Documentary of Rocky's trip to debut

The documentary that kicked off Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson's latest round of trouble with the Republican party is making its premiere tonight.

The film, an hour-long look at a 6,000-mile trip from Salt Lake City to Torino by bike and yacht, was part of a dispute between Anderson and James Evans, chairman of the Salt Lake County Republican Party.

Evans wanted to investigate how the mayor used tax dollars for the $171,000, nearly four-month trip. But Anderson insisted — and city records showed — that any public money initially used for the trip was repaid by private donations.

"James Evans didn't know what he was talking about," Anderson said. "We did this in a way that should make every resident of Salt Lake City proud."

Each non-employee on the trip paid for his or her own flight, and private donations covered lodging, food and support vehicles. Anderson paid Dunn Communications around $90,000 for publicity and filming about the trip to Torino.

The resulting movie will be screened tonight at 7 p.m. in the Broadway Theater at 111 E. 300 South. Anderson will offer an introduction; twelve hours later, he'll leave for four days in Torino, where he will pitch Salt Lake City to the world's companies, sporting associations and visitors in hopes of luring tourism and investment to Utah.

The movie starts with Anderson's press conference April 4 to send off the Olympic message. Jeff Niermeyer, deputy director of Salt Lake's public utilities department, and Marc Wangsgard, a friend of Anderson's, biked a tome from Salt Lake City to New York City, dipping through southern Utah, the Rocky Mountains, Kansas plains, Missouri river bottoms, West Virginia hills and New Jersey Transit trains along the way. The spandex-clad pair left behind a signed $1 bill in a Colorado pub, peeked into the world's largest hand-dug well in Greensburg, Kan., and learned about limestone pulp from a quarry worker in the Midwest.

From New York to Belgium, yacht crews kept track of the tube with the message. In Belgium, a different team of Utah residents biked the message through French countryside and Italian Alps.

The bike riders and trans-Atlantic sailors carried an Olympic message from the 2002 host to the 2006 host of the Games; the message expresses support for peace, youth and environmental causes.

The tradition of passing a message between cities began with Lillehammer in 1994 when the Norwegian team used no fossil fuels to transport the epistle to Nagano. Subsequent team members, including Salt Lake City's, also used green transportation, including bikes, electric trains, boats and their feet.

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E-mail: kswinyard@desnews.com