- Hey GQ, this is Red Gerard, and this is The Breakdown.
[static buzzing] [upbeat tech music]
"Agent Cody Banks".
[rock music]
- [Snowboarder] Woo-hoo!
- Wooh-ooh!
Here we go, this is somethin' that I haven't seen before.
That's what we need, on a storm day, pause.
On a storm day, we have wax techs
that put wax on our bases and our boards get going faster.
But we can almost just eliminate that position
with having a jet pack on the back of your snowboard.
I'm just sayin' we can maybe take tips from this.
We're super-lucky, you know?
Each contest that we travel to,
we have wax techs is what we call 'em that come with us,
and these are guys that are completely dialed on their job,
and basically their whole job and their whole life
is like figuring out how to make a base go
as fast as it can when there's weather coming in,
when it's snowing, or when it's windy or something,
they have all these different lists of waxes
that will do good on some days,
and make you actually be able to compete in a contest.
♪ Come back, come back, come back ♪
- I think if you had a jet pack on your board
it might cause more problems than not having it.
I think probably the weight
would really throw you off in the air.
That's probably why he went tail over nose,
because it weighs so much.
That's probably why he fell.
I don't know, I mean it's a movie, so who knows?
But if we were to actually have that in real life,
probably cause some complications.
I think your balance would be pretty messed up.
It'd be like riding a skateboard that's electric,
and you just have no power, you know?
And it just has a mind of its own.
By the look of the scenery in this scene, above treeline,
that probably means that you're using a helicopter
to access the snowboarding.
Pause.
Right there, I mean that's just
your classic fall right there.
He went, you know, tail over nose,
did half a front flip, landed head first in the snow.
Popped right up though, seems to be good to go.
Jet pack on board,
I'd have to try it out for a day, you know?
But to be honest I don't really know
who you'd check in with.
Maybe like USADA,
but doesn't really fit under drug testing.
I'd say it's above and beyond drug testing.
I mean, talk about a real-life performance-enhancer.
That's that jet pack board right there.
"Out Cold".
- Everybody ready?
[snowboarders laughing and cheering]
- Let's go! - Bunch of suckers!
[crowd]
- But, "Out Cold" is the movie I grew up to.
Every time I go snowboarding with my family,
"Out Cold" is playing in my head.
I mean, this is like a family tradition right here.
The whole idea of the "King of the Mountain" is,
you fill up your glass with beer at the top,
snowboard down the whole mountain at nighttime,
and you basically try not to lose your beer
the whole way down.
It's honestly a great event.
I mean, everyone's going skiing
and snowboarding to have a good time,
and this is the definition of a good time.
The problem I guess nowadays with that,
it's so hard to find ski resorts
and snowboard resorts that offer night riding.
There's not really a whole ton of them out there,
which, the other hard part is,
that it's probably completely illegal
to have an open container while snowboarding.
But hey, I'm no cop, I'm with it, let's do it.
Honestly it can go down as one of my favorite movies.
"Hot Tub Time Machine".
- [Skier] Yeah!
This is a black diamond? - Terrifying.
- That's all you got? - Oh!
I don't remember this- - What do you think boys?
- Tips down.
Tips [bleep] down, right away!
Let's ride! [rock music]
- Black diamond's what you would say
the advanced riders would ride.
It's gonna be the steepest hill
with the most you know, hazardous marks on the run,
and that's where the black diamond comes from.
I always say if you're snowboarding a black diamond
or skiing a black diamond, you probably don't know.
You know, you're never like,
if you're actually on it, you're not like,
"I wonder if this is a black diamond or not", you know?
Those look like black diamond runs though.
By the trees and all that,
I'm guessin' Pacific Northwest.
Good snow cover, good style, all the borders.
I don't know about the skiers,
I'm not a skier so I stand clear.
A black diamond for a skier would probably mean
there's gonna be moguls on it which are big bumps of snow,
where you go from doing hockey stops, back and forth,
getting you down the run, and for a snowboarder,
that's really not that fun, going on moguls.
It just hurts the knees.
The technique to handle a black diamond
would be knowing how to use your edges,
knowing how to snowboard,
and just really knowing how to link your turns
and knowing how to stop when there's trees in the way,
or a rock or something.
You just kinda need to know your snowboard,
know how everything rides, and go from there.
Once you got that, you can get in the black diamond,
you're gonna make that run yours.
I wanna get to know their stunt doubles.
They seem like some good shredders.
"Fantastic Four".
♪ Run, run ♪
- [Snowboarder] Woo-hoo!
- Right there, it's already real, right?
And people jump out of helicopters all the time.
Many-a-names that are household names.
Travis Rice, you know?
This right here,
I have never jumped out of a helicopter.
On my bucket list, I would love to.
I think if anything it might get me more sponsors.
I don't think it's gonna be an issue, I'm into it.
I've done this before where you're ridin' back country,
and the helicopter's dropped you off,
and then maybe someone's filming from the helicopter
which is going on right now,
and you can totally hear this while you're riding
and it's almost like, I consider it, which I don't know,
but I consider it almost being in war.
There's noises going on behind you,
your focus is like 40% on snowboarding
and 60% on this helicopter behind you.
It's a rush, it's pretty sweet.
[rock music]
- [Skier] All right, no more kid stuff!
Check this out!
- With the helicopter going on behind you,
and you snowboarding, and the wind in your face,
I think it would be pretty hard
to hear your friend talking to you.
I've never really done that before, you know?
I'm always pretty focused on the snowboarding.
Then you got yeah, you're like I was saying,
you're 40% snowboarding, 60% the sound of the helicopter,
add another percentage you're talking to someone,
I don't think that's too realistic, but you never know.
Is there a skier and snowboarder beef?
I would say, yes.
Some snowboarders don't like skiers.
Some skiers sure don't like snowboarders.
There's still a mountain or two out there
that don't even allow snowboarders at the ski resort.
Me personally, I'm down for both.
Sometimes I'll get annoyed with skiers,
but I'm sure they get just as annoyed with me,
so, I'm with it, you know?
"Last Holiday."
[holiday music]
- [Snowboarder] Who's that?
Oh no, get out of my way!
Ooh, watch it, watch it,
watch it! - Ai!
- Ooh! - Aaargh!
[snowboarder speaking in foreign language]
[snowboarders screaming and hollering]
- This is probably where snowboarders
get such a bad rap, right here, you know?
Skiing's this old sport that you know, maybe rich people do?
I don't know if I'm saying anything bad there or whatever,
but, and then you get someone with a snowboard
that has been sleeping in their car
and they come out of control, passing you
and they almost hit you and you family,
and she goes Bills Mafia on 'em.
I've always wondered in movies like,
if they're actually shooting the snowboarding
or if it's green-screened and all that
and there's like a couple of scenes in there,
where you can tell there's no green-screening,
and you're like, "That was probably pretty scary to shoot."
Like, that was probably kind of a gnarly scenario.
I mean there is a lot of aspects in there
that do seem real you know?
Like when you're first learning how to snowboard
you're just kinda like a snowman put into a board
and all you know how to do is go straight.
You don't really know how to use your edges,
you're just kinda all over the place.
The thing that you know, it points out that like obviously
it's not her first time, is her airing over a snow cat.
Or, her like riding up on the bar
and jumping off of it onto a table
you know like, there's some out of control
and then there's just like planned out of control, you know?
When you're first starting to snowboard
you're out of control trying to survive
goin' down the mountain but you can just tell in that movie,
you know like, that's just a pro snowboarder,
a really talented snowboarder trying to play,
or trying to act this scenario where he's a beginner
and he has been a beginner in like five years,
and then all of a sudden he jumps over a snow cat
and you're like, "Okay, you've been doing this for awhile."
If that was an actual beginner,
I would say her longest period right there
it'd probably be like a 15 second out of control-ness
and then she'd fall on her butt.
That was probably like a minute
of free soloing down down a run.
"Chalet Girl".
[snowboarder skidding] [exhilarating music]
- Ahhhh! [airbag thumping]
- Yeah! [upbeat bouncy music]
- That's an airbag.
That's really big right now in snowboarding.
Like, we're reaching this point
in the snowboard slopes competition,
where tricks are getting so big,
where they're too dangerous just to try on snow you know?
You take a pretty big possibility of getting hurt
and these airbags have been coming into play.
The last five years they've been really
coming into snowboarding because
it's the safe way to learn a trick.
It's like jumping into a foam pit
or jumping into pillows stacked up.
You can't really get hurt on it,
and it takes away that danger aspect
of snowboarding quite a bit.
And you can do a lot of reps on this
and do your trick over, and over, and over
until you feel good to go to the snow.
There's a little bit of an apres scene goin' on here.
I'm guessing they're in Europe.
Europe's got some of the best apres snowboarding
and skiing out there you know?
After you're done snowboarding you go inside,
get a beer, watch whoever is snowboarding
and looks like the apres is set up right next to the airbag,
so this girl's got herself a little X Games crowd watching.
Yeah, you got tank tops on, the sun's out,
it's just kind of how they do it over there and I think
it's something the U.S. needs to take into account.
We need to get on Europe's level of the apres.
You're not really hittin' an airbag
if you're not like doing competitions.
You know, like not, average people are just going out there
like, "I wanna go hit an airbag today."
Mental blocks and sobering is massive
and sometimes you have bad accidents in the past
that hold you against what you want to do
and your future holds for you,
and that seems like maybe in that movie
that's what she's gettin' at you know?
Like the airbag, like I said it's this false reality
of snowboarding where you can kind do whatever you want
without getting hurt, and it's a good way
to work step-by-step to get to your goal
of getting back on jumps and getting back to doing spins
and you know, eventually competing and all that.
I have used an airbag a couple of times.
I'm not the most fond of 'em but you know,
nowadays with where the sport's going you kinda got to.
But with that there's also some like weird,
you know, some people aren't about 'em at all
because it does get people to this point
where maybe you're not ready to do the trick
but you hit the airbag and you've done it so much
that now you're doing this trick but you forgot
a lot of fundamentals in the process.
But, I mean that's bigger picture stuff than snowboarding.
We don't need to talk about it but,
yeah, I mean a conversation between airbags,
it's a funny one to have.
Thanks so much for watching these clips with me.
Hope you learned somethin', until next time.
[upbeat playful music]