Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear! Absurdist schlock you'll love!
A bad film ain’t necessarily…bad…if you dig. Maybe it has a little something that sends it into the schlock zone. So absurd it deposits saliva into your blood.
In the Christian-themed surf movie, Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear, a kid has to learn to surf again after being freaked out in big waves. The ghost of daddy helps him back in.
The film screened for a week in LA. Now it’s gone.
But has it gone? Or is it an instant classic?
Recently, Vice magazine interviewed the director, writer and star of the film Douglas Burke.
Excerpts:
Douglas Burke, Surfer’s auteur, has crafted a fascinatingly absurd drama about a boy who must rediscover the courage to surf again with the help of the ghost of his father. His real-life son Sage plays the titular “Surfer.” Burke plays his father, “Father of Surfer.” The movies has overt Christian themes, including multiple oral tellings of Bible stories. It also has a dead whale, some truly incredible green screen, and one of the most uncomfortable portrayals of a mentally incapacitated person ever committed to film.
Around the midpoint of the movie, Burke delivers a full-throated monologue, moaning and shouting, “God put me together with squid and electricity! We don’t have a lot of time… I’m gonna melt back into the ocean. I wasn’t supposed to FEEL!!” He pauses, then vomits black liquid as his son watches in silent horror.
The monologue lasts a full ten minutes before his scene partner, his son, speaks. This is within a 12 minute single take, with no cuts or camera movement. Later, Burke told me it’s the longest single-take movie monologue ever. It feels like it.
I pointed out that, at the Surferscreening I attended (which Burke spent sitting directly behind me), the audience was laughing throughout the movie.
Burke suggested that the audience might have been laughing because they were in awe of his performance. “I think people at some point have to laugh if the actor is doing a good job,” Burke reasoned. “It’s going to make the viewer feel a little bit insane, and start to laugh a little bit. But there’s also a lot of deep, deep tragedy.” Burke explained that his inspirations were more classical than modern, citing Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole. “I love to write poetry and perform it as though I’m on the middle of some Shakespearean stage,” he said. “No other producer would ever let me do that.”
One scene features Burke shouting another monologue to his son in front of a dead whale. “That’s a real whale,” he told me.
Burke read online that a whale carcass would be washing to shore near them, so he quickly pulled together a shoot for the same day. “It stunk. It smelled. Imagine the worst sour milk you’ve ever smelled. That’s what it smelled like.”
“To me, it was a gift from God,” he added.
Read the rest of the interview here!
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I feel like the Aussies will gang up on me for saying this but Christianity or any conventional religion has no place in surfing. Christianity destroyed Hawaiian culture the Spanish missionaries destroyed and enslaved the natives in California. And so on and so on. first sentence is my opinion the second is fact.
Con air is so bad it’s good, especially with the all star cast. Face off gets close too. Maybe it’s nick cage??
Anyone else just feel bad for the grom? This is going to stick with him forever. The internet doesn’t forget.
They didn’t play the song!
(actually I didn’t watch it so I dunnno)
maybe later.
you are right, and there is 3 word title that sums them up
“don’t bother watching” a story of a low talking , slightly over weight man with a very menial job beats up a bunch of really heavy duty bad guys with guns.
on deadly ground.
Didn’t HBO already make this? – John from Cincinnati
If you’re looking for real b-grade (or z-grade) shite you can’t go past the Spanish classic, “Karate a Muerte en Torremolinos”. Zombie ninja assassins kidnap 5 young damsels and use them to awaken the ridiculous half octopus-half spider crab, Jocántaro. Who can save them? The celibate Christian surfers of Torremolinos, of course.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Great ! Is it suitable for 5 year olds because I am so over LEGO Ninjago ?
It’s generally not suitable for human consumption. Are the 5 year olds human?
Are we human ?
Or are we dancer ?
I suppose if I am they are too .
I suggest you start a campaign to get that hybrid crabtopus a wildcard for the Ranch or next years US Open creating mutant waves of mutilation ?
Wow, Filipe’s really taking losing at Chopes pretty hard.
A+ for the theme song though.
“I play the street knight because there’s no place I can go
Street knight, it’s the only life I know
Street knight and there’s a thousand parts to play
Street knight, until you play your life away”
You mean that one?
Bit of a coup wrangling a licensing deal with Jewish board short manufacturer The Hui considering Jebus and all that.
“Cult Classics” are really inclusive.
0.51
Friendship: Stroung Enough ?
fail kid – worst trailer I’ve seen in a long time. A mess.
Keep the faith while you flip them burgers.
Don’t quit your day job brother! Holy shit!
My favorite part was the closing scene when the street lights cast an eerie glow through the cracked window glass of the Gaylord Hotel lobby, stained with cigarette smoke and the purgatorial menstrual blood of Catholic school girls.
Making a movie seems like an awful lot to go through just to torture your son with religiously inspired monologues. In all seriousness the movie sounds like utter garbage.
Cmon Nega approve my comment. It’s not that bad mate!
Sometimes when I’m hungover and feeling ginger looking over the edge of a wave I think back to what my dad would say…. “paddle you little fucking poof!”, “you fucken useless cunt!” and my favourite “what’s your boyfriends name! Poof!”. Usually makes ya go. Trouble is my old man ain’t a ghost yet.
WPS Snr sounds like a hoot
Going to Indo with him for 3 weeks soon. Bit of a last hurrah for the old cunt before we put him out in the back paddock. He’s still got a bit of fight in him. Gonna be interesting.
Hope you guys call each other into a few mad ones.
Boys only ?
Or family ?
Just the boyz
Way to go !
Hey, Wiggs do a write up.
Seriously, bars, crowds, plastic, trannies, waves o’course, whatevs.
The grumpy side of Indo sorta thing.
I haven’t been back there in years, but I wanna hear the real stuff.
Only if you want to. No pressure, ya pooftah cunt.
As a wise pop-star house-painter once said upon applying another coat of eggshell off-white to the living room walls; “ I second that emulsion.”
DO IT WIGGLY.
Get him on a mushy shake my old boys never been the same since, just sits in his arm chair utubing strange euro cunts cutting grass with a scythe for hours on end on his ipad
Hahahaha
he obviously handled Maldives well so you giving him another shot!!!
My dad simply called me a “weak suck” when I’d paddle over a set.
My dad offered me golf clubs ! What I would have done to be called weak suck ?
How’d your gay Brother take to those calls from the old man?
He’s pretty good at laughing it off. My old man doesn’t mean it. Don’t think he’s actually homophobic. Just good words mate. They roll off the tongue like little lightning bolts.
I try to think about what my dad would say about my surfing too, but it’s hard to know since he left when I was one year old.
How about Wavepoolnado –
Surfing’s deadliest killer takes to the skies in the ultimate anti-depressive pleasure as a global group of grumpy locals squabble together to save their spots from pool-infested tornadoes and kook-rain, armed with only their mobile phones and free wi-fi during work hours.
Starring Macauley Culkin as Barton, John Candy as Occy, and the Mike Myers reviving his Dr Evil role as Kelly