The name Warren Miller is synonymous with skiing.

He is not an Olympic champion or a famous equipment manufacturer. He is a recreational skier who had a love of photography and a love of skiing — then turned them into a worldwide business.

It all began modestly enough. Miller began shooting 8 mm footage of himself and friends skiing in Sun Valley, Idaho, in 1946 after leaving the Navy with his $100 mustering-out pay from the service.

The idea was to help them improve their skiing abilities by watching themselves. Then it picked up speed. During the summer months when they viewed the footage and Miller provided his narration to the pictures, these home movie sessions turned into nights of entertainment for family and friends.

In 1949, Miller landed a more sophisticated 16 mm Bell & Howell camera on loan from the firm's president, Chuck Percy, and comptroller, Hal Geneen. They happened to be Miller's ski school students at Sun Valley.

He scraped together enough money for editing equipment and rented a Los Angeles theater to show footage from the previous season to a paying audience. Called "Deep and Light," the film boasted a budget of $427 and was shot at the Squaw Valley ski area near Lake Tahoe, Calif.

Someone in Port Angeles, Wash., heard about the screening and invited Miller north to show his film. He also booked shows in Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia.

Miller packed up his truck and rolled up old Highway 99 to the Pacific Northwest. He made only $8 for the Port Angeles show, but his screenings in Seattle and Vancouver netted him a whopping $615.

Wide Angle

Miller says that by the third year of his filming he was booked from Portland, Ore., to Portland, Maine, in high school auditoriums charging patrons $1 each.

A film career was born.

Miller never won any Academy Awards, but his movies earned a cultlike following and led to a nationwide tour that continues to this day.

Many call him the father of the extreme sports film genre, which he was perfecting long before it became a multibillion-dollar industry.

He's 82 and retired from filmmaking, but his name rolls on in the popular Miller films that represent the unofficial kickoff to each winter ski season. "Every year, the film would become a huge annual event," said Miller's daughter, Chris Miller, who works as a photojournalist in Southern California. "People would get together and basically celebrate and have a good time among friends. This went on around the country, and it's a great way to get excited by coming winter."

Every fall, a new film showcases extreme skiing from extreme locations, along with vignettes depicting the sport's lighter moments.

Every year, the tour takes the film to packed auditoriums across North America and beyond, firing up mountain enthusiasts.

Miller films have captured skiing on a pile of resorts — even in Siberia and Iran — on every continent, including Antarctica. "The thousands of miles I traveled every year, and the hundreds of miles I skied every year, allowed me to meet amazing people, who, like me, thought the freedom one experiences skiing is the best feeling in the world," he wrote on WarrenMiller.com.

Miller's footage covers the works. So does his narration: skiers hurtling down impossibly steep and narrow mountain chutes; skiers carving up trails covered in fresh powder; the average joe struggling to get on and off chairlifts.

The action and humor make Miller's films a hit. People of all ages marvel and laugh at the sights for 90 minutes until Miller's voice concludes each film with his signature line, "See you next year, same time, same place. Thank you, and good night."

That Miller tape peppers the films with quips and encourages audiences to follow their dreams.

Over the years, he told audiences:

• "Adventure is the invitation to common people to become uncommon."

• "Don't take life too seriously, because you can't get out of it alive."

In 1983, he partnered with a firm known for rock concerts to assist in organizing the growing world tours for his films. Some disagreements led to Miller and his partners selling the company to Miller's son, Kurt, who owned the business until 2002.

"This was an opportunity to keep the business in the family and build on the company's name to reach a wider audience," said Kurt Miller while promoting "Warren Miller's Ride."

The junior Miller expanded the company by branching out with programming for TV and covering other extreme sports. He also sought to incorporate more music on the soundtrack to appeal to the MTV generation.

Warren Miller's role in the most recent films bearing his name has been reduced steadily, and today he no longer has an active role in the production of the films.

But since his name has become such a recognizable brand, it stays spread across the screen. Time Warner took enough notice to purchase Warren Miller Entertainment from Kurt Miller in 2002.

Today, Miller spends most of his time in his Orcas Island home amid the scenic San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington with his fourth wife, Laurie. He has three children, all of whom are involved in films or photography.

He has published a number of books and has a syndicated newspaper column.

During the winter months, he serves as the director of skiing at the exclusive Yellowstone Club in Montana. A private, gated winter playground community, the resort features nine chairlifts with the capacity to move 5,500 skiers an hour.

Yet by exclusive, Yellowstone means it. The resort handles just 35 skiers a day.

Miller likes the intimacy. He told Outside magazine, "The second time I skied, there were only six other people: Jack Kemp, Benjamin Netanyahu, the club's owner and three bodyguards."

For his 80th birthday, Laurie Miller established the Warren Miller Freedom Foundation to teach ethical principles of business and entrepreneurship to young people.

Teen Time

The foundation says it's striving to stimulate and educate teens to open their own businesses.

"Her idea is to encourage teenagers to become entrepreneurs, not to just finish college and go to work for somebody else," Miller told Mountain News in 2005. "I agree with that, because small businesses are the key to the economy."

It's a fitting endeavor for a man who grew up on the sun-splashed beaches of Southern California, developed a passion for a cold sport and became one of skiing's most recognizable names.

"When I started skiing, there were 12 chairlifts anywhere in the world," he said. "Now there are more than 750 ski resorts worldwide. There are plenty of opportunities for people to go out and do it."

It's that attitude that got Miller to where he is today and that he continues to preach to any who will listen.

"If you don't do it this year," he said, "you'll be one year older when you do."


BY BRIAN J. ARTHURS