The gift that keeps on giving.
Erik Logan, former Chief Executive Officer of the World Surf League, is a gift that keeps on giving. The Oklahoman with a magical wetsuit of armor came our way via Oprah Winfrey less than ten years ago but his impact reverberates. Hired to lead the newly formed WSL Studios, which was shuttered immediately after he gave it the cheese touch, Logan failed upward and onward. His initial promise was to make “shoulder programming” around the tour.
His one project, there, a Billy Kemper miniseries, was a non-success by any and every metric.
Branching out, Logan helped push The Ultimate Surfer to air, considered by most to be the worst reality television program of all-time. He then broke Box-to-Box, a star machine that could do no wrong… until Logan came ambling along, by tanking Make or Break. Not finished, and from the grave, he turned the beloved Surf Girls Hawaii into World Surf League pap for Amazon Prime and it was, of course, cancelled after one lonely season.
Its creator Monica Medellin announced the end, penning, “Creating and producing Surf Girls Hawaii has been a 5 year process with many ups and downs but it was 100% worth it. I hope my work can open up possibilities for girls, woman and people of color through the power of sports.”
Her version, pre-Logan, was gold. As Jen See reported:
About two years ago now, the women’s media platform Togethxr made a four-part film called Surf Girls Kaikaina. Owned by Alex Morgan, Chloe Kim, Simone Manuel, and Sue Bird, Togethxr has created a killer platform for women’s sports. Surf Girls Kaikaina painted a group portrait of teen surfer girls coming of age in Hawai’i, and focused on Hokulani Topping, Vaihitimahana Inso, Ēweleiʻula Wong, and Puamakamae DeSoto.
As the Surf Girls Kaikaina series progressed, it centered the girls’ Hawaiian culture and their efforts to find themselves both in and out of the water. Though contest surfing formed a piece of the story — Moana Jones and Carissa Moore both appeared — it was not foregrounded. Instead, director Monica Medellin centered the young womens relationships with surfing, the ocean, and their culture. The interviews, which took place in bedrooms and skateparks had a raw authenticity. It felt real.
Enter the aforementioned Man with a Poopoo Touch.
Surf Girls Hawai’i puts contest surfing at the center of the story. The narrative arc becomes the effort to qualify for the Championship Tour and the stresses of competing. There’s a sequence devoted to training that predictably involves carrying rocks underwater. It’s like Ultimate Surfer got stuffed on a plane and flown to Hawai’i.
Surf Girls Hawai’i plays like an extended advertisement for the WSL, and that’s almost certainly what Logan set out to make. In her original, Medellin trusted her material. She believed that this coming of age story about girls surfing in Hawai’i had something to tell us. There was less lip gloss and shine in Surf Girls Kaikaina, but far more authentic story-telling.
What’s frustrating about Surf Girls Hawai’i is that it grew from a compelling concept. These women are plainly strong, engaging, and passionate characters. Tell me the story of these women, growing up in Hawai’i, finding their way in some of the world’s toughest lineups. Tell me about their fears, frustrations, and joys. Tell me about what it means to them to be Hawaiian and how their heritage shapes their relationship with the ocean and the wider world.
That’s the story Logan steamrollered in his desperate effort to sell contest surfing to the masses. And I think we all know by now, that they aren’t going to buy what he’s selling. The story that didn’t get told, that might have drawn people to follow these women and their journey, that might have shown the world something beautiful about women’s surfing and Hawai’i — I’m not sure he even saw that story and its value. And that’s a shame.
Well, now it is dead, buried and forgotten. Another giant idiotic feather in the cap of the man Jen See rightly called “spectacularly untalented.”
What a succubus.
