25 years ago in 1996, Ben Moon teamed up with his friend and climbing partner Jerry Moffatt and filmmaker Simon Tucker to make the first feature length bouldering film, The Real Thing, which would ultimately became a classic of the genre and a source of inspiration for the next generation of climbers. Moon Climbing has released a retrospective video about making the film.
Ben wrote about the film and this latest release:
"I was 30 years old and a professional climber, and had been climbing full-time since leaving school at 16. The sport of rock climbing had seen massive changes in that time and the changes weren't about to stop any time soon. One of the biggest changes that was about to happen was that bouldering would become an end in itself and that 100s of 1000s of people would only boulder, and that a large majority of these would only boulder indoors in huge, purpose-built bouldering gyms all over the world.
At the time that we made The Real Thing both Jerry and I had been bouldering extensively both indoors and outdoors, home and away, for many years, but it was mainly as a form of training for sport climbing. We both loved climbing and had pretty much dedicated our lives to it, and we wanted to make a film that conveyed what made climbing so special to us. Climbing, for me, is far more than just a sport and we both felt that bouldering was climbing distilled. We felt that a film about a road trip to Fontainebleau, the Mecca of bouldering, would be the perfect vehicle to convey what we felt was so special about climbing.
The Real Thing 25 years on is a short documentary that looks back at the making of the original bouldering movie. I hope you enjoy both films."
Watch the original film:
Comments
Being a bit younger and seeing almost only serious and super produced climbing videos a lot of time it was a breath of fresh air to discover these older, looser style climbing videos where people are having a laugh, and with quality soundtracks, makes me nostalgic for a time I wasn't even around!
Absolute class.
This came out around the time I started climbing, after a year or so we watched it for the first time and were psyched out of our minds we hadn't seen anything like it before. That easter we went on a road trip to Font (didn't even own bouldering mats) and through we were heroes climbing low to mid 6's. (we also tried to jump onto Karma but naturally couldn't do anything on it at the time. Great film.
Soundtrack is still excellent.
When this came out I got on the train at 6am with my bike, cycled from Sheffield to Burbage, climbed two problems, it started raining, I cycled to Hamper’s where I sat in the rain for an hour, cycled back to Sheffield and 2 damp hours on the train back to Uni.
Loved it.