Warren Miller’s “Daymaker” Hits Lake Placid

Warren Miller Entertainment is back with its 73rd annual ski and snowboard film

When we were Lil’ ADKers, nothing got us more amped for ski season than a Warren Miller film. We dreamed of being able to ski like the experts down huge bowls and along steep spiines and ridges. Or doing gravity-defying tricks, jumps, and flips.

Warren Miller Entertainment, the company he founded in 1949, has been making a film a year since 1949.

Born in California in 1924, Warren Miller enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the age of 18, and served in the South Pacific. He was on leave for a Christmas vacation in 1944, when he first filmed skiing with a borrowed camera in Yosemite.

According to our favorite font of knowledge, Wikipedia, upon his discharge from the Navy in 1946, Miller bought his first 8mm movie camera, a Bell & Howell, costing $77 (equivalent to $1,179 in 2022). He and a friend, Ward Baker, moved to Sun Valley, Idaho, where they lived in a teardrop trailer in the Sun Valley ski resort parking lot and worked as ski instructors. We thought the footage from his moving was unbelievable, can you imagine living in a teardrop trailer?

Any, way In their free time, Miller and Baker filmed each other skiing to critique and improve their techniques. During the summers they shifted to the California coast, where they filmed each other surfing.

After Miller showed his skiing and surfing films with accompanying commentary to friends, he began receiving invitations to show and narrate them at parties. In 1949, he founded Warren Miller Entertainment [WME] and began producing one feature-length ski film per year. He lent money to rent halls and theaters and charged admission to his shows. He booked show halls near ski resorts so that he could film the next year's footage during the day and show the current film in the evening. Before long, he was showing his films in 130 cities a year.

Miller continued to head Warren Miller Entertainment until the late 1980s, when he sold the company to his son, Kurt Miller. Kurt later sold the company to Time, Inc., which sold it in 2007 to Bonnier Corporation, which was itself acquired by Active Interest Media in 2013. The company still produces a new film yearly, but Miller was not actively involved after 2004. He was 80. We think he deserved a break.

This leads us to the 2022 installment of WME films, “Daymaker,” making its Adirondack debut on December 17 at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts. Skiing with Warren Miller is the ultimate experience for any skiing enthusiast. Daymaker, the 73rd film in the amazing Warren Miller library, will take you on an adventure of a lifetime to breathtaking heights that will far surpass any mountain you have ever seen. Big names joining this epic journey include Crazy Karl Fostvedt, Katie Burrell, and Freeride World Tour competitors Hedvig Wessel and Lexi duPont. Viewers will also witness Snowmass come alive during winter with the National Brotherhood of Skiers in an amazing party you don't want to miss.

For showtimes and more information about the film, visit LPCA’s website. If you can’t make it to Lake Placid on 12/17, you can stream “Daymaker” on Outside.

And here’s a little sampling to get you amped up, too.