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When Dean Potter died while attempting a proximity wingsuit flight from Taft Point in 2015, he left behind a complex legacy. Potter was a pioneer and enormously influential in the worlds of climbing, highlining, and BASE jumping, but he was also a controversial figure who battled personal demons that weren’t fully understood until after his death.
HBO‘s new four-part documentary series The Dark Wizard knits together archival footage and interviews with those who knew Potter best to create a portrait of the man behind the legend. Directors Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen, who knew Potter for many years, have been climbing together since college.
“I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, which is like the mecca of climbing in America,” Mortimer tells Den of Geek. “I started climbing young, and then got into filmmaking. I started melding the two, going out with friends and filming them. It just evolved from there.”
Rosen was working as a journalist in New York when he saw one of Mortimer’s early films and realized he was onto something. “His idea was to tell these stories about the culture, kind of for the first time. And I was like, ‘Man, this is going to be a thing.’”
Meanwhile, Potter climbed The Reticent Wall route on El Capitan, completed the first FreeBASE ascent of Deep Blue Sea on the north face of the Eiger, and free-soloed Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, drawing criticism from park rangers and government officials who were concerned about damage to the arch’s soft rock. Potter blended disciplines in ways that influenced a generation of climbers and aerial athletes, but following his tragic death, his sister, Elizabeth, gave Mortimer and Rosen access to his personal journals, and the true nature of his inner world became clear.
“The journals show that although Dean was such a self-confident person in life, such an alpha, there was a vulnerable side to him that we didn’t even know about,” Mortimer explains. “He wouldn’t let that out. I mean, anyone’s journals are pretty intimate and vulnerable, but they really shine a new light on his journey.”
Potter found relief from his struggles only by pushing the envelope and attempting death-defying feats, like the highline crossings he completed without a safety lanyard, backup line, or even a parachute, but the filmmakers admit that much has changed in how athletes approach their mental health.
“We’re in our early 50s. Back in the ’90s, we didn’t have therapists, there was no medication, and there were no diagnoses,” says Mortimer. “We just went out and did crazy shit to work out our issues. It’s unbelievable seeing all these Olympic athletes talk about their mental health and their struggles. That was not happening back then.”
In The Dark Wizard, Dean’s own brand of therapy is explored; a kind of “death consequence” that leaves him untethered, but it’s clearly not a healthy mindset. “A lot of the people who were close to Dean now heavily therapize themselves,” Rosen says. “They’ve had a kind of psychiatric and emotional awakening. They can now look back at what was going on back then with a more sophisticated and tender emotional lens.”
The Dark Wizard premiered March 15 at the SXSW Film & TV Festival. It will be available to stream on Tuesday, April 14 on HBO Max.
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