Warren Miller: The Godfather of Holy Sh*t

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Outside Magazine November 2004

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Warren Miller
The Godfather of Holy Sh*t (cont.)

BESIDES, HE'S GIVEN plenty back. Miller has devoted his formidable drive to making the world better by sharing his passion: the pursuit of freedom through sports. His do-it-now instincts never flag, even when he's at home on Orcas Island, north of Seattle in the San Juans.

The spartan public ferry taking me there is less glamorous than the private jet we flew to Montana, but it's a gorgeous July day, and Orcas is bucolic and unassuming—an undeveloped Pacific Nantucket. The road to Miller's place meanders past fruit orchards and grazing horses.

"Living here has added 15 years to my life," Miller says, greeting me at his handsome Arts and Crafts house, with its Asian rooflines and cedar shingles. The backyard slopes down to a cold blue finger of Puget Sound, where Miller keeps his favorite toys—a skipjack, two kayaks, and a 47-foot yacht. "Sometimes I think it's pretentious," Miller confesses, "but I've grown to love it. I often think, What have I done to deserve all this?"

Miller's next book is a humorous look at how not to age. He would love to become our national spokesman for habitual youth, and he's hoping this book will start a new tack in his career, particularly since his future in film looks uncertain.

Miller's next book is a humorous look at how not to age. He would love to become our national spokesman for habitual youth, a new tack in his career.

Miller's current contract to write and narrate movies expires in December. He feels he's been steadily marginalized since he sold the company, and under Time Warner's management the process is only accelerating. "What bothers me," he says, "is that they're showing too much extreme stuff and not enough giggling. Without my voice, it's just guys turning their skis right and left."

When I ask Perkins Miller (no relation), vice president of Mountain Sports Media—the Time Warner subsidiary that now runs Warren Miller Entertainment—whether Impact will be the last film Miller will narrate, he answers, "That hasn't been determined. We're looking forward to having a conversation with him this fall..." Then his voice trails off. "Unless he's told you this is his last film."

Whatever his next role, Warren Miller will always have his finger on the young pulse of action sports. He feels, as he likes to put it, "like a 14-year-old trapped in a senior citizen's body." He drives me to the new state-of-the-art $225,000 skate park he started building on Orcas after raising just $65,000. "I said, ‘If we dig the hole, the money will come,' " Miller says in mock-Confucian tones. "And it did."

The park is thrumming with kids going huge and pumping up and down smooth concrete walls. Miller waves to a 12-year-old on the far side.

"Hey, Warren!" the kid shouts.

"Where's the camera, Tyler?" Miller asks.

"Forgot to bring it today," the boy says sheepishly. "But I've been filming every day this summer."

Miller was watching Tyler skate one day and thought he had potential. He met Tyler's mom, a housekeeper on the island, and learned she was raising him on her own. So he gave Tyler a video camera and said, "See what you can do with this." It was a pay-it-forward gesture from a man whose early circumstances mirrored Tyler's and whose own life was changed every time someone believed in him. "Put the right tools in kids' hands, and good things happen," Miller says.

He drives home the long way, showing me a few other pet projects: a BMX park and a YMCA summer camp, which he recently outfitted with a fleet of secondhand sailboats. Later, we're getting ready to take Miller's yacht to his favorite seafood joint, over on San Juan Island. As we grab our coats, we stand in his den, gazing at a ten-foot wall covered with photographs of family and friends, politicians and ski heroes. There's Warren filming from atop a greasy gondola a thousand feet above Chamonix, and cooking rabbit stew with Ward Baker. I get the feeling there are many more pictures to come.

"It's been fun so far!" he says, jingling the keys to his yacht. "Let's get going!"

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