Worst Wipeout Ever: “I Thought I Was Gone!”

Behind the scenes of Point Break’s pivotal wipeout sequence… 

Does the animal vitality of the new Point Break film excite you?

For one year, I’ve followed the travails of the remake, ever since the Australian Laurie Towner hit the Teahupoo reef, sprung his jaw in two and was saved by Laird Hamilton.

As BeachGrit reported back then, “Such an event doesn’t come without casualties, even with Laurie excepted. Poto’s ski sunk ’cause of a too-heavy camera attached to it and another ski was flipped and the 200-gee camera strapped onto the sled was drowned. There was even a fight! At least according to one photographer. ‘It’s been a hilarious couple of days with Hollywood trying to shut it off to the locals which failed miserably, Hawaiian water patrol flipping skis, a fight out the back amongst a couple of very well-known riders and basically all the superstar riders being dominated by a 16-year-old local Manoa Drollet’s little bro, Matahi.’

Anyway, the film’s pivotal wipeout scene, at the front half of the movie when Utah drops in on Bodhi, was filmed at Pedra Branca, the name of a lil island 26 clicks off Tasmania’s South East Cape. The surfer is James Hollmer Cross whose oxygen was restricted for longer than was comfortable, as he explains in the short below.

Pedro Branca, Portuguese for White Rock, is a helluva joint to go surfing. Heavier than Shipstern Bluff maybe you ask?

Don’t look at me. I dislike these kinda places on every level.

How about we ask the filmmaker Tim Bonython whose vision of Jame’s wipeout was sold to the filmmakers of Point Break?

“By a long shot,” says Bonython. “Thicker and more grunt. Raw! I showed it at my surf movie festival and as I was working on Point Break in Tahiti, the director asked me if I had any big-wave wipeouts, but not from Hawaii. They wanted it looking dark and scary, as it’s set in Europe not Tahiti.”

Do you like seeing a man dragged to a complete, utter, hopeless, bogged-down end? Watch!

Oh, and for Chas Smith’s review of the movie, read here…