Jake Burton alive and bristling in ‘Dear Rider’ documentary

By EDDIE PELLS
AP National Writer

A new documentary on the late snowboarding pioneer Jake Burton is more than a glossy retrospective of his life. It’s a raw, unflinching examination of the trials and tribulations Burton went through over a four-decade career in which he shaped both the snowboard and the billion-dollar industry that forever changed life on the mountain. The movie “Dear Rider” premieres on HBO on Nov. 9. Before Burton died in 2019 after a relapse of cancer, he had been approached about a movie of his life story and had started planning to make it. His wife, Donna, let the project move forward after Burton’s death. One of her instructions to director Fernando Villena was that there was no subject that would be out of bounds.