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Salt Lake City Whistler!?

Story by Arne Gutmann Everyone knows that Whistler is one of the leading destination points in the world for the adrenaline starved, or just a sweet locale for anyone wanting to get out of their own home town.

Story by Arne Gutmann

Everyone knows that Whistler is one of the leading destination points in the world for the adrenaline starved, or just a sweet locale for anyone wanting to get out of their own home town.

But did you know that Whistler also doubles for other cities – namely Salt Lake City, Utah.

So now you ask why is Whistler doubling for a place much south of our own border? Well, apparently there were only two choices for NBC to film a commercial for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics: New Zealand and B.C. It doesn’t take a broke lifty to figure out that B.C makes much more financial sense then N.Z.

On June 4 a small platoon of around 80 movie-people came up to our "Utahish" town. With them, they brought 200,000 feet of film stock for a 30-60 second Olympic-hype-commercial (the average X-Files episode uses 10,000 feet of film stock ). Questioned about the need for so much film, production crew members replied, "When we deal with as many variables as we have with this shoot, you just gotta have the film."

Stunts were eye candy for the masses. There were some choppers, sleds, and some sick snowboarding. The cast was a mixed bag of cops, clowns, aliens, taxi-sled-drivers, a female hockey team (with Zamboni), Santa, some Hare-Krishnas, a Sasquatch, and a guy in a bear suit for good measure.

Local talent included Sherry Newstead of ActionCasting.Com who played a member of the U.S. women’s hockey team. Canadian Snowmobile owner and sledder extraordinaire Doug Washer provided sick and slick sled-stunts. Canadian Snowmobile guides portrayed armed cops on cop-sleds who chased after local Brian Savard, who was doubling for US Olympic hopeful Chris Klug.