I just finished watching
60 Minutes on CBS about a young man, Alex Hannod, who lives his life rock climbing solo without any source of rope or protection. He has set records all over the United States, and his ability to risk his whole life to climb the face of a mountain truly amazes me. The whole interview was focused on his climbing, how people view his risks in the climbing world, and finally how he lives out of his van on less than one thousand dollars a month. This was all incredible to me, and I immediately thought of how similar he was to Chris McCandless. Like McCandless, Alex Hannod dropped out of college and just left to go pursue his passion of climbing in the wild. What I found most interesting about this interview though, was that they never focused on his childhood or his relationship to his family. As part of the audience i was really interested in how his family viewed his lifestyle choices. This realization made me think about the choices interviewers and directors make when telling the stories of other people and conducting interviews. I saw Alex Hannod's story as inspiring and truly incredible, but i wonder had the interviewer taken a different approach to the story maybe i would think differently. Watching this interview really made me think about how each story can be crafted so many different ways, and each way really does make a difference on how the audience will view the story.
I saw this too, but instead I associated him with Timothy Treadwell. It's interesting how Hannod, who is idolized by climbers worldwide, was featured in this 60-Minutes segment, but Treadwell, who was ideally doing the same thing: following his dreams, was thought to be completely crazy by most people (at least at first glance). Although it could be argued that Hannod is also a little wacky, he hasn't died because of climbing, which in comparison with Treadwell makes him seem all the more sane.
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