I grew up lugging Forum’s True Life around. I bought the VHS (or convinced my father to buy it for me) when I was in seventh or eighth grade and stuck it in my snowboard bag so it’d be with me wherever my snowboard bag would also go — which was basically up and down the stretch of I-70 separating my home in Kansas City from the mountain towns in Colorado where I spent most of my delinquent youth. My older cousin David and I would throw it in before we rode the first gondola to the top, or after we got back from a couple hours hiking the park when the lifts closed. I still have “Mexican Radio” from Peter Line’s section stowed away on my nicked and cracked cell.
It wasn’t the best snowboard movie back then in terms of skill or production value, but it really resonated with me. Pathology is that sort of edit — the sort of edit you’ll take with you wherever your laptop or smart phone will also go because it resonates with you in a way that a lot of over-the-top snowboard movies these days simply don’t.
The flick is raw with the kind of growling enthusiasm you’re probably more used to coming across with your best friends over a couple thirty-racks of beer than a handful of the best pros in a sport. And that seems to be the point of all this. Drink Water co-founders Austin Smith and Bryan Fox called on editor/photographer/videographer/renaissance man Liam Gallagher to go on a season long journey documenting long travels, big airs, and huge drops — as well as all of the stoked shenanigans in between. They didn’t want to distant themselves with the unattainable but rather invite everyone along in what turned into one hell of a story. And in doing so, they brought Tim Eddy, Curtis Ciszek, Shaun McKay, Alex Yoder, Rube Goldberg, and Rip Zinger into the fold.
Anyway, rather than continuing to wax nostalgic about my own past or going on and on about how fucking awesome Pathology is, have a look for yourself — they made it free because, again, they want to do things differently and snowboard for the sake of snowboarding, nothing more.
Take a page out the boys’ book and determine your own landscape: “We all are the creators of our reality. Without our perspective of the world, the world doesn’t exist to us. That gives me 100% the choice to perceive it how I want.”
