Waiting for Lightning Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Waiting for Lightning Blu-ray Movie Review

It is indeed a Great Wall.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 23, 2013

My hometown of Portland, Oregon has achieved a certain cachet over the past few years courtesy of a burgeoning hipster movement and such celebrated fare as Portlandia. But anyone who’s lived for a while (and I’ve lived here for the majority of my life) will tell you that Portland tends to suffer from a certain kind of inferiority complex, at least insofar as relatively major metropolises go. Portland has always felt a certain competitive envy for its larger “sister cities” to the north (Seattle) and south (San Francisco), concluding (rightly or wrongly) that it’s the bastard stepchild of the larger west coast cities, perhaps because it’s not actually on the coast (it’s about an hour’s drive west—if you drive like a madman—to get to the Pacific Ocean from Portland). Portland has also felt left out in the celebrity sweepstakes as well. In fact, when I first moved here decades ago, civic leaders were struggling to point with pride to any major celebrity who had come from Portland, usually consigning themselves to mentioning people like Jane Powell and Mel Blanc. Things have improved somewhat in the years, with several major musical acts (most recently The Decembrists) calling Portland home, and a much improved scene for our rather splendid acting community courtesy of all sorts of film and television offerings that utilize Portland as their home bases. But even I, who consider myself something of a Portland nerd (not a repetitive term), had never really realized that Danny Way, the subject of the documentary Waiting for Lightning, was born and lived the first few years of his life in the rainy climes of my city. Way is probably best known to the public at large for having jumped the Great Wall of China on his skateboard in 2005, though as this frequently quite interesting piece makes clear, he has had a lifetime seemingly attached to his skateboard, an attachment that in fact helped Danny overcome his own personal sense of inferiority.

There’s an adage that you get the face you deserve by the time you’re forty, but there’s still a palpable sense of shock when the documentary first interviews Way’s mother, Mary. Though she’s considerably past forty, the documentary shows some old photographs of her circa the 1970s when Danny and his elder brother Damon was born and the transformation this woman has undergone since her younger days is testament to a life lived hard and, most likely, fast. Mary is a survivor, and in fact when she recounts an anecdote about meeting Damon and Danny’s now deceased father, Ken, she relates the Ken told her on their very first date that he had been put on this planet to teach Mary how to survive. Mary’s face is simply the most telling symbol of the tumultuous lifestyle that the Way children found themselves being raised in. Ken died at a very young age while incarcerated for six months for not having paid a mere fifty bucks in child support to his former wife, and while it’s never made very clear exactly what happened to him in jail (was it a suicide or a murder?), the effects were obviously devastating on both Mary and her two young sons.

A series of “replacement” fathers then entered Damon and Danny’s life, but it was probably the first one, their stepfather, Tim O’Dea, who most influenced the boys’ interest in skateboarding. Mary herself lauds Tim for being “exactly” what her boys needed at that stage of their development, and the surrogate Dad, who was evidently quite the woodworker, actually handmade skateboards for the boys. Danny, then little more than a toddler, figured out he could more easily keep up with older brother Damon if he knelt on his skateboard and pushed himself around, chasing after Damon. That began a lifelong love affair between Danny and this particular sport.

Mary’s continued emotional problems due to the death of Ken and then the breakup of her subsequent marriage to Tim led to her adopting a fairly risky lifestyle, and Damon is on record in Waiting for Lightning talking about the revolving door of violent men who passed through all of their lives in this phase. Ultimately Mary herself kind of checked out, and Danny devoted himself more and more to skateboarding and the coterie of buddies (most of whom were actually friends with Damon, and who were simply “tolerating” Danny’s presence) to gain some sense of family. The documentary interviews several key figures from this era, and highlights Danny’s single minded determination to turn skateboarding into his mode of egress from a dysfunctional childhood, something helped along by some felicitously placed mentors.

The film ping pongs (no pun intended, considering the Chinese angle) back and forth between Danny’s perilous upbringing and his attempt to be the first person to jump the Great Wall of China. Anyone who followed the news reports at the time (which were legion) is not going to have much of a sense of suspense about what ultimately happened, but there are still some “heart in your throat” moments nonetheless, especially when simply viewing the unbelievably high ramp that Way sailed down to make the jump. There’s also some perhaps unintentionally hilarious footage along the way, including a fantastic little official Chinese news agency report detailing the upcoming jump, replete with an absolutely hysterical demonstration by the news anchor featuring cardboard cutouts and his equally funny remonstration to the audience that “your mandatory support is encouraged”.

While Waiting for Lightning is to be commended for offering a “warts and all” depiction of the dysfunctional Way family, one can’t help but conclude that that very approach is meant to help lionize Danny in a perhaps unrealistic way. This is a kid who after all dropped out of school to pursue skateboarding, something that led to his individual success but which should hardly be held up as a paradigm to other young kids who might have similar dreams but not the same drive or aptitude. There’s also a certain corporate element to the film, including the participation of some of Way’s sponsors, which calls the film’s objectivity into question, at least in passing. Interestingly, that corporate element does not include Nike, one of the few Portland based companies that has helped this city overcome its lingering issues of not being good enough.

Waiting for Lightning Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Waiting for Lightning is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of First Run Features with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer (mostly) in 1.78:1 (a lot of the archival minicam footage is in 1.33:1). As should be expected from a documentary cobbled together from such disparate source elements, there's a fairly wide disparity in the quality of the look of the film. The contemporary interview segments pop the best, again as should be expected, with excellent sharpness, very good fine detail and accurate looking color. Though this is a progressive presentation, it's obvious that some of the older footage is sourced from interlaced elements, and clearly visible combing artifacts crop up from time to time, especially in moments of fast motion. A lot of the older footage is pretty fuzzy looking, and there also some attendant issues off of broadcasts like ghosting. When taken in context, though, the bulk of this presentation is certainly acceptable at the very least, and with regard to the new elements, much more than that.

Waiting for Lightning Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

First Run Features is still fairly new to the Blu-ray game and may not have gotten the memo that high definition consumers have reached the point where they simply demand lossless audio on their releases, even if any given product may not offer hugely impressive soundtracks to begin with. Waiting For Lightning in fact offers only lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 mixes, and they suffice relatively well for a film that is after all made up largely of talking head and narrated sequences. The 5.1 mix is really pretty front heavy in any case, without a lot of overwhelming surround activity. Fidelity remains very good, and (as should be expected) dynamic range is fairly nil.

Waiting for Lightning Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Videos include:

  X Games Featurette (1080p; 20:43)

  Chronicles of Gnarly (1080p; 5:14)

  Streets Are Rough (1080p; 3:45)

  Woodward Megaday (1080p; 8:40)

  Kauai Megaramp with Danny and Laird Hamilton (1080p; 3:41)

  Kauai Megaramp with Jake Brown (1080p; 3:10)

  Tribute to Mike Ternasky (1080p; 15:18)

• Interview with Director (1080p; 11:22) features Jacob Rosenberg, who also produced, talking about the project.


• Deleted Scenes include:

  Blabac: The Perfectionist (1080p; 1:43)

  Caudill: The Blow Up (1080p; 1:44)

  Danny: The Quarter-Pipe (1080p; 1:18)

  Dyrdek: The Disappointment (1080p; 00:49)

  Hensley: The Crowbar (1080p; 2:46)

  Hensley: The Tour (1080p; 2:33)

• Theatrical Trailer (1080; 2:30)

Waiting for Lightning Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Like a lot of you who are only cursorily aware of the world of skateboarding, my acquaintance with Danny Way was largely limited to his now infamous jumping of The Great Wall of China. The good news is that Waiting for Lightning puts that jump in the context of a somewhat tumultuous life, one which has shown Way to be a survivor against some formidable odds. The bad news is that the documentary has a certain aggrandizing quality about it, something that sits kind of uneasily with what really should be a more objective approach. All of this said, anyone with an interest in skateboarding will certainly want to check this out, at least as a rental. Video quality here is variable due to the widely disparate source elements, and there is only lossy audio on this release.