Watch: Jordy Smith in “Can you imagine riding a 15-foot wave shaped like this for seven miles?”

MJ Smith gets a hunk of that rarest treat, the wave made famous in 1964's The Endless Summer…

Fifty, sixty years ago, whatever it was – who can count? – filmmaker Bruce Brown slacked jaws around the world with footage of two surfers riding “the most perfect wave in the world” in his film The Endless Summer. 

Shot in November, 1963, Bruce and surfers Mike Hynson and Robert August, rode a mechanical righthand point Bruce would later describe as “so good it was almost unbelievable… It was the kind of wave that at first you’d start giggling, then you’d start laughing, then you’d start screaming at the top of your lungs, until you felt like you were about to snap your twig.”

Cape St Francis. 

“What every surfer dreams of finding is a small wave with perfect shape. What we call a perfect wave. The odds against finding that are 10 million to one,” said Bruce in the film’s voiceover.

Turned out the joint is rare as hell.

And last week, perennial world title contender Michael Jordan Smith, in town for the J-Bay contest which is held twenty clicks north, got his slice of Cape St Francis.

Bruce’s Beauties, as it’s called. 

This clip is so short you’ll barely have time to puddle your Superman pyjamas and reach under the blanket.

But it is an interesting curio.


Watch: Nathan Florence in “There and Back Again!”

Surfing's own Jan Brady just got herself a featurette-length movie! And ooh-wee-ooh it's good.

Now that big bro has had his thing pushed backwards between his legs, metaphorically speaking, middle bro has grabbed the pole and spotlight, also a metaphor.

Nathan Florence, twenty-five or thereabouts and with reddish brown eyes like dried blood, is the most interesting of the Florence pack. How many pro surfers can you think of who were gobbling novels when they were six and who’ll reference french author Guy Sajer’s seminal wartime novel The Forgotten Soldier? He says he likes to read “before I go to bed or after surfing, whenever you have time to relax and lay down for a second. Especially in airports. That’s when you really fly through them. I get through, in a session, maybe a hundred pages. I never fall asleep reading. People say they get sick reading in a car but that’s my favourite time to read cause car rides are… boring.”

Nathan has an accent that is a beguiling mix of Bruce Irons and Jamie O’Brien, those easy shrieks at the end of each satisfying sentence and the italicising of words (Bruce) and the agreeable mmmhmmms and mmmmmm’s that prefix most responses (O’Brien).

In this film, his first, which is called There and Back Again, our skulls are hit repeatedly with slow-motion.

But just as we’re about to regurgitate our food, like the mother bird in a nature film, we hit regular speed.

And the action tugs at your arm so completely you’ll be jerked into complete attention.

Highly recommended. 


Watch Filipe Toledo in “Get out of my face or I’m gonna roundhouse your ass!”

A beautifully mindless shred reel from the world number three…

And, here, Filipe Toledo, on a recent vacay to Sumbawa, a large island in Indonesia that forms a sort of cultural bridge between the Hindus of the West, including Bali, and the Muslims of the East.

Of course you’ll remember, one week ago, watching Filipe canter to a win in Brazil. There’s a certain mix of conditions that almost guarantee the 24-year-old from Ubatuba, Brazil, will place third or better, and Saquarema fulfilled those requirements.

In this short, we find Filipe like a lusty Jupiter assuming the shape of a surfer.

All with the irresistible physicality, spirt and an effervescent energy that captured our hearts five years ago.


Watch John John Florence’s archly compelling vlog: “I’m gonna suck the life outta ya sugar!”

Look over the shoulder of the two-time champ during his Gold Coast campaign…

Dignity. Where did it go?

It ain’t in oversupply.

Girls with chubby baby legs posing in bikinis for Instagram accounts and weeping when the pitchforks come out; goddamned spoilt brats being patted on the head and told they rip, can sing, dance, write, whatever, little monsters, all of ’em.

John John Florence is a work of extreme originality.

Who knows what lurks in that heart? In that head?

This short film, which is wildly outdated given it was short during the first event of the year, is a maverick work that is exciting, genuine and funny.

John John does this, John John does that.

“I’m not aggressive enough,” he says at one point.

“John only talks to me when the camera is on,” says Kolohe Andino.

A wildly comic tour de force.

Highly recommended.


Watch: Italo Ferreira in “Folks can smell sin on ya!”

Watch and gasp, maybe sob.

There ain’t a lot Italo Ferreira, twenty-five and the world number three, can’t do. He can spin like a bottle and he’ll raise the seat on a Teahupoo barrel and rain down his powerful stream.

In these two-and-a-half minutes, which were filmed around his home of Baia Formosa in north-east Brazil, we get rocketship Italo seeing who can go fastest to the moon.

I asked Timmy Patterson, the American shaper of Italo’s surfboards since he was fifteen, what the secret was.

“Look at how centred he is,” says Timmy. “Surfers are usually forward surfing or tail heavy and he’s so centred. He gets boards to fit into tight little pockets. The flat spot is right between his feet. He can get speed out of anything. He’s got those low centre of gravity tree-trunk legs. I mean, when you watch him, he doesn’t pump or wind up. He stiffens his legs, pushes it and he’s gone. He’s not really sinking his board, just planing. Italo is all natural ability. Guys like Italo have the freest mind to go where they want.”

Watch and gasp, maybe sob.