Ski and snowboard movies can be pretty clichéd. You’ve got your banging music, slow motion airtime and a cast of crazy folk who know no danger.
It’s normally awesome, but it’s normally pretty predictable. That’s how we were able to make a drinking game out of it. With all that said though, ‘#skigoodmoneywillcome’ – the new mockumentary from the Legs of Steel crew – completely breaks the mould.
The film plays on the practised formula of the ski world; seeing the skiing crew play exaggerated version of themselves in a ‘behind the scenes documentary’ that’s freakin’ hilarious.
The amplified personas are brilliant. Paddy Graham is the whisky-mad rockstar with a dirty little secret. Tobi Reindl is the business man who only sees skiers as ‘assets’. Bene Mayr is the superstar who can’t get enough of his own face, and Thomas Hlawtischka is the fitness freak who can barely reach 10 sit ups.
It’s been called the funniest film since G.N.A.R, and it’ll more likely than not have you laughing throughout.
“We realised that a normal documentary would’ve been pretty cheesy and pretty f*cking boring as well…”
“Would you like to hear the real story or the fake one?” asked Paddy, as we sat down for a chat. I ask for both, and he continued: “Well the real story is that we’re making a two-year project with Legs of Steel just now and we didn’t want to go quiet.
“The fake story behind the film is that we were approached by a company who wanted to find out who Legs of Steel were and get behind the scenes of us and our movies. So we let them into our house to see how it’s done!”
Tobi was quick to chip: “The idea came about to make a documentary about the past few years initially, but we realised that a normal documentary would be pretty cheesy and pretty fucking boring as well.”
Well that sorts that then. But what about the characters? How close are the hilarious caricatures to the real personalities of the cast?
According to Paddy and Tobi, the over the top portrayals are surprisingly accurate. Which is slightly concerning considering Paddy’s character spends most his time swigging whisky.
The Sheffield man said: “Everyone plays a character that we came up with for the initial concept, but when we watched the documentary we though ‘…that’s just us’! We might be wearing something different or doing something a bit more dramatic, but it’s pretty much just us.
Tobi continued: “Yeah, there is a lot of truth in every character. Borderline too much truth!
Bene takes pride in the fact that he’s ‘the Justin Bieber of skiing’…
“Thomas is the national coach of the German freeski team, and the very healthy, sporty one. Paddy is the nice British guy and the rockstar, so we played on that. I’m the business man dangling the strings behind the curtains, and Bene is the most famous one – so we made him very selfish!”
They certainly did. And it’s brilliant. Bene takes pride in the fact that he’s ‘the Justin Bieber of skiing’ for example.
Tobi’s character provides the thinking behind the title of the film meanwhile, as you can see in the short clip below. It gives you a nice little taster of what’s in store for the rest of the film:
Some of the actual stories from filming are arguably even better than the film as well.
Prestigious ski showcase Nine Knights is one of the settings in the documentary, and Paddy admits that the rest of the pros were a little baffled about what they were doing.
“People would come up to us and ask if Tobi wore a suit all the time, or ask why I was drinking so much whisky,” he laughed.
“One time we were shooting at a bar at about 10 o’clock in the morning, and Kevin Rolland – who came third at the Olympics – came in and asked if I was alright.
“we did the first shoot and I got an e-mail from Thomas that just said ‘Are wegoing to look really stupid?’…”
“I told him I was good and asked why he asked, and he said ‘well you’re sitting by yourself at a bar drinking whisky in the morning’! I was just like ‘….well yeah, I am, but don’t worry. We’re filming!’”
That’s just another small clue to some of the hilarities that lay within the short documentary.
Pretty much everyone who watches this film leaves a lot happier than when they went in. The cast are brilliant, and Hersha Patel, the “presenter” of the documentary, holds it together brilliantly as well.
The mockumentary has now even racked up a couple of awards, but despite the success, the team admit they were far from convinced that it would go down so well.
“Thomas has the most doubts about it,” recalls Paddy. “I’m not sure if it was the concept or that we just didn’t explain it properly.
“I remember we did the first shoot and then got an e-mail from Thomas that just said ‘I don’t know if we should do this! Are we just going to look really stupid?’
“We thought, though, that if we took out of ourselves, nobody else would take the piss out of us’! But it is a certain taste of humour and we didn’t know how it would go down.
“I thought it was hilarious and Tobi was 50-50 in that he thought it was great, but thought it could be a massive failure as well!”
Tobi concluded: “We did the interview sections late on though and while we were sceptical about it at the start, by the end of shooting I just thought ‘fuck it’.
“I was still super worried till the end, until we actually saw the film though. Even then we still weren’t sure. We found it hilarious but would everyone else?”
They certainly would. The judges award at the iF3 film festival in Montreal was the first to land, and the film is almost certain to pick up a cult following around the ski world now.
This is one of the funniest things to drop on the scene in an age, and not only that, it’s got some great life lessons in there too.
Want to be rich? Just remember. Ski good – money will come.
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