Bulldog gets ass hammered while master gets
ears lowered.
Reclusive John John Florence releases
behind-the-scenes short featuring sexed-up bulldogs and latest
“devastating throat punch to the World Surf League”
By Derek Rielly
Climbing against all odds from poverty to a
position of honour and privilege, the millionaire world champ has
turned an original story into a Hemingway masterpiece.
This fourteen minute short from reclusive world champion
surfer John John Florence is exciting, genuine and
funny.
Climbing against all odds from poverty to a position of honour
and privilege, the now thirty-one-year-old John John has been
anointed with two world titles, turning a truly original life story
into a Hemingway classic.
A comic tour de force.
Highly recommended.
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Sore leg in Brazil! So sad!
New Filipe Toledo docuseries reveals
controversial champ’s heartbreaking struggles prior to world title
glory!
By Derek Rielly
“There’s nothing left to prove to anyone,” he
says.
The world’s best small-wave surfer, Filipe Toledo, who
won his second consecutive world title under a sailboat sky in
three-foot waves at Lower Trestles, is the star of a new
docuseries with the wildly sexy title Peace & Power.
When Filipe surfs, the world stops He is only twenty-nine but
his name is spoken around the world as often as Muhammad Ali. He is
a polarising and controversial figure, all but unbeatable in
three-foot waves, fragile in heavy waves over six.
“Filipe Toledo’s new series, takes you inside his quest for his
second World Title and the Olympic dream,” we are told. “Picking up
at the final events of the year at Rio de Janeiro and J-Bay, Filipe
gives us insights into his new approach this season. The
documentary style series meant to cover the ups and downs of his
career, what’s working, what’s not and how he intends to reach the
top and leave an even bigger legacy behind. It’s a deeper reveal of
the emotions that coincide with Filipe’s competitive greatness that
is refreshing to see and hear.”
An alternately tense, funny and heartrending toast to surfing’s
world champion.
“There’s nothing left to prove to anyone,” he says.
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Hawaii’s BIPOC “Queen of Crazy” Mason Ho
films surfing’s greatest virtuoso Clay Marzo at Desert Point!
By Derek Rielly
“He knows things I don’t know," says Kelly Slater.
"He knows things that all the guys I’m surfing with don’t
know.”
In this twelve-minute short, we find Mason Ho, with
camera, recording the sorcery of Maui’s Clay Marzo at Desert
Point on the island of Lombok in Indonesia.
Of Marzo, Slater says, “He knows things I don’t know. He knows
things that all the guys I’m surfing with don’t know.”
Laird Hamilton, also from Maui, calls Marzo “an artist who can’t
be pigeon-holed. He’s something all together different that should
be cherished.”
It’s a penetrating glimpse into Marzos’s virtuosity and in stark
contrast to Ho’s “shuck and jive” style of surfing, a whooshing
flash that leaves spectators’ mouths flapping mutely.
The trio, along with Pollet, De Carne, Mason’s
filmer Rory Pringle, Mikey Corker and Stu Gibson, spent one week on
the unnamed hunk of sand, driving mostly, but surfing here and
there, giving Medina the opportunity to dazzle in righthand
slabs.
Rare free-surfing footage of Gabriel Medina
tearing hell out of remote Australia alongside Mick Fanning and
Mason Ho in “Kangs”
By Derek Rielly
"It's the stroke flick of the year!"
The last time I’d interviewed Nick Pollet, famous for
his his comedic collaborations with Swellian Lord Adam “Vaughan”
Blakey, he was a few hours from a trip to Australia’s Great
White-infested southern flank with Mick Fanning, Gabriel
Medina and Mason Ho.
“I’ll swim and shoot but, fuck, real close to the other
photographers,” the Byron Bay auteur had told me.
That movie, called The Kangs, a cutesy way of saying Kings and
also ‘cause Medina wanted to see some kangaroos, has now been
released. And, from the moment Medina first puts on his rubber
gloves, submerges his hand in a jar of lube and rims…oh but
don’t let me give too much away… it’s the stroke flick of
the year.
Pollet says the highlight was triple world champ Medina, a rare
bird whom you’ll rarely see on free surfing trips. He says his true
character only emerges when the camera isn’t on him and, so, he
employed his sound engineer musician pal Alain De Carne, who scored
The Greatest Surf Movie in the Universe, to capture each forbidden
utterance. It’s the shell we can’t pry our ear away from.
“He recorded the whole trip and me and Vaughan had to sift
through the audio,” says Pollet although the price of art is to
sometimes lick the stank fingers. “It was a bit punishing to be
honest,” he says.
The trio, along with Pollet, De Carne, Mason’s filmer Rory
Pringle, Mikey Corker and Stu Gibson, spent one week on the unnamed
hunk of sand, driving mostly, but surfing here and there, giving
Medina the opportunity to dazzle in righthand slabs.
“He blew me away. I was shooting footage in the water and it
doesn’t do him justice,” says Pollet, “he so’s good out there it’s
crazy.”
The movie exits your screen with a soon-to-be-classic tune Wide
Open Land.
I define this as the sound of love.
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Florence bro's surf check.
John John Florence stuns surf world with
release of intimate homemade video from South Africa only weeks
after “devastating throat punch to the World Surf League”
By Derek Rielly
"The question must be asked again and again. Why
bother with the WSL?"
John John Florence is better than every other other
horned-up lunkhead on tour.
The almost thirty one year old from Pipeline on Hawaii’s North
Shore is living proof of the adage simplicity is the ultimate
sophistication as he shepherds his family of four, two brothers,
mammy Alex and wife Lauren, around the horn of southern Africa.
In these sublime twelve-minutes, Florence’s elegance and grace,
as well as his well-noted mystery, radiate from the screen. There
is no look-at-me grab for attention, only a sensuality that
delivers desirability and vitality in spades.
As noted two weeks ago, the video studiously avoids mention of
the Jeffreys Bay Pro where the two-time world champ was
controversially clipped by Conner O’Leary for a ninth place finish,
again a hint that he may not return to the tour in 2024.