Surfer magazine and Two Eyes Film skewer surfing's "sentimentality" and "retro bullshit"…

Comedy ain’t easy. And trying to satirise surfing, as was pointed out several minutes ago, is as futile as not jerking your chin to your chest when someone’s finger runs a delicate trail across the underside of your neck.

Here, in this film by Rob Lockyear and Jeremy Joyce, who made the 2015 mockumentary Freezing, the pair, along with Surfer magazine editor Todd Prodanovitch, applies pincers and some heat to the absurdity of surfing nostalgia.

It tells the story of shaper Mike Strident who, in 1979, “built a revolutionary single fin – The Outrider. Strident has the world at his feet. He is the highest paid surfer in history, he’s killing it on the world tour, but then the Thruster happens. The tri-fin surfboard makes Strident irrelevant overnight and his empire crumbles. Thirty years later, Californian hot dogger, Tommy Tonata, discovers the original Outrider and tries to bring Strident back. And so begins a classic buddy story of shaping, redemption, head butts, acid trips and getting barrelled.”

Instructive quotes:

“He’s a good surfer but he’s a throwback, he’s a pastichest. God. It’s the worst kind of sentimentality, this retro bullshit, it’s holding back the sport.”

“I find it hard to separate surfing from art. My surfing is compatible with my art and my art is compatible with my surfing. They live together. It’s like they’re in the same department or something.”

“The first I met Tommy I just thought to myself, this guy is a freaking unicorn, right? He’s a great surfer, has hair like a shimmering field of wheat and… that beard? That beard cashes checks. People really respect that about him. He’s a true authentic.”

“Look. The Outrider is a board for its time. If it was any good the pro’s would still be riding it on the world tour.”

Really, watch.

A dazzling eleven-minute feature from What Youth…

Life really does move at a frenetic pace. One minute you’re the belle of the ball, tucking loose hair back into your French braid, the next you’re smelling like a barroom slut, fresh makeup covering swollen eyes.

The wave pool in Waco, Texas, had a meteoric rise to stardom after the Hawaiian Cheyne Magnusson worked the levers to produce the best wedge anyone had ever seen anywhere, ocean or pool. Suddenly, that central Texas city who’d only just worn off the stigmata of its murderous religious  siege twenty-five years earlier, was the king of the world.

And, then, a Jersey surfer died a couple of weeks after surfing in the pool’s unfiltered water, which led to the joint being closed until next March.

This edit, from our dear pals at What Youth (Hello Tom Carey, you’re still number one!) squeezes a big blue ball of Crest into your mouth. Ever so sweet but with a sting as it goes down your throat.

You can watch, but you can’t have. At least not until mid 2019.

Do watch.