A film within a film.
There are two families that come directly to mind as surf cinema royalty. The Browns (Bruce, Dana) and the Oblowitzes (Michael, Orson).
Oh, you are most certainly aware of Michael Oblowitz’s body of work, one of the finer of the last decade plus. His Sea of Darkness, whispered about in hushed tones from Sydney to Paris. His Heavy Water an award winner. His yet-to-be-released Sunny Garcia documentary certain to cement his place in history.
His soft core vampire porn for Showtime already having done.
His son Orson is a cinematographer, producer, writer, director of much note who also worked on each of his father’s surf films but hitting worldwide headlines, these past few days, for directing one Zach Avery in the 2018 horror film Trespassers.
Avery, whose real name is Zachary Horowitz, was recently arrested for running an over $600 m Ponzi scheme in which he raised money from investors in order to buy the rights to films that were to be purchased by Netflix and HBO.
A can’t miss deal except…. the contracts were allegedly forged, investors hung out to dry, Horowitz awaiting trail.
690 million United States dollars.
Wow.
The Los Angeles Times has called the classic Ponzi scheme “the most audacious in Hollywood history” and I reached out, directly, to Orson, who is from New York but lives in L.A. for the surf, for more.
“Fuck, dude…” he laughed a disbelieving laugh into the phone. “All I knew was the guy could not act. A terrible fucking actor. He came attached to Trespassers and I just assumed he was a rich kid who had put up some money to be in it but he was awful. A nice kid, though, and we spent a lot of time together on set then doing press. Went to London and all that.”
I asked Orson if he had any idea that he was working with a criminal mastermind.
“Not at all. I mean, once the story came out I just thought, ‘If you were bilking people for $600 million dollars how can you not act?’ My dad always thinks he’s the Prince of Darkness, cinematically, but I think he’s met his match.”
I would say so, seeing as Michael Oblowitz has never unwittingly directed a lousy-acting criminal mastermind unless we can consider Nathan Fletcher such.
Orson has another film coming out this summer, The Five Rules of Success, and I am looking forward to it but first shall watch Trespassers. It is on Hulu here in The United States.
What luck.
Can we turn BeachGrit into a Ponzi scheme?
$690,000,000.
Think about it, will you?