Wow! This all sounds similar to what CCR went through.
The Restless Native sums up the history and the current state of affairs. Essentially it means Warren Miller is out of the ski film business even though it seems he is not quite ready to exit:
It might seem obvious that no less an expert than Warren Miller would have a good idea what made Warren Miller films click. The formula was simple: Re-create on film the agony/ecstasy experience of snow sports by mixing spectacular action photography from exotic locales with footage of epic crashes and hilarious chairlift bloopers — all of it carried along by Miller’s voice.
But amazingly, a clash emerged.
In broad terms, Miller’s films had a breezy, dry-witted style with equal appeal to beginners and experts, kids and adults. WME wanted more extreme action, set to a driving rock and hip-hop beat, and humor that, in more recent years, seemed more “Jackass” than slapstick.
You know, I do not care much for most ski films, as Brian Landrigan coined the term ski-pr0n to describe the state of most ski films and how the films he features at his ski film festival are not along those lines. However, most ski films are just clips of people skiing and ski follies. A lot of nightclubs around my area will play these films in a corner of the establishment while the dance music is going (or whatever music people are dancing to) and I watch, but I will not seek out such films or go out of my way for any of them. I was hoping to get to the MWSFF not so much to watch the films but as a way to get my name out and network with others in the ski industry.
So what is it I really value about Warren Miller? His writing, plain and simple, he can take the most trivial aspect of skiing and turn it into something monumental enough for a magazine article or back-page. He also has a lifetimes worth of stories from bear trap bindings, wood skis, rope-tows being state-of-art all the way up to the current day. As a pioneer in ski films he has managed to meet a large number of the shakers and movers in the world as well as in the nation and film industry.
Keep writing Warren!
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