Jake Burton alive and bristling in 'Dear Rider' documentary

A new documentary on the late snowboarding pioneer Jake Burton is more than a glossy retrospective of his life

People who know the sport — really know it — will tell you that the best snowboarding movies are those that never let you get too comfortable.

That might explain how “Dear Rider" could very well end up in that category, even though nobody dropped out of a helicopter or plunged off a cliff to make this film.

Instead, the best storytelling in the documentary about snowboarding icon Jake Burton, who died in 2019 after a relapse of testicular cancer, comes from the nimble stitching together of decades of home movies and archival media interviews to paint a well-rounded portrait of the man who saw a sport in that undefined slab of fiberglass and forever changed life on the mountain.

Some might argue the wounds from Burton's death are too fresh to allow for an unflinching narrative about a man whose life and influence on the sport he created are detailed in this 90-minute film, which debuts on HBO on Nov. 9.