"Cross-country skiing is hammering wicked hard, pushing your body to the limits, crossing that finish line, collapsing on the ground, and actually getting up and wanting to do it again," says World Cup skier Andy Newell.

Except when he says it, he hasn't collapsed on the ground. Shirtless and wearing his baseball cap backwards, he's on my TV, the star of a film he directed and produced called Generation X-Ski. It debuted in 2002, back when Newell was still a teenager. The film was his effort to show the world how much the sport has changed since the days when Olympic silver medalist Bill Koch popularized it in the U.S. It was - and still is - perceived as a sport for bookish granola-eating, knicker-wearing, tree-huggers.

Newell set out to change this, "to get people really excited about the direction U.S. skiing is going in," he once said. He formed XSki Films and began creating a 30-minute flick in which he and his Gen X Nordic ski buddies - mostly high school friends - race and perform any number of stunts, both on snow and off.

On snow, the film shows Newell catching big air in the terrain park and halfpipe. On his skinny cross-country skis! He does back flips, mute grabs, and dinner rolls as comfortably as if he were kicking and gliding down a set double-track on a cross-country ski trail. Like the old "This is not your father's Oldsmobile" commercial said, Newell's antics show that this is not your father's sport.

Not that many of us could mimic Newell. Some of his friends try in the film and fail - hilariously.

Off snow, the film shows the boys mud bogging in Vermont in the "back 40" in a Chevy one-ton pickup with nine-inch lift kit. And belly-flopping in their underwear off a second-floor deck into the snow. Surfing behind a motorboat. And shooting guns in a field.

The film is raw - with little indication of who's who - and is the kind of entertainment mostly of interest to friends and family. He sold it online and in specialty retail shops. But it was a first step for Newell in promoting his chosen sport.

In 2004, Newell came out with a second film, American Skier. Although I haven't seen it yet, the summary on the XSki Films website promises more of the same: "more insane stunts and sick ski racing footage from around the world ... and guns ... and chicks." Rated PG-13, warns Newell.

His latest release indicates that his filmmaking is maturing. Released in 2009, A Day in the Life offers a look inside cross-country World Cup racing, with footage from Germany, Russia, and Canada, along with interviews with top North American racers. (And hopefully, no guns and chicks.)

Again, I have yet to see it. But while Generation X-Ski puts the X in xc skiing, A Day in the Life promises to show that the X was already there - no mud-bogging or skeet-shooting necessary to illustrate that no one but true tough guys can handle the rigors of the sport.

Talk about extreme. I mean X-treme.

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