Wide Boyz
2012 · 50 min · Trad, Documentary · Chris Alstrin Films
Two British climbers built a replica of a horizontal offwidth crack in a Sheffield cellar and spent two years suffering in it, all to cross the Atlantic and attempt Century Crack, a 5.14b roof crack in Utah's White Rim that American crack specialists called the hardest offwidth on the planet.
Pete Whittaker and Tom Randall are hilarious, self-deprecating, and completely unhinged in the way only crack climbers can be. Chris Alstrin's feature, released free by the filmmaker, is equal parts training montage, buddy comedy, and horror film about what offwidth climbing does to the human body. By the time they're stacked upside down a hundred feet off the desert floor, you'll understand why nobody else wanted this ascent.
Review
The funniest film on the site, and also the most painful to watch. Pete Whittaker and Tom Randall build a replica of a horizontal offwidth in a Sheffield cellar and spend two years suffering in it, then cross the Atlantic to attempt Century Crack, a 40-meter roof offwidth on the White Rim in Utah that was the first of its kind confirmed at 5.14b. Chris Alstrin's feature is free from the filmmaker.
This is for anyone, climber or not. The setup explains itself, the two of them are self-deprecating and completely unhinged in the way only crack climbers can be, and the film is equal parts training montage, buddy comedy and horror film about what offwidth does to a body. Skip it if you want elegance. There is none, and that is the point.
What works is the cellar. Two years of a homemade crack in a basement is a better training sequence than any gym scene in any film here, and the film knows it. When they are stacked upside down a hundred feet off the desert floor, you understand why nobody else wanted the ascent. What it gets wrong is that fifty minutes of the same joke starts to wear, and the first free ascent in 2011, done first with gear pre-placed and then redpointed two weeks later, gets less detail than the training.
100 feet of Kneebars: Slayer is the American cousin, thirteen minutes of Brent Barghahn under an arch. Both are films about a specific kind of suffering. Wide Boyz is the one you will quote.
