put me off, and again when I suggested the next one. There was evidently nothing much to see, no pictures, no particular wines, nothing that other Clubs boast of; but one heard tales there, he said; very odd ones sometimes; and if I cared to come and see the Club, it would be a good thing to come some evening when old Jorkens was there. I asked who Jorkens was; and he said he had seen a lot of the world. And then we parted, and I forgot about Jorkens, and saw nothing more of Murcote for some days. And then one day Murcote rang me up, and asked me if I’d come to the Club that evening.

I had agreed to come; but before I left my house Murcote surprised me by coming round to see me. There was something he wanted to tell me about Jorkens. He sat and talked to me for some time about Jorkens before we started, though all he said of him might be expressed by one word. Jorkens was a good-hearted fellow, he said, and would always tell a story in the evening to anyone who offered him a small drink; whisky and soda was what he preferred; and he really had seen a good deal of the world, and the Club relied on stories in the evening; it was quite a feature of it; and the Club wouldn’t be the Club without them, and it helped the evening to pass, anyway; but one thing he must warn me, and that was never to believe a word he said. It wasn’t Jorkens’ fault; he didn’t mean to be inaccurate; he merely wished to interest his fellow-members and to make the evening pass pleasantly; he had nothing to gain by any inaccuracies, and had no intention to deceive; he just did his best to entertain the Club, and all the members were grateful to him. But once more Murcote warned me never to believe one of his tales nor any part of them, not even the smallest detail of local color.

“I see,” I said, “a bit of a liar.”

“Oh, poor old Jorkens,” said Murcote, “that’s rather hard. But still, I’ve warned you, haven’t I?”

And, with that quite clearly understood, we went down and hailed a taxi.

It was after dinner that we arrived at the Club; and we went straight up into a small room, in which a group of members was sitting about near the fire, and I was introduced to Jorkens, who was sitting gazing into the glow, with a small table at his right hand. And then he turned to Murcote to pour out what he had probably already said to all the other members.

“A most unpleasant episode occurred here last evening,” he said, “a thing I have never known before, and shouldn’t have thought possible in any decent club, shouldn’t have thought possible.”

“Oh, really,” said Murcote. “What happened?”

“A young fellow came in yesterday,” said Jorkens. “They tell me he’s called Carter. He came in here after dinner, and I happened to be speaking about a curious experience I had once had in Africa, over the watershed of the Congo, somewhere about latitude six, a long time ago. Well, never mind the experience, but I had no sooner finished speaking about it when the young fellow, Carter or whatever he is, said simply he didn’t believe me, simply and unmistakably that he disbelieved my story; claimed to know something of geography or zoology which did not tally in his impudent mind with the actual experience that I had had on the Congo side of the watershed. Now, what are you to do when a young fellow has the effrontery, the brazen-faced audacity…”

“Oh, but we must have him turned out,” said Murcote. “A case like that should come before the Committee at once. Don’t you think so?”

And his eye turned to the other members, roving till it fell on a weary and weak individual who was evidently one of the Committee.

“Oh, er, yes,” said he unconvincingly.

“Well, Mr. Jorkens,” said Murcote, “we’ll get that done at once.”

And one or two more members muttered Yes, and Jorkens’ indignation sank now to minor mutterings, and to occasional ejaculations that shot out petulantly, but in an undertone. The waters of his imagination were troubled still, though the storm was partly abated.

“It seems to me outrageous,” I said, but hardly liked to say any more, being a guest in the Club.

“Outrageous!” the old man replied, and we seemed no nearer to getting any story.

“I wonder if I might ask for a whisky and soda?” I said to Murcote, for a silence had fallen; and at the same time I nodded sideways towards Jorkens to suggest the destination of the whisky. I had waited for Murcote to do this without being asked, and now he ordered three whiskies and sodas listlessly, as though he thought there weren’t much good in it. And when the whisky drew near the lonely table that waited desolate at Jorkens’ right hand, Jorkens said, “Not for me.”

I thought I saw surprise for a moment pass like a ghost through that room, although no one said anything.

“No,” said old Jorkens, “I never drink whisky. Now and then I use it in order to stimulate my memory. It has a wonderful effect on the memory. But as a drink I never touch it. I dislike the taste of it.”

So his whisky went away. We seemed no nearer that story.

I took my glass with very little soda, sitting in a chair near Jorkens. I had nowhere to put it down.

“Might I put my glass on your table?” I said to Jorkens.

“Certainly,” he said, with the utmost indifference in his voice, but not entirely in his eye, which caught the deep yellow flavor as I put it close to his elbow.

We sat for a long time in silence; everyone wanted to hear him talk. And at last his right hand opened wide enough to take a glass, and then closed again. And a while later it opened once more, and moved a little along the table and then drew back, as though for a moment he had thought the drink was his and then had realized his mistake. It was a mere movement of the hand, and yet it showed that here was a man who would not consciously take another man’s drink. And, that being clearly established, a dreamy look came over his face as though he thought of far-off things, and his hand moved very absently. It reached the glass unguided by his eye and brought it to his lips, and he drained it, thinking of far other things.

“Dear me,” he said suddenly, “I hope I haven’t drunk your whisky.”

“Not at all,” I said.

“I was thinking of a very curious thing,” he said, “and hardly noticed what I was doing.”

“Might I ask what it was you were thinking of?” I said.

“I really hardly like to tell you,” he said, “to tell anyone, after the most unpleasant incident that occurred yesterday.”

As I looked at Murcote he seemed to divine my thoughts, and ordered three more whiskies.

It was wonderful how the whisky did brighten old Jorkens’ memory, for he spoke with a vividness of little details that could only have been memory; imagination could not have done it. I leave out the details and give the main points of his story for its zoological interest; for it touches upon a gap in zoology which I believe is probably there, and if the story is true it bridges it.

How did Swingers get to be so money?

Jon Favreau (Mike): When I set out to write Swingers, I didn’t know I was even writing a movie. My dad had given me a screenwriting program and I started the script just as an exercise to see if I could write a screenplay. Swingers is what came out.

[...]

I started writing, just drawing from the environment I was living in. I had characters loosely based on people I knew. None of the events were real; it was all a story that came out of my head without an outline.

[...]

I wrote the screenplay in about a week and a half. The writing process wasn’t filled with any sort of turmoil. If you really do the math, it’s 10 days, 10 pages a day. It’s not like you’re chained to the computer. I was just entertaining myself and really enjoying it, sort of giggling at it as I was writing it. I couldn’t wait to share it with my friends more as, like, doodles in the notebook than saying, “Hey, here’s my big movie.”

[...]

I sent the script to my agent. She sent it out and there were some nibbles. People were interested in optioning it, but they had a lot of notes. They wanted to change Vince’s character to a girl and have them not go to Vegas and said the dialogue was too repetitive, and it had to be darker and more violent. I was really trying to embrace the notes. I tried to change the script, but I just couldn’t.

[...]

I said, “Look, before I change anything, why don’t we do a staged reading? Let me bring in the friends of mine that these characters are based on. And that way we could really hear the script as I intended it so you understand the dialogue, and then you can also maybe be open-minded, and maybe cast one of these people?” I figured it’s a shot to put my friends in front of whatever guy who was going to direct this thing.

The budget was small — and allocated in unusual ways:

Favreau: Nicole’s office was in an unfinished garage in the backyard with dogs running around and stuff.

LaLoggia: The door to the outside garage was through my bedroom and it was like people would come walking through at all hours. Jon, Vince — who’s a huge personality — they’d come in the office, they’d put their feet up, they’d wanna talk. I’m like, “I can’t talk about this shit right now. I’ve got shit to do. Get out of here.”

Liman: Our entire lighting package was gonna consist of 100-, 150-watt light bulbs.

Wurmfeld: Our coffee budget was zero. We had it donated.

Liman: Saving on shooting time and movie lights is a big factor, but you still need locations. And Nicole used to cry in front of people, literally. No technique was beneath us to get people to give us things for free or cheap.

LaLoggia: Instead of getting a traditional caterer, we made deals with restaurants in the neighborhood for next to nothing.

Avram Ludwig (associate producer): We spent more money on music in that movie than on the movie. We paid the most for the Dean Martin stuff. I don’t know. I think we paid half a million dollars in music licensing and the movie cost a quarter of a million dollars to make.

LaLoggia: The entire post-production — all the development, all the processing, all the coloring — was free. That would have been our budget alone. So if it weren’t for that, we couldn’t have done it.

Liman: Every day I was telling Jon something else that was un-kosher and he was getting more and more alarmed. Not hiring a DP, a director of photography, seemed to be the thing that particularly [troubled him]. And then one day — a few weeks before we started shooting — he caught me reading a book on basic movie lighting.

Ludwig: Our biggest cost was getting film. Film comes in 1,000-foot loads and 400-foot loads. On a big movie, they’ll throw away the end of the film, like the last hundred feet or so.

Liman: We shot most of the movie with these 100-foot short ends. It’s a minute of film. Which also meant the actors could get through 60 seconds of a scene and I’d have to call reload.

Wurmfeld: I cultivated a lot of relationships with the people around town selling short ends.

LaLoggia: I called this place in L.A. that does recycled, re-canned short ends and I just begged for the cheapest price we could get.

Liman: The problem with shooting on short ends, though, is that it takes four minutes to reload a conventional camera. I thought to myself: We’ll never get through the movie if we shoot a minute, spend four minutes reloading, shoot a minute, spend four minutes reloading. You’ll never get any kind of rhythm going. So I decided I would shoot the movie with this documentary 35-millimeter film camera that was not designed to shoot dialogue because it sounds like a sewing machine.

Ludwig: The camera was much louder than a regular camera that you’d use for a feature film. But it’s easy to load and very compact. I think it was developed so Godard could have a camera that would fit into his bicycle basket.

Liman: To absorb the sound, I would take my down jacket and put it over the camera and then take the two arms and tie them together underneath the lens. And then my comforter would just get wrapped around the whole thing once. Jon would describe it like he was acting in front of a big, fluffy snowball. But I really think that as insane as that setup was, it created a really safe environment for the actors. Vince really did some extraordinary things, like the scene where he’s supposed to be drunk and he jumps up on the table. You know, he had to do that in front of a lot of people and I feel like they looked at me and they were like, Doug is clearly not being self-conscious.

The strength of the movie was that they had already rehearsed it endlessly:

Favreau: We already knew our characters. It was as though we had been in a stage production of it. I often think of it like Play It Again, Sam, which was onstage before it was ever filmed.

Wurmfeld: Literally every single word that comes out of Vince’s mouth is on the page. That’s what totally blows me away about Jon’s writing — his ability to get someone’s voice, because I think that’s not an easy task. One might think that Vince is improvising, and certainly he can, but I just was amazed that all those jokes and stuff were actually on the page.

If you enjoyed the movie, read the whole thing.

Artist Alex Ross talks to the Wall Street Journal about his hyper-realistic work in comics:

“My Superman looks more like a man in his thirties or forties…. The characters carry a lot of weight of years of history.”

Enjoy the Muppets performing their Sequel Song:

I didn’t find myself drawn to HBO’s True Detective until I learned that it alluded to The King in Yellow, a collection of short stories from 1895, which opens with four weird tales that refer to a fictional play, itself called The King in Yellow:

The first mention of the play comes in episode two when Rust Cohle, the cynical, nihilistic detective played by Matthew McConaughey, finds the journal of a young former prostitute, Dora Lange, who has been ritualistically murdered.

“I closed my eyes and saw the King in Yellow moving through the forest,” Cohle reads aloud from her journal. “The King’s children are marked. They became his angels.”

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink beneath the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.

Cassilda’s Song in “The King in Yellow,” Act i, Scene 2.

Apparently these cryptic references have been enough to boost sales of the book, and that may have been the goal:

Speakeasy: If you could recommend any single work of weird fiction and/or horror to people, what would it be?

Pizzolatto: That’s tough — on the one hand I want to name one of the blue-chip classics, and on the other I’d like to give an endorsement to people who may not usually get enough attention. I mean, I’d suggest Lovecraft or Poe, but everybody knows them already. More recently, I’d point people in the direction of Thomas Ligotti, Laird Barron, John Langan, Simon Strantzas and others. For fans of the show who’d like to see what contemporary voices have done with Chambers’ “King in Yellow,” I’d point them toward Karl Edward Wagner’s short story “The River of Night’s Dreaming” or the recent anthology “A Season in Carcosa.”

The first story of the collection, The Repairer of Reputations, opens with an odd portrayal of the Progressive future — the 1920s, that is, from the perspective of the 1890s — which we can’t fully trust:

“Ne raillons pas les fous; leur folie dure plus longtemps que la nôtre…. Voila toute la différence.”

Toward the end of the year 1920 the Government of the United States had practically completed the programme, adopted during the last months of President Winthrop’s administration. The country was apparently tranquil. Everybody knows how the Tariff and Labour questions were settled. The war with Germany, incident on that country’s seizure of the Samoan Islands, had left no visible scars upon the republic, and the temporary occupation of Norfolk by the invading army had been forgotten in the joy over repeated naval victories, and the subsequent ridiculous plight of General Von Gartenlaube’s forces in the State of New Jersey. The Cuban and Hawaiian investments had paid one hundred per cent and the territory of Samoa was well worth its cost as a coaling station. The country was in a superb state of defence. Every coast city had been well supplied with land fortifications; the army under the parental eye of the General Staff, organized according to the Prussian system, had been increased to 300,000 men, with a territorial reserve of a million; and six magnificent squadrons of cruisers and battle-ships patrolled the six stations of the navigable seas, leaving a steam reserve amply fitted to control home waters. The gentlemen from the West had at last been constrained to acknowledge that a college for the training of diplomats was as necessary as law schools are for the training of barristers; consequently we were no longer represented abroad by incompetent patriots. The nation was prosperous; Chicago, for a moment paralyzed after a second great fire, had risen from its ruins, white and imperial, and more beautiful than the white city which had been built for its plaything in 1893. Everywhere good architecture was replacing bad, and even in New York, a sudden craving for decency had swept away a great portion of the existing horrors. Streets had been widened, properly paved and lighted, trees had been planted, squares laid out, elevated structures demolished and underground roads built to replace them. The new government buildings and barracks were fine bits of architecture, and the long system of stone quays which completely surrounded the island had been turned into parks which proved a god-send to the population. The subsidizing of the state theatre and state opera brought its own reward. The United States National Academy of Design was much like European institutions of the same kind. Nobody envied the Secretary of Fine Arts, either his cabinet position or his portfolio. The Secretary of Forestry and Game Preservation had a much easier time, thanks to the new system of National Mounted Police. We had profited well by the latest treaties with France and England; the exclusion of foreign-born Jews as a measure of self-preservation, the settlement of the new independent negro state of Suanee, the checking of immigration, the new laws concerning naturalization, and the gradual centralization of power in the executive all contributed to national calm and prosperity. When the Government solved the Indian problem and squadrons of Indian cavalry scouts in native costume were substituted for the pitiable organizations tacked on to the tail of skeletonized regiments by a former Secretary of War, the nation drew a long sigh of relief. When, after the colossal Congress of Religions, bigotry and intolerance were laid in their graves and kindness and charity began to draw warring sects together, many thought the millennium had arrived, at least in the new world which after all is a world by itself.

But self-preservation is the first law, and the United States had to look on in helpless sorrow as Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium writhed in the throes of Anarchy, while Russia, watching from the Caucasus, stooped and bound them one by one.

In the city of New York the summer of 1899 was signalized by the dismantling of the Elevated Railroads. The summer of 1900 will live in the memories of New York people for many a cycle; the Dodge Statue was removed in that year. In the following winter began that agitation for the repeal of the laws prohibiting suicide which bore its final fruit in the month of April, 1920, when the first Government Lethal Chamber was opened on Washington Square.

When you combine a montage of melismatic and skipping micropolyphony with the gravitas of Bryan Cranston and Ken Watanabe, you get the official main trailer for Godzilla — of course:

Harold Ramis has passed away. Charles Murray offers this advice, rule 34 from his Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead: Watch Groundhog Day repeatedly:

Harold Ramis estimates that that the movie has to represent at least thirty or forty years’ worth of days. We see only a few dozen of them, ending when Bill Murray’s character has discovered the secrets of human happiness. Without the slightest bit of preaching, Ramis shows the bumpy, unplanned evolution of his protagonist from a jerk to a fully realized human being — a person who has learned to experience deep and lasting justified satisfaction with life as a whole even though he has only one day to work with.

Ramis’s own understanding of the story he is telling is sophisticated and subtle. That’s why you should watch the film more than once. You are sure to pick up subtexts the second time that you didn’t get the first time. And you’ll see even more when, after giving yourself a rest, you watch it a third time. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched Groundhog Day, but I’ve always seen something new.

Why is it a good thing to understand this movie so well? Because it will help you live a good life. Absorbing the deep meaning of the Nicomachean Ethics will also help you live a good life, but Groundhog Day will do it with a lot less effort.

John C. Wright loved the first Hobbit movie and hated, hated, hated the second with a nerdrageous passion that knows no sense of proportion — enough, that is, to dub it The Desolation of Tolkien.

I never followed snowboarding, so I’d never heard of Kevin Pearce before watching The Crash Reel. I also didn’t know that the sport had progressed from the six-foot-tall halfpipes of the 1990s to towering 22-foot superpipes.

Coming into the last Winter Olympics, the 2010 games in Vancouver, Pearce was hailed as the next Shaun White, until he took a bad, bad fall in training, and the resulting traumatic brain injury put him in a coma for a week and a half — and left him different:

“It was pretty wild, seeing that stuff,” Pearce says of the moments with his family. “It was heavy to see that, like ‘Damn, that went down. I was not aware that went down.’ That’s no BS, I really didn’t know that stuff was going on. My brain was thinking one way, and all the people that were helping me recover had a different mindset and were on a different page. Now that I see it, I understand what they went through, what I put them through.”

It was eventually his brother, David, who has Down syndrome and has his own struggles accepting himself for who he is, was able to get through to Kevin by speaking the blatant truth. In his defense of why he doesn’t want his brother to start snowboarding professionally again, David simply told Kevin, “I don’t want you to die.”

Kevin says the accident actually brought him even closer to his brother. “Growing up with a brother with Down syndrome taught me so much about special needs and life in general and how you really need to open your eyes and be aware of all situations,” he says. “My accident had a huge impact on David. It really affected him. And it brought us so much closer. Before, I was living a life where I was winning competitions and living that life, and now, with the life I’m living, we understand each other so much better now. Things are harder. Life is slower. And David understands that.”

Taking the advice from David and his family, and taking note of his own physical limitations, Kevin eventually realized that the ending to his story was not going to be an Olympic gold medal. It wasn’t going to be professional snowboarding, period.

“The real moment I remember really realizing it is when I got back into a competition in Mt. Baker, Washington. It was the first time that I really tried to go fast and race down the mountain after my accident. It allowed me to understand how impaired my snowboarding was. You know, sitting in this chair right now, I feel totally fine. My brain doesn’t tell me that I’m still injured. Yeah, there are issues with my vision and issues with my memory, but those things aren’t telling me that I can’t snowboard. Doctors tell me, parents tell me, but I didn’t believe that sh–. I thought I could do it.”

The film reinforces Steve Sailer’s point that Winter Olympians are the successful products of nice families who engaged in a lot of (not inexpensive) family fun together.

Interestingly, Pearce’s father is a very successful businessman — a very successful, dyslexic businessman, with an artisanal glassblowing business.