Portland Premiere Season: Bonfire’s Fall Tour

Once upon a time the term “snowboard video premiere” actually meant that it was the first time a movie was shown. But like so many terms in the English language, “premier” seems to have lost its meaning. In snowboarding it has come to represent anytime a movie is shown on screen bigger than say 52″ for a crowd of more than four or five people. It’s so overused that there are movie premier tours and one for each of the 200 new snowboard releases that come out each year. They move from city to city, venue to venue, and while some maverick film makers opt to skip the first stop of the tour in San Diego and show the movie for the actual first time in a random place like Jackson Hole or Portland, everyone else pretty much follows each other around.

This week it seems, the movie premier circuit has embarked on my fair city of Portland. It started last weekend with Forum or Against ‘Em (one of the rogue films I already mentioned) and continued on Thursday with Bonfire and Monster Energy’s Fall Tour featuring Pirate Movie Productions Overseas and Runway’s See What I See. Apparently Friday night Mack Dawg’s Double Decade is showing somewhere, but I’ve seen enough big screen snowboarding, and honestly, I only went to this one because there was free beer.

Unfortunately, the hard-asses at the OLCC wouldn’t let Bonfire tap into the four kegs until 10 pm, which meant over an hour of watching snowboard videos sober. Runway’s film was up first. If I’m being honest, for the first ten or so minutes, I was really fearing what I would have to say about this movie. It started off, well, slow. And not being the biggest proponent of women’s snowboarding, I feared things might get worse. Then something magical happened. Around the time of Jamie Anderson’s part, the movie found its groove. I suddenly got it: yeah it wasn’t the most epic snowboarding in a video this season, but it did a great job of showing the lifestyle and telling the story of snowboarding. It was edited well, had good, complimentary music, and enough variety to keep things interesting. I must say, it was fun to watch.

Then started Overseas. The Euro movie was very, Euro. It had its moments, but about 20 minutes in I heard some randoms behind me start the countdown until they started serving beer. I don’t know if it was the Euro thrash soundtrack or the excessive number of front and backflips, but yeah, beer would have helped. Luckily it was long enough that it filled the time until 10 and soon after the credits rolled the crowd was forced outside so that big dudes with flashlights could check everyone’s IDs.

Two long lines (one to get back in and one to get a beer) and then the real party started. Drinking, dancing, etc. This is where my story will really start to get cliche so I am going to end it here. You get the point anyway. This is what, the 500th story you’ve read about a video premier so far this year?

If you feel like my story didn’t do this event justice, well never fear. This was just the first stop of the tour so be sure to check it out when it comes to a city near you.