Movie Destination: Aspen!

 
     Movies are like little shared multi-million dollar dreams that we get to experience on demand. While they aren't reality, they reflect little slices of the real world like a kaleidoscope or a fun house mirror. What these movies say about the real world is distorted, more fun and a little larger than life. With this in mind there are a whole bunch of famous (maybe infamous) films which take place in part or in whole in our little valley which can give us a little glimpse into how people around the world think about what’s goin on here. Of course everyone knows that Colorado is where the secret world government consisting of the five richest people in the world including The Queen, Colonel Sanders and the Pope meet every year, but did you know that there is much, much more to see here than just our beloved shadow government?

       Of course the most realistic of all the films ever made about Aspen Colorado is Battlefield Earth.  L. Ron Hubbard's saga of the year 3000 is also the greatest science fiction film ever made.  Forget Star Wars. Battlefield Earth realistically portrays Aspen in one thousand glorious years, after the earth has been stripped entirely of its shiny gold and turned over to a race of 8 foot tall John Travoltas. Aspen is depicted as it is in the year 3000, a luxury resort ravine full of feral humans on the run from a giant Vinnie Barbarino. As the most historically accurate movie about the future ever made watching Battlefield Earth is quite shocking, but to quote James Joyce "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."
 
    For people just getting to the valley this summer there are two films which will give you a little taste of what Aspen is supposed to be and what it really is. Both of these films are set in the early 90's or late 1980's and have virtually identical plots. Two friends take off from their small towns looking for the good life where someone can plug them into the social pipeline. Eeking their way through life these characters are sick and tired of being nobodies, but most of all they are tired of having nobody. These blue collar characters leave their worm farms behind and move to Aspen only to lose everything, becoming bodies crushed in the gears of this luxury resort. And that's just Aspen Extreme.
 
    Aspen Extreme is probably the greatest 1980's Ski Movie ever made and the only movie filmed entirely in Aspen, about Aspen for Aspen. I had never heard of this film before coming here, but it is extremely important- a cultural linchpin that holds this valley together. Aspen Extreme is the story of Dexter and some other guy who come to Aspen as ski instructors and live in what looks like a derelict box car in a river. They live their dreams skiing, writing, and dating Finola Hughes the star of the 1983 sequel to Saturday Night Fever, "Staying Alive," (who is sort of on the run from Vinnie Barbarino if you think about it). They get addicted to drugs and one of them dies while skiing in the yearly Powder 8 Competition. This competition seems to be kind of "Rite of Spring" held annually to thin out the ski instructor ranks and ensure that the gods of ski and powder are sated with fresh blood. The lesson of Aspen Extreme is that while half of the people who just up and move here will die because of avalanches or drugs, the other half will certainly fall in love with a soap opera star and become celebrated writers like local heroes Hunter S. Thompson,  Walter Issacson, and Emzy Veazy III.

       Dumb and Dumber is a far more famous film which depicts two working class heroes on an adventure which would make Joseph Campbell blush with joy. Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne live hum drum lives in New Jersey, where they have no food, no jobs and their pet's heads are falling off. One day they find a briefcase, owned by a beautiful woman named Samsonite who is on her way to Aspen- where the beer flows like wine. Driven by a sense of duty and love of which troubadours will one day sing- Lloyd and Harry set out on an odyssey to return the briefcase, which happens to be full of cash. Once in Aspen they find out that their quest for love entails spending all of that cash on cars, fancy hotels and saving endangered wildlife in pastel tuxedos. Once they are exposed as blue collar idiots, Lloyd and Harry are expelled from Aspen thrown into the wilderness, presumably walking back to New Jersey.
       
       Both Aspen Extreme and Dumb and Dumber have valuable lessons interspersed throughout. We find out that you can't trust John Denver, that the Monkeys were a huge influence on the Beatles and that in life skiing is the easy part. There are some fantastic and unbelievable moments in both. Dumb and Dumber is clearly filmed at the Estes Park Hotel, 200 miles away and is totally devoid of local landmarks. Equally as ridiculous Aspen Extreme has a number of scenes that take place in a regular old greasy spoon diner, nary a Michelin star to be seen. If they were eating at the Gucci Store it would be more accurate. If you just moved here or have lived here for years any of these films are absolutely worth watching. These films offer us a glimpse into our near past and the far future and are a reflection of this place, however distorted. 

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Matt Cleer

I was born a fool, don't want to stay that way.