Renewing Our Town Park

About the Film — and the Crew Behind It

Every fall, ski towns across the country kick off winter the same way: with the new Teton Gravity Research film. This year’s is “Actually, It Is Rocket Science,” TGR’s 31st annual ski film — and on Saturday, November 28, its 200-stop world tour comes to Ludlow, VT as a fundraiser for the Cavendish Town Park playground project. The film starts from a simple idea: before every drop, there’s a split second where the math has to be right — the speed, the angle, the landing you can’t see. TGR turns the mountain into a laboratory and lets the world’s best skiers run the experiment, testing speed, gravity, and instinct across Jackson Hole, Haines (Alaska), British Columbia, Japan, Finland, Andorra, and Montana — and right here in Vermont, at Jay Peak. The cast includes Kai Jones, Nick McNutt, Maggie Voisin, Karl Fostvedt, Parkin Costain, and Teal Harle, and the film has already picked up nominations at the iF3 Movie Awards, including Film of the Year.

Stills from the official promo.

Teton Gravity Research has been defining ski film for three decades. The company was founded in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, by brothers Todd and Steve Jones, who had worked as commercial fishermen and heli-ski guides in Alaska and poured their savings into camera gear. Their very first film, “The Continuum” (1996), won top honors at the International Ski and Snowboard Film Festival and was later inducted into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame. From those two brothers with a camera, TGR grew into one of the most influential names in action-sports media — more than 50 films, television series, and commercial work, shot on all seven continents.

Along the way came the films skiers still talk about: the Jeremy Jones trilogy “Deeper,” “Further,” and “Higher,” which traded helicopters for human-powered splitboarding expeditions into the most remote ranges on Earth (“Further” helped earn Jeremy Jones recognition as a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, and the “Higher” TV series was Emmy-nominated) — plus a beloved run of annual fall films including “High Life,” “Almost Ablaze,” “Tight Loose,” “Far Out,” “Magic Hour,” “Legend Has It,” and last year’s “Pressure Drop,” which marked TGR’s 30th year. A TGR premiere is a preseason ritual in ski country: a packed room, a lot of hooting at the screen, and giveaways from the sponsors.

It’s a fitting stop on the tour — a film with a Vermont segment, showing in Okemo’s hometown, on a night where every ticket helps build a new playground for Cavendish kids. Come get your winter started, and help Olivia’s project take its next step.