Deep dive: Film explores roots of BASE jumping
BASE jumping has become a familiar extreme sport. There is, however, some debate as to the sanity of the people who parachute off cliffs, tall buildings and radio masts.
A new documentary opening in Minnesota this weekend profiles the man considered the father of BASE jumping.
"Sunshine Superman" is the story of Carl Boenish, an electrical engineer who fell in love with skydiving and then became famed as a leading advocate of leaping off high structures.
"Well, we are kinda used to people calling us crazy," Boenish says in an archived interview in the film. "But, at least in our opinion we're not crazy. We are basically fun-loving adventurers."
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Director Marah Strauch came to Boenish's story through a late uncle — a filmmaker and BASE jumper who left a collection of movies he'd made of his own jumps.
Strauch also found films by Boenish and wanted to learn more.
"He had a kind of Pied Piper, inspirational role in these people's lives," she said. "He was an iconoclast and a leader, and an innovator."
Boenish saw himself as a filmmaker first.
"Interestingly enough, if it weren't for the camera, at least I personally probably wouldn't be that interested in skydiving," he says in another archived interview. "The camera captures something not only for ourselves but for everybody."
Strauch believes Boenish was driven to inspire people to reach their own goals.
Boenish became an aerial photographer and his expertise strapping heavy 16 mm cameras to skydiving helmets got him work in Hollywood.
Soon, he was applying his skills to the new sport of BASE jumping, which Strauch says started in part because the gas shortages of the 1970s affected skydiving planes as well as cars.
"It was expensive," she said. "And they realized that they could jump off of buildings and off of cliffs, and this was another way to parachute."
The term BASE jump is an acronym for "building, antenna, span and earth" — all launching points for the jumpers.
Boenish and his friends stressed careful preparation and safety procedures. Some of the early jumps were from the top of El Capitan, a towering cliff face in Yosemite National Park.
The film captures the jumper's exhilaration, but also the official unease from the park rangers who tried to stop it.
"There was no law against BASE jumping off a cliff," Strauch said, "because there wasn't BASE jumping."
The jumps attracted international attention, but the scrutiny prompted the National Park Service to declare BASE jumping illegal — a fact underscored recently when celebrated climber and BASE jumper Dean Potter died during an illegal jump in Yosemite.
The question of legality followed the BASE jumpers as they began to use high buildings. Strauch said they argued there was no law against what they were doing, only where they did it from.
"Buildings, a lot of other objects that BASE jumpers jump of off, there's no law against it but trespassing," she said. "So BASE jumping itself is not illegal."
Marah Strauch got footage of those early jumps from Jean Boenish, Carl's widow. She had a trove of films which sat untouched in her home for three decades.
As BASE jumping moved to buildings and towers it was often Jean who talked to the media. Strauch says the pair complemented each other.
"I think it was a beautiful love story," she said. "I don't think I would have made the film if it had just been about BASE jumping ... The core of this film is about their relationship."
Boenish died in 1984 after a botched jump off a 3,500 foot cliff in Norway called the Troll Wall. His legacy lives on in the sport he championed.
As she worked on the film, Strauch said Boenish taught her "a lot about what it means to live your life authentically and with purpose."
While she's interested in BASE jumpers, Strauch says she has no interest in trying the sport herself. As a filmmaker she believes that makes her the perfect person to explain the attraction to people who would never dream of doing it.
If you go
Sunshine Superman
Where: Lagoon Theater, 1320 Lagoon Avenue, Minneapolis
When: Opens Friday