When Dick Barrymore stopped making ski films, he “retired” to the sunny beaches of southern Mexico. Today, when not at his other pad on the Idaho side of the Tetons, Barrymore’s most famous protégé, Greg Stump, calls Maui home. For these legendary filmmakers, there must be something in the palm trees and warm water that provides the yin to the subfreezing yang.

Stump is ostensibly rehabbing a bum knee in the tropics, but he’s far from retired. In mid-May he revealed to The Ski Journal that he’s working on his first major ski feature since making Fistful of Moguls with Glen Plake and Jonny Mosely in 1999. The working title alone of the new film should get die-hard Stump fans excited. Legends of Aahhhs will be far more than a follow-up to 1988’s landmark release The Blizzard of Aahhhs. Stump is dreaming big, as in winning the Sundance Film Festival. He says his new movie—which will feature skiing but will transcend the sport and be more of a cultural documentary—will have the ammo to gun down the competition.

So, the question on everyone’s mind… What is Clodumbia Invades America?

[Laughs] I was a paperboy when I was a kid, and the first thing I did with my money was buy a regular 8 mm camera and a little 2-reel editing splicer at Kmart. My dad bought a bunch of film for me under the condition that I would film our family vacation. So we all left on a cross-country road trip but instead of filming my family, my brother, Geoff, and I decided that I would basically film him acting like a retard at all these national parks. His character was “Clodumbia” and he was invading America’s treasures by acting like an idiot. The funny thing is, I still use a lot of the abstract angles and film techniques I used back then.

That was in 1971 according to the filmography on your new Web site (www.gregstumpproductions.com). How old were you?

Geoff was nine and I was ten. We were visionaries.

And now you’re rubbing shoulders with Willie Nelson and Tony Hawk…

What can I say.

Regarding the new project, Legends of Aahhhs, when will it release?

It will come out in fall of 2008. We’re in the middle of securing investors and sponsors right now, and I’m doing a lot of writing and pre-editing. My mom and I have saved every image, every article, basically everything about my films and skiing and this whole “extreme” phenomenon over the years so we have a lot of media to use. I’ve also been dreaming up the music segments. It will be a great soundtrack.

Will Legends be a "Blizzard of Aahhhs II," or something different?

It will be different. It’s basically a semi-autobiographical look back at the rise of the concept of “extreme” and the way it has been documented on film. So yeah, there will be a lot of my own and Bruce Benedict’s footage for sure, including some great stuff from the archives people haven’t seen before, but we’re going to way back before the ‘70s and ‘80s, starting with Nazi Germany and the 1936 Berlin Olympics to examine some of the action film techniques used by Leni Riefenstahl, which at the time were revolutionary. The way she used the camera to follow athletes around and show the events from different angles was incredibly new at the time.

You say you’re going to go on a “house by house” search for the “culprits” who “transformed the smoldering rubble of freestyle skiing into the ten-ton monster that became ‘extreme.’" Does this mean the original players—Glen Plake, Mike Hattrup, Scot Schmidt, and others—will make cameos?

Yes. But the film will also trace the rise of an entire industry and culture that grew out of the “extreme” movement. People like Steve Rectschaffner, who was at Swatch when I got started back in the early ‘80s. He started off with a tiny budget just like I did and our businesses grew together over the years. He’s just one example. Look at Seal. When I made Groove Requiem he didn’t even know his music was in a ski movie. People would come up to him and say, “Man, I love that new ski movie you did,” and he’d be like, “Huh?” Same with Trevor Horn at ZTT. Legends will show how all these different friendships and business relationships grew over the years and ultimately culminated in a marketing force that went way beyond any of us and resulted in things like “extreme” burritos and deodorant. Plus we’ll show the effect it had on contemporary skiers like Micah Black, who I share a house with in Victor [Idaho], Jeremy Nobis, etc.

Can you believe it’s been 20 years since you made Blizzard?

No, I can’t believe it. It’s crazy. I made Blizzard when I was 27, and I’m 46 now. I’m fat and I have gray hair. No, I’m not that fat, but if I’m not careful I’m gonna be. Since that time I’ve had a lot of good experiences and met a lot of fun, crazy people. Here in Maui I basically hang with powerful women and Vikings.

Do you ever get tired of people telling you how much they enjoy your movies?

No! I love it. It’s really rewarding. Ultimately I was making the movies for myself, but it’s gratifying that others can relate to them so much. It’s really something to have someone come up to you and say, “Your movie changed my life.” I think my films brought a form of escapism to the forefront. People, especially those who grew up in the east like I did, realized they didn’t have to be a banker or broker. They could go chase their dreams. Of course, being a banker does go a long way toward helping you afford skiing…

So what’s your favorite Greg Stump film?

Groove Requiem walks a really delicate political line. I had to be careful because of the world climate at that time. I also like P-Tex, Lies, and Duct tape. It’s just a happy movie, people really enjoying themselves.

And your least favorite?

The Good, The Rad, and The Gnarly never really clicked in my opinion. And I know a lot of people didn’t like Dr. Strangeglove, but I think there are some good elements in there. I remember sitting on the marquee at the Seattle showing and hearing two guys debate the movie down on the street below. One guy says, “That sucked!” The other guy says, “That was rad!” It was like my own little “Tastes great, less filling” moment.

Do you still use film, or have you switched to digital?

I use both. It depends on the situation. But there are tricks you can use with digital equipment to make it look every bit as good as film. For Legends we’ll use both digital and 16 and 35 mm film.

Outside of ski cinema, who is your favorite director?

Probably Terry Gilliam. I’m a huge fan of Brazil and The Fisher King.

Finally, is it true that you never wanted Glen Plake in your movies?

At first, yes. I didn’t want anything to do with him. We were such opposites. People used to tease me that I was just like Michael J. Fox in Family Ties. I was never a Republican like that, I’ve always voted Democrat, but I was pretty clean cut when I started out. Plake was trouble from the start, but obviously it ended up being good for both of us. I started hanging out with Glen and I guess I got used to him.