Phil Hansen "Holy Moly" Interview
Most of you are Phil-miliar with our snow team rider Phil Hansen. Lib Technologies gave Phil and his crew an RV to take to Banff, Canada, to document their road to Holy Bowly. We caught up with Phil on the phone for a quick chat ahead of the "Holy Moly" video release to hear about his winter's high and low points and how it compared to the previous season while working on Philm. Sit back and enjoy the raw chaos, friendships, and high-quality boarding.
The plan was to have no plan, and that was the best plan.
"We did whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted, slept where we parked, and the only thing on the schedule was make it to Holy Bowly. I always do these big Bowly trips that seem to have an agenda or some sort of structure, but I like coming up with ideas on the spot. You can’t capture the natural flow of the road if it isn’t natural. I wanted to make a raw video with all of my best friends, capturing the highs and lows of traveling on the road. The only problem was there were no lows, and we rode a high for 3 weeks straight, from Brain Bowl to Grouse to Banff and back, and I can say it might have been the best trip I’ll ever go on. The energy was all time and there were so many moments that I’ll never forget that weren’t captured. I cried a lot on this trip, both from happiness and sadness, and the two things I learned are do whatever you want when you want and make memories with the people you love. And of course, tell them you love them, and I love all of these people".- PHIL
How's it going?
Good. How are you doing?
Good. I am just watching it piss rain.
Yep. Same, same. I'm kind of down to be inside chilling right now.
A good time to be behind a computer editing?
Yeah, exactly. It's super nice for me right now. I'm all busted up anyway, and I need to Relax. I'm not good at relaxing.
How is the editing going?
It's killer right now. I'm just finishing the Bowly section right now. It's coming along good, though; it's going to be a sick video.
I sent our media crew the video so far, and described it as "extra loose and spicy." in an email.
Exactly. I think that's a great description.
How big was the timeline when you first started / How are you looking at in terms of like raw footage?
It was like two hours of footage. And that was just phone footage, which I probably have cut down to just moments of probably five minutes within there. And that's not including the whole logging of footage from everyone with cameras! I'd say that I have a pretty good stack. All the phone stuff was mostly just like, BS too. There are some real clips on the phone, but most of it was random. Some videos were five minutes long with just someone drunk stumbling around. The other ones are just a two-second clip that is just gold.
That's where you get the good stuff. So what's the inspiration behind the soundtrack?
That was Mateo's idea. I asked him what to play when we were driving Midwinter, just driving back from Baker one night. And he was like, "play some Limp Bizkit." I was like, "what? What do you mean Limp Bizkit? And why do you want to listen to Limp Bizkit?"
Skatings says, "Because Limp Bizkit is sick," and so we listened to Limp Bizkit, and I was like, "Dude, what if we just use this for that end of the year edit eventually?" and that was the first song that we listened to was that song that I ended up using. **shredding noises** No! - Sorry, my dog's trying to chew up something in my house.*
All good. So, You're not filming for a full project; how did this season compare to last?
I would say that this year, I probably spent more time actually snowboarding compared to last year. Last year it was just a lot of like compiling trips and trying to get clips and stuff. I didn't snowboard that much. It was just a lot of the filming, and the filming process.
But this year, I snowboarded a lot more and had one of the best winters of my life. I rode either powder or mini shred all year between going to Baker and doing brain bowl stuff, and then going into Brandon Reis's house. It was a lot of fun! I'd say like way more fun this year than last year. I felt a lot better on my snowboard towards the end of the year, I haven't snowboarded this much in years.
It's crazy to think - A project has a lot of clips. It's a huge deal to put it out, with all the efforts behind-the-scenes work that go into it that isn't actually snowboarding. And when you're not focusing on a project, I'm sure, you get a lot more free time to just board.
Yeah, exactly. When you get a bunch of footage, that's your snowboarding right there. All the footage you get; that's pretty much all your snowboarding is. There's the stuff you film, which is pretty minuscule compared to the stuff you actually do sometimes. Obviously, You film the bigger tricks and jumps. But a lot of the time, you roll up and drop a cliff, or hit a cool line and it's not even filmed.
It's more about the memories of doing everything, not just it being captured and put into a final piece.
Exactly. It's a lot of memories. Maybe one on one of your friends saw you do something, or you saw one of your homies do something crazy. And you're just like, dang, that was insane. No one else will ever know that happened.
You talked about mini shred. How many Brain Bowl stops did you make it to this year? And what was the best build, in your opinion?
I did three Brain Bowls, the best one was the Snoqualmie one. Cause that's my home resort. I guess I didn't grow up there, but that's my home resort. I know everyone that was there, and it was so much fun. People were up there building for like a week before, It wasn't just the Brain Bowl crew going there and doing something either. The local people were all stoked, and the weather was kind of crazy, but everything in the course just worked and flowed together. It was a fun setup all the way through.
Mt. Baker Brain Bowl to The Holy Bowly. Who did you hit the road with on that journey?
Well, going to Baker, I was solo in my car up there for the baker Brain Bowl, and then went back to Seattle for two days and kind of like gathered a bunch of stuff up and got everything ready, and that we ended up taking three cars up to Vancouver to grab an RV. Most of the people ended up in an RV, but I took in my car was... Jack Wiley, Xander Cornabe and Devon Cubbs, and I. It was a sick squad in the car.
Who is the king of the aux cord while you're on the road?
King of the aux? The only song that came out of my phone while we were on the road was Cowboys From Hell. We listened to that like ten times on the way to the bar one night. That was pretty crazy in the RV. I'd say Wiley was probably the king of the Aux. He would hop on when I would go on my phone and joke about playing Cowboys from hell again, and he would jump on and play some like club bangers and stuff and get everyone stoked. Whereas I was just like fully on just a joke trip. I was making fun of everything, listening to Cowboys From Hell way too much.
How many times can we listen to this song before someone jumps out of the van?
I bet we listened to that song 300 times by the end of the trip. Gotta delete that out of my library for sure.
Top three do's and don'ts while on the road?
Do's:
1. Walmart- Walmart pitstop, terrible food selection. Good for everything else that you need.
2. Whenever you're near water, take a dip. Even if it's cold, you just do it and feel better.
3. Keep switching your crew up when you're in a big enough crew, because it's good to get on different people's wavelengths and catch a different vibe from it. Ride up the lift with someone else every time.
Dont's:
1. Don't sleep in; even if you are hungover, don't sleep in. It's better to wake up and deal with it, and you'll figure it out.
2. Don't get iced. Getting iced is awful.
3. Don't use a plate from the RV and not bring it back and clean it. I'm not going to name any names...
Be responsible. Do your dishes. So, you stopped the Grouse on the way up, right?
It's pretty incredible. Many people have been to Mount hood, and they know how it looks when you first get up there, but there's something completely different when you're up at Grouse or any of the Vancouver resorts. I'd never been there before, but you look down and see the whole city when you're up there. You see like eight different skylines of different cities because Vancouver is huge, and there are like eight other downtowns spread throughout. That was crazier to me the first time than when I saw Hood from the top.
When I saw those clips of you guys at Grouse, it brought back memories of an old snowboard movie with adolescent Seb Toots- "Apples, & Oranges." If you're familiar with that, a lot of that was shot at Grouse, which is pretty insane to see an entire cityscape below.
Their park was so good too. It flowed super well. We had this homie Tanner up there, and he hooked us up with tickets. Huge shout out to him! He was just up there ripping with us, just stoked and keeping everyone hyped. Huge shoutout to Tanner at Grouse.
Once you got to Bowly, what was the vibe and who were some of the standouts?
We had this bounty the whole way going there. We were like, who will be the craziest person who shows up at Bowly this year. Someone said that they thought Fridge was coming, and we were like, "No way Fridge is coming to Bowly," and the first day, we showed up and saw Fridge there. It was like perfect weather at the start of the first day, then went to shit after a few hours. But for the first two hours, we were on the same lap with him (Fridge), and he was going super ham.
Backpack and all?
Yeah, backpack and all. And then seeing Louif going through was another pretty heavy one. And then he got the win for our kickball team!
Louif!?
Yeah! Louif won our kickball game for us. That was huge.
He's a kickball MVP?
Yeah, he's MVP. He had never played kickball before and had no idea what the rules of baseball or kickball were, and he just walked up and just kicked a hammer and scored like three runs in the last inning and scored the winning runs. It was insane.
He's got the leg!
Yeah, he does have the leg.
Opposite of a Bowly stand out, who got most wrecked?
I think I'm going to say Tubs got the most wrecked because he went to hit the main "jump" at the night shoot and just like looped out the first time and just like air chaired straight to his side and then sat it out the rest of the session.
What are your plans for the rest of the season?
So in a week, I guess I'm going to be going to Sweden, and that's pretty cool going to Sweden on a Coal trip. I am pretty hyped on that! And then I am also doing an Etnies trip later this summer. That will be a skate, snow, biking hybrid trip, and then we're going to end up at Hood after that. Then I'll probably end up in Hood for another week or so after that. So yeah, It's going to be a late boarding season. I'm so stoked about snowboarding that I don't want to stop. Like I've never been more stoked on snowboarding in my life.
We love to hear it, especially with the endless winter we've had here in the Northwest, January and February were pretty dry and warm, but it does not seem to let up this spring.
It's still coming down right now. If you were to try, you could still ride powder right now.
It is never-ending... Alright, Let's wrap this thing. Thanks for taking the time to chat, we are hyped on the video!
For sure! I'm stoked for the world to see this tomfoolery.
Any last shoutouts?
Thank you, Mervin, Coal, Tactics, Krush, Snowboy, Sunshine Village, and Kokanee beer. I can't forget Kokanee. Shout out Jamie Brother. Shout out to Grouse. A huge way to end the winter.
I'm glad it went off with a bang.
One of the best trips of my life for sure.
