How to interview with Mark Occhilupo!
The game of interviews ain’t as easy as y’think. Human behaviour being as it is, we genuflect towards the famous, we talk over answers and we try to impress the mark with our own genius, thoroughly forgetting the purpose of the interview – to extract information.
I remember, once, an entire interview with Mick Fanning became a treatise on life, love and big-wave surfing by a prominent surf photographer employed to shoot portraits, Fanning reduced to a bit player in the proceedings.
Mark Occhilupo, whom, as a teenager was as remarkable a surfer as the young Kelly Slater, has become, accidentally or by design, a formidable interviewer. In this forty-three minute podcast/video hybrid Occy peels back layers of Christian Fletcher with a goofy style that belies a sharp mind and an ability to ask excellent follow-up questions.
Occy asks Christian about his famous contest win in 1989 at Lowers that polarised surfing to such an extent members of the top 16 co-signed a letter to the various surfing magazines asking for photos of Christian not be run.
“Got talked into buying a house by my parents. Ended up with a wife, a kid, a house – all the responsibilities of a fifty-year-old man at twenty one and she didn’t cook. She didn’t even cook a bowl of cereal, ok, didn’t clean, didn’t work. It was a rough one so finally ended up with a nervous breakdown.”
You won $30,000, says Occ.
“31725,” corrects Christian.
“What happened to the money,” says Occy, a beautiful follow up.
“Got talked into buying a house by my parents. Ended up with a wife, a kid, a house – all the responsibilities of a fifty-year-old man at twenty one and she didn’t cook. She didn’t even cook a bowl of cereal, ok, didn’t clean, didn’t work. It was a rough one so finally ended up with a nervous breakdown.”
Can you go further with that?
“Sure! I would’ve ended up dying.”
You’ve been sober a long time now.
“Wouldn’t say sober. I’ll do whatever I want, whenever I want! I just choose not to do it too often.”
Making the right choices, says Occ.
The interview is priceless. Watch here.
