Adirondacks are focus of new PBS show

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May 12, 2008

Will have national audience Wednesday

By KIM SMITH DEDAM The Press Republican Mon May 12, 2008, 04:45 AM EDT

LAKE PLACID -- A new PBS documentary will broadcast the Adirondack landscape across America on Wednesday.

The two-hour film "The Adirondacks," shot airborne over rugged mountaintops, up winding rivers and on the ground from ice-covered lakes and misty forest trails, looks as much to Adirondack people for meaning as to wilderness points of view.

Filmmakers said they worked to capture a sense of place in the rural pace preserved in the only public/private wilderness park in North America.

"We had a year. We stayed all over," filmmaker and executive producer Tom Simon said in a phone interview from his Dobbs Ferry studio.

"I think we did pretty well. We had a fairly open brief in terms of what kind of film to make."

LONG TIME COMING

The "brief" really began over four years ago when Buffalo-based WNED looked to produce nationally, said John Grant, chief program officer.

"We're just growing our way into being a producer. We looked around and asked, what can we focus on?"

WNED's inaugural documentary on Niagara Falls led them to another state treasure: the Adirondack Park.

Grant approached Simon, an executive producer of "National Geographic Specials" on PBS and for "National Geographic Explorer" on TBS.

Simon won seven Emmy Awards for his individual work, more than three-dozen Emmys for films he's produced and 150-plus awards in journalism.

In researching the Adirondack Park, Simon was smitten.

He had been here once before as a child on a family trip to Lake Placid.

"The first interview we did was with Clarence Petty," Simon said.

The legendary Adirondack forester and progenitor of the Adirondack State Land Master Plan was 101 that year.

"He was a great way to start things off."

Memorable moments changed with the season.

Simon recalled "climbing up the ski jump at Placid at 20 below, it was the lower jump; covering the 90-Miler (canoe race) was fun; climbing Tongue Mountain in Lake George with Carl Heilman was great.

"We had been shooting in the Tupper Lake area with a logger named Paul Mitchell. We started before dawn, and it was really cold. As we finished up and headed back, we stopped on a bridge and saw something moving in the distance. It was a bobcat. Paul was waiting for us back in his truck, and when we told him what we saw, he didn't believe it."

But they caught it on film.

EDITING IT DOWN

The biggest challenge in production, Simon said, was to simmer months of film into a two-hour comprehensive look at the park, its people and policies.

"That's a pretty daunting task. I felt that every day," Simon said.

Emerging from the material, the Adirondack story told itself.

"It's real, it's genuine, it's so unlike the rest of America -- you know, strip-mall America."

Filmmakers worked under the assumption that 95 percent of viewers know nothing about the Adirondacks.

"In the end," Simon said, "if the audience understands it and appreciates it, we will have done our job."

Grant said screenings have been well received.

"Outside of the park, there wasn't the full scope of awareness of the public/private nature of the Adirondack Park. I think that's always something people are surprised by or at least surprised they didn't know."

FINANCING

Money from I Love New York and several major foundations helped finance the project, along with $50,000 in support from the Adirondack Council.

Council spokesman John Sheehan said the documentary is visually stunning.

"Ultimately what we have is a two-hour documentary on why the Adirondack Council exists. The photography, both aerial and on the ground is amazing. You really get a sense of how large and how wild the park really is."

kdedam@pressrepublican.com