Friday, I jumped on a Skype call with a couple of the oh-so-crazy Canucks, Joe Schuster and Matt Margetts. I’d originally pitched them the idea of a “pro-on-pro” interview, with plans of having them discuss their recent skiing exploits and whatnot. What ensued was a banterful conversation that touched more on alcohol and girls than anything else. And why am I not surprised? The duo are among the best in the world at balancing top-notch skiing with top-shelf (and topless) partying.
Anyhow, the jabber is posted below. I quite enjoy the conversational feel of this one, and hope you will too. Perhaps we’ll do a little pro skiers Chitchattin’ on the reg’…
Chitchat with Schuster and Margetts:
Joe Schuster: What’s going on, Lambo?
Henrik Lampert: We’re working on our 2015 Buyer’s Guide. Got a few new hires at Freeskier, which we’re super pumped about. Boulder, Colorado summer is coming into full swing here pretty soon. Life is good.
JS: Fuck yeah.
HL: And you?
JS: We were still filming a few weeks ago a little bit, but it’s basically done around here [Whistler] now. Maybe we’ll go out again, but I doubt it.
HL: Shooting for Super Proof?
JS: Yup. This week we’ll do a bunch more shooting for the movie, like, scene-y, intro type of shit.
Matt Margetts: Yeah, gangster shit. Mobster, New York, Mafia style.
HL: Super Proof seems to be shaping up pretty well, from what I’ve heard.
JS: Yeah, I like it a lot. It’s going to be a good change. It’s not going to be your typical ski movie shit. Obviously our crew is the same crew we’ve skied with forever, but we’re doing it our way, skiing with the people we want to ski with, and not having to deal with the sponsorship bullshit. Like, there’s always that BS, but it’s not to the point like it’s been with some production companies, where it’s like ‘Cool, this guy rides for Red Bull, so we’re going to film with him for one week and he’s going to have twice as much footage in the movie as everyone else who filmed all year.’ So yeah, it’s definitely our movie, and there’s only seven [now eight, with the addition of Noah Bowman] of us in there. It should be awesome.
HL: Marg, you just weren’t cool enough to be included, eh?
MM: Yeah, totally. I blew my knee in January. So, that was that.
JS: Hank, I don’t know if you know, but I got into Real Ski. I’m damn honored, and hyped for that. So, I have basically two film parts to do now.
HL: Are you able to use the same footage?
JS: I’m probably going to use the same footage, yup.
HL: ESPN doesn’t care?
MM: The footage will come out at the same time this year, so it’s no big deal.
JS: The parts are due August 1, they put it online, I think, September 1, and then it turns into a feature on ABC, which should be airing around September 15. So, we get eight mini profiles on ABC, but they’re like, “Yeah, it has to be original footage,” and I was like, well I’ll be doing Super Proof all year, and we’ll premiere it at iF3, which is right around the same time period, so it should be fine. Each Real Ski segment is just 90 seconds long, so like, 12 hammers, and Super Proof will be a bit bigger for me, like a full part.
The Real Ski stuff will also turn into a one-hour feature for ABC. The film segments alone won’t fill that time slot, so there will be some behind the scenes stuff for each person, and they’re going to do some sit-down interviews with us, too. At least that’s the plan. Having that on ABC will be awesome.
Credit: Jake Largess
MM: Joe, you’re going to be famous.
JS: Yeah, as if I’m not already. There are some problems with sharing footage and whatnot, though. People don’t want to share their footage. I heard some people may be dropping out of Real Ski because of that. I don’t really know, but, I think [ESPN has] got it mostly figured. I’m really stoked for it, stoked they brought it back. It’s a wicked contest and they almost didn’t do it this year. I hope they don’t ever drop it. It’s a great chance for us film skiers to make some money.
MM: Yeah, usually you don’t even get to eat.
JS: Yeah, exactly. I don’t know, to actually get some more exposure, it will be sweet. It’s super good to get our stuff out there in the mainstream media.
HL: You mentioned iF3 in there. That shit is going to be massive for us this year; we’ll be unveiling the final episode of the Road Trip Challenge there.
MM: How’d that go?
HL: So good.
JS: That’s rad. Are you releasing the whole series there?
HL: No, plan right now is, starting the first week of August we’ll be releasing one episode per week, each episode switching back and forth between Team Nordica and Team K2. By the time the sixth and final episode rolls around, that’ll be unveiled at iF3, so nobody knows who will win until then.
MM: I already know who won.
HL: No you don’t, loser. Nobody knows who won. We don’t even know. I’m not telling Damian and the K2 guys what Nordica did, and they’re not telling us what they did, and we haven’t watched all the footage yet because there’s so damn much of it, so at this point, not a single person knows who won. K2 keeps saying, “We didn’t do shit, we just partied,” but I’m convinced they all got tattoos and racked up bazillions of points and they’re just going to smoke us.
MM: Let’s talk about partying.
HL: OK. Who’s been winning?
MM: I think Joe needs to go off on that for a little bit. He was recently up at WSI. Tell us about your week, Joe? How was competing, skiing?
JS: Oh, wow. I don’t think I did any of those things there. It was quite a hectic week this year, filled with no competing, no filming, ’cause the snow was garbage… it was basically 10 days of straight partying. We pretty much did six days in, two days out, two more days in. So I did eight for 10 of partying. Basically, just lit it up with the boys as hard as I possibly could.
MM: Tell us about Amsterdam, Joe.
JS: You dick.
MM: Out with it, bud.
JS: Well, it was one of those day-drunk kind of days. We ended up at the ol’ patio there, around noon, just rifling through drinks. One thing leads to another, and a certain pro skier who has a bee allergy brought out the EpiPen, and just happened to put it on the table for some reason. And another unnamed pro skier was there, and convinced this other guy… do I drop his name? He’s going to be pissed.
MM: Just keep going.
JS: Anyway, individual number two, he might have taken that EpiPen and convinced individual number one, that it’s all good to stab yourself with it, and that it’s nothing more than a little adrenaline rush. So, person two stabbed person one in the leg, and once that rush started going, it looked really entertaining, so I went ahead and filled it up and I stabbed myself in the leg with it. And then, things just got ugly from there.
HL: How did that make you feel?
JS: For a while I felt good, then I went to the village square, puked my guts out and went to bed by 6:00 p.m.
HL: That could kill you.
MM: [Laughs] I miss you guys. I was so bummed I wasn’t there for that.
JS: Yeah, it was fucking awesome. I saw [James] Woodsy and Joss [Christensen] the next day, they were like, “Dude, you were fucked.” I was like, “What? I haven’t seen you.” They were like, “Yes, you did, yesterday.” And then I felt like an idiot.
HL: Marg, you’ve sucked at partying lately. ‘Sup with it?
MM: Well, leading up to the Olympics, I really didn’t do any partying because I blew my knee. I was on the “athlete” program pretty damn hard there, trying to get ready to compete in Sochi without an ACL. I was able to go and do it, but I unfortunately didn’t do well, so as soon as I was done I was sitting at the bottom of the pipe, and I was like, “I haven’t had a drink in a month, I finally did it, I finally made it, I got to ski here, now I need to find a fucking drink.”
So, I started ripping around, trying to go into all of the tents, and even with my credentials I couldn’t get in anywhere, or find any place with alcohol. Eventually I saw [agent] Tom Yaps sitting in the friends and family zone with a beer, and I wasn’t allowed to go in there, so I was waving at him wildly and finally got his attention and convinced him to bring me one, and wow did it taste good. I sat there and put my beer in my Team Canada mitt as a koozie and sucked in a cold one, it was pretty awesome to have one for the first time in a while. And then things got weird.
HL: Go on…
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