I asked you to film a part for The Uninvited ”in 2018 and things kind of picked up around then. That was right after I had been completely fucked out of a video part in something I had filmed for. I was pissed off about the way girls were just getting shafted, so when I saw you at the premiere I was like, “Should we make a movie?” Yeah, and I felt really good with my snowboarding at that time. I went on a trip to Kelowna. We went to this down-flat-down and I was try-ing to gap it and blew my knee again. I was devastated, depressed. What’s it like trying to raise a child while you’re feeling depressed? It was tough. Samuel and I had just split up too. It felt like I had way too much on my plate. And snowboarding is one of those things, when I don’t have it, I go a bit bananas. The breakup was really hard on me, and then the knee, and at the same time [doctors] thought I had bone cancer—they’d found a tumor in my hip bone. I had MRIs done in Vancouver and I was waiting for the results, and there were more tumors in some of my other bones. I was like, “Am I going to die now?” The tumors ended up being a rare disease I have called melorheostosis. I develop tumors in some of my bones sometimes. Then [doctors] have to go in and slice them off. You blew your knee and Darrah [Reid] also got hurt, and in a big way I felt that I had made the project for you two, because I was sick of trying to give you advice when the advice was going to go nowhere. So, I decided to make The Uninvited a two-year project. You came back your second year without an ACL. I was so scared that I was going to blow it again right away, so I took it mellow. I went to a few spots and I was like, “No, too hard impact; no, that’s too high.” That’s good you were smart about it. How did you feel when your part played, and you saw people ripping their eyeballs out and screaming your name? I was so overwhelmed. I don’t like to be the center of attention. Thank god I was drinking a bottle of tequila. “Calgary, AB, 2018, while filming for The Uninvited . The in-run for this rail was on a street with a very slight downhill so we had to build 10 pump bumps, which were a fun challenge going switch. It took me all day to land it. Kennedi Deck was there all day helping me fix the pump bumps after cars had run them over, and giving me shovel pulls for speed.”—Maria Thomsen Screen grab: Courtesy Jess Kimura That part won the Transworld Women’s Part of the Year. Then you were asked to film for X Games Real Snow. That’s the first time in history they’ve asked a girl to film for it. Although you’ve basically made it to the top, you were still having trouble getting the support you needed to do these things. Was that frustrating? Yeah, I was a little bit bummed, but I also didn’t want to be. I still just love to snowboard, and I just do it—I don’t do it for money. Just because I succeed in one thing doesn’t mean that I’m going to think that I’m the shit. Nothing really changed that much. One day, you’re going to look back and think, “Damn, what were those people thinking, I was a gold mine.” And you are a gold mine. It’s not just the fact that you are a mom, but that you are a mom and you ride. And you’re not just participating, you’re pushing the entire field. Yeah, I feel like what’s driving me more is pushing the sport. Support is good, and I was thinking about it for the X Games, too. It was literally a one-man show. It was me and Dave [Walcer], my filmer. If I had had a bigger budget, it could’ve been a lot easier than it was. It was the toughest thing I’ve ever done. You only hit spots with natural speed because you didn’t have someone to pull the bungee or run the winch. How far into filming were you when you fractured your hip? The first week. I only had one shot, which we never even used. 066 THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL
The Snowboarder's Journal frequency 17.2: Page 66
