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They had a perfect moment in time.
That's as much as that cliff
was going to give them.
I'm glad that she got in her car
and drove off.
Because if she would have hung out
any longer,
it was like the entire mountain
was going to fall on top of her.
That cliff had it out for them
or something.
I don't know what it was but it just
didn't end well for the Boenishes.
Nothing happens by chance.
Every single thing that ever happens,
happens for a reason.
Happens due to the law of the universe.
And it's just incumbent upon me
to figure out enough
what those laws are and obey those laws.
I feel that when I jump off a cliff,
I'm obeying those laws of the universe,
including gravity.
- Ready?
- I'm ready.
OK. Four, three, two, one, go.
We've moved over to the mid-point
of our newsroom
to get away from
the mainstream news of the day
and look at some more unusual things
going on.
Of course, I have been the one
with the more unusual things going on
for most of the day.
One of them is the growing fad
of parachuting from skyscrapers.
Especially here in Los Angeles. And you
pursued that yesterday afternoon.
Downtown Los Angeles is a natural
for this sort of thing.
In particular, the high-rise
construction boom is a big attraction.
Because the unfinished buildings
usually have little security,
jumpers can make it secretly
to the top and make their jumps.
Not too many years ago, this sport
wouldn't have worked in Los Angeles
because there were no true
high-rise buildings.
But now several buildings
are above 50 stories tall
and skyscraper skydiving is a big sport.
It is also illegal.
We almost feel like we're
astronauts walking on the moon.
It just gives us a feeling of power
and of joy.
We want to share it with the world
but every time we try to,
people can't relate because,
in a sense, it's out of their realm.
When I first started this story,
I thought that's a crazy thing.
Why would anyone want to do that?
But after talking for a while
with those people
and hearing the thrill they get from it,
I have to admit it's a little tempting.
- No!
- Only a little, but it is.
Doofus!
My guest's name rhymes with Danish.
His name is Carl Boenish.
You are a cinematographer, A,
but you are, B, a cliff jumper.
I want to say that again
so people know I meant to say it.
Cliff jumper. You jump off cliffs, Carl.
You do do that?
Yes, I do, Pat.
One of my mottos is
there's no future in growing up.
I just never want to grow up.
Most people, I guess they grow old.
I don't want to grow old or grow up.
I don't want to be childish.
But I think there are a lot of virtues
in being childlike.
Because if you study a child, he hasn't
been taught what he can't do.
- We all do a lot of praying.
- You do pray?
I think a lot of this comes
from a metaphysical basis, even.
A spiritual basis.
I think that the biggest aspect to why
I do this is for rejuvenation.
Because if I can master these goals, it
improves every other department in life.
I think that if a group of people
can watch me jump off a building
and be successful, they can say,
"Well, I probably don't want to do that
but maybe I could bowl
that perfect 300 game."
He was a guy that was everything
and everywhere all at once.
And he had this crazy infectious
enthusiasm. And he would laugh.
And he would fly over to the piano
and play some classical riffs
and then he would talk about
quantum mechanics.
And then he would get a little weepy
and then he'd wax nostalgic
about some job that he had.
Then we'd go out
and jump on the trampoline.
It was like a stream of consciousness.
Half from hell and half from, you know,
some better world somewhere.
I mean, it was really an interesting
kind of thing being around this guy.
Our father's name was Carl.
And Ronnie was Carl,
so at home, we always called him Ronnie.
My brother got polio
from a polio vaccine.
They weren't sure he was going to live.
But he survived it.
And for his recovery he was in
a wheelchair and couldn't walk.
His legs were really weak.
So he spent his time
playing the piano.
When he had polio, he missed
a whole year of elementary school.
But once he finally got cleared
and could go back to school,
he challenged every boy in his class
one at a time
until he could beat them
in a foot race.
And he beat every one of them.
He talked to me a lot about
his birth mother leaving.
And I think that touched him deeply.
Then he was in high school
and he was, you know,
very intellectual
and always doing his calculus.
So he had just finished college
when I was born
and started working for Hughes Aircraft
as an electrical engineer.
Once he got into skydiving
he just changed.
They're always pulling you in.
You're part of a group.
You have to fly together.
So he changed completely.
You used to be an engineer.
Pretty safe, secure type job.
When and how did you make
the decision to give that all up
and go into doing this,
what you like to do, full time?
It's funny.
My boss at Hughes Aircraft told me,
"Carl, the man who knows how
will always have a job."
"The man who knows why
will be his boss."
And at that time I knew how to design
electrical circuits.
I knew how to skydive.
But I knew why to skydive
much better than I knew
why the electronic circuits worked.
OK, new sheet of paper.
New heading entitled The Gypsy Moths.
He was working at Hughes Aircraft.
And he got the opportunity
to do Gypsy Moths.
And that was a big MGM production.
I was asked by MGM
to be in charge of the aerial free-fall
filming sequences.
John Frankenheimer,
the director who created
the excitement of Grand Prix,
now captures the drama and spectacle
of the death-defying game called
skydiving in The Gypsy Moths.
So he went and took the Gypsy Moths job
and that was the end
of his electrical engineering career.
I didn't know how I wanted
to film the aerial sequences.
I had to experiment
and try all kinds of things.
And I had to find really young guys
who were willing to do that.
Pull it! Pull it!
Carl was an innovator. He was
probably the only one in Hollywood,
or the area, that was known
for free-fall photography.
Background of Carl Boenish
and his films.
Carl Boenish's early start.
He has been able to put off going back
to work two months at a time
such that for over the last ten years,
he's never had to go back to work,
and is accustomed to making film
payments instead of car payments.
As it's worked out in the past,
Carl Boenish usually spends
about two years
to make one 15-minute film.
If you were jumping with Boenish,
it was expected
that you'd wear a helmet-mounted camera
or possibly two.
Carl's main focus was to share
the wealth. Share that feeling.
To share the feeling with people
that didn't understand it,
that thought we were absolutely crazy
to do something like this.
But once you see it
and see the beauty of it,
I think people tend to understand
the motive.
I've been skydiving for 18 years now
and I've been filmmaking
for just as long.
Primarily, I consider myself a filmmaker
first and a skydiver second.
So whatever he did, he wanted to capture
on film the best way he could.
I think he wanted to show the humanity,
the freedom, that is felt
when you are pushing the envelope of
what the human spirit can accomplish.
Yosemite is beautiful.
It's breathtaking.
Many people cry when they first see it.
It's beyond their expectation,
beyond their experience.
I was the chief ranger in
Yosemite National Park.
And my job was protection.
So protecting the park from the people
and the people from the park
and the people from the people.
Where did you get the inclination
to jump off a cliff?
Well, this comes from making
1500 parachute jumps over 15 years
and becoming so proficient at it
that you wonder,
well, what else is out there?
El Capitan.
3,600 feet of polished granite
rising from California's
Yosemite Valley.
For climbers, its vertical ascent
is one of the great challenges
of North America.
A group of professional parachuters
traveled to this unique spot
to experience flight.
When I organized the first load
to go to El Capitan,
we spent nearly all summer there,
four or five trips,
scouting of the geography, finding,
hopefully, places suitable to jump.
Then we stumbled upon
this really idyllic place
that's about 3,000 feet tall
with an overhang
of a couple hundred feet.
And as soon as I saw it I yelled,
"Eureka!"
The pioneers of this remarkable
attempt
are skydivers Kent Lane and Tom Stark.
Along with Kenny Gosselin, Mike Sherrin
and helper Sally Wenlzel.
Expedition leader Carl Boenish
with Dave Blattell.
Carl, on his own, was doing
a lot of research on El Cap.
He then asked me
to help him with the filming of it.
I wanted to figure out a way,
if possible,
to film a person running off a cliff.
But from a vantage point
looking back toward the cliff.
The first jumps were going to be made
off El Cap
and Carl wanted to get
motion-picture footage
of the first jumpers running towards him
jumping off the cliff
and then that way he could then follow
them down as they were in free fall.
Actually, I made a homemade ladder
that's about 20 feet long
out of aluminum.
I perched on the end of this ladder
so I could film toward the cliff.
It was a long pole.
And it had some crosspieces on it
to kind of make it like
a little bit of a ladder.
When it was set up
by the rock climbers on El Cap,
it was just this rod sticking out
from the mountain
with a little bicycle seat.
And if you were going to sit on
that bicycle seat,
there's nothing between you
and 3,000 feet below you.
I mean, it was just nothing.
He would go out there...
and then he'd have to get up the nerve
and swing 180
so that he could sit on that seat.
He was nuts.
He was absolutely nuts.
Then you would hear his laugh
and you were guaranteed
that he was nuts.
And he talked us into jumping off
this thing.
So we're all nuts.
We were all young and not knowing
any better. We're ready to go.
Kent Lane,
first jumper off of the first trip.
Two and a half years' jumping,
600 jumps.
My name is Kent Lane.
The first time I heard about it,
it sounded like really a neat thing
to do.
I was scared to death.
When I was out on this ladder,
I'd make sure everyone was ready.
And I would start the countdown.
Five, four, three, two, one, go!
I saw a wall, a huge granite wall,
accelerating right next to me.
When you exit off of a cliff,
there's no wind to work with.
And so how you go off
is how you're going to stay
for the next four or five seconds.
Can't wait to do it again.
And so once we got down
on the ground
we had ground crew
that took our gear
and they placed them under rocks
or under logs. It is all mapped out.
We were all dressed up as hikers.
All we did was we'd land and stood
and ground crew changed us
from skydiver to hiker.
And then we just, you know, dispersed.
We were entirely successful
in all our cliff jumps
because I feel that we were
constantly led by the idea
that we were glorifying mankind's
beautiful spirit of seeking adventure
and that we were within our rights of
freedom and dominium over all the Earth.
There are many man-made laws that aren't
laws at all that need to be broken.
One is a belief that it's impossible
to jump off a cliff.
I felt the activity
I thought was exciting.
And to do it off of El Cap
just trigged my imagination.
I thought that was wonderful.
I didn't feel adversarial,
but it didn't keep me
from doing my job at times.
It didn't seem
like it was going to stop.
How do you herd a bunch of cats?
We had word that there were
going to be cliff jumpers
coming into the top of El Cap.
And it was against the law.
This is a cat-and-mouse part of it.
A couple weeks later
when Carl and I went back
and we jumped off,
I got caught by the ranger.
I was the first person ever caught
for BASE jumping in Yosemite.
Tom Stark, Dave Blattell
and Jill Morgan got citations.
I was an attorney for
the Federal Government.
So I couldn't represent them.
But I did a lot of pro bono work
for them
and we were trying to challenge
their park's regulation.
Speaking of El Capitan, there have been
some controversies around that.
Apparently the park did not want people
jumping off their cliffs.
Yeah. That's true. And we can
certainly see their point of view.
But they just didn't understand.
In fact, they couldn't even believe
that we just jumped off.
Basically, we will just jump off
and fall for ten seconds
and fall over a thousand feet.
I found most of the jumpers
very agreeable.
Carl was special. You kind of have
an instinct about the ringleaders.
He was easy to remember.
He had this aura of life.
You don't have to dislike someone
to take away their freedom.
My name is Carl Boenish.
I'm expedition of this leader.
Cut.
The park ranger at the time
that issued these citations
was aware that Carl was involved in it.
What did you say
with respect to the filming?
OK, they asked me, you know,
whose equipment it was
and first of all they said,
"Where is Carl?"
You know, I mean,
where is Carl Boenish?
- Really?
- Yeah. They're out for blood.
Somehow we got involved with rangers.
The film was confiscated.
Carl was very concerned about his film.
One of those what was there
was the park ranger
that sort of had this vendetta
against Carl
and they continued to press
the litigation aspect.
We don't want to be limited
by anything except nature.
We always have to listen
to nature's laws.
But not necessarily man's laws.
The US Magistrate, Don Pitts,
he was kind of tired of seeing
this parade of cliff jumpers coming in.
So he was throwing the book at him.
I know that the park ranger
was really trying to focus on Carl.
I don't mind being called paranoid,
if that's what you want
to call it or me.
I do admit to being extreme and radical.
And I feel that I'm justified
in being extremely radical
if it's based on truth and principle.
I believe that truth is radical.
My time with Carl ended
at the beginning of '79.
You were either all in or,
you know, there were challenges.
At some level he was really trying
to kind of close that gap
of getting that unconditional,
forever love by his side.
The fact that Carl was around
40 years old and not married
told me that he either wasn't
interested in women
or not interested in marriage.
He was a geek, a nerd, everything
you can imagine in that scope.
I wouldn't say he was popular
with the ladies.
I know that when it came to Jeanie,
something really captured him about her.
His whole life just changed
and the focus of his life was Jeanie.
Those of us who met Carl,
anybody, would go away
with part of his goodness,
it becomes a part of you.
And whenever
anybody expresses goodness,
it travels away with that person.
Carl and I first met in April of 1979.
I was a sophomore at Pomona College.
Carl was showing his most recent film,
which was Skydive.
Afterwards, he had us get in a circle.
He said, "Everybody stand up.
Get in a circle and hold hands."
So the group of us stood up and
held hands the way he had requested.
We're thinking, "This is a bit odd.
Where is he going with this?"
And, of course, he just wanted us
to experience the position
that skydivers would be in
when they came into a star formation.
His purity
was a very attractive quality.
And everybody recognized that.
When we were all departing,
I saw another girl was talking to him
and giving him her phone number.
And I thought, well, she's very
interested. So I just let it be.
It had been fun to see Carl's movie.
It was nice to meet
and talk with a parachutist.
I wanted to pursue this somehow.
And I thought to myself, "I know Carl."
I believe that I wrote him a letter,
actually.
He ended up calling me
and telling me,
"I'll come out and get you.
It's right on the way to drop zone."
And this ended up being our first date.
Carl and I talked a lot
going out to the drop zone.
It was a long drive.
We talked about things
that we believed in.
Principles that we held to.
While we were at the drop zone
Carl said, "Let's have a foot race."
And I thought, "OK."
I think we were running
next to the airplane
as the airplane
was starting to take off.
It was just something
that came to him to do.
I guess maybe in a sense,
it was just a gauge.
A gauge of possibilities.
It had gotten late in the day
after our day at the drop zone
and it was a long drive back.
Carl had told me that
his sister had her house
right there at Lake Elsinore
and that she wasn't home.
He said it will be fine
if we just spent the night there.
So he said,
"Well, you can sleep here on the couch
and I'll go sleep in the bedroom
where I usually do."
After a couple of hours
he came in and said,
"Can I lie down here
beside you on the floor?"
Then I said, "Well, that's OK."
"That's OK."
Then he said, "Can I hold your hand?"
And so I said, "Yeah."
And so he was lying there
parallel to me
and we're holding hands
and that's the way we spent the night.
In a matter of just a few weeks,
we covered all the ground
that each of us felt was necessary
to figure out if we were sufficiently
compatible to start a life together.
It wasn't start a relationship,
live together, any of that.
It was start a life together,
get married.
You're about to get married in a week.
Yes. I'm very excited about that.
Does your fiance jump off cliffs?
Well, not yet. She would like to.
Since we met, she's made eight skydives
and she has a natural affinity
for the air.
I think she's going to be
a very fine skydiver.
She didn't seem like
the skydiver type to me.
I remember she wore this
red and yellow and blue bright clothes.
And she kind of looked like she worked
at the little hot-dog stand
where they dip the hot dogs.
This girl just does not look like
a skydiver.
More than once, people at
the drop zone pegged me as a librarian
and some as a nun.
They were trying to figure out
where I was coming from.
There's this psychologist named Jung.
And he always talked about
the marriage of opposites, right?
And if you wanted
the diametric opposite of Carl Boenish
that would be Jean Boenish.
I had that thoughtful demeanor,
and Carl did too.
We were both very analytical,
very detail oriented,
and interested in
an intelligent approach to everything.
We were two people who were
a very good coupling. A unique coupling.
We were very well fit for each other
and we loved each other very much.
And now, ladies and gentlemen,
here we are.
I am interviewing you live
from the church of the marriage
of Jean and Carl Boenish.
Jean, would you like to come here
and say a word? Quick. Hurry, hurry.
We ran out of tape. And this is...
Alright, one word. I don't know
what I've gotten myself into.
- One word is, "I do!"
- Those are two words.
When I was considering
BASE jumping,
when it was presented to me by Carl,
it was something that struck me
as pleasant as camping.
One of the most interesting and
incomprehensible love stories ever.
But they got along great.
She was sort of the brains
of the operation.
So I was marrying into
his established business
and joining him in partnership
as the team.
Fifteen seconds!
Camera goes on at five. Here you go.
Five, four, three, two, one, go!
There she goes!
Alright!
It was a wonderful thing for both of us
to begin our life
working together on a daily basis.
Beautiful. Perfect form. Man.
Hey, Carl. it went really well.
Let me tell you something, though.
It takes more than four seconds to open.
Well, at least the count of four
when you're scared.
Roger. I copy. Yeah, I'll tell you...
You had such flawless form.
You were rock steady.
Everything went mint.
You make a hard act to follow, Jeanie.
That was flawless stability.
I'm going to try to do the same thing.
Even I bend the knee.
It's pretty easy, though.
Have a good one.
Okay duke.
It's a rush, you know? I'm using
the word scared because it's not...
When you're counting the seconds,
it's not that.
It's just that you seem to count
extra fast.
It's what skydivers call a rush.
You jump off
and there's absolutely nothing
because you can't work with anything.
You're at the mercy of nothing.
You're falling.
Jean Boenish,
if I saw her in the street,
the last thing in the world
I would think
is that she would put a parachute on
and jump off a rock.
But she believed and loved him so much,
and if Carl said that you could
jump off a cliff, do this, she did it.
And she did it better than
most of the men at the time.
Well, we're kind of used
to people calling us crazy.
But at least in our opinion,
we're not crazy.
We're basically fun-loving adventurers
and we really have fun skydiving.
It's almost become a way of life for us,
we take it so seriously.
Interestingly enough,
if it weren't for the camera,
I, personally, probably wouldn't be
that interested in skydiving.
Because the camera captures
something not only for ourselves
but for everybody,
over a vast amount of time.
And it's really a sense of creativity
that we do a lot of things in skydiving
just for the sake of the camera,
and hence for millions of people,
to see what we do.
Pretty much all the BASE jumping
was called into the Manor Drive house.
"We're going to go jump El Capitan
at six o'clock tomorrow morning."
"Want to come and film?"
Carl and Jean, this is Mary Todd.
Well, I'm over here.
We did El Cap yesterday
and it just went so fantastic.
Piece of cake. Everything.
As you can tell, nothing happened.
No rangers.
Soto say he was a ringleader,
yes, he didn't tell people to go jump
but he knew about it.
Even though we had had problems
with the National Park Service
as far as arrests or people
wanting to fine or prohibit,
BASE jumping
was not an illegal activity.
And in the park service specifically,
it should easily have been
a permitted activity.
Currently it's pretty illegal to jump
off of the top of most of those cliffs.
And I know that you've been instrumental
in fighting that.
What's going on with that now?
Is that going to be legalized
in your opinion?
Well, we hope that in time,
just like mountain climbing,
that it will be unregulated.
Right now, we want to work
hand in hand with the park service.
We both wanted the same thing.
To legalize it.
To reduce the danger
of jumping illegally.
Because they're doing it at night.
Trying to evade us.
Bill Wendt is the National Park
Service director for Yosemite.
El Capitan happens to be
inside of Yosemite National Park.
And it's one of the few cliffs
in the world
where they can safely jump
from the top of a cliff
and parachute down
to a suitable landing site.
We have finally, after a year of
negotiating back and forth,
you might say, convinced the park
service that it can be done safely.
The park service is issuing permits.
It worked,
and it worked for a while,
but it really started to be untenable.
There were just too many free spirits.
And we had to shut them down.
The ninth of September.
Jumping off El Capitan
was first unregulated
because it was unthought of.
And then it was regulated
because it was feared.
And then it was banned
because it was abused.
We got it started
because I recommended it.
And it was stopped
because I recommended it.
So I'm responsible.
And maybe I was too impatient
and didn't...
That... that I will admit.
It really has no connection
with what we consider
to be an International Aviation sport.
It's more closely related
to circus acrobats and circus tricks.
OK, the Granite Circus
was one of Carl's dreams.
The last day of jumping,
he wanted to make it spectacular.
So he arranged for one person
to be on stilts, that was me.
Mayfield was going to walk
on his hands, doing a handstand.
Carl was on a pogo stick
and one other guy
was going to be on a skateboard.
I got up on the stilts, made about
two or three steps and I was gone.
It was so cool
that that kind of set my heels in.
I was into BASE jumping.
Even though it wasn't called
BASE jumping at the time.
That was the program for me.
After the permitted season
of jumping from El Capitan,
the number of jumpers interested
doing this activity was growing.
And Carl in his foresight knew
that we needed to be able
to call it something other
than fixed object skydiving
or skydiving from fixed objects
or cliff-jumping.
There were boundaries
beyond just cliffs.
I found some other objects around that
I thought might be interesting to jump.
Phil Smith, Smitty,
came up with a couple ideas.
One of them was jumping off TV towers.
He had a TV tower in Houston
that was over a thousand feet high.
He also mentioned that there was a
building going up at a construction
that was ultimately going to be
about 900 feet high, a little bit more.
One thing led to another.
Carl and Jean decided to come out
in January of 1981.
The four of us would go down
and jump the TV tower.
That was the prime focus.
The building had been mentioned
almost in passing.
It seemed like not having done
either one
that a TV tower jump would be
a lot more feasible than a building
just because of the logistics
of getting onto a building.
Smitty did all the homework
and lined it up for us.
And by that I mean figured out
when we need to be there
and how to get onto the tower
because we'd have to climb a fence.
How to get away and how many sets of
cables there were on the tower
so we could avoid hitting those.
Bottom line is we jumped that.
Carl and I had traveled out
to Phil Mayfield's house
and we met Phil Smith there as well.
And we started talking about
Carl's latest ideas. His grand idea.
His big picture of fixed object jumping.
That evening we were up
in Phil's house in Arlington.
And we were planning
our next day's jump.
And Carl had been daydreaming all week
and brainstorming this thing.
He came up with the idea
of making an organization
where to be a member,
you had to have jumped
these four different kinds of objects.
So we started brainstorming
different acronyms, different names
so that we could come up with
something that was kind of catchy.
I don't really know who came up with it,
but it evolved into the word BASE.
And all of the guys instantly
just grabbed hold of BASE
and said, "Well, that's the one."
- What's your group called?
- We don't...
Crazy Men of the World.
No, what are you called?
That's what most people call us.
But we've got an organization.
We have to be members of it
although we don't have a roster
of official members yet.
It's too new an organization.
The type of jumping that we do,
first of all, is called BASE jumping.
B-A-S-E is an acronym for Buildings,
Antennae Towers, Spans and Earth.
So at that time nobody had
jumped off four things.
We had kind of planned
to do the building in Houston.
At that time, it was called
Texas Commerce Tower.
You jumped off a cliff. What's next?
I heard you want to jump off buildings.
Well, yes. It's just mankind's spirit
that's bubbling out saying,
"if there are mountains
let's climb them."
"if there are buildings,
let's jump off of them."
Houston was going through
a lot of growth.
They were building several new buildings
that would be
about a thousand feet high.
At that time,
that was kind of our criteria.
I didn't want to do
much lower than that.
The nice thing about those buildings is
when a building is under construction,
they're really vulnerable
to people like us.
Often the building would have
just a chain-link fence around it.
You could just pull it apart and find
someplace to get in or climb over it.
It was really easy to do.
There is a stairway, no elevator.
But there's a stairway and we just
went up to the top, no problem.
With Carl Boenish,
you have to understand
the number-one thing is the film.
So it didn't matter the security
of getting away and making the jump
and getting all that stuff;
that was secondary to getting that film.
So we got in there real early. We could
have made a jump then and got out
but the light wouldn't have been good.
So we always had to wait on Carl
for perfect light.
About the time we started seeing a
little bit of traffic down the streets,
Carl let us know that time
is right. The conditions are good.
Once we put the jumpsuits on and
the cameras on and plugged them in,
we knew that it was just about the time.
As soon as we got the go-ahead,
"OK, we're ready down there."
"The helicopter's ready.
OK, you guys, we're waiting on you."
We knew that we had to start
the countdown, turn the cameras on.
I didn't want to screw up.
Neither one of us did.
OK. Five, four, three, two, one.
The thing that I remember most was
looking down as I was pushing out
at the windows on each floor going by.
The first second,
I saw two or three go by.
Then by the third second
they're going by just incredibly fast.
Step off and then...
You'll see the building behind you
or the cliff or whatever it is.
As it just goes...
I let go of my pilot chute,
which opens my canopy,
because I see Smitty's over here.
His is already starting to string out.
I let mine go.
I opened probably 150 feet below him.
And just as soon as I got open
and I was not facing the building,
I breathed an enormous sigh of relief.
Because now the whole thing is over.
All the danger is over.
All I got to do is land
and hopefully get away.
But even if I don't get away,
if I get detained by the police
because I was trespassing,
I'm OK with that.
So Phil Mayfield and I,
I guess we skyrocketed into history
and made the first completed
BASE members.
Phil Smith is BASE jumper number one.
He was the first person to jump
all four required objects
and has since made
over 50 successful leaps.
Skydiving then was just as much
a challenge as BASE jumping is now.
So it's that challenge
that we're seeking.
And we really want to...
We want to expand our environment
to include bigger
and more and greater things.
BASE jumping, there's so many things
out there that haven't been tamed
that I'm really excited to tackle them.
1981, that's when
the BASE program started.
We actually told the public,
told the world, about BASE.
Of course,
it grew exponentially after that.
Almost immediately, Carl was
bent on legitimizing it to the world.
Are you bored with your life
nine to five
looking at the clock,
check in, check out?
Look, you only go around once.
You might as well go for it.
Carl and Jean Boenish are here.
They're BASE jumpers.
You jump off of buildings,
antennae towers and bridges?
Yes. And cliffs.
- And you're both crazy.
- No, we're not.
As the equipment got better
and word spread about this thing
then the numbers began
really accelerating.
Then it became a worldwide thing.
Not just the United States
or not just Texas and California.
It took off.
The still uncompleted 54-storey
Crocker Center in downtown LA
may have seen the last skydiver
jump from its lofty heights.
A group of intrepid divers have been
climbing to the top of the building
and parachuting off
for about four months.
But always at two or three
in the morning.
The jumpers say it's a new sport
called BASE diving.
Police aren't sure what to call it.
But they say there's no law against it,
except maybe trespassing.
Question: why did you jump
off the Crocker Center building
in downtown Los Angeles?
Answer: because it was there
and a lot of fun.
Carl, how can you justify breaking
the law to jump that building?
Answer: what laws am I breaking?
He assigned a lot more importance
to the laws of nature
than he did the laws of man.
The laws of man, in Carl's eyes,
were temporary at best.
There were buildings
in downtown Los Angeles
that were under construction.
The Crocker Center happened
to start construction
when we were interested
in jumping off of buildings.
Well, you know, Jean and I
have each jumped from a building.
A thousand-foot, 75-story skyscraper.
And people say why?
Why did you do it, Jean?
I actually do it for the fun of it.
It's the feeling that you get
when you jump off of a high dive.
There's nothing to push against
like when you're swimming
through the water.
You are falling, literally,
for the first two seconds.
And you can't control your fall.
That's why you have to be very careful
in the manner in which you exit.
One morning, Carl had gone
to do an early morning jump
after it was already light.
Yesterday three men jumped off
the unfinished building,
the Cracker building in Los Angeles,
in their sport of skydiving.
And today I talked to one of the three,
Carl Boenish.
You're standing there and no matter
how seasoned a skydiver you are,
or a BASE jumper, you're very
apprehensive and you're nervous.
But you know in your mind you can do it,
even though your physical body
says you'd better not do it.
I mean, that's 700 feet straight down.
So finally you say,
"Here we go. Ready, set, go."
And the first second you start
accelerating incredibly fast.
It leaves you almost breathless.
And then the second second you
have a feeling of freedom and power
and confidence, almost euphoria.
You think, "Wow, I feel like Superman."
The next day, the LA Times
had this photograph of Carl
right on the front page
jumping off of Crocker Center.
Plain as day, literally.
Mr Boenish, my name is Fred Gooch.
I'm an attorney for the owner
of the Crocker Center.
I want to advise you
that at 1:30 tomorrow afternoon
in department 85 to the
Los Angeles County Superior Court,
the owners of the property are going
to seek an injunction against you.
An X party application for a temporary
restraining order against you,
members of your group,
and any other skydivers
from jumping off of the Cracker Center.
I suggest that you have your attorney
call me.
And I pick up the LA Times one day
and I see this picture of somebody
jumping off Crocker Bank.
And I read the article
and, OK, that's Carl.
Then a day or two later I get
this phone call from Carl saying,
"Jim, I think I'm in
a little bit of trouble."
Here's the message.
Carl and Jean, this is Jim Winkler.
Give me a call as soon as possible.
Cracker Bank apparently
does not want to settle.
They wanted to get control
over this situation.
So the Crocker Center decided that
they wanted to start legal proceedings
specifically against Carl
because he was named in the newspaper.
They couldn't catch him
most of the time.
Then, when he was caught,
I would guess the prosecutor at the time
basically told the judge,
"We know this guy's doing this."
So the court ordered that
he could not go into anything
over a 30-story building
without a judge's approval.
Why do you do your homework
and know what you're doing?
A lot of us do this day in and day out
and we do it very systematically.
The difference in attention to detail
is being a hero or being dead.
Some BASE jumps are illegal,
others are not.
Tomorrow in Memphis, Tennessee,
as part of that city's annual
Cotton Carnival
BASE jumpers Jean and Carl Boenish
plan to parachute from the top
of a downtown office building.
That building is called
the Hundred North Main Building
and it's 432 feet
to the top of the 36th floor.
A man came up and introduced himself.
He happened to also be the president
of the Union Planters Bank Building,
which was the largest building
in Memphis, Tennessee.
And he said, "Would you like
to jump off of that building
for the Cotton Carnival?"
Carl and I just looked at each other.
We both turned back to him
and we said,
"Well, that would be great.
We'd be very interested in doing that."
They had a parade
and they had arranged for Carl and I
to ride on one of the floats
so that we would be
the co-grand marshals of the parade.
So we were co-grand marshals and our
job was to jump down from the building
with crystal medallions
that were made especially for the king
and queen of the Cotton Carnival.
If you were around the Boenishes
long enough
you got the feeling of people
that really didn't belong.
They weren't weird, alright.
They were different.
A little eccentric, even.
They didn't really fit anywhere, right?
See you at the bottom.
But they fit together.
Here we go.
Five, four, three, two, one, go!
We've just reached the Trollveggen,
which is the largest cliff face
in Europe.
It'll be the site for our assault
on the world BASE jumping record.
Standing over here on this ledge
is Carl Boenish and his wife, Jean.
They're about to fling themselves
off the mountain
in something called BASE jumping.
At that time, I was a recently
graduated dude with no career
from graduate school
studying literature and philosophy.
I had no idea what I was going to do
other than what I had been doing
which was rock climbing and sea kayaking
and generally doing things
that were really fun that made no money.
So I just took my expertise in adventure
and applied it to production,
and I ended up working for David Frost.
We needed to have a centerpiece
for an ABC special.
That special being
The Guinness Book of World Records
which showed on ABC and also on BBC.
We needed to have a centerpiece thing,
which was an international
big action-adventure thing
that could carry the whole show.
I figured BASE jumping
was going to be it.
Carl was thrilled to be contacted
by the Guinness people
and given the opportunity it was...
This was really an opportunity
being given to us.
Meeting Carl Boenish was...
...not like anything
I'd ever experienced.
By that time, I had been in New Guinea
and the fricking North Pole.
I'd been all over and had seen just
about every kind of person imaginable.
But I had never seen anybody
like Carl Boenish.
Super energetic.
He had plans to do everything
and he documented everything,
he had pictures of everything.
He was everything. Everything about Carl
was out there right from the beginning.
And it was like running into a geyser.
It was just like,
"Whoa, look at this guy!" You know?
Carl, what's the old record?
The tallest BASE jump ever made
is 4900 feet.
And that was made at Half Dome
at Yosemite National Park.
High by anybody's standards. Jean,
what are you going to attempt today?
Well, I'm not exactly sure
what the height is here
but it's definitely over 4900 feet.
- All the best to you both.
- Thank you.
When they said let's go and do
a record jump,
let's find a site that's the highest
from point of launch
to point of landing.
And where would you like to go
and do that?
The world was our oyster
and we chose Norway.
Norway. Norway's beautiful.
And the people are wonderful.
And, as they say,
there's a very open trust.
That's Norway.
It was like mounting an expedition,
really.
We were pretty much involved in that
from the time that he said
he could and would do it
until the time we left which is, I don't
know, two and a half weeks later,
it was pretty much a mad dash.
I flew across the Atlantic and went to
London and spent a day there.
Took a flight up to Oslo and
the Boenishes were already there.
I just jumped in a rental car with them
and we drove up to Andalsnes
which took all day.
It was that time of year where
the nights weren't really nights.
There's a midnight sun kind of thing.
So the sun never really totally set.
So we just kept driving
and driving and driving.
That went on for eight hours
and we ended up in Andalsnes
and I saw this cliff for the first time.
I said, "Wow,
that's going to be interesting."
It's a scary sort of place.
It's like Sleepy Hollow with
these huge cliffs rising on both sides.
Really formidable
and really intimidating.
And it was really bad weather. It was
just drizzly and cloudy and weird.
I wasn't real enthusiastic that
it was going to break any time soon.
Wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
I knew it would take us a little while
to figure out what we were going to do
and where we were going to jump.
One glance up there and I knew
it was going to take me a while
to get fluent with the whole area.
It was just too big.
It was too big
and too confusing up there.
So I was lucky enough
to meet with a friend.
He had climbed around here a whole lot.
He was not only a great sort of partner
and climber
but a really decent, soulful guy.
We got along perfectly
from the beginning.
We hooked up and every day we'd hike up
the back side of Trollveggen,
go up there marching around
looking for places to go.
I started climbing when I was 15
and I've been doing a lot of climbing
in the area here in Romsdal.
I first met Carl when the others
asked me to be a local guide
and be responsible
for the security up in the mountains
while they were doing the parachute.
I really didn't know what's going on
then, what they were going to do.
But it was really a exciting time
to be together with them.
I remember his leg.
That he had hurt it once
and broke it, I think.
And that he did not go to a doctor.
When Fred and I first started
hiking up to the top of Troll Wall
to figure out a location
where we're going to jump,
Carl went along with us
but he was such a slow hiker
that ultimately we decided most
of the time to go up there without him
because he just couldn't keep up.
Carl, when he got up into the mountains,
had some problems with his leg
all the time.
He got very tired because
it was hurting very much, I think.
I go, "What what's with this guy?"
"Why is he going so fricking slow?"
It was driving me crazy.
It'd take half the day to get up
to the top of the cliff, right?
And I thought he was just lazy.
And finally there's a little stone hut
that you can sort of take shelter in
on your way up.
And we got about halfway up
and we got to the stone hut
and it started raining
so we had to actually go in this hut.
We went in this hut. We're sitting down
and Carl's rubbing his leg.
I go, "What's going on?
What's up, Carl?"
And he pulls his pant leg up
and his leg has this...
The bone goes down like this
and takes this jog.
I'm like,
"Carl what's going on with that leg?"
And it turned out he'd broken his leg.
He'd broken his leg hang gliding
a couple years before.
And he'd never got it set
because he's a Christian Scientist.
I didn't know anything
about any of that.
I believe that there's a law
and order to the universe.
Some people call it God.
I don't care what you call it.
I just know that mathematics
never fails us.
If we get the wrong answer,
we didn't apply something correctly.
Nothing happens by chance.
Every single thing that ever happens,
happens for a reason.
Happens due to the law of the universe.
One of the things I kept looking for
was someplace that was
cantilevered out like that.
So we found this thing,
Stabben pinnacle.
We get to the top and
there's a bunch of big boulders around.
What you do is you do
what's called a rock test.
And what you want
is something that falls
somewhere between 15 and 20 seconds
before it hits the wall.
The whole thing with BASE jumping
is you don't want to hit the wall.
That's what's going to kill you.
Fred and I pushed ten rocks
off the top of Stabben pinnacle
and they all hit between
three and five seconds.
Every time.
We did the rock test
and immediately ruled that out
as something we would do.
Carl goes, "No, it's too dangerous.
It doesn't give it enough time."
There was quite a lot of people
because it was a big team
and they had all the helicopters.
So it was both local people that was
going up to see what was going on
and there was a lot of tourists
that were stopping because of the
helicopter traffic that was going on.
It was a big event in Europe also.
So news teams
from all over Europe were here
waiting for this thing to happen.
I mean, it was a zoo.
I was hoping to be able to do this thing
sort of on a low profile.
But by the time the thing finally
happened, it was no secret to anybody.
The Boenishes were both...
Well, Jean, it was hard to tell
because she seemingly never got
excited about anything.
But Carl was coming out of his skin.
You know, like uncontainable enthusiasm.
This is a celebration of
the human spirit
and thank you for bringing
your spirits too.
Take a shot of Jean and me
and the crowd.
Put it on Infinity.
You have it on Infinity?
OK, look at the camera.
No, it's the other button.
I mean, it's like a geyser,
you know? Just like Old Faithful.
The day prior to when
we really got the thing on film,
he had done the jump basically
at night already, and done it perfectly.
So we knew that everything
was going to be perfect.
As soon as the sun comes up,
he can do this jump.
We're going to get it a couple times
so we got it covered,
then we're out of there.
Carl's enthusiasm was so high,
everybody was really high on this thing.
Remember, BASE jumping had never been
filmed on any kind of big scale.
It was little teeny 16mm documentaries
that people showed
on their bathroom wall.
And a huge network television crew
had swooped in here
with an internationally famous star,
David Frost.
He was the host
of The Guinness Book of World Records
and all this hoopla right?
And, boom, we have six cameras.
I think Boenish had another couple
cameras. We had cameras everywhere.
This is going to be a big event.
Everything was going great.
Everybody was enthusiastic.
It was sort of a big thing.
Then we got up, the sun was perfect.
It was a perfect bluebird day.
That was lucky enough.
We got everybody in position
in a matter of a couple hours.
They're getting ready now.
The Boenishes approaching
the jumping off spot, coming out there.
And the pilot is doing a fantastic job.
It's very difficult right there.
He seems to be balancing that helicopter
almost on one skid.
And there are the Boenishes over there.
There they are.
Perched on that very, very tiny outcrop.
Now with the help of our key mountain
climber, cameraman as well,
they're making their final
equipment checks.
Thirty seconds.
Are you ready?
- Twenty seconds.
- Twenty seconds.
Ten seconds.
Are you ready?
Five, four, three, two, one, go!
- Congratulations.
- Thank you very much.
Let's find Carl now.
He's a little behind.
He was very enthusiastic.
There he is.
Alright! Perfect landing!
He was always enthusiastic
about all of his projects.
Particularly after a jump was finished
or the film was in the can.
Terrific. Congratulations.
- Thank you very much.
- That really excited him.
It was exciting. Wow. Wow.
That's a jump of a lifetime.
Well, did you see how much lift
this big parachute has?
- I was staying up forever.
- Listen, just by landing safely,
that means you have set now
a new world's record for BASE jumping.
Norris, do you have the exact figures?
At least 400 feet further
than any other BASE jump in history.
And the speed,
because you deployed so late,
it was like flashing through
a 20-story building in one second.
Carl was really enthusiastic
about having finished the jumps.
To see that wall rushing by.
Man, we loved it.
And for Carl, too, to have been able
to make a record jump.
It was like, "Let's get out of here
before the mountain falls on top of us."
I just had this feeling of doom
hanging over something
that was potentially that sketchy.
So the moment they are over,
as though retroactively
something could happen,
and combined with the fact
that that was the last piece
that we needed to do on the show,
both of those combined and in concert
gave everybody a reason to get...
It put jet underneath everybody.
They were gone. Barn! Out of there.
After our record jumps,
we were both really tired
because we had been up for
a number of days with very little sleep.
Particularly
in the last 24 hours or more.
It was one o'clock in the morning
and it was not dark.
We really had a great deal of difficulty
in this midnight sun situation.
We had a short night that night.
I was...
...tired from the jumps the day before.
And I told him I was going to sleep in
and he had decided he wanted
to go and jump the Bruraskaret
which was the normally jumped site,
so I didn't think much of it.
But I was grousing a bit.
"You're tired. Why don't you stay?"
"Why do you have
to go do this right now,
right today, when you're tired?
Stay here and sleep."
That morning that Carl left for the jump
as I was lying in bed,
I was grumping at him
that I didn't think that he should be
doing this because he must be tired.
And that was the way
I was expressing my feelings
and my intuitions about it.
If I had had 30 years more
of experience that I have now,
perhaps I would have expressed
my feelings in a different way
and understood that there was
a message there for me.
That it was not a good idea
for him to do this.
That's the honest truth about it. And...
I can only look at it in hindsight
from here.
There was two locals.
Friends of mine that followed them up.
And also Jean was aware
that he was going up, of course,
but somewhere on the route
they decided to go for Stabben instead.
His foot made much trouble for him
because I'd seen that
in earlier days as well,
that he was having problems when
we were walking up in the rough terrain.
It was quite rough
up in the back of the Trolltind.
And it was a decision he took
there and then
to get back down an easy way, I think.
The fact is we had done the record
jump, filmed it,
and not more than 12 hours later,
he had hiked back up there.
That didn't make any sense to me.
I don't know how that was possible.
The fact we heard he'd done Stabben
didn't make any sense
because we had agreed when we did
the rock-drop test that it was suicidal.
Nobody could survive that jump.
Why had he done that?
Why was it that
if he was going to go back up
he didn't ask Fred or I
to go up with him?
On Friday night I was on
Grand Hotel at Andalsnes
because Carl had borrowed a room
so he could pack his parachute.
So I and my brother was with him.
And they explained a lot about BASE
jumping and how to pack the chute
so it released quick
and things like that.
It didn't go well that day.
I have an impression that Carl,
more than most of us,
thought that God had a plan for him
that he had to fulfill.
I am a person who remembers in pictures
so I have a small glimpse
of what happened during the day.
Me and my brother,
we picked him up in my brother's car
where he lived with the Griiners.
I remember driving from the Griiners'
and up to Trollstigen.
It was not so good weather.
It was a little rain and quite windy.
We went not so fast because
he had the problem with his leg.
And then we went further up to Stabben.
We climbed up to the pinnacle...
...and sat there for at least...
it was more than a half an hour,
maybe up to an hour.
He started to throw stones
to measure the height of the wall.
We sat on top of the pinnacle
and chatted
about different matters of life.
On the top of the mountain he asked us
if we knew the story from the Bible.
The Temptation of Jesus.
The Devil brought Jesus to Jerusalem
and put him on the highest point
of the temple.
And he said that
if you throw yourself down,
God will send his angels
and carry you in their arms
so you will not hurt your foot
on the rock.
Jesus answered,
"Do not put the Lord on test."
Carl just had...
he had a particular laughter.
He pointed to his parachute and he said,
"This is my angel."
I think it's really amazing
kind of last words.
I don't know what it means
but it feels like it means something.
Finally, he said that he wanted to jump.
We prepared our cameras.
So I saw his jump through the lens.
I saw the back of the whole body
more like just his feet diving down.
His parachute was stalling
against the mountain.
He slid under his parachute
down the mountain
and stopped in some snow.
No signs of life.
No movements or anything
after the parachute stopped.
It was before the days
of the mobile phone.
It was decided my brother
would run down
to call the police
and start the rescue operation.
I waited, looking down on him,
on top of the mountain.
Police district Romsdalen,
on Saturday the 7th of July, '84
approximately 4:35pm,
I received a call from Arnstein Myskja.
Arnstein explained he was calling
from Trollstigen Fjellstue
and reported that he had just,
at approximately at 3:50pm,
been a witness to Boenish, Carl Ronald,
jump from Stabben,
a mountaintop situated
between Trollveggen and Semletind
in Trolltindmassivet.
The jump had,
for one reason or another, failed
such that Boenish hit the mountain wall
and was suspended over the valley.
We had brought a camera each,
and we were taking pictures
when the accident happened.
You get so shocked
you started to think about...
That you don't want to sell the photos.
Why don't we have the photos
and just don't sell it?
It's not more difficult than that.
But we decided to destroy the pictures.
Just to open up
and pull it out of the cassette
so it was fully exposed to the light.
I went back to where I was staying
after we wrapped.
I think I just laid down. It was
probably still mid to late afternoon
and I didn't really get up
until the next morning
when Fred came hammering on my door,
saying Carl's been in an accident.
Fred came and got me. I got in the car.
We drove down, looked up,
saw Carl's body.
It wasn't moving.
But his red parachute
was sort of billowing in the air.
He was probably
three quarters of a mile away
and a couple thousand feet
up the flank of the bottom of the wall.
We went back to the police and said,
"We're going to have to try and figure
something out to get up to get him."
They're going to have to call in
a coast guard helicopter, and they did.
They had to fly up into the slab
at the bottom of the wall.
We couldn't really climb up to it.
It was sort of an isolated area,
but they recovered Carl's body,
brought it on the helicopter.
They flew that helicopter down
to the police station and landed.
Meanwhile,
we hadn't gotten a hold of Jean,
which was probably not fair to her.
Nobody got a hold of Jean
until the helicopter was on its way.
I was there with the police officer
and let me tell you,
one of the boldest things
I've ever seen anybody do,
was to call her up.
I mean, I'll never forget it.
This guy is talking on the phone.
He knew that the situation was bad.
And he's talking to her
and he was holding it together
with the last ounce of strength
that he had
saying your husband
had been involved in an accident
and it doesn't look good.
I'll never forget watching that. God!
That was awful watching that.
But...
That was just one of those things
where you just had to watch it
and deal with it, you know?
It was like, "This is happening."
"Is this really happening?"
Well, it was, you know?
The police had come. Two of them.
And I met them downstairs
at Griiners' hytter.
And they told me that Carl was dead.
Everybody in the room looked at me,
silently.
And I could tell instantly
that it was up to me and my response...
...to determine the entire atmosphere
that would surround everything
that would happen
subsequent to this announcement.
At first, I didn't understand
because it didn't make sense
because I still thought
he had jumped from Bruraskaret.
But then as the conversation proceeded,
that was when it was revealed
that he had jumped from Stabben.
And things started to fall into place
in a very different way.
So my response may not have been
what they expected because...
...I needed to put on the hat
of finding out what happened.
Carl and I were not just husband
and wife. We were professionals.
We were pioneers.
We were people working together
in something that was a vital activity.
And as a vital activity that other
people were participating in as well,
the necessity was to find out
what in the world happened.
He had a good exit.
But somehow obviously
got turned around into the cliff.
And that is not a site where
you have achieved the distance
from the cliff that you need
to be able to handle
being turned into the cliff
that soon upon opening.
I have a picture in my mind of him
lying here with his red helmet on.
A blue jacket and also the injuries.
He had many bad injuries
and serious injuries both in breast,
head and also the arms and the legs.
I think he died immediately.
I could see that it looked like Carl,
as far as the presence of the body.
But the real Carl
was absolutely clearly not there.
I have seen a lot of dead people,
and dying,
but this particular moment here
is one of the strongest moments
because of his visions, his dreams,
and what he did in Trollveggen.
What Carl did was something that
the whole country was interested in.
So it was... it was strange.
Touching.
It's about...
...limits. Living on the edge.
And, of course, his dreams as I said,
his vision,
and then suddenly he was here,
lying dead.
And you know, when they are here,
they are really dead.
After that we got on a ferry
and it was just, you know, beautiful.
And I cried a little in the car.
And kept driving back to Andalsnes
to Griiners' hytter.
A couple of days after Carl died
was the day that Erik Fenz
was planning on jumping.
There I was. I was going to jump off
the Troll Wall and Carl dies.
I'm just, like, holy shit.
But there was something that was,
you know,
there was something that was
bigger than the moment
that was driving me to want to continue.
Word spread like wildfire
that Carl had died.
Very quickly people around the world
in the jumping community
knew what had happened.
And it really, really shocked
and shook so many people.
I said, "I want to still do it."
She was like, "I want to do it too.
With you. We're going to go do it."
Not wanting him to seem disrespectful
in making a jump,
it would remove any aura
of seeming disrespect
for me to be the one to be making a jump
first after Carl's death
to show people it's fine, it's OK.
Carl wanted everybody to get on
with their lives after he died
and that there was nothing wrong
with BASE jumping because of this.
We just had to learn from it and go on.
As I was under canopy
coming down from that jump
I had my last personal time.
I had my last quiet time.
And I could see as I was coming in
for a landing
that there was a group
that had gathered.
And there was the prospect
of having to deal with the press.
Well, I'm a BASE jumper.
And I'm a professional.
And Carl wanted that no one
should miss a beat in their lives
if and when he died,
whenever that would have been.
And it didn't matter how.
Everybody goes through
the same things in life.
From the time they're born
to the time they die.
We all go through birth and death.
But we have had cultural pressures
about how to handle it.
What did you feel doing this jump today?
It was just like any other BASE jump.
It was the same.
Were you thinking of some special thing?
No. No. Nothing really special.
So you didn't have your husband in mind?
Well, under canopy I thought of him.
But that's really kind of personal.
Everyone has his own real way
of reacting. It will be individual.
And BASE jumping encourages people
to think as individuals,
to discover and explore
their individuality.
It is not unique to BASE jumping.
BASE jumping is just
a condensed version.
Somehow, in this earthly experience,
we have to depart.
There has been no one who has not
departed from this earthly experience.
So don't let death impede you
as a hurdle.
Don't let it be a wall
that you bang up against
and then can't see past,
can't see through,
can't see over.
Climb the walls quickly as you can
and go on.
We know everyone
doesn't want to do this
but if they see us do it,
they can be inspired
to go out and bowl a perfect 300 game
or mow the lawn.
It doesn't matter what.
They're encouraged by what we can do.
I think it makes, you know,
a better quality life for us
to know that we can do this.
You always wondered with Carl
that underneath, what's the real story?
What are those core beliefs
that would drive you to do that?
I got to think
it's that sort of mystical thing
where he thought that he could...
That mind-over-matter thing.
He was the one person
that could get away with it.
But the Troll Wall had other ideas.
What deserves the praise?
Death doesn't deserve praise.
Life and the wondrous works that
we do in life from our good ideas,
those deserve the praise.
That's what we should be standing by.
That's what we should be
paying attention to.
And that's what Carl was all about.
Carl would love to have the new wing
suit flyers standing on his shoulders
and jumping v"-
They have taken from what
he was trying to inspire in people
about breaking through
artificial limitations
and going beyond what people say
can or cannot be done.
He would be right there
with the wing suit flyers.
And, in essence, is.
(THE AIR THAT I BREATHE
BY THE HOLMES
If I could make a wish
I think I'd pass
Can't think of anything I need
No cigarettes, no sleep
No light, no sound
Nothing to eat
No books to read
Sometimes
All I need is the air that I breathe
And to love you
All I need is the air that I breathe
Yes, to love you
All I need is the air that I breathe
Sometimes
All I need is the air that I breathe
And to love you
All I need is the air that I breathe
Yes, to love you
All I need is the air that I breathe
PGGCQ came UPON me
And it leaves me weak
So sleep, silent angel
Go to sleep
Sometimes
All I need is the air that I breathe
And to love you
All I need is the air that I breathe
And to love you
Sunshine came softly
Through my a-window today
Could've tripped out easy
it But I've a-changed my ways
It'll take time, I know it
But in a while
You're gonna be mine, I know it
We'll do it in style
Cos I made my mind up
You're going to be mine
I'll tell you right now
Any trick in the book now, baby
All that I can find
Superman or Green Lantern
Ain't got a-nothin' on me
I can make like a turtle
And dive for your pearls in the sea
A-you can just sit there thinking
on your velvet throne
Yes
About all the rainbows a-you can
a-have for your own
Cos I've made my mind up
You're going to to be mine
I tell you right now
Any trick in the book a-now, baby
All that I can find
Everybody's hustlin'
a- just to have a little scene
When I say we'll be cool
I think that you know what I mean
We stood on a beach at sunset
Do you remember when?
I know a beach where, baby
A-it never ends
When you've made your mind up
Forever to be mine
I'll pick up your hand
And slowly blow your little mind
Cos I made my mind up
You're going to be mine
I'll tell you right now
Any trick in the book a-now, baby
That I can find
Superman or Green Lantern
ain't got a-nothin' on me
I can make like a turtle
And dive for your pearls in the sea
Yep
A-you, you, you can just sit there
While thinking on your velvet throne
'Bout all the rainbows you can
A-have for your own
When you've made your mind up
Forever to be mine
I'll pick up your hand
And slowly blow your little mind
When you've made your mind up
Forever to be mine
I'll pick up your hand
And slowly blow your little mind
Blow your little mind...
English SDH