Pro skier from Squaw creates reality show
By Charles Bethea, ESPN Action Sports
Coming to a network near you: the gnarly evolution of “Nitro Circus.” Over the past year, Squaw Valley-based pro skier Mike Wilson, with the help of sponsors and partners, has raised and spent an estimated $1 million filming six episodes of what the 24-year-old calls an “action-sports-based-adventure-travel show.” The pilot, now complete, will be shopped around major networks next week.
“I basically dreamed up a bunch of the gnarliest things in some of the most dangerous sports I could come up with,” says Wilson, from his parents home in Squaw Valley, after a mid-December day on the slopes, “and my friends and I set out to do them all.” So far he and a revolving crew of action sports accomplices — including Byron Wells and Jesse Hall — have been heli-skiing, BASE-jumping, wing-suiting, snowmobiling, sky diving, snowboarding, rope swinging and zip-lining around the world.
Wilson’s full-time partners on the project are Patrick Rivelli, owner of the website unofficialsquaw.com, and Johnny DeCesare, filmmaker and founder of action film company Poor Boyz Productions. Rivelli, who had the original idea for the show, has contributed capital — as have a few of Wilson’s skiing sponsors — while DeCesare has contributed filmmaking know-how and equipment. Wilson, who is an executive producer and the show’s de facto star, has been responsible for rounding up the talent, and creating the game plan, which amounts to “going to some of the most beautiful places in the world with incredible backdrops and stuff to do something crazy or gnarly.”