What Happens When the Reel Rock Guys Get Access to Your Private Journals?

Eleven years ago, the legendary climber and BASE jumper Dean Potter—one of the world’s best free soloists, before Alex Honnold came along—died in a wingsuit accident off Taft Point in Yosemite Valley. He left behind a shattered circle of friends and fans, but also a lengthy archive: morbid doodles, raving voice notes, and hundreds of hours of footage from jumps, flights, and free solos. Now, Reel Rock founders Peter Mortimer, Nick Rosen, and Josh Lowell have created The Dark Wizard, a four-part documentary series drawing out Potter’s life into a riveting, Shakespearean-level drama.

Among climbing directors, this trio has more experience than anyone in excavating the emotional core from a straightforward climbing story. As the minds behind Valley Uprising (2014), The Dawn Wall (2017), The Alpinist (2021), and 20 years of Reel Rock tours, they’re not afraid to re-calibrate the center of Yosemite’s cinematic universe. Nor does the prospect of reconstructing a climber’s life intimidate them. But with Dean Potter, who fiercely controlled all of his media projects and engaged in what Rosen calls “a decades-long quest to tell his own story,” the stakes feel highly personal. What Mortimer, Rosen, and Lowell have created is an extension of Potter’s desire to express himself to the world—albeit one that likely wouldn’t have been sanctioned by the “Dark Wizard,” as he was nicknamed in the climbing community.

“Every filmmaker in Dean’s lifetime was engaged in this big canon of Dean mystique,” Rosen told me. But The Dark Wizard goes further, conveying “what was actually going on and who he actually was.” This includes Potter’s defeats on El Cap, his personal betrayals, his undiagnosed mental illness, and his mistreatment of his friends. Rosen confesses that even though he and Mortimer were both friends with Potter, they never could have told the story they did if Potter were still alive.

So what does it mean to alter your dead friend’s self-mythology, even if it’s to tell a truer tale? I sat down with Mortimer and Rosen to discuss the series, which premieres tomorrow, April 14. We dig into Potter’s rivalry with Honnold, the glorification of free soloing, how Potter would react if he knew his private journal entries had become public, and the remaining unsolved mysteries about Potter.

A conversation with Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen, directors of The Dark Wizard

The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Sam MacIlwaine: While Dean Potter starred in a couple of your Reel Rock projects, including Valley Uprising, how well did each of you actually know him?

Peter Mortimer: We knew Dean pretty well. We filmed with him a bunch and were involved with a lot of his projects, especially from 2008 to 2012. I actually had a big project that he and I had set up together before he passed away. We hadn’t started filming on it, but it was a big idea that he wanted to do with Red Bull.

I climbed with Dean a bunch in Eldorado Canyon and Yosemite. He would stay in my basement when he would come through Boulder, and we would stay at his house in Yosemite when we would film.

Nick Rosen: For me, it really dates back to 20 years ago. It was my first trip to Yosemite as a filmmaker. I’ll never forget it. I just moved from New York City. I was a climber, but I was not cool. We drive into the Valley, which is mind-blowingly intimidating to begin with, and we pull up to Meadow, and right there at the bridge, as always, is this hardcore crew of Stone Monkeys, looking so dirty and badass.

Looming over all of them, at the end of the line, all quiet but clearly dominant, is this six foot six, towering, Dean Potter figure. It felt like when Johnny Utah first meets up with Bodhi and his crew in Point Break. It was my big introduction to this subculture.

MacIlwaine: Since you personally knew Dean, did the narrative arc of The Dark Wizard feel obvious to you from the get-go? Or was there a point in the process where it all clicked—the descent into madness and redemption?

Mortimer: The broad strokes of Dean’s life were pretty clear to us, just from knowing him. He came up on the underground circuit, then he started doing the Masters of Stone films in Yosemite, and he was kicking the door down. It was the arrival of this new generation at that time in the late ‘90s. But then, Honnold came along and kind of dethroned Dean. There were always stronger climbers in Yosemite than Dean, obviously—like Tommy [Caldwell] and the Huber brothers and Beth [Rodden], who could climb 5.13 on El Cap. But Dean was the one that all the Monkeys looked up to. He was the leader.

When Honnold came along, he let go of that at some point and realized the new generation was here and he was not going to be the best, bold climber in Yosemite. So we had the broad strokes.

Then there was this kind of softening, and then obviously the tragedy—the almost ironic tragedy—of how he passed away, getting caught back up in some competition. It was so much more about his mental health journey and emotional journey.

That trip to China that I think most people don’t know about—it’s a live event on Chinese television, and he’s free soloing a high line, and he’s out of his mind. It’s pretty intense. That was this low point, and then there was this clear intentional change in Dean after that. You see it as journals; you see it in his actions; you see the direction that his life went.

When you’re crafting these things, it’s always that low point that comes in three quarters of the way through the story. So many things coming down at once was a real big moment. Once we kind of clicked that moment, we were like, okay, you can see the highs of his journey leading up to that and then some of the highs after that as well. That was when it all clicked together.

MacIlwaine: As we go along the series, we get more and more of Dean’s voice notes, bringing us into his mind. Do you know why he was recording all those intimate voice notes? Was it for your project?

Rosen: No, it wasn’t for our project. This was just Dean’s personal—it was very much like his journals.

Mortimer: In real life, his journals kind of taper off and his voice notes start up. I think he got an iPhone or something.

MacIlwaine: How do you think Dean would react if he knew that you were including his candid, private journals and voice notes in this series?

Rosen: As his friend Brad [Lynch] says [in the series], Dean would be mortified if he knew that we were looking at these journals, like anyone would be. These are very, very personal, vulnerable, and honest writings. Any of us would probably be mortified, especially someone like Dean, who’s processing this level of dark thoughts and hopes and dreams in his writing.

But I’d like to think that there are a couple sides to Dean. The egoic, very image-obsessed part of Dean would be completely mortified. The side that he strove for, which was artistic and truthful and larger than life—I think that side of Dean would approve of our decision to go deep and honest and unflinching with our portrayal of him through these journals.

Mortimer: Dean the artist wanted to share. He wanted to go deeper. He didn’t want to do the superficial thing. I think it’s just something he struggled with because there was so much going on inside his mind. We’ve seen the reaction of how people feel really connected because it feels so honest. And that’s what Dean wanted. He wanted to go to this deeper level. So I think on the big level, he would love it. I think on the small level, he would be totally mortified.

MacIlwaine: There’s a pretty prominent comparison between Alex Honnold and Dean Potter. When did you interview Honnold for this? Is it just me, or did he seem particularly edgy in his remarks compared to other films?

Mortimer: It was two or three years ago. I think it was literally 10 hours, our interview with Honnold. When he watched it, he was like, “Dude, you cherry-picked all my lines.” Well, that’s called editing. I mean, we’re not gonna show a 10-hour interview.

I think Honnold had such mixed feelings. He just says exactly what he thinks. He feels like such an honest person, and people love that about Honnold. I love that about Honnold. He came up with such admiration for Dean; he was seeing what Dean was doing in the Masters of Stone films and was like, “That’s what fucking badass climbing looks like,” and went to do it.

Rosen: Anybody who actually personally knows Alex has heard him brush away the niceties and go direct to the point in a way that only he can.

I also think it’s interesting that he’s an antagonist in the story of Dean’s life. But I don’t think you can really blame Alex for dethroning Dean Potter because Alex was very inspired by Dean and was following in his footsteps, taking it to the next level. He just happened to be this generationally talented, one-in-a-billion athlete who took the very human things that Dean was doing to this preternaturally gifted, fearless level that only Alex could.

There is this competitive side to Alex that I’m not sure too many people have seen, but that’s authentic.

Mortimer: Alex was like, “Dude, you make it seem like I was systematically just trying to destroy Dean’s legacy.” And he’s like, “But I wasn’t doing that. I was trying to destroy everyone’s legacy. That was just a side effect of the broader destruction.”

I think Dean would have preferred that he just sat there and didn’t pursue his incredible gifts to change the world of climbing forever, but Alex wasn’t going to do that.

MacIlwaine: In January, we saw Honnold free solo Taipei 101, which echoed Dean Potter’s free solo highline in China that you feature in The Dark Wizard. It’s the same kind of high-profile, free solo stunt that’s a clear transaction of risk for cash. Was Dean’s potential as a role model to young people a consideration for you in making the series?

Rosen: We’re telling a story that’s so nuanced. I’m not sure that the portrayal of Dean’s free solos in this film is particularly inspiring. They are a very personal process for him, not just in terms of his trajectory and climbing. This is a man who is suffering from pretty serious mental illness, is undiagnosed and unmedicated, and has embraced these things like free soloing and things with, as he says, the death consequence, as a way to find momentary peace through the risk of death.

That doesn’t really seem like, “Yeah! Woohoo! Let’s go free solo.” It’s an intense and personal, painful process for him. I hope it wouldn’t inspire people to do things that they are unprepared to do.

Mortimer: It seems like in general, the climbing world has gone more toward gym climbing and the Olympics and competition and sport climbing. Even if you go to a sport crag developed in the last 10 years versus 30 years ago, I can clip three bolts from one giant handhold. I think there’s a general push towards safety. Maybe there are more climbers,  so that’s why a small percentage are out free soloing, trying to be the next Alex Honnold. I don’t know about that.

You can’t completely take the “danger, adventure, exploration, and going into the unknown” side out of climbing. You can’t be like, “It’s all about numbers all the time.” It’s just part of it. It’s so intrinsic to the sport. Climbing is an outgrowth of mountaineering, so to try to be like, “We shouldn’t talk about that side of the sport or glorify it” doesn’t even make sense to me.

MacIlwaine: As the founders of Reel Rock, you have made a lot of movies enjoyed by a mostly climbing audience. Do you approach your films differently for a climbing audience than for a mainstream audience?

Mortimer: It’s not that different. We’re really interested in the “why” and what drives people and finding amazing characters: people you’re like, “My God, I’m so glad I got to know that.”

We toe that line between, you kind of get it if you’re not a climber and you get it more deeply if you are a climber. There are certainly Reel Rock films that are just Sharma doing the next 5.15 deep water solo where you’re like, “Okay, that’s gonna be like candy for climbers.”

Rosen: Climbers are the biggest consumers of Reel Rock, but we’re trying to make sure that if a climber brings their grandma, that their grandma is going to have a good time and understand the stakes and what makes the story special.

MacIlwaine: Compared to films you’ve worked on about climbers who are still alive, and who might be looking over your shoulder, how did Dean’s absence affect your creative process? Did it make your creative choices braver, or did you have more caution, knowing he wasn’t there to say no?

Mortimer: That’s such a good question. It definitely made us braver. Timmy O’Neill said something like, “Dude, if Dean were alive, you would never be able to tell this story.” That quote is not in the movie, but in my first cut, we opened the movie with that.

With our last big story about Marc-André [Leclerc], we also ended up telling the story after he had passed away. There’s something liberating about that, but there’s also this incredible onus to get it right. With both The Alpinist and The Dark Wizard, most people are going to know about Dean and Marc-André through our storytelling. Marc-André was underground. The core climbers knew him and people up in Squamish and around the circuit did. But a lot of people know who Marc-André was now, and it was through our lens that they got to know him. So there’s this huge onus to get it right and to do it in a meaningful way.

The liberating side is like—we were talking before about how Dean would have been horrified that we’re reading the journals, but I really feel like he would love, on a deeper level, this story and people learning his story. He wanted to share his story. We never would have gotten to tell it in this way. I don’t think his friends would have done the interviews in the way they did if Dean were still here.

Rosen: What makes it even more poignant is Dean himself was engaged in this kind of decades-long quest to tell his own story. His friends were all getting roped into that. He had this big film project that he was working on for a while. Even when we worked with Dean, he never gave us notes or anything on what to say or not to say, but he considered us to be collaborators as much as directors. Every filmmaker in Dean’s lifetime was engaged in this big canon of Dean mystique—these films that were what Dean wanted to put out to the world, which wasn’t exactly the same as you can see in the series about what was actually going on and who he actually was. And I think his friends have responded really well.

I think it was Brad Lynch, when we premiered it at South by Southwest, who was like, “Dude, this is the story that Dean was working on all these years that he just didn’t have the sort of courage or the self-awareness or the perspective to tell.”

MacIlwaine: Now that you’ve completed this very thorough biographical narrative, is there anything that remains a mystery to you about Dean? Any contradiction you haven’t yet unraveled?

Rosen: I  don’t think we’re resolving a lot of the contradictions. It was a really interesting process with this Dean self-mythology. One thing I really learned, going deep on this project, is how real that was for Dean. It wasn’t just a “Dark Wizard” mystique. It was not something that Dean was putting out there that he didn’t believe. He really believed in—almost on a metaphysical level—some of the things that he was putting out there: his connection to nature, his connection to birds, all this stuff. I think there is so much mystery in that art.

As filmmakers, we both had this desire to puncture that myth and peel back the layers and show what’s real underneath. But at the same time, it was so true for him that we also had to kind of buy into it. I’m a very materialist, practical person. There’s very little woo-woo in my life. But now my metaphysical conception around Dean and his connection to ravens is something that’s more real than it was when we started this.

Mortimer: I still wonder and think about the tragedy of his death. I think he wrestled with the ego. I think in a big sense that he transcended that on some level. He let go of some stuff as he got older and aged out. I wasn’t there so I don’t know, but it feels like it was still the ego that significantly contributed to his ultimate decision—the tragic decision-making in the end. And I wish I could understand that more.

It’s just crazy, his final day. We looked at that stuff so many times and talked to Jen [Rapp] about it. He made so many little decisions on that day, like the decision to go for it, the decision to not pull out like we’d seen him do before. I wish I could understand what was really going on with him on that day, because there’s still a little bit of mystery for me.

You could say, of course, he did so many crazy things and he was on the edge so many times and there were so many other times where he could have theoretically died, so you can, on the one hand, just dismiss it and be like, “That’s what’s gonna happen if you do that for 25, 30 years.” On the other hand, they were really specific decisions, and he was so hyper-aware and so rational.

Rosen: And that he now had so much to live for. In the past, it made sense in the internal logic of Dean’s world that he was risking his life and he was so on the edge.

Mortimer: Like after the Delicate Arch, he was like, “Fuck everybody. Fuck everything.”

Rosen: He was like, “I’ll get everything. I’m willing to die for my art.” That was very much his approach to life. In 2013, 2014, he’s got Jen; he’s almost a family man. He’s just reached that point in his forties that a lot of us do where you start to let go of the need to be the best that you can be.

MacIlwaine: The theme song for the series, “When I Was Done Dying” by Dan Deacon, feels like it was written for Dean himself, especially with the descriptions of angst, transformation, and flying in the first verse. How did you find this song?

Mortimer:  Josh Lowell, who’s our other partner and the third big creator on this, heard that song. That song was actually released in 2015, the spring of 2015 when Dean passed away. Josh heard that song and we were in right away. I was like, “I fucking love this song.” So we reached out and we found out that the guy who wrote it, Dan Deacon, composes all these shows for HBO and is a big composer. So he composed the entire score for the four hours as well.

Rosen: We have only a handful of needle drops in the show; everything else is by Dan Deacon. He’s a brilliant, mad artist. He totally fit in with our whole process, and he’s been going so hard in the end with us. For guys our age, Dan was an “If you know, you know,” indie rocker in the 2000s that I would listen to and I’d be a fan. It was kind of contemporaneous to Dean’s career.

The first episode of The Dark Wizard is available to stream beginning April 14 on HBO Max. The next four episodes will drop weekly on Tuesdays. 

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