Surfers use drug money to start various surf biz'
and then fuck each other, literally and figuratively, as they
realise that no one is immune to the siren call of big cash…
If you’re into what show biz people call the trade
papers, you’ll have seen the notices for a new TV series
called Barons, a big-budget production that’s going
to stick its fork into the genesis of the surf industry.
The first series, of a planned five, is eight episodes long and
follows a group of surfers treading that early-seventies golden
triangle, Australia, Bali, LA. They use drug money to start a
wetsuit company, a boardshort company, and then fuck each other,
literally and figuratively, as they realise that no one is immune,
not even soul brothers, to the siren call of big cash.
Production begins in early 2020 and will be shot on
location.
If it sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, dripping with
cheese and cliche, you might be surprised, reassured even,
that the muscle behind it includes Mick Lawrence and Nick Cook, the
Maroubra-based film producers who made Bra Boys, as well
as Taylor Steele, whom you know, and a writing and production team
of Australia’s best talent.
Of course, one can never talk surf history without pivoting
towards the keeper of the flame, Matt
Warshaw, the former Surfer magazine editor
turned fastidious archivist.
He ain’t convinced.
DR: The holy grail of television, and movie, for
surfers, has always been this belief that, one day, the wonderfully
sordid stories of drug money and so on being used to fund the surf
industry, would be breathed life. The series, Barons, is
using hybrid characters and fictionalized surf co’s, I believe, to
tip-toe around lawsuits and so on. You know the history. What are
the essential stories y’think have to, or will, get
told?
Warshaw: If Barons had been sprung in 1990 or even
2000, maybe I’d be more excited. But in 2019 the topic feels played
out. Phil Jarratt covered it in two or three of his books. Sea
of Darkness never went public but everybody knows the
punchline, which never seemed all that radical to begin with. Drugs
were how a lot of surfers made money in the 1970s, and some of that
money went into the ground floor of the surf industry. In business
terms it wasn’t even that much money. And surfing being what it is,
looking as great as it does, it was the lowest-hanging fruit on the
activewear tree, it was always going to be a force even if Hakman
and the rest of the Quik gang had been hardcore Amish. I mean, Bob
McKnight went to USC School of Business, so he’s at most two
degrees of separation removed from venture capital. At this point,
the fact that drugs were involved in surfwear’s foundation story is
a marketing point. Using hash profits to float your new company is
more surfy than hitting up your college roommate’s dad. But either
way, we end up right where we are.
I may’ve leaned a little hard on the drugs angle. It’s
in there, I believe, but the juice gets squeezed from the human
side: surfers playing the soul-man line only to get hard lessons in
biz when they realise that they, just like the establishment they
despise, are not immune to a love of money, and betrayal of friends
comes easier than they think. That’s got legs. I’ve seen it up
close, I’ve felt it. Oh, and Barons is loosely based on
Jarratt’s book Salts and Suits, which was originally
optioned for the series.
So let’s presume that the writers are guns, the actors
believable and every talent in LA and Sydney is loosed onto the
project, which according to the presser they are.
How can it make that seventies-era industry start-up era
in Australia really sing? I would suggest a draft-dodging Wayne
Lynch character fleeing the cops and disappearing into Nat Young
country, for one…
Yeah, Derek, I’m not being contrary on purpose, and I’d be happy
to be proved wrong. But I’m not feeling it like you do. I’m not
against a dramatic surf series. Just not one set in surfwear.
Surfwear by definition is throwaway. Surfwear doesn’t mean anything
to anybody, really, apart from the companies themselves. We looked
better before surfwear existed. So I guess I’m not seeing how you
build much on something that doesn’t really mean anything.
Succession works because of the ridiculous amount of money
and power at play. Those Rupert Murdoch fuckers can start wars,
launch rockets, elect presidents, bring down democracy. Succession
works because of the writing and acting, but that in turn I think
works in part because of the arena the show is set in. You want to
watch because the stakes are so high. Barons is set in
surf because we photograph well. That’s it. And watch, they’ll lean
too hard into the surf bits, they’ll go back to it again and again
to remind viewers of how beautiful the sport is, and beautiful
surfers are, and that will feel contrived and forced, just like it
does with surfwear in general.
What is the greatest untold story about the surf
biz?
The origin story for the surfboard industry is where the real
drama is. The push and shove between the labels in the ‘50s and
early ‘60s was vicious and personal and Godfather without the cut-off horse
head. The labels were like gangs. Hobie was the jocks.
Velzy was Animal House. Then here
comes Dewey Weber, the adorable little national yo-yo champ with
his Buster Brown suit who grows up to out-flash everybody at
Malibu—then puts a fucking shiv in Dale Velzy’s business. And Velzy
was Dewey’s mentor! Weber was really, really hardcore. He worked
with Dale, likely embezzled from him, and also knew that Dale was a
flagrantly no-fucks-given businessman who lit his cigars with Past
Due notices—and sure enough, 90 seconds after the IRS dropped the
big hammer of Velzy Surfboards for unpaid taxes, Dewey was hanging
a new Weber Surfboards sign in front of Velzy’s shop in Venice. The
Hobie-Weber-Velzy saga is a thousand times more interesting than
the birth of surfwear.
They’re planning on making five seasons of the series,
from the seventies through to the nineties. If the seventies was
about running hash and smack (oooh, street words!), what were the
eighties and nineties about?
Scaling up, I guess? I don’t know. I lose interest as the whole
thing moves further away from actual surfing. In other words, the
surfboard biz thing I talk about above – surfing itself needs that
industry. Delete the car industry and there is no more driving.
Delete the surfboard industry, and—okay, we’d still surf, but it
would be some kind of post-apocalyptic DIY thing. Delete the
surfwear industry, and who cares? No contests and fewer video
edits. So what? We’d be fine. As far as Barons goes, who
knows. I’ll watch anything if the script is sharp, if the actors
know their stuff, and maybe Barons will hire all the right
people and do something incredible. If it’s good, it’s good. And
there is SO much good TV these days. That said, I’ll take 50-to-1
that Barons is gonna suck. Although I will of course seek
counsel with JP Currie before booking the bet.
Would you do a series, if the choice was yours? And how
would you play it?
It has to be comedy. Which is still impossibly hard, but at
least you’ve got a shot. I’m thinking Letterkenny, but in
the OC; the shows jumps from one subgroup to another, all directly
or tangentially related to surfwear and to each other. So the
Salts and Suits, like Jarratt talks about. But also the
geezers in their chairs at San Onofre bullshitting about the old
days, and the groms glued to their phones in somebody’s basement,
and the local CT-level pro and his entourage. No surfing at all.
Just dialogue like daggers, and then you slip in just enough heart
and warmth that the viewer understands that everybody on the show,
on some level or another, even if it’s been misplaced, really loves
riding waves.
(Editor’s note: We’ll keep readers in the loop re:
screening dates etc.)
