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June 9, 2007
37266 visits
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More people saw surfing this past weekend than any other weekend in history.
No, there were no giant swells, no dramatic contests, Kelly Slater didn't pull a 360-air-to-barrel maneuver while chatting with Cameron Diaz on the beach at Malibu - it was actually pretty darn average weekend of surf, at least in the US, and both the ASP World Tour and the WQS are in between events.
Despite the fact that its stars were animated penguins, Sony Pictures' Surf's Up grossed $18 million bucks by presenting surfing same as it ever was: a stunningly beautiful, slightly dangerous, and always fun act practiced by kids and kids-at-heart. Nothing challenging or groundbreaking here except for a couple of in-the-tube sequences, which were almost more real than any actual surf movie. Walking out of the theater, the buzz was a happy, simple stoke - nice way to waste a couple hours, good popcorn, etc. |
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HBO's new surf TV show, John From Cincinnati on the other hand, is a whole different bar of wax. It premiered Sunday night, right after the last-ever episode of The Sopranos, and it's about as far from groovy animated penguins as you can get. Picture a bunch of dodgy characters flinging eloquent, sometimes-hilarious curses at each other and occasionally riding waves in the decaying surf/border town of Imperial Beach. This is no surprise, really. The show's creator, David Milch, wrote for Hill Street Blues and helped create NYPD Blue before coming up with HBO's hit Deadwood, which was a similar deal: angry, poetic characters, stumbling around a small town looking for gold and sex and power. Milch, working with acclaimed 'surf noir' writer Kem Nunn, made sure John From Cincinnati is sort of a surfing version of that. Which is to say it's not some Blue Crush "look-how-groovy-surfing-is" fluff flick. Riding waves is a backdrop for other, possibly more important, definitely weirder, stories. Understandably, criticism have been mixed. The New York Times said: "John From Cincinnati" has many barriers to success, and the premiere episode is almost willfully strange and unlikable. But that doesn't mean that the series is bad, just peculiar, a solemn mythologization -- and mystification -- of surfing as unearthly pleasure and life-sapping addiction. "The show takes place in the surf world, but it's not really about surfing -- it's about much bigger things than that. It's about people who, for one reason or another, fall from grace and who're trying to find their way back into the world and into each other's hearts."
--Staff writer and surf consultant Steve Hawk
I don't know about you, but surfing has in turns been both an "unearthly pleasure" and a "life-sapping addiction" for me, depending on the surf and however many obligations I had to blow off to get it, so maybe they got that part right. Not that the show's intended solely for surfers or anything. Steve Hawk, a staff writer on John... and its surf consultant, sat down with Surfline the day after it premiered to narrate this slideshow and talk a little about the show and how it all fits into surfing. "This is a look at the uglier side of the sport," he explains. "Nobody's happy, at least initially -- even though they've been blessed by surfing, they've been blinded to the miracles that surround them every day because of their own pathologies. "The show takes place in the surf world, but it's not really about surfing -- it's about much bigger things than that. It's about people who, for one reason or another, fall from grace and who're trying to find their way back into the world and into each other's hearts. "There's a lot of arguing and fighting and negative energy in these characters in the early going. But in their own crippled way, they're all moving towards redemption. And that's really the theme of the show. And sometimes, the more fallen you are, the more beautiful it is when you find your way back." --Marcus Sanders The show airs on HBO on Sundays at 9pm. SURFLINE HOME PAGE MORE SURF NEWS |
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