"If people are coming to see high-definition don't bother. Because this is film! It's got grain! It's got life to it!"
It might be real hard to believe, and such is the passage of time, but Mark Occhilupo is a couple of years off turning sixty and it’s been a quarter century since he won his historic world title in 1999.
Warshaw’s EOS describes Occ as being “built like a duck” and surfing “like a big cat.”
To celebrate the milestone, Occ, who described himself in a Sean Doherty profile as a “little cross-dressing Italian Scotsman from Kurnell”, and the film’s creator Jack McCoy, are touring the seminal film The Occumentary along the east coast of Australia in May.
Apart from one initial screening of The Occumentary, it’ll be the first time the film has been seen in cinemas. McCoy says he’s spent “hundreds of hours” turning the film from its VHS-friendly 4:3 aspect to big-screen 16:9.
“If people are coming to see high-definition don’t bother. Because this is film! It’s got grain! It’s got life to it!” McCoy tells me from his farm on the mid-North Coast (geographic specifics he asks me not to mention, but it’s a pretty forty acres a few minutes from real fun warm-water waves).
The tour will be in McCoy’s usual format, lives stories, unseen clips, question sessions slated for thirty minutes that go for way longer ’cause everyone in the theatre is enthralled by the electricity of sitting among legends.
Anyway, I say to Jack, oowee, can you believe Occ is nearly sixty (Jack turns seventy-six this year, his first big film Tubular Swells hit screens in 1975)?
“Well, he’s my son, you know, as he gets older so do I,” he laughs. “But, I don’t have to tell you, he’s one of a kind. He’s fit and strong and clean and he just gets better with age. The only thing that doesn’t age is his childlike mind.”
Jack tells an excellent anecdote of Occ drinking vodka out of a coconut that he bought off a street vendor in Rio while he watched the heat that would decide whether or not he’d be the champ.
“You gotta come to the show to hear the end of it,” says Jack. “Unless you got Google.”
Jack famously got Occ, who ballooned out to three hundred pounds, off the couch in 1995 and back in training. There’s a great sequence of bubble Occ throwing buckets in The Occumentary.
Famously, Jack and Billabong’s Gordon Merchant created the Billabong Challenge series as a way of testing Occ against seven of the world’s best. The one-day format, two one-hour heats and a one-hour final, created a template that should’ve been adopted by the ASP.
“And the judges didn’t even have a pen and paper,” says Jack. “At the end, they came to a consensus as to who was the winner. When good surfers watch a heat, even if it’s close, they can tell you in what order who the best guys were.
Jack says it’s a system that works better than the usual way of scoring heats in the pro game.
“The general public doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. Oh, he needs a three point two to combo a five point six, this and that. The guy rides a wave and you can’t tell the difference. I had an event that took care of those things. The Billabong Challenge was as good a templet for a contest as there ever was.
He reminds me of his and Derek Hynd’s rebel tour in 2001 that included Kelly Slater and Andy Irons.
“We had a tour that was ready to go and then 9/11 came and it closed down all sport and it had a major impact on economies around the world,” says Jack.
“It was a limited number of surfers who would be the upper echelon with the ASP kept as a feeding ground. The art of surfing instead of the sport of surfing. It wasn’t like we were trying to take over the ASP (now the WSL). We were trying to set a different course for surfing that wasn’t… (Jack takes a long theatrical yawn)… let me yawn here, typical event.”
Like Occy, one of a kind, ol Jackie McCoy.
Tour dates for The Occumentary below.
Tour dates:
Wednesday, May 1 – The J, Noosa
Thursday, May 2 – Byron Theatre, Byron Bay
Sunday, May 5 – HOTA, Gold Coast
Wednesday, May 8 – Gala Cinema, Wollongong
Thursday, May 9 – Event Cinema, Newcastle
Friday, May 10 – Orpheum Cinema, Sydney
Saturday, May 11 – Avoca Beach Theatre, Central Coast
Wednesday, May 15 – Astor Theatre, Melbourne
Friday May, 17 – Lorne Theatre, Surf Coast
Commented on Disqus? Log out, tap the Disqus button, and your old name and comments come back. The box is ours.
Your comments are still here. Every one of them.
Twelve years of BeachGrit comments came across from Disqus. Connect and we will show you how many are yours. We get your username, nothing else.
Connect Disqus to reveal.
:No Cross Dressing Ever Occured…a joint statement from the ExecBoards of Principals and their escorts/
The Doherty profile piece you referenced was a high-water mark in surf journalism. This BG shortform fluff with homoerotic commentary (that is, obviously, a mask for latent tendencies) is disposable. You won’t find any of your insight quoted by a peer in a decades time. BG is limited to the insubstantial by chasing ephemeral click targets with dubious, manipulative headlines.
Ergo, the comments section of this surf-relevant, niche post is restricted to trolls and sycophants (arguably, reader contributions to all BG missives follow this rule).
And, yet, I wade in…
Occy – as profiled by Seano – was unmistakably flawed. He was portrayed as honestly as possible via the carefully applied principle of the writer remaining invisible. The combination of words, the timing and the rhythm was all Doherty, though… like you could hear his voice as a narrator.
This is the art form.
McCoy – similarly – has a treasure trove of images that mean a great deal to a specific generation of surfers, and im sure the mind-numbing digital editing required to achieve the 16:9 ratio was driven by Jack’s nostalgia for times passed with his “son”. However, his apologetic, pre-emptive mention of the graininess of the footage probably speaks volumes for the success of the endevour… and they were probably hunting the other-worldly digital transition acheived via the original Greenough prints, and no one was ever going to match that…. 80’s/90’s video (even with McCoy’s insistence on using film) is of its time, and parallels Occy, but it has its visual limitations.
Still, the editing and reproduction bills have to be paid, so Jack will have to grit his teeth through a live version of sycophant/troll Q&A after each showing, the loud-mouths in the crowd competing for cred.
(Yes, I am completely aware of the irony that I am doing precisely the same thing, here)
Come on where are all the occ stories. I’ve got one but not going 1st
Love this
Occy is exactly what the tour is currently missing. The “I don’t give a shit” attitude coupled with absolutely ripping no longer exists on tour, at least not the way Occ, Curren, and few others were doing it.
Everything is stay in your lane. Its our lane or the highway. No personalities allowed. The only passion you see is when a Brazo wins a heat and thanks baby Jesus because he thinks out of all things going on in the world that he cares about a fucken surf contest.
Neither would stand a seconds chance against the current mens CT .
And none of the current CT would stand a chance against either on the boards of that era.
Really dude ?
Funny cunt and cross dressing ways aside Can we all agree that occy is the best backhand surfer of all time?
Chipper Wilcox would wipe his backside with him ,even at his best , not to mention Medina or JJF.
Ohh lordy what a sausage grabbing back slapping festival that will be.
I always got the vibe that Occy could quite happily push the stool in for you at a bar on Oxford Street
Did you read the writing on the toilet dunnie in Cronulla too?
Anyway we aren’t allowed mentioned sarge
Can you imagine the luck?
Ke11y retires because the tour is so easy and you’re sitting there waiting for you lifetime achievement award?
Sunny and Occy should publicly thank Ke11y.
So this is Jordy’s year? Pfft, no. We all know this is Kolohe’s year baby!
Occy would have won a lot of those art in motion surf events. he was kinda like what Rodney Dangerfield was to stand up comedy. There was nothing like him before or after! He was the best in the world but I tell you he still got no respect!
The cow that wants to be eaten
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
At the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Could’ve been Occy
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
But looky there
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Kowly Steaker…
Nice find. Ke11y and that creature are obvs related.