Sunshine Superman Page #6

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basically told the judge,

"We know this guy's doing this."

So the court ordered that

he could not go into anything

over a 30-story building

without a judge's approval.

Why do you do your homework

and know what you're doing?

A lot of us do this day in and day out

and we do it very systematically.

The difference in attention to detail

is being a hero or being dead.

Some BASE jumps are illegal,

others are not.

Tomorrow in Memphis, Tennessee,

as part of that city's annual

Cotton Carnival

BASE jumpers Jean and Carl Boenish

plan to parachute from the top

of a downtown office building.

That building is called

the Hundred North Main Building

and it's 432 feet

to the top of the 36th floor.

A man came up and introduced himself.

He happened to also be the president

of the Union Planters Bank Building,

which was the largest building

in Memphis, Tennessee.

And he said, "Would you like

to jump off of that building

for the Cotton Carnival?"

Carl and I just looked at each other.

We both turned back to him

and we said,

"Well, that would be great.

We'd be very interested in doing that."

They had a parade

and they had arranged for Carl and I

to ride on one of the floats

so that we would be

the co-grand marshals of the parade.

So we were co-grand marshals and our

job was to jump down from the building

with crystal medallions

that were made especially for the king

and queen of the Cotton Carnival.

If you were around the Boenishes

long enough

you got the feeling of people

that really didn't belong.

They weren't weird, alright.

They were different.

A little eccentric, even.

They didn't really fit anywhere, right?

See you at the bottom.

But they fit together.

Here we go.

Five, four, three, two, one, go!

We've just reached the Trollveggen,

which is the largest cliff face

in Europe.

It'll be the site for our assault

on the world BASE jumping record.

Standing over here on this ledge

is Carl Boenish and his wife, Jean.

They're about to fling themselves

off the mountain

in something called BASE jumping.

At that time, I was a recently

graduated dude with no career

from graduate school

studying literature and philosophy.

I had no idea what I was going to do

other than what I had been doing

which was rock climbing and sea kayaking

and generally doing things

that were really fun that made no money.

So I just took my expertise in adventure

and applied it to production,

and I ended up working for David Frost.

We needed to have a centerpiece

for an ABC special.

That special being

The Guinness Book of World Records

which showed on ABC and also on BBC.

We needed to have a centerpiece thing,

which was an international

big action-adventure thing

that could carry the whole show.

I figured BASE jumping

was going to be it.

Carl was thrilled to be contacted

by the Guinness people

and given the opportunity it was...

This was really an opportunity

being given to us.

Meeting Carl Boenish was...

...not like anything

I'd ever experienced.

By that time, I had been in New Guinea

and the fricking North Pole.

I'd been all over and had seen just

about every kind of person imaginable.

But I had never seen anybody

like Carl Boenish.

Super energetic.

He had plans to do everything

and he documented everything,

he had pictures of everything.

He was everything. Everything about Carl

was out there right from the beginning.

And it was like running into a geyser.

It was just like,

"Whoa, look at this guy!" You know?

Carl, what's the old record?

The tallest BASE jump ever made

is 4900 feet.

And that was made at Half Dome

at Yosemite National Park.

High by anybody's standards. Jean,

what are you going to attempt today?

Well, I'm not exactly sure

what the height is here

but it's definitely over 4900 feet.

- All the best to you both.

- Thank you.

When they said let's go and do

a record jump,

let's find a site that's the highest

from point of launch

to point of landing.

And where would you like to go

and do that?

The world was our oyster

and we chose Norway.

Norway. Norway's beautiful.

And the people are wonderful.

And, as they say,

there's a very open trust.

That's Norway.

It was like mounting an expedition,

really.

We were pretty much involved in that

from the time that he said

he could and would do it

until the time we left which is, I don't

know, two and a half weeks later,

it was pretty much a mad dash.

I flew across the Atlantic and went to

London and spent a day there.

Took a flight up to Oslo and

the Boenishes were already there.

I just jumped in a rental car with them

and we drove up to Andalsnes

which took all day.

It was that time of year where

the nights weren't really nights.

There's a midnight sun kind of thing.

So the sun never really totally set.

So we just kept driving

and driving and driving.

That went on for eight hours

and we ended up in Andalsnes

and I saw this cliff for the first time.

I said, "Wow,

that's going to be interesting."

It's a scary sort of place.

It's like Sleepy Hollow with

these huge cliffs rising on both sides.

Really formidable

and really intimidating.

And it was really bad weather. It was

just drizzly and cloudy and weird.

I wasn't real enthusiastic that

it was going to break any time soon.

Wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

I knew it would take us a little while

to figure out what we were going to do

and where we were going to jump.

One glance up there and I knew

it was going to take me a while

to get fluent with the whole area.

It was just too big.

It was too big

and too confusing up there.

So I was lucky enough

to meet with a friend.

He had climbed around here a whole lot.

He was not only a great sort of partner

and climber

but a really decent, soulful guy.

We got along perfectly

from the beginning.

We hooked up and every day we'd hike up

the back side of Trollveggen,

go up there marching around

looking for places to go.

I started climbing when I was 15

and I've been doing a lot of climbing

in the area here in Romsdal.

I first met Carl when the others

asked me to be a local guide

and be responsible

for the security up in the mountains

while they were doing the parachute.

I really didn't know what's going on

then, what they were going to do.

But it was really a exciting time

to be together with them.

I remember his leg.

That he had hurt it once

and broke it, I think.

And that he did not go to a doctor.

When Fred and I first started

hiking up to the top of Troll Wall

to figure out a location

where we're going to jump,

Carl went along with us

but he was such a slow hiker

that ultimately we decided most

of the time to go up there without him

because he just couldn't keep up.

Carl, when he got up into the mountains,

had some problems with his leg

all the time.

He got very tired because

it was hurting very much, I think.

I go, "What what's with this guy?"

"Why is he going so fricking slow?"

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