Waiting for Lightning Video

Waiting for Lightning represents a war, a struggle of duality in documentary form. This 90-minute look at the life of skateboarder Danny Way and his insane but inspiring attempt to skateboard across and over the Great Wall of China, at its core, is unable to make these strands connect naturally. The film is well-made, certainly, and Way’s daring folly in China is fascinating. As hypnotic as it can be to watch him skate up and down a half-pipe, though, Danny Way’s story feels a bit too slight to fill out a feature-length film.
The biographical aspects of Way’s life are interspersed with the lead-up to the fateful stunt in 2005. Waiting for Lightning posits that Way, whose father died when Danny was very young, was innately equipped to pick up a skateboard and try new stunts, even if he got bruised on the way down. The traumas that forged him, we’re led to believe, are what made him such a great skateboarder. In the buildup to the actual jump on the Great Wall of China, we see Way create a so-called Megaramp that enables him to break world records for the longest jump by a skateboarder (and also hurt himself badly on national television), among other feats of derring-do.

Waiting for Lightning Trailer

Persistent practice helped hone his vertical skill set, and world records followed. Even more importantly, though, Danny became known for pushing the boundaries of what was possible on a skateboard — bomb-dropping from a helicopter onto a ramp, and building his own “MegaRamp,” on which he completed a 65-foot horizontal jump. A serious surfing accident temporarily waylaid him briefly in the mid-1990s, but Danny battled back, winning various gold medals at different X Games and setting the stage for a huge jump on a specially constructed ramp over a portion of the Great Wall of China.

As directed in friendly fashion by Jacob Rosenberg, “Waiting for Lightning” tracks a formula familiar to many such biographies — lionizing interviews with peers and colleagues, and loads of home video footage (including an amusing glimpse of a “Wrong Way” traffic sign spray-painted over with Danny’s name).

Another descendant of “Dogtown and Z-Boys,” Stacy Peralta’s influential 2001 documentary about the 1970s rise of popular skateboarding culture and the colorful characters who populated it, “Waiting for Lightning” details the life story of visionary skater, daredevil and X Games star Danny Way, building up to his 2005 attempt to jump the Great Wall of China. A slick technical package and a willingness to peer at least a bit into the difficult childhood and fractured psyche of its subject give this movie a leg up on a lot of its less inquisitive, like-minded, hagiographic stunt spectaculars, like “Nitro Circus: The Movie.”

Way was born in Portland, but grew up mostly in Vista, California, north of San Diego. After the death of his biological father in a prison incident (a blind spot that the movie mentions, but unsatisfactorily explains), his mother briefly remarried, but then dipped into drugs

Waiting for Lightning Poster

The Cult of Gnarly is our way to describe Danny and the few athletes in
his strata, in particular Laird Hamilton, Travis Pastrana, and Mat Hoffman.
There are others and they are easy to recognize, but these four are a good representation
different disciplines in action sports. Despite participating in completely different sports, there is
a kinship and a recognition between them; or as Danny says, “same attitude, different tool.” The
commonalities are many but can be condensed into several principles: 1) the constant pursuit of the
boundaries of human potential; 2) perseverance through terrible injury, 3) a pure love and passion for the
sport that defines them, 4) a familiarity with head space of “flow

Waiting for Lightning Wiki

The documentary Waiting for Lightning tells the story of expert skateboarder Danny Way who overcomes a shaky past in order to attempt an unbelievable stunt. Though he grew up in a family broken by divorce, Way became a talented skater, and now he attempts what will become the greatest accomplishment of his career -- constructing a ramp that will allow him to jump over The Great Wall of China - if he succeeds. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi .waiting for lightning movie.