ESPN Snowboarding

When ESPN Action Sports caught a glimpse of this stop motion video we couldn't stop watching it. When we'd finally exhausted the fun a bit, we tracked down the creator of G.I. Joe vs. Ski Fun Ken Doll, former pro shred and bon vivant Brett Johnson, to find out where this video has been hiding all these years. Turns out that, like him, it was, "deep in the heart of the Watch-your-ass Mountains."

Tell us a bit about when and how this video came to be—was it for a movie?

I pitched this to Artie and Jerry (Arthur Krehbiel and Gerald Dugan) from Fall Line Films as an interstitial for their follow-up film to Snowboarders In Exile. I think it was RPM. It was a pretty big deal for them to throw so much jing at an animation. Pretty cool of them to do it.

Did it ever see the light of day? I just stumbled upon it randomly on the Camp of Champions blog.

No, it didn't, really. During the process of creating the sets and animating, Fall Line sold or was partially sold to a company out of New York. Jerry and Artie as well as the NY company were all fired up on the animation until they saw the footage. Regardless of what they paid, I don't think anyone expected it to be so, uh, comprehensive, if you will. I think they were thinking it would be all rinky-dink. But when they saw Joe and Ken in full effect, especially drunk Ken saying 'sh*t' three times in a row, and Joe blowing up the Barbie Porsche, they panicked. I don't think anyone would really want Mattel banging on their door. It was yanked before it was in the rough cut. But I heard they put it in some greatest hits reel years later.

Continue reading "G.I. Genius":

For new snowboarders needing a history course...who the heck is Brett Johnson? Claims to fame?

Uggh. These questions bite. Uh, started riding a swallowtail; got sponsored by Kemper in the late 80s. Sucked at contests. Had some mag pics... I don't know. To me it was always about doing something new, pioneering something. The opportunity of it all... I guess some of the highlights would be some of the footage in Creatures Of Habit, the original one. Hearing Andy Hetzel and Shaun Palmer yell my name as they hoisted their trophies at the World Cup... I think for the off-slope moments, was a validation enough for me that my riding meant something.

The ski area let me design the first snowboard park at Breckenridge. At the time it was the only permanent park anywhere. It had a couple hits but was mostly huge log slides. There were a couple really cool features they said were too much of a liability so we scrapped them. Now it's just metal, kickers and a giant u-jump. But hey, they still use that same run.

After that I ran the marketing and the team for Apocalypse. They were financially upside-ass-backwards so I went back to LA to animate some motocross stuff for Fleshwound Films and eventually ended up at Sony. I was so pleased to finally have a real job with real insurance that I took the first opportunity I could to head to Snow Summit and try a McTwist on a hip-jump... Yeah, I know, there's really no such thing, but the important thing is that I cashed in on the Motion Picture insurance with a broken neck.

How long did G.I. Joe vs. Ski Fun Ken take?

I don't know. I was doing some traditional animation for Doug Palladini and their Snowboarder TV project in tandem, but all in all we spent about 8 months on it. We shot it in two weeks, sent the cans off to the developer and had no clue what it was going to look like. At that point, I'd never shot 16mm before, or done really any stop-motion animation. Artie picked me up at the airport and just gave me a headshake and a long 'dude'. I thought the footage was totally bunk or something. The whole way back to Truckee, Artie held me at 'dude'...

I say 'we' because my wife, or soon to be wife, put in countless hours on sets and costumes and animation. Nick Ciotti, was 'doin' it for the cause' and put in a ton of hours. There were several people that pitched in my living room, cutting trees, and dripping candles, painting. We got a warehouse space eventually. The Log Slide Of Doom was about 20 feet long and about 12 feet wide. There were train tracks and Joe was suspended in mid air from fishing line. We had to time the shutter to catch him at the right place as he swung back and forth. I think that shot was the only disappointment. I knocked over the Arriflex and cracked the housing during the shooting of that scene. It was like 4am, everyone was tattered, so that was it. We packed it all up and sent off the footage.

Funny stuff like this used to be a much more important part of the sport's fabric and culture. Watching it made me feel the loss of the randomness and creativity that really informed snowboarding's early days and boom years.

Yeah, it's a good point. The sport changed a lot as the money poured in. Back then so much of what the sport was about was just a celebration of snowboarding itself. It was a whole new way of looking at the mountains and at winter sports. And the life and times of an aspiring pro snowboarder was such a comedy in itself. Nobody was really making so much money that they had to dummy-up and look all tidy. People were rewarded for doing something different or outlandish. Farmer was wearing neon green speed suits and epoxy-ing his hair into dreads. People were constantly crashing cars, getting hauled in by the law. There were tons of creative start-up companies. Sure, some of it was detrimental, but I look back with rose glasses. Name any time or any place of that history and there is something inherently funny about it.

Yeah, this whole surf-sk8-snow trifecta could use some new life. I swear, if I have to turn on my TV and see another skater do a kick flip down some stairs with some music playing—please. Let's show an animated version of the bros trying to work that hit. There's some entertainment. Hissy fits, breaking boards, super-animated skin peelers, ECU metal grinding, dudes having hallucinations on the operating table about fame, stardom, and a sea of babes. That's entertaining. Don't show me something that's been done a million times.

Do you still hold the record for the world's heaviest snowboard leash?

I'd like to meet the idiot who has a heavier one.

—Colin Whyte / Redcard Writing Group

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