“Before I go in the water I make sure I’m ok with losing.”
The surf film god Jack McCoy spent two years back in the early 2000s making a surf documentary called Blue Horizon that would do two things: confirm the legend of Andy Irons and show, for the first time before or since, a version of Kelly Slater riven by vulnerability.
At a broad stroke, Blue Horizon contrasts the lives and philosophies of two of the world’s top surfers at the time: Hawaiian-born Andy Irons, a wildly competitive surfer driven to win world titles and Dave Rastovich, able to draw cheques without surfing in any damn contests, a man famous for his environmental activism and endowed with a level of surfing that is as immaculate as his coca butter skin and glowing smile.
Blue Horizon follows Andy Irons during his campaign to defeat Kelly Slater and win the ASP World Title, which he did in 2002, 2003, and 2004.
And it’s that rivalry that draws the viewer into the closing sequence of the film, the 2003 Pipe showdown that broke Kelly Slater.
Los Angeles born McCoy, who is seventy-six and who’s been in rough health with an unspecified illness the past few years and speaks with a ragged whisper, had broken his ankle two days before he was supposed to hit the North Shore for the 2003 Pipeline Masters.
He called Ben Davies, a Bondi surfer and documentary maker back when he was a young shooter on the make and three years before he’d roll into the big-time with the eighteen-season worldwide hit Bondi Rescue.
Told Ben, you’ll stay in the Billabong house, I’ll pay you a weekly rate and here’s a letter introducing you to Kelly Slater who’s staying a few doors down in one of the houses at the Johnson’s Pipe compound.
Ben took his letter over to Kelly whom he found “super charming but closed to having a camera in his face weeks out from the world title showdown.
“It took me a little while to realise that he was charming me to get on his program. At first I thought, what a nice guy, he’s so friendly and at the same time after meeting Andy, thinking, Andy is pretty raw and brusque even offensive. If it wasn’t for the insight from Occy, Parko and Taj who were staying at the house, I would’ve found Andy hard to deal with. But I warmed to him. There was no BS about him. He was as raw and honest and pure and unadulterated as possible. Andy was this untamed good hearted, good spirited beast.”
Meanwhile, Kelly didn’t want to be in the movie. Wanted to focus on beating Andy. At the same time, when Andy heard that Ben was going to follow him around he told him, “No, that’s not going to happen.”
“He was open to an interview here and there but not being followed around. That’s what I was there to do and I needed to convince him. That was in our first meeting. Immediately, Kelly saying no, Andy saying, no, no, no. But what I had was the name Jack McCoy. It carries a lot of weight so I was sorta in. It wasn’t a cold door knock for either of them. It was what I was proposing that was the problem, filming, observing during the world title climax.”
Ben put his mini-DV camera down for a few days and started hanging with Andy and Kelly, separately, figuring if he could show ‘em he wasn’t going to throw ‘em down the well, they’d give him access.
“The more I hung around with Andy, the more he realised, this guy’s ok. The door opened wider and wider and by the time my girlfriend turned up on the North Shore we’d go off and play tennis with him and his girlfriend, surf Waikiki together. Andy was the sorta guy that if he didn’t want to do something he wouldn’t try and make excuses. He’d tell you he wasn’t doing it. And I respected that raw honestly.
“And, then, with Kelly, he was the ultimate charmer. He was saying no but then at the same time having me over for breakfast with him at his house every other day, inviting me over to to talk about stuff unrelated to surfing. Very interesting, tangential conversations. Then, eventually, I put it to him: you’re Kelly Slater. You’re focused on winning a world title. And if that happens, and you expect it will, you can’t turn around later and say, hey, can get those moments in the movie? The moment’s passed. Here’s the opportunity now to get it. If we don’t, the moment is lost forever. If you believe you’ll win, take advantage of it. Then he said, ‘Yeah, cool, let’s do it.’”
Ben says he told Kelly and Andy, “All I’m doing is making a faithful representation of both your seasons here in Hawaii and nothing else. Not being part of the surf industry there was no fear of fallout later if someone didn’t like me. If someone was going to lose I wasn’t going to sugarcoat it because there was no consequence for me later. I just had to stick to my word and be faithful to events. And make sure I did a good job for Jack who’d been a hero of mine for years.”
Viewers of the film will remember a few things.
There’s a heated-up Andy telling Ben he’s going to ruin Kelly’s pretty picture. There’s Kelly saying the North Shore was secretly gunning for him and not AI.
Those quotes didn’t just appear. Ben was smart enough to relay comments back and forth between the two that would provoke compelling vision for the film.
“It didn’t take much to get Andy going,” says Ben. “Andy was in that boxer mentality, wanting to go in and destroy. Classic journalist style. Kelly makes a comment and then you take it back to Andy for his right of reply. And then Andy would say, ‘Kelly won’t be welcome back here on the North Shore’ and Kelly would be, like, ‘That’s bullshit.’”
Kelly’s vulnerability became evident when he admitted to visualising losing to reduce the enormous pressure. It was part of the game of an Australian ironman. The theory was if you can get a little steam out of the blood pressure, you go into the contest with a clearer focus and that should turn into winning.
“I bought it myself at the time. If you talk to a mindset coach now, you’d never do that,” says Ben. “You risk manifesting the opposite outcome and your belief in winning is corroded and impacted by that.”
The peak moment of the sequence in the film is Kelly Slater, who has just lost the world title and the Pipe Masters crown to Andy, weeping alone in the Johnson’s outdoor shower, at least before big bro Sean swings over and consoles him, while Andy and Lyndie and Bruce and the Wolf Pack whoop it up next door.
The sequence was shot by a young Billabong filmer Jay Lancaster who was told by Jack McCoy, don’t let Kelly out of your sight. Jack told Ben the same thing about Andy.
“That was a very powerful moment in competitive surfing. A lot of history,” says Ben. “And it’s funny. When I ran into Kelly a year or two later in Sydney we had a beer together and I asked him, ‘How did you feel about your representation on screen? And he thought about it. Looked at me. Said, ‘It was fair. It was fair.’ Despite the outcome Kelly didn’t try and withdraw consent to us showing him at his most vulnerable, which says a lot for his character.”
“I never saw Andy again but I remember the nickname he gave me for staying on his case that winter: Shadow.”
Jack McCoy is touring Blue Horizon coast to coast, Perth to the Gold Coast and most places in between, through April and May. You know Jackie’s shows are good, he’s gonna talk story before each screening.
