"No difference between pro surfer and pro tennis player!"
When was the last surf film you’ve watched and been very very excited about? For me, I can tell you, it was just two days ago when I watched Vaughn Blakey’s near epic Scary Good. But what about a bigger surf film? One that transcended our little bubble and had boys and girls from Topeka dreaming? Like Big Wednesday, The Endless Summer, etc. Maybe not since the 1970s. Ooo-ee, that’s a dry spell.
But why? What happened to us? Are we patently uncool now? Thankfully The Guardian asked the legendary Jamie Brisick. And let’s read:
In the past decade, however, audiences appear to have lost interest, leaving surf films to flounder: the 2015 Point Break remake from Fast and the Furious cinematographer Ericson Core was critically pummelled, while Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson’s 2008 movie Surfer, Dude belly-flopped at the box office. Part of the reason is that these days surfing no longer has a subcultural lure that lends itself to good storytelling. It is now a broad, mass-participation sport. “If you watch surf films made before 1996 you see a lot of people out of work,” says the writer, former US pro surfer and ex-editor of Surfing magazine, Jamie Brisick. “Back then, you didn’t know when you were going to get the good waves. Everyone was waiting around, because they don’t want to miss the surf.”
The arrival of accurate wave forecasting also allowed for greater career opportunities. “Surfers could plan their week,” says Brisick. “It became less time-consuming than it once was, and much more of a big business. Now there’s not much difference between a pro surfer and pro tennis player.” If surfing was now big business, it no longer worked as cinematic shorthand for “romantic outsiderdom”, nor as the perfect setting for the dangerous, outcast protagonist.
Well hell. That’s pretty depressive. But wait. I don’t think Mr. Brisick has fully explored my turn as a pro surf writer. I feel there is all kinds of romantic outsiderdom for me to discover. I also feel I can be a very dangerous, outcast antagonist.
Scene:
(It is a gloomy fall day in Cardiff by the Sea. The reef is pumping but filled with all sorts of longer boards and SUPs. A solitary figure stands in the parking lot with a 5’10 19.25 under one arm and a computer/wireless keyboard under the other since his computer’s keyboard doesn’t work anymore because it got drowned in booze. A teenaged boy rides by on an electric bicycle)
Teenaged boy: What are you trying to be mister?
Chas Smith: Get lost, kid.
How’s that for a start?
Sea sweepers
Try Immanuel Kant “The critique of pure reason”.
Maybe next time, keep an eye on your drink when hanging with Channies.. cuz.
Nice to see you’ve healed up. I understand your ADHD. I hope your Mum is OK.
Thankyou, professor Harvey Weinstein.
Well then get on with it.
Ta, there must be a wiki article on the process. Inneresting.
The best surf movie is waiting to be made. It’s based on the road trip MP and Owl Chapman took from Qld to Phillip Island in Vicco back in 1976. Took three weeks.
An era was ending, their youths were drawing on — that Withnail-type sense of things moving on and you either move with it or die in a ditch with your gun drawn. Yet they’re both still magnificent. And lost. Literally.
Ah fuck why did I tell you cunts this.
You had me at Withnail
Counter-cultural: Fake Cancer, scam money based on same, die in a blaze of glory trying to take hostages.
Could Chas play Kocher?
A 5′-9″ at Cardiff Reef? You’ll need way more booze with your loafers. As far as a “start”……zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, burp, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
That’s a smart way to market Scary Good. Is it scary good? Anyways, there is a good surf movie waiting to be made. Go for it Chas! Drug angle? Lives saved? Sad drama seems to be the easiest path. Dark comedy? Probably asking for brilliance on that one.
Perfect
The biggest problem? Surfers can’t act (occy, Dorian) and actors can’t surf (Sandler)
CO2 extracted Cannabis Oil is better because? [See HotNife banners at side]
It’s not a dry spell. It’s that those movies came out when surfing was still young, culturally. Now, nobody (rightfully) gives a fuck.
Next.
You’re way too advanced and logical for this site TomHouse — don’t you realise there’s crusty old cunts here who must live in the past before they are buried as frustrated and poor paid surf journalists
The scene:
Rory Parker is taking photos of a heavily localised break in Oregon when up walks Chas.
‘I’ll choke you the fuck out cunt if you don’t put that camera away’.
The rest writes itself
cori schumacher to play chas, obvs.
Alexander Scarsgard
Teenage Boy ( obviously dressed as electric bike riding hipster) – “If you had checked surfline/coastalwatch/magic seaweed you would have known it was pumping here yesterday, too bad.”
“Me and my mates built our own electric powered/solar wavepool and it even has sharks come join!”
Chas – “Can we take my Porsche?”
TB – “Only if it is electric”
Chas felt the gloom lift off his heavy shoulders, tucked his 5’10 under a spindly arm, and on the handlebars of his new friends electric bike headed into an uncertain future!!
The proof is overwhelming, BeachGrit = Surf Journalists GraveYard
Your theory begs the question: does LongRichard, having endured reading this Beach Grit article, and being so moved that (s)he comments, exhibit necrophiliac tendencies?
I wish I could answer that but I have no idea what necrphilia is and can’t be fucked looking it up!
brisick’s theory may have some merit, but why not simply make a good film, about surfers, set in the pre-internet era?
real problem with surf films is that everyone wants to make surfers seem like cool people, instead of the assholes they really are.
take “chasing mavericks” — closest they had to an asshole was that one kid who says “paddle paddle little grom” to the moriarty character. and that was supposed to be santa cruz?!!
Go just beyond the past decade and you’ll find Surf School. The last quintessential outsiderdom surf film (it says “outsiders” on its IMDB page).
https://youtu.be/CGdyRW1SgMw