I've always been a fiction filmmaker and I've been heading in the direction of fiction filmmaking, doing documentaries along the way.
Lucy WalkerThe world of extreme sports is also one of the big businesses. Kids might think that snowboarding is the ultimate freedom, but this freedom is being marketed to them by commercial sponsors.
Lucy WalkerExtreme sports tricks are becoming increasingly complex, the courses ever more challenging and crashes all too common.
Lucy WalkerThere's a theory of accidents that I studied when I was making a film about nuclear weapons: you can never eliminate accidents, because the measures you introduce to prevent accidents actually produce more accidents. That's certainly true of this sport; you're flying over 40 feet of what might look like snow, but it's hard as ice, it's as hard as pavement. You're doing acrobatic spins and tricks, 40 feet above pavement, essentially. There's been more accidents since, and there are going to continue to be more accidents, that's the nature of the sport.
Lucy WalkerI think we've reached that point where we understand medically what we are doing to ourselves with these sports. In football, it's kind of hard to get the access that you want for the story and, of course, it's very long-term: the effects of the repeat concussions really don't hit until decades afterwards, whereas the traumatic injuries in extreme sports are very immediate. I realized Traumatic Brain Injury was a fascinating and important story that not had been told very much. I wanted to know more.
Lucy Walker