BY SCOTT GAFFNEY
I didn’t cry every day. Maybe only every other day. But I laughed over and over again. Just me, sitting alone in my dim editing room with the cold concrete floor, headphones on, laughing aloud as I watched old footage of Shane McConkey being whipped by a bullwhip with a resounding crack. Shane arches violently and screams out in unbridled, albeit feigned, agony. His friends off camera are in hysterics. I clicked on the next shot, and Shane’s juggling two bowling pins and an axe, emanating his unmistakable cackle as the axe head narrowly misses his grasp. Moments later, he’s ridiculing his Red Bull Air Force cohorts in a favorite game of “Make Your Friends Look Like Idiots By Having Them Throw Rocks Left-Handed.”
Shortly thereafter, his buddies take photos as he, clad in his BASE jumping wingsuit, kneels behind a sheep, adding to his staggeringly deep library of images in which he jokingly humps (or is humped by) inanimate — and, occasionally, animate — objects.
So went the process — no, the treat — of making the documentary film “McConkey,” co-produced by Red Bull Media House and Matchstick Productions. As co-director and co-editor, that creative journey was something of a trip down memory lane. The film premiers Oct. 5 at Squaw Valley at its outdoor venue, KT Base Bar, before opening in theaters in Los Angeles, New York, and in Europe at Spain’s San Sebastián Film Festival.
I met Shane in 1994 in Colorado and shortly thereafter convinced him (with the help of a few other friends) to return to his childhood ski area of Squaw Valley. For the next 15 years, I considered Shane my best friend. We were roommates and practically inseparable for most of the late ’90s. For almost three decades, we traveled the world together, each of us considering our work a dream job. He skied radical lines and BASE jumped whatever vertical features he could find, and I pulled the trigger on the 16mm film camera, capturing iconic moments for Matchstick Productions ski films, as well as my own. Life was simple. And life was an absolute blast.
I was unable to accompany Shane to Italy that fateful March in 2009 because I’d destroyed my knee two months prior. I was grinding through physical therapy when I got the call I’d always dreaded, that Shane had died in a ski-BASE jumping accident. Like so many in this Tahoe community, I’ve lost a lot of friends doing what we do — it seems an unfair number considering how wonderful our lives and experiences can be doing this stuff — but I’d never lost a best friend. And, as far as I was concerned, Shane was no ordinary best friend. Shane McConkey was Superman, James Bond, Thomas Edison, Will Ferrell, and Jesus all wrapped into one. Oh, and to be fair, he had a little Urkel in him, too. Yes, he was kind of a geek, a geek with supernatural athletic ability, unprecedented vision, uninhibited humor, and an uncanny gift for making every single day of your life better just by being in his presence. Now that man was gone.
Perhaps a day or two after that fateful phone call, when I had a chance to come up for a breath, I realized we had a job to do. We had to share this treasure of a human with the world outside of our little skiing bubble. No one in action sports redefined possibility more than Shane. No one had more footage. No one made people laugh harder. Not one top tier athlete had singlehandedly revolutionized his sport’s equipment — twice (with the fat skis and rocker inventions) — like Shane did. It’s as if Kelly Slater was not only the clown prince of surfing but also invented the shortboard. And no one in action sports was as universally beloved. It was a no-brainer that the “McConkey” documentary simply had to be made. The team at MSP Films echoed my sentiments. We just needed funding, and word had it that the higher-ups at Red Bull gave the project the fastest green light ever.
We were flooded with 17 years worth of material from Shane’s prolific professional ski career, and nine years as a pro BASE jumper. And let me tell you, if you’re perplexed by skiers and snowboarders dorking out with their GoPros on the mountain in the worst of conditions, elevate your dork level tenfold when it comes to BASE jumpers. They shoot it all, and Shane was among the worst offenders. I’ve heard 1,000 hours worth of footage were amassed for this film, and I went through all of it. The most unfortunate thing is how much golden material had to hit the floor.
The earliest stages of the editing process undeniably hurt — rediscovering moments Shane and I shared so many years ago that I’d forgotten, and suppressing the anger that we couldn’t create any more memories. But over time, with the incessant exposure to someone who was the same person on celluloid as he was in real life, something spectacular happened that I hadn’t counted on. I was hanging out with Shane. Laughing along with him, studying ski lines, chilling on a boat deep in the British Columbia wilderness, or banging our heads to music on a windy road through Switzerland. For months on end, when I’d climb into bed after another late-night editing session, part of me was left with the comforting sensation that I’d just spent another quality day with my best friend. And, to steal one of Shane’s favorite maxims, that definitely did not suck.
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