History
of Australian Surfing
(Nat Young, 1985)
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| Young pays respectful homage to his country and its surfers in this full-length documentary, from Isobel Lathem -- Duke Kahanamoku's spontaneously chosen tandem partner at Freshwater in 1914, when Duke introduced the sport Down Under -- to Cheyne Horan and Tom Carroll. Highlights include the 1964 world contest, bone-crushing big surf at Fairy Bower and a look at the 1977 Stubbies contest at Burleigh Heads. |
Surfer's
Journal: Great Waves
(Ira Opper, 1998)
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| A four-volume, four-hour, 12-episode documentary that was originally shown in single half-hour installments on the Outdoor Life Network, with each episode investigating a well-known surf break -- Waimea, Malibu, Grajagan, etc. The range of surfers interviewed for the series is astounding -- Tom Blake, Dewey Weber, Nat Young, Gerry Lopez, Kelly Slater, Lisa Andersen, Peter Mel and Sunny Garcia -- with dozens of others in between. New footage meets archival clips from Bud Browne, Bruce Brown, Greg MacGillivray, Jack McCoy, Alby Falzon and Sonny Miller. Tightly written and edited. Even the music is good. If the series has a flaw, it's that good material sometimes feels wedged into place. |
Fast
Times at Ridgemont High
(Amy Heckerling, 1982)
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| The character issue: surfers, collectively, are more aligned to Jeff Spicoli than Kelly Slater or Shaun Tomson or Mike Parsons or any of the other clear-eyed, nice-smelling good-for-the-image fellows. Surfing has always been about style on land as well as in the water, and having pizza delivered to your world history class is a style move of the highest order. Accept and love Spicoli. Accept and love yourself. |
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| A short, smooth, jazzy look at the longboard resurgence, winding up with Joel Tudor in slow motion at Pipeline, backed by Nina Simone's version of "I Shall Be Released" -- and here we're edging up toward spiritual territory. |
Big
Wednesday
(Warner Brothers, 1978)
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| "Ridiculously overdone," Surfer magazine said of Big Wednesday in 1982. "Melodramatic...embarrassing...the serious scenes are bigger jokes than the comic ones." Gary Busey carries the film for a while, then gets washed away. Wafer-thin characters and a mail-order plot. Some great stunt-double surfing, though, by Peter Townend, Jay Riddle, Bill Hamilton, Bruce Raymond and Ian Cairns, and the surf scenes are beautifully photographed by Greg MacGillivray and George Greenough -- among others. Now a cult classic for reasons that probably don't go any deeper than the overwhelming power of nostalgia. |
Kelly
Slater in Black and White
(Richard Woolcott and Quiksilver, 1991)
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| The first insightful look at the Floridian wunderkind who, in a few short years, went on to win six world titles and become the best surfer ever. A couple of clips in Black and White are clear indications of what's to come: an impossibly late double-up at Pipe that he somehow finds a way out of (and to this day, calls one of the best barrels he's had at Pipe) and footage from his win at the 1990 Body Glove Surfbout at Trestles, the event where he unloads on a 6-foot southwest swell in his favorite "star trunks." Not only is this 20-minute short essential for history's sake, the champ finally sets us straight on surf video copyright laws: "Who cares?" he says after the FBI warning flickers on the screen. "Rip it off, man, make a bunch of copies and give 'em to your bros." |
Momentum
(Taylor Steele, Poor Specimen, 1992)
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| The I'll-do-it-myself-and-do-it-even-more-core school of surf video would soon become cliché, but Momentum, Steele's first effort, had a certain kind of slashing charm when it hit coastal VCRs in 1992. And make no mistake, Steele initiated a surf cinema revolution. Slow motion was out. Grainy budget-quality video stock was in. Sunset Beach was out. Backdoor was in. Rail turns: out. Tailslides and spins: in. Carroll and Curren were -- not out, exactly, but suddenly looking a lot older. Slater, Machado, Dorian, Williams were way, way in. Lots of raw, youthful energy in Steele's videos, but the whole game was made to look one-dimensional. Steele seemed glad to have Jack McCoy out there working to capture the sparkle, texture and color in our most sensual of sports. |
The
Search II
(Sonny Miller, 1994)
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| Perfect, peeling Jeffreys Bay and Tom Curren hitting on all cylinders. Nuff said. No, wait a sec, add this: The Search II is Sonny Miller's best, and that's saying a lot because the original Search was pretty damn good, as was Searching for Tom Curren, winner of Surfer Magazine's Video of the Year award in 1997. |
Thicker
Than Water
(Chris Malloy and Jack Johnson, Poor Specimen, 1999)
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| By the late '90s, even the stars of the Momentum-clone videos couldn't stand to see another quick-cut segment laced to a droning Pennywise soundtrack. Enter Chris Malloy, the pensive Taylor Steele loyalist and eldest of the famous Malloy brother trio who decided to offer his own alternative to the surf video. In March of 1998, Malloy and rookie filmmaker Jack Johnson hit the road with a board bag, a 16mm Bolex and a plan to make a surf film with substance. The result was Thicker Than Water, a 60-minute artsy, groovy fantasy-based flick (with an accompanying 160-page photo book) that's a complete departure from the hundreds of forgettable videos that were produced in the '90s -- a Morning of the Earth for Gen X and Y. Although we can't forget that Malloy and his band of friends -- unlike Nat Young and the country soul crew -- were living off surf company promo budgets instead of self-cultivated vegetables in Byron Bay, the intentions were good. There's hope for the future. |
Surfer
Girl
(Donna Olson, 1995)
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| Wendy Botha, Jodie Cooper, Pam Burridge, Debbie Beacham and Frieda Zamba ride gorgeous powder-blue waves at Tavarua, then return to the island on a nice post-session high to talk about surfing and life. Irony-free. No mugging. No flexing or posturing. Not specifically a feminist project, but gender and sexism are touched on, then it's back out to Cloudbreak for more tuberiding. Beautifully photographed by the amphibious Don King. |
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| No absolute reason to have Sik Joy in this slot: it could have been Green Iguana, Bunyip Dreaming, the Billabong Challenge series, Nine Lives or Occy: the Occumentary. McCoy's work set the industry standard through the '90s for craft and quality. But maybe Sik Joy does have that extra hit of gloss and polish. Highlights include the 1994 Kirra contest tube-fest; a sublime Indonesian sequence with Keith Malloy, Shane Dorian and Luke Egan; Michael Barry tracking deep inside the desert-scented tubes of Western Australia and a dozen or so studio sleights-of-hand from McCoy's ace editors. Nothing sick about it. Tons of joy. |
