How Sean Bean and a Virtual Production Stage Made It Into One of the Year's Best Ski Movies

Paddy Graham isn’t an actor.

But when it came time to create his latest ski movie, We Can’t Not, he ended up in an acting class, anyway. The one-off lesson boosted his confidence. When he returned and read some lines, Adam Gendle, the writer and director, didn’t like what he saw, though.

“Whatever they’ve told you, stop doing it,” Graham remembered Gendle telling him. “Go back to what you were doing before.”

Luckily, as Gendle advised, just being himself couldn’t have been too far a reach. That’s who Graham plays in We Can’t Not—a 38-year-old father, husband, and high-flying professional freeskier from Sheffield, England—as he embarks on what might be his last journey to make a ski movie. Along the way, he chases the answer to a question he often gets about his unusual occupation: Why do you do it?

Early in the movie, he’s surrounded by family members. They pepper him with questions, including how ski instruction’s going, which, as you can guess, is a bit like asking Tom Brady what it’s like being a punter (okay, Brady punted a bit, but the point stands).

While Graham’s parents know the deal with his career in real life (they also play themselves in We Can’t Not), he did actually get the ski instructor question from a relative.

“I just couldn’t be bothered to explain,” he said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s great, thanks’.”

Now, Graham can point to his movie, an hour-long romp that triples as a documentary, a ski action flick, and a sometimes tongue-in-cheek meta-meditation on being obsessed with powder.

Along the way, he recruits four fellow skiers and provides a dissection of how, exactly, ski movies get made. The explainer portions are brisk and witty enough to engage those who aren’t obsessed with skiing, a group Graham and the crew understandably kept in mind. The skiing itself is also slick.

“There’s something for everyone to relate to in it,” Graham said.

The idea came from him and his longtime co-conspirator, Tobi Reindl, with whom he co-founded Legs of Steel alongside Bene Mayr and Thomas Hlawitschka. Over the years, the ski movie and commercial production house has dropped straightforward like bangers The Ultimate Run, but it’s also dipped its ski boots into the silly and absurd. 

One mockumentary, Ski Good Money Will Come, lampooned professional skiing while the more recent Ritsch’s Roll was a fake livestream of a ski competition that ended with one of the announcers getting beheaded by an errant drone. 

In that tradition, We Can’t Not is another experiment. It borrows from the usual ski movie scaffolding—pure action and documentary storytelling—but is its own beast, rearranging the mold into something new. This involves acting scenes, real actors (one belts out a dramatic monologue in Shakespearean regalia), interviews with pros, clever camera tricks, and, yes, double flips.

“I guess it’s about entertainment and originality,” said Graham after being asked what drives Legs of Steel to get a little weird. “We’re skiers, and we’ve been competitive athletes; it’s like once something becomes easy, then it might lose its value.”

Gendle also brought experience in making ski movies with a twist. He worked on Legs of Steel’s Ski Good and, more recently, Here, Hold My Kid, a comedic skiing send-up that starred rippers Elyse Saugstad and Jackie Paaso.

For him, the trick was executing Graham and Reindl’s vision, which he nailed, striking a balance that was lighthearted but not slapstick. While We Can’t Not has jokes, they don’t slide into mockery.

“I think there’s a lot of serious ski and snowboard movies and I just never saw it that way,” said Gendle. “It’s an amazing sport and you respect everything [people] do, but I think to bring an outside audience in, you can have a bit more fun.”

The filmmaking side of We Can’t Not was far from unserious, though. Production, which Legs of Steel did alongside Red Bull Media House, spanned two years, while the idea has been in development for almost four years.

It also included a ski movie first: the virtual production studio Hyperbowl, which has an LED “volume” stage that can recreate outdoor backdrops and bring them to a refurbished airplane hangar outside Munich, Germany. Think highly advanced green screen.

Normally, Graham noted, this tech, which can also create fantastical environments, wouldn’t make sense in a ski flick. With skiing, you’re supposed to be outside capturing the wildness of real nature, not traipsing around Tatooine, accepting bounties, and blasting aliens. 

When Graham and the crew began creating a pilot for their movie, though, they got in touch with Hyperbowl, who, it turns out, wanted to get better at scanning snow environments. Ultimately, the stage allowed for an arresting sequence that transitions smoothly from the dinner table to an Alaskan video shoot and, later on, a memorable shattering of the fourth wall.

“It’s like in Westworld or in another TV show, when they’re in an environment, and then someone pulls a panel off and goes behind it,” said Graham.

Another curiosity: Sean Bean, the actor you might know as Boromir or Ned Stark. His gravelly, accented voice underscores We Can’t Not, providing wry narration and a surprising collision of broader pop culture and skiing. 

“So, the film you’re currently watching is a ski film about Paddy making a ski film to show his family why he makes ski films,” says Bean during the introduction. It’s all very British, which makes sense given the shared backgrounds of the skier and the actor—Graham and Bean hail from the same city (Gendle’s also a Brit). 

When Graham was growing up, he’d drive past the Bean family house and later learned that it’d produced a famous actor. He found that inspiring. If someone from his hometown could make it to Hollywood, maybe Graham could be a pro skier.

While trying to recruit Bean, Graham learned through the actor’s agent that paying him to do the narration wasn’t an option. He needed a connection. So, Graham put together what he called a “cheesy” video to tell his Sheffield story and explain We Can’t Not. Bean was in.

“They say not to meet your heroes, but he was a lovely, lovely guy,” said Graham. “Really pretty quiet and modest. He was quite funny and then sort of got on with his work.”

Near the end of the movie, two skiers and cast members, Markus Eder and Tom Ritsch, make a scripted joke about We Can’t Not being Graham’s final outing. In our conversation, he confirmed that it wasn’t just a joke. While he doubts he’ll take on a project of the same scope, he thinks he’ll end up skiing in front of the camera again. 

During production, he had questions about staying in the game given his age, but moments of clarity came through. The whirlwind of snow, best buddies, and movie-making still had its charm after all these years.

“You don’t even need a good day; you might just get a good turn,” Graham said. “And it just gives you that buzz and that thrill of knowing why you like doing it.”

In other words: he can’t not.

As for Reindl, he offered a quote that applies to every ski movie, both big and small, and may neatly explain what this is all really about.

“It’s essentially a friend making machine,” he said.

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