Archived Interview
Peter Mortimer
 early April, 2005

FRB: Full Name?

Peter: Peter Tobin Mortimer.

FRB: Age?

Peter: 31.

FRB: Height?

Peter: 5'10".

FRB: Weight?

Peter: 155 lbs.

FRB: Ape Index?

Peter: 0.

FRB: Where you from Peter?

Peter: Born in Phillie, moved to Boulder when I was 4, grew up there.

FRB: How did you get into climbing?

Peter: Mr. Macarthur's climbing class at Fairview High School. We learned to jumar on ropes hanging off the basketball hoops. Every Wednesday we took the afternoon off to climb in Eldo. The first real climber I met was Mo Herschoff who was tromping around the woods by the West Bank with a sock on his head, casting bear tracks. He was kind of a mentor to Zac Barr and I when we were in high school. He would buy us drinks at the old Nepalese restaurant on 9th and Pearl.

FRB: Tell us about some of your favorite
          climbing moments in the Front Range.

Peter: Cragging in Eldo is what I miss most about not being in Boulder. Its pretty much my favorite climbing area. I also miss having the Diamond so nearby, and The Flatirons where you can tromp, get lost in the woods and climb on killer sandstone. The rest of it -- Flagstaff, Sanitas, Boulder Canyon -- is good local cragging, but doesn't conjure images of glory for me.

FRB: Favorite partners?

Peter: All my friends I grew up climbing with in Boulder, and the ones I climbed with at college, were great partners. Zac Barr, Jay Droeger, Corey Nielson... the whole crew. Now most of my climbing is done with people I film with. That's fun, but I'm always the weakest climber in the group, cause all the people I film are pulling really hard.

FRB: What other sports?

Peter: I'm completely psyched on surfing right now, and still climbing. Not climbing a ton, but staying in shape.

FRB: Schooling? Training?

Peter: I went to college at Colorado College where I studied geology. Then I started getting into film and traveling a bunch, I spent some time doing film stuff in NYC, and I started making climbing docs. I went back to school for an MFA at USC film school, which I completed a year ago.

FRB: You made 'Front Range Freaks'. Tell us about the
          filming and conceptualizing involved.

Peter: It started out as two separate shorts: Paul Glover dynoing and Timmy O'Neill buildering. It quickly became apparent that there was a common theme in those two films that could be developed into a larger movie, hence Front Range Freaks. I'd wanted to do the bit on Derek Hersey for a long time, so this seemed like a perfect platform for that. The rest of the segments just sort of evolved as we were filming and brainstorming.

FRB: Have you ever been to Cloud 9?

Peter: Yes, a few times. The first time I went was weird because John Baldwin thought I was an undercover cop tracking him. Then I went back a few more times and shot there with John, mb, Matt Samet, Tommy Caldwell and a bunch of other folks and that was more fun.

FRB: What is your second film?

Peter: FRF is actually my second film (Scary Faces was the first). The most recent is Return2Sender.

FRB: Return2Sender is at Boulder Theatre April 13th.
          Tell us about your new film.

Peter: April 13 is the World Premier. Timmy wil be hosting the event, there'll be sponsor gear giveaways, lots of climbers from the film will be there. The film is 90 minutes of some pretty rad climbing footage. 'Parallelojams -- crack climbing in the Creek' -- is the segment that we've already shown to people ( we screened it at the winter OR show). It's got good buzz. There's also a profile of Cicada Jenerik, who climbs V10 at age 10, a profile of loudmouth free soloist Michael Reardon who solos EBGBs + other gnarly stuff in SoCal. BASE jumping in Mexico, more antics with Biscuit and her puppy Felix. There's Timmy and Nathan Martin's epic expedition to Greenland... tons of Timmy humor throughout the film. We expanded our sponsorship base to produce this film, so we upped the production value a bit. We got a heli to shoot in the desert to film Timmy walking the bridger jack highline, we got cool miniature cams that we've been mounting on climbers and inside cracks, we've shot some 16 mm film, done some funky stuff in post. Overall its a project that I'm really proud of, and that I think is a step forward from FRF.

FRB: Timmy is in it. What's he doing, where?

Peter: Timmy is the host of the crack climbing segment in Utah. He's doing typical Timmy stuff: outrageous antics, fucking with people, climbing, walking the highline, beatboxing, being hilarious. He's also in the Greenland segment, which he and Nathan Martin and Micah Dash and Thad Friday shot themselves. And again, more of the same. He's a big, positive presence in this film, bigger then in FRF.

FRB: What's next?

Peter: Keep taking it step by step, working with cool people, doing projects that I'm stoked about. Timmy and I are going to collaborate on other projects. I've got lots of ideas for stuff, some climbing, adventure, other things in different directions.

FRB: Thanks for the interview, Peter.

Peter: Thanks man. See you at the show on Wednesday night.

<HOME>