Not really—we just forgot to update the blog for two years because we’ve been a tad self conscious about making marketing documentaries. There’s really NOTHING wrong with marketing documentaries, we just prefer long term projects.
Just a quick catch up on what happened in the last two years: Eastern Rises, despite my forecast of total suckage, didn’t suck I guess. It’s been one of the best reviewed fly fishing films that we’re aware of—and it did surprisingly well on the film festival scene. I think winning “Best Mountain Sport Film” at the Banff Film Festival was kind of a big deal, considering that category had traditionally been dominated by healthy budgeted skiing, climbing and biking films. It was pretty dang exciting to break down that barrier for the sport of fly fishing.
Travis married this lovely chick Melissa, and I was his best man. I’m still surprised he picked me, but I was honored. We went back to Baja to chase roosters for Travis’s bachelor party. Frank proved that he is the best rental car rally racer of all time, and I caught my first rooster on the last day after Travis accused me of “not trying hard enough.” Instead of using my anger to beat him with an empty tequila bottle—I channeled it into my fly rod. I had actually given up that day, and was taking my clothes off to go swimming… and of course here comes my fish. I was half naked in the photos, but at least I got it done, and Frank [Smethurst] looked like a proud father when he helped me land it.
Despite our total lack of social media skills, we’ve still been fairly busy. Well, to be honest… Travis has been busy. I personally like to work in “spurts.” If that big-ass geyser in Yellowstone only went off once a day, and occasionally only once a month—that would be equivalent to my productivity in the last two years. We’ve worked on short films for The Rainforest Alliance, The Telluride Tourism Board, Nextel, Hawaii Airlines, Scott Fly Rod Company. I’ve also been filming for Suzan Beraza’s new flick “Uranium Drive In.” Suzan and her crew is best known for their film “Bag It” which has been creating massive change in people’s thinking about plastic bag use all over the world.
Currently we’re in northern British Columbia working on our new film, “Amend.” Travis hasn’t embraced the working title yet… but I figured I’d just put it out there to see what people thought.
Amend: [1] to change for the better; improve: to amend one’s ways [2] to remove or correct faults; rectify
The film is about what appears to be nation-wide movement behind the removal of dams and the push to restore spawning grounds for native sea run fish. Yup, fish again. More fish. That’s what we do. Some guy named Yvon who makes fancy clothes and his son-in-law Matt have asked us to make the film, and we’re going to do our best to tell another story that needs to be told. [bk]