Actually, I think it's the producers who are mixing these two sports. The things I've read indicate that the documentary includes interviews with people like Bill Briggs and Lou Dawson. It will be interesting to see whether the producers keep straight the difference between these two games.
I noticed a
review
of the film on the NY Times website. It's interesting to see how the film is perceived by somebody who has no stake in the modern ski scene:
Talk About Slippery Slopes
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: December 21, 2007
One of the daredevils in "Steep," a documentary about extreme skiing, insists he is not hooked on the adrenaline rush of this death-defying sport. His denial is hard to believe.
In one scene after another of this movie, written and directed by Mark Obenhaus, skiers hurtle down slopes at angles of 55 degrees or greater and leap off precipices into the unknown. The tiniest miscalculation, we are repeatedly told, could result in death.
The sport's practitioners -- addicts might be a better word -- would rather talk about how extreme skiing puts them totally in the moment and gives them an appreciation of life so acute it makes this sport, which has a high fatality rate, worth pursuing at all costs. There is a lot of mystical mumbo jumbo about how mountains are living, breathing things whose moods must be gauged before you venture onto their slopes; on a bad day a grouchy mountain can bite back.
Behind it all is the same competitive spirit that disciples of religious cults dish out to the uninitiated. The proselytizer fervently believes that he or she (but usually he) has a richer life than his unenlightened audience. That may be why "Steep" so often sounds like a promotional film.
Stephen Holden scores a bullseye!
