If you found entire clusters of dinettes, cars, and living rooms — with people sitting in them — rolling toward the ground from the clouds, you might think, “Well, then the end of time is a real thing.” But it’s also possible that this work was the work of Joe Jennings, the subject of “Space Cowboys,” a “free-fall cinematographer” who specialized in creating and photographing such surreal stunts. This new doc comes a decade after Mara Strauch’s first film, “Sunshine Superman,” about BASE jumping pioneer Carl Boenish (also an aerial photographer), and offers a companion piece that’s intertwined in theme and style.
The film, co-directed by Bryce Levitt, isn’t quite as cheerful or moving as its predecessor, perhaps because the central character isn’t larger than life this time around. One can’t complain, however, as the easygoing and fun Jennings makes his living doing mind-numbing activities – all of which are on screen here. While he’s currently traveling the festival circuit, “Cowboy” won’t have much trouble finding venues in various formats all over the world.
His so-called “insane passion for dropping large objects from the sky” somehow developed as a result of a difficult upbringing, in which Jennings, after being diagnosed with ADHD, was sent to a hippie community “school”. He and his siblings were then unceremoniously dumped on a farm to fend for themselves after their parents divorced. After their mother came two years later to transplant them to a suburb, they discovered that they were “not normal” by the other children’s standards. Although the realization of great athletic prowess honed by much outdoor living eventually made him less of a target for bullying, Joe still felt the stigma of being outcast due to the nickname “Joe Dirt.”
Heading to college and California in 1980, he met his future wife Sissy, who was attracted to his adventurous spirit. Skydiving was on their bucket list, but after one ride Jennings knew he couldn’t get enough of it. By 1990, he had begun practicing “camera flying” professionally, jumping in with other divers to film their landings using a helmet video camera. Intrigued by reports of “freeriders” performing elaborate movements in the air before opening their chutes, he began a partnership with Rob Harris, a DJ, skateboarder, and street bike racer. et al. whose delightful creations included “Wild Dancing in the Sky.” Riding the then-nascent field of “extreme sports” (the
It was a “perfect friendship” that was cut short in 1995, when Harris was involved in a fatal accident due to a faulty photo rig in Canada. Even before this tragic event, Jennings was suffering from bouts of depression. He found that fame had to be taken. The mental health problem struck again, even harder, after Patrick de Gaillardon, the French pioneer of kitesurfing (freestyle skiing using a snowboard) – with whom he began a new ongoing collaboration – met a similar end to Harris in Hawaii after… Three years.
Jennings’ wife discusses these struggles, as does eldest son Joey, who realizes at some point that he, too, is at risk for clinical depression. But no matter how shifting his mood on solid ground, my father was still charged with his work in the ether, that excitement embodied in the remark, “Here I am, 61, and I haven’t aged at all.”
Aside from the chronologically narrated biographical narrative, the main structural theme of “Space Cowboys” is Jenning’s team’s quest to perfect the “Holy Grail of UFOs”: tuning a car found in a junkyard so that it can be dropped from a plane and photographed landing without Flip, rotate or tilt. (Or hitting a photographer, as happens in one test). Of course, it must also carry passengers, who will release their parachutes at the last possible second. We never learn what this is to…but does it matter? Jennings calls these stunning works of aeronautical engineering “art,” and indeed they are, no less than Andy Goldsworthy’s ephemeral sculptures or Christo’s temporal covers.
Although their main characters come from different generations, “Cowboy” mostly sticks to the winning soundtrack strategy of “Sunshine Superman,” which anchors the pop-rock of Me Decade with great tracks from Three Dog Night, ELO, and Big Star – Although there’s also room for Fugazi and Snakes. Archival footage (including much of Harris) reflects the varying video quality of previous decades. Given the deep pockets of the employers involved, from MTV to Pepsi to blockbuster action films like “XXX” and the first big-screen film “Charlie’s Angels,” it’s of very high quality – as is the new material shot by Tony. Johansson.