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SEA OF DARKNESS
New film chronicles shadowy surf world of 1970s Indonesia
By:
Dave Gilovich
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Director Michael Oblowitz will tell you straight to your face: "This is not a surf movie." Perhaps not, but those who were lucky enough to see the movie at the Malibu Film Festival on Friday, August 7 will attest: Sea of Darkness is most certainly about surfing, and about a group of surfers who blazed a trail of adventure, self-discovery, mysticism and crime throughout Bali, Java and other, more remote parts of Indonesia long before the days of the fully catered boat trip. |
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It follows the life-changing decisions made by early Indo surfers Mike Boyum, Jeff Chitty and Peter McCabe, who turn to drug-smuggling to fuel their passion for surfing -- and those made by Martin Daly, Bruce Raymond and Dave Barnett, who funnel their wave addiction toward more legal pastimes that gain them fame, fortune and a lifetime of perfect waves. The movie took Oblowitz over three years to make, and, beyond Daly, McCabe and a host of other Indo adventurers, features Steve Spaulding, Jeff Divine and John Milius. Surfline caught up with the director recently at a hotel in Las Vegas, and asked him a series of questions about how and why Sea of Darkness came about. This is a movie about a curious place and time. How did the project get started? I was flying on an airplane to the Turks and Caicos. I had been hired to do a TV show there -- one of these crazy vampire TV shows. In a prior lifetime I had films in the Sundance Film Festival, Cannes, Edinburgh, Berlin. But poverty dictates that very often I have to take real jobs, such as directing Steven Segal movies or chasing a bunch of lesbian vampires down to the Turks and Caicos and making a television show out of it, right? And lo and behold I am sitting in the airport in Miami, and the guy next to me looks extremely familiar; he looks like a grey-haired version of Martin Daly, who I was very familiar with because I read Surfer Magazine regularly, as all of us do when we're not surfing. And it is Martin. And the two of us get to chatting. And we talk about what we respectively do. We are about the same age. We both love surfing. I am from South Africa and I talk about the early days of surfing in South Africa. So Martin and I were having this conversation about all these strange and mysterious waves, and he had his Mac with him and it was just loaded with amazing, exotic photographs because he was in the midst of the Quiksilver Crossing at the time. And he showed me all these fabulous pictures of these young kids and then he started talking about Jeff Chitty and Dave Barnett and the elder guys and how all of this had come about -- what his boat had previously been used for. And of course out of all these names comes the illustrious Mike Boyum. And how Mike Boyum had a built a camp at G-Land. How Boyum was dodging the cops in fifty countries. How he got booted out of G-Land, and how he came to live with Martin and Jeff Chitty in a place in Jakarta -- a little house called the "Skull Cave" from which Boyum conducted many, many sojourns, forays and drug dealings. And all of this was done to fund Boyum's dream of building another G-Land somewhere. Now I said, 'You know, Martin, we've had five Scotches each, but this is a movie I'm going to make.' "Bali was an exotic, amazing place -- free-flowing opium, free-flowing hashish, free-flowing Thai sticks, free-flowing magic mushrooms; young girls willing to try everything."
-- Michael Oblowitz
Not many people are clear about what happened to Mike Boyum. Did he disappear or die or...? The film revolves around a fork in the road. And that fork in the road really turns at a certain point when Boyum is presenting to Bruce Raymond and Martin Daly and various surfers: 'Let's get together with all your technical and oceanic knowledge and let's build a fleet of drug-smuggling boats that could really work and could really get that 60-feet on the waterline filled with tonnage. We can pick it up in Engano in Sumatra and drop it off on the West Coast of Australia. We'll make millions.' And Martin and Bruce turn him down. Jeff Chitty and Peter McCabe, on the other hand, allow him to contract them to smuggle drugs and they do all kinds of crazy stuff like swallowing pounds of cocaine. They eventually all get arrested. When they come out of jail they decide to do one more big run to build up some money for Vanuatu where they are going to set up another surf camp. And Chitty has a kilo or two that he gets busted with in Australia and goes to Boggo Road Prison for ten years, and with him goes Boyum's stash money. Boyum arrives in Australia but he can't access the stash money because Chitty has already been sent to solitary confinement. He attacks Chitty's beautiful girlfriend; tries to get it that way. In the end, he can't get the money. Boyum goes off to the Philippines, to Siargao; you know that island there, Cloud Nine? And we have a number of different stories about what happens to him. But the general story is he tried to cleanse himself through a diet and absolve himself from his sins and start all over again. One of the interviews we did had him lying dead; found by a pastor in the town, of starvation. One of the people interviewed in the film calls Bali in the '70s 'Heaven on Earth' or 'The Center of the Universe.' Why do you think they described it in those terms? Steve Spaulding, who was wonderful in the movie, describes Boyum as having nowhere else to go. He was a fugitive from the law, he was a draft dodger; he had to be in a country that didn't have an extradition policy. And Bali was an exotic, amazing place -- free-flowing opium, free-flowing hashish, free-flowing Thai sticks, free-flowing magic mushrooms; young girls willing to try everything. As Milius put it, it was a wonderful place for sheer hedonism. What year does the story begin? I'd say it starts in the early seventies. It's a little sketchy because Milius and Jeff Divine talk about disconsolate Americans -- either draft-dodging or finishing the Army and coming back to America and getting a bad reception -- feeling more allure for the Asian Peninsula than America. 'Going Asiatic' as Milius calls it. And they go Asiatic and we go through the late seventies, eighties. Mike Boyum drops out of the picture around 1989. And in '91-'92 Quiksilver hires the Indies Trader, formerly called The Rader. It was a purpose-filled boat made by Dave Barnett to pillage the ocean floor. Because these guys were all salvage divers remember -- that's where they began. And so we go all the way through these...they are almost hilarious stories. Boyum and Chitty are like the Keystone Cops of smuggling. They are the opposite of Cocaine Cowboys. They are not smuggling to make millions; they are smuggling to keep their surf life going. And by '93 Boyum has vanished. Peter McCabe has spent four years in jail. Jeff Chitty's in jail for 12 years. Martin is looking for a job and he hooks up with Bruce Raymond and they start the Quiksilver Crossing. That goes on for a while, and that seemed like the be-all-and-end-all of the career, and that was more or less when I met Martin, but then I lived through the entire collapse of the Quiksilver Crossing with Martin. So there were other phases after that and really it comes to the present day. 2007 is when I think the final shot was made. Jeff Chitty is now out of jail after being there for 15 years and he is sitting on Martin's boat, along with Martin and Dave Barnett, and he is talking about what might have been, and Martin's pretty happy with what is. A fork in the road.... It's an amazing story. It's a terrific story. John Milius said it's one of the great surfing films, because it's not about surfing. It's about people who are engaged in surfing. What I'm really glad about is that I've made a movie that really isn't a surf movie; it's a character driven movie about a period of time. It's not surf pornography, you know? I noticed in the movie that Martin gets philosophical about some of the reasons why people like Boyum did what they did. Was there a lesson in there for you? Absolutely. Surfing is an addiction and it's like all addictions -- if you let it consume you, it will consume you. Milius very clearly says at the end of the movie: 'There are absolutes and there is a right and there is a wrong, and even though the universe may appear indifferent, it does matter.' The film will make its East Coast Premiere at The New York Surf Film Festival at Robert DeNiro's Tribeca Film Center in Manhattan in September. Stay tuned to Surfline for details. MORE SURF NEWS SURFLINE HOME PAGE |
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Comments: (45) Add Your Comment
Rhodes G. 01/07/2010 03:40 PM
'Sea of Darkness' will be shown as part of the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival, on 5 Feb10.
http://oceanfilmfest.org/films.html
RonJohnson 01/06/2010 01:48 PM
Does anyone know when this will be out on DVD?
Josef 12/06/2009 11:20 AM
It´s still out there, uninhabited islands with perfect waves nobody surfed before...just depends how you wanna go...
Michael Schulz 08/23/2009 10:45 PM
This films sounds like it will stir emotions that sometimes are better left unconfronted like the benign skin cancer that bathes in the chemically filtered sunlight of Southern California on my scarred and receding hairline.I myself chose to visit Kauai for a few years after watching Bali Hai.Thankyou Mr. Spaulding
I also consider Bali Hai my favorite alltime movie.
chuck allison 08/23/2009 03:35 PM * PREMIUM MEMBER - Real Name
this time period was truly 'off the wall' people did and said things that are best viewed with a wondering eye. bali was a time and place that will never return---if you were there you know but might not remember
Rahm Rodd 08/22/2009 09:07 PM
Go to Facebook and plug in "Sea of Darkness" for trailers and other info.
Dan Devine/Hawaii 08/22/2009 07:52 PM
Well I heard about all this shit going down over the
years back in the 70's..... Sounds like a epic-ley entertaining
Film not to be missed..... What happened is History &
the names need to be changed to protect the not so innocent....
DD/HI
Bjorn Hazelquist 08/21/2009 12:40 PM * PREMIUM MEMBER - Real Name
This Movie looks epic. Nowadays surf travel to Indo is more like going to summer camp rather than a real adventure. Airport pickups, fully catered 3 meals a day, jungle cruises just like Disneyland accept real natives. These guys who pioneered these spots deserve mega respect! They did it the real way.
I wish I came from this era. The boards were gnarly, the bordies were gnarlier,no leashes, but that was all part of the fun... right?
Bill Boyum 08/20/2009 09:44 AM
Martin stands alone in scrabble, is a consuming storyteller and runs the hands down best surf operation in the world. So frankly, with this going for him, I was astonished he wanted to participate in this murky haphazard story that isn’t well told. Ego? Bitter about his pal Chitty? I also had issues with my brother but I’m not letting the BS in what I’ve seen and read flow without saying something.
Simon Lamb 08/19/2009 10:04 PM
Look forward to seeing it!
08/19/2009 09:33 PM
Surfed with Petey last season in g-land,happiest mother f--ker in the camp, still Rips.
08/19/2009 09:19 PM
The names change, the wave remains the same.
mark wakeland 08/19/2009 04:05 PM
the facts and timeline are not accurate on gradjagan.there is a story out there but this isn't it...some of it is true a lot isn't....and this notion that opium and young girls were in abundance back then is absurd.Mark Wakeland
mike findlay 08/19/2009 04:01 PM * PREMIUM MEMBER - Real Name
From Findo..I have met both Daly and Bill Boyum. Great story tellers, but very suspect Scrabble players. Still the tales, true or not, is what makes surfing lore what it is.
Mike B 08/19/2009 01:07 PM
View All Comments (45 comments)
Healthy dialog is good ; I look forward to seeing the film. As we go forward all surfers need to treat others at their home break as they would like to be treated when traveling, and lead by example in picking up trash and being sensitive to how our actions influence the next generation. leave nothing but footprints, drop the ego, and be a role model to some kid who needs it - aloha
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