Photo courtesy of Russ Byars
World champion stone-skipper Russ “Rock Bottom” Byars, left, and former world champ Kurt “Mountain Man” Steiner, are the subject of a new documentary by a a group of Montana filmmakers.
Last Memorial Day, Billings Senior High graduate Ryan Seitz was in Texas, hanging out on a lake near Austin.
He and Daniel Skaggs had covered 14,000 miles in three months, following the film festival circuit to promote their documentary, “Freeload.”
“We were just kind of unwinding, drinking beer and throwing rocks,” Seitz said. “And all of a sudden it got competitive.”
That set them to wondering, and when they got back to a computer they turned to Google. They soon learned that there was such a thing as sanctioned stone-skipping competition, that it had been going on for decades and involved some fierce rivalries.
Seitz and Skaggs were intrigued enough to wonder whether competitive stone-skipping might be a good subject for their next documentary.
Seitz found Russ “Rock Bottom” Byars, the current world-record holder, on Facebook and sent him a message about what they were thinking. Byars responded quickly and enthusiastically, giving Seitz all sorts of other contacts in the world of stone-skipping.
“We just went for it,” Seitz said.
Their new documentary is “Skips Stones for Fudge,” and they have launched a Kickstarter campaign to help them finish the project. The Kickstarter page includes a trailer, an interview with Seitz and Skaggs and more information.
The title of the film comes from the traditional prize of a year’s supply of fudge awarded at the Mackinac Island, Mich., stone-skipping tournament. This July 4, the 46th annual tournament was held there.
During his third year of competing, Byars’ mother made him a lucky T-shirt bearing the slogan, “Skips Stones for Fudge.”
Ryan Seitz
Seitz talked about his new movie in a telephone interview from Byars’ home in Franklin, Pa., where the four-man film crew has been working since just after the July 4 tourney in Michigan.
The other two filmmakers are Mather McKallor and Alex Downey, a native of Butte. Seitz, McKallor and Downey all met while studying filmmaking at the University of Montana in Missoula.
Seitz, McKallor and Skaggs worked together on “Freeload,” a documentary that examined the subculture of train-hopping young hoboes. It has been screened at 12 film festivals around the world, and Highway Goat Productions, the company the filmmakers formed, recently signed a distribution deal with MVD Entertainment Group. Seitz said you can pre-order the movie on the MVD website, with an official release set for November. They are also shopping it to Netflix, Amazon and Hulu.
The new documentary will feature a fairly large cast of characters, Seitz said, but it will focus on two: Byars and Kurt “Mountain Man” Steiner. Steiner had held the world title for six years when Byars took it away in 2007. Byars’ world-record throw skipped 51 times.
Seitz said the movie will delve into human beings’ competitive nature, the science behind stone-skipping and the human “affection for throwing things really far.”
At the heart of it is the rivalry between Byars and Steiner, described by Seitz as “polar opposites in just about every way of life.”
As for Byars, he said, “Russ is a little more casual about it. His motto is ‘grip it and rip it.’”
Steiner also lives in Pennsylvania — he’s building a house in the mountains outside Emporium, Pa. — and that’s no coincidence, Seitz said. Lake Erie is known for producing the best skipping stones in the world, partly because of an abundance of shale.
It is also home to a perfect body of water for skipping stones — the confluence of French Creek and the Alleghany River in Franklin. Seventeen years ago, people in Franklin asked the sponsors of the tournament on Mackinac Island if they could put on their own sanctioned tournament. It has been held in Franklin ever since, with this year’s tournament set for Saturday.
Competitors bring their own stones and throw six each. The counting of skips is all visual, with a panel of judges keeping count. Because counts can vary — try counting them yourself on the Kickstart trailer — the judges’ results are averaged. Points can also be awarded for the esthetics of a throw.
After filming wraps up, Seitz, Skaggs and Downey will go back to Bozeman to finish editing the documentary, with McKallor working from Seattle. They’re hoping to have it done in time for summer film festivals in 2015.
In the meantime, Seitz has been enjoying one of the side benefits of filming the new documentary.
“Any time we go, we throw with these guys,” he said. “The last half hour, we put the cameras away and we just skip. We’re learning from the best. I went from 10 skips to 25 in a matter of weeks.”
