He accepts the Olympics and marvels that his invention helped produce a champion such as Shaun White, whose two Rolling Stone magazine covers essentially cemented the sport’s acceptance into the mainstream. The documentary shows Burton growing as a man while his snowboard becomes both a sport and an industry.
“He was a very resilient man, but the more we could honestly show what his demons were, what his struggles were, and then show how he overcame them, that was always our focus,” said director Fernando Villena, who met several times with Burton before being chosen for the project. And while Sims, who died in 2012, would certainly have had a different take on many of these events, the fact this unvarnished portrayal of the main subject makes it into the movie at all is a testament to what Burton, his wife, Donna, and his son, George, were trying to do with this project. It is instructive, not always easy to watch. The chapter ends with Kelly’s untimely death in an avalanche in 2003. The most notable involves prickly issues surrounding the patent for the snowboard that turned Burton, both the man and the company, into something of a pariah within the sport they created. It includes backbiting and lawsuits, while also touching on Burton’s potentially career-killing miscalculations at the sport’s outset. Some of the most enlightening moments revolve around the sport’s first superstar, Craig Kelly, and his role in the business side’s first major rivalry, between Burton and another snowboard maker, Tom Sims. It’s a lesson that does not shirk from the uncomfortable realities of his undertaking: Yes, he built it for fun, freedom and who-gives-a-crap rebellion, but no billion-dollar industry sprouts up purely on good vibes and bro hugs.
But it also serves as a history lesson about a pastime that became a sport in the late 1970s when Burton quit his Wall Street job to produce snowboards in his garage in Vermont. What results is a movie that is, no doubt, an homage to Burton.
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