Come watch a never-been-released big wave teaser!
The madmen who have a kink for giant surf will always fascinate me. I wait for their feats, as northern hemisphere winter rolls around again, with bated breath. This year’s El Nino is certain to go absolutely wild, they say, and so I will watch the purple blobs with even more anticipation. How do they do it? How do they sit out in rolling insanity and then throw themselves over the ledge? How? How?
South African filmmaker Michael Oblowitz shares my driving curiosity. Before his latest, Heavy Water, there was Twiggy. He followed his countryman and champion big wave surfer Grant “Twiggy” Baker out to Mavericks and captured the fury of the ocean and was captured himself. He tells me:
“I was able to go undercover out there with a super fast twin hulled speedboat and two ultra high speed Red Cameras with Hydroflex mounts and gets as close to the action as possible without a jet ski or swimming. The incredibly powerful slow motion close up footage of Mavericks breaking became the impetus along with meeting Nathan for Heavy Water.”
And I get it. I get not being able to tear eyes away from the horrible sea at its worst. We share an addiction, I suppose. Not the addiction of those who ride but the addiction of those who try to figure out what dwells in the heart of the exceptional man. Twiggy and Heavy Water are two sessions on a therapists couch. Two stabs at defining the closest thing on earth to Nietzche’s ubermensch.
Watch here…
TWIGGY from Stephen Eckelberry on Vimeo.
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For all the kit he had, that was some pretty shithouse filming. Still a good watch, though.
yeah, shithouse alright!!!
Sarcasm? I can’t tell, soz… Was it intentionally shaky with poor shooting angles on purpose? It just seemed like someone who knew nothing about surfing went out and filmed it, yet somehow made something pretty good of it.
as Wittgenstein wrote: “…of that which we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence…”
take your high-flying, crystal blue water, Indo edits. This is the shit that gets me pumped up to surf tomorrow