Two blue-collar guys from Detroit pack up and move to Aspen to become ski instructors. Like the VHS box read, it’s pretty much Top Gun on Skis. A really good Top Gun on Skis.
Writer-director Patrick Hasburgh had been one of those Aspen ski instructors himself. He moved there in 1971, spent years on the mountain before co-created 21 Jump Street and Hardcastle and McCormick with Stephen J. Cannell. By the time he circled back to make a movie about it, he was basically filming his own twenties.
It was his one and only feature. And one of his old ski pupils turned out to be Michael Eisner, which probably didn’t hurt when it came time to find a distributor.
This is where I first discovered Paul Gross, who went back to Canada after this and became a national treasure after starring in Due South – even earning the Order of Canada. And Peter Berg, who I first noticed in Wes Craven’s Shocker, had actually appeared on Hasburgh’s own 21 Jump Street before getting cast here. He went on to direct Friday Night Lights and Lone Survivor, so not a bad CV for the second banana in a little ski movie that bombed.
Aspen Extreme never found much of an audience in theaters, but skiers adopted it the way surfers adopted Point Break, pulling it out every fall to get ready for the season. It’s a movie that still survives on recognition rather than reviews. -Pop
Aspen Extreme slalom’d on home video today in 1993, after a January 22nd theatrical release.