What: Chic Scott & the Making of The Eiger Sanction
When: Saturday, Jan. 14, 7 & 9 p.m.
Where: Eagle Eye Theatre
Tickets: $15/12
Before the luxury and no-risk factor of green screens, renowned guide and mountaineer Chic Scott remembers a different time in the 1970s when movie stars such as Clint Eastwood performed their own climbing stunts.
"Clint did outrageous stuff: things I don’t think any insurance company would allow anymore," said Scott who worked as a guide and stunt double on Eastwood’s film The Eiger Sanction .
"At one point, Clint was hanging 4,000 feet over space and then he cut the rope he was hanging from and dropped onto another one. It was pretty exciting considering most wouldn’t do something like that. You wouldn’t get Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise doing that now days."
Scott will share behind-the-scenes pictures of the making of the Hollywood cult classic film and excerpts from the film itself, along with plenty of Clint Eastwood tales, at the first speaker/film series hosted by the Squamish Adventure Film Society Saturday, Jan. 14 at the Eagle Eye Theatre in Squamish.
The newly created society is founded by Ivan Hughes and Angela Heck of Fringe Filmworks, the team that produced the 2003 film In the Shadow of the Chief. The couple is using the series to gauge whether there is enough interest to host a Squamish mountain film festival in the summer.
"In the vain of Squamish marketing itself as the adventure capital of Canada, we want to bring more adventure films and speakers to Squamish," Hughes said. "It will give people one more thing to do in this town…. We are testing the waters to see if there is a market for this sort of thing."
Scott’s presentation of Chic Scott and the Making of The Eiger Sanction was shown at the 2005 Banff Film Festival. The 1975 thriller, directed by and starring Eastwood, follows the tale of assassin Jonathan Hemlock who must uncover a killer on a mountain climbing team scaling the treacherous Eiger.
Scott described the filming process as a bizarre one.
"In Hollywood at the end of the scene all the dead guys get up and wipe off the ketchup," he said. "That is not the way in the mountain world. It was a bit strange."
Reality struck home when one of the guides, Dave Knowles, was killed after being hit by rock fall only hours before Scott, who was stunt doubling for the French climber character, played out the exact same scene as part of the script.
"It was really a meeting of reality and fantasy," Scott said.
While most climbing films today, such as K2 and Vertical Limit portray what Scott describes as "laughable" depictions of climbing, Scott rated the climbing captured in Eiger Sanction as seven out of 10. He says the most accurate big-screen climbing scenes to date are in the film Five Days One Summer , starring Sean Connery.
Scott said while some people may not remember The Eiger Sanction , campy climber lines made famous in the movie such as "No, I don’t think so, but we shall continue with style" ensure the film lives on well into the millennium.
Chic Scott and the Making of The Eiger Sanction shows both at 7 and 9 p.m. at the theatre located at Howe Sound Secondary School. Advanced tickets are $12 and are available at Climb On and Valhalla Pure in Squamish. Tickets at the door are $15.
