"I always knew it would be a can of worms," says the former world number four.

The former world number four surfer known for his “go for broke” style of surfing that includes many experimental and aerial maneuvers has shocked surf fans with his latest film, Glad You Scored, though I prefer the title Hallucinatory Idiocy.

Dane Reynolds, a father of three who is a couple weeks away from turning thirty seven, is surfing’s rampart against the milquetoast horror of the WSL’s “pandering bullshit that’s exploiting surfing” and, therefore, we must watch and examine closely every piece of his creative output.

Reynolds writes:

We landed home from the final trip to Indonesia on July 7th and we had promised Vans the film would be complete for review July 15th. The premier was based around US Open of Surfing and the event was August 6th.

Someone could probably have made a better film if they documented Hunter and I trying to pull this film together over the past month. Licensing music, computer crashes, missing files, I always knew it would be a can of worms.

But the story I wanted to convey was buried in hours of voice memos I had recorded on the road during decisive or funny or moments that I thought could tell a story, whatever that was going to be, and put the viewer on the road with us while we are trying to get waves and footage.

Boiling that down into a comprehensible storyline was a mind numbing process that I couldn’t ask anyone else to do. I’d work on that during the day and Hunter, for some reason thought he’d be more creative at night and would edit surfing till sun rise. Leaving us nearly zero time to connect the dots between surf sections and the story.

Anyways, it came around and it’s one of my favorite films we’ve done cause it show’s what a shit show it’s really like pulling together surf film.

For me anyway, seems a lot easier and breezy and for all the folks that are always scoring! But now I’m a guy that scores… so look for me in big blue pits from here on out!

Too many highlights to list. Essential etc.

The most-loved man in surfing is a hoary old phrase that gets thrown around, but in this case it's true!

A sort of melancholy falls over the  latest episode of Lost Tapes, the 11-part series that documents Kelly Slater’s 2019 year.

It is Autumn and we are in Hossegor, France, as Slater wrestles with a series of ninth place finishes, catastrophic by his standards.

It is lovely in the Aquitaine this time of year, tourists mostly gone, the little summer wind swells giving way to Atlantic muscle, but the sky is greyer, the days shorter.

It’s a time when even the most optimistic soul feels a little malaise.

The episode focusses on his thirty-three relationships with Stephen “Belly” Bell, an ex-pat Australian glasser who’s been living in France since 1989, and who became the step-daddy to Leo Fioravanti after finding love with the Italian’s spectacularly assembled mama Serena.

“It feels like the end of an era for me,” Slater says, as he stays at Belly’s gorgeous cubist beach house. “Belly now has only one event left in his tour managing career… he’s been there for every world title I’ve won. I love Belly. He’s my best friend. He’s a consistent person and a good guy. I can trust him with anything and everything. Everyone should have a Belly in his life. I’m a lucky guy to’ve had him in my life all these years!” 

I know the feeling.

Belly also owns a piece of my heart.

For the two years I lived in Hossegor, through the grey cloak of the long winters and the saturated golds of the too-short summers, he was kinder than he ever needed to be.

Maybe it was our mutual love of titties, short trips to Spain and whistling sand-bottom tubes that clapped like thunder across the town’s sandbanks, but it felt real.

Belly moved from Victoria to France in the mid-nineteen eighties and set up a glassing shop called Euroglass. He had the contract to build all the Quiksilver boards for Europe which, in the honey surf industry days at the turn of the century, meant everyone was coming to Belly for boards, Kelly Slater and the sixties icon Miki Dora included.

Because he was Australian, and more Australian than anyone I’d ever met (although fluent in French), Belly was the hub around which that country’s surfers revolved during the European leg of the tour.

Once Belly asked me to affix a tail-pad onto a board that was bound for Quicksilver’s flagship store in Paris. It was, ostensibly, an ex-Slater board, but it wasn’t.

I put the K-Grip pad on a crooked angle and while it would’ve been justified for him to be agitated and cruel he gave me a fatherly smile and said, “you fucking idiot.”

“Loved by all” is a hoary old phrase to throw around, but it really is true.

Stephen Bell, a little man with a bald head and baggy pants, is all heart, no ego.

Did you know he also rips?

“Every time this thing runs, it’s better than ninety percent of waves ever are when we’re there!”

The Surf Ranch Pro, a WCT event held at the Kelly Slater wavepool in Lemoore, California, and also known as the Freshwater Pro, has been completed three times, and in every instance Gabriel Medina and Filipe Toledo have been in the final, Medina winning twice.

The contest was very unpopular with fans, however.

As our tour correspondent, the late and forever beautiful Longtom, wrote, “When you strip out the ocean and the possibility of anything that adds unexpected drama to pro surfing, a Medina brain explosion, lulls, a heat-winning ride in the final seconds, sharks, coral etc etc, it boils down to a bland formula.

“For the viewer, a dull ache of unrealised desire at the deathless sight of that impossibly perfect wave that fades with each wave to be replaced with niggling boredom and a jarring resentment.”

In the latest episode of Lost Tapes, an 11-part series that documents Kelly Slater’s 2019 year, he reveals that it was Kolohe Andino, and not he, who was the catalyst for the event running.

“After watching footage, Kolohe goes, ‘Why isn’t this on tour…well think about it!’” remembers Slater. “That’s when the conversation became real.”

Ironically, Kolohe’s initial enthusiasm would turn to sad when the contest did manifest, Kolohe accusing the judges of “playing mind tricks” and rewarding safety surfing and sitting in a barrel that carried with no risk.

"Giant crazy waves!"

In episode eight of the 11-part Slater doco series, docuseries, however you wanna call it, the Champ is back roaming Miyakzaki, Japan, for the first time since 1990.

This ain’t the tour event it used to be but the 2019 ISA Olympic Games qualifier.

And, here, we see the delightfully peculiar notion of putting the greatest surfer ever, and still is at specific venues, Pipe, Teahupoo, against surfers from Iran, Afghanistan etc.

Slater didn’t make the cut for the Olympic team; he did revisit the river mouth point he was too terrified to surf, but eventually did, along with his pal Tom Carroll, back in 1990.

“What you would say is easily forty foot faces…giant crazy waves… no one had the balls to surf it, and then Tom Curren went out and surfed it by himself.”

Also in the episode is a peek behind the bamboo curtain at how localised some of these joints are, permission sought from old-timers before waves paddled.

At some point, we all gotta hit the road.

At some point, or not I suppose, you’ll make a family, kids will grow to a certain size, and you’ll wanna take off on the great road trip and explore the outer flanks of your country.

A rite of passage for every Family Man before the wife veers off into her Secret Garden, never to return.

In this feature-length edit, we follow Angourie big-wave surfer Laurie Towner, wife Bron and kids Chase and Iyla as they head west across this vast island continent. Laurie, you’ll remember, perused the pro surfing dream for years until reality intervened and he became a tiler, although lately, he’s been working in the design room with his sponsor, the online wetsuit and accessories brand Need Essentials.

The pair are followed by Film-maker Nathan Henshaw and his girl Bec, who only intervenes whenever some dreadful slab is about to explode.