Bustin' Down The Door

It's time to write something about this surf movie.

As I said before I'm reading and watching as much stuff as I can about surfing. I actually have quite a queue of items I should write about but I never have the time.

So, in this surfless and painfull saturday I just watched again Busting down the door and I have to say that it's by far the best thing about surfing I've found.

If you have a soul you cannot not love this movie and put it way high up compared to classics like Endless Summer, Crystal Voyager and such. Most of the dvd you can find are about guys surfing waves and that's all, but BDTD is actual storytelling. 

Beautiful storytelling. 

It's about the crew of australians and southafricans who in the middle 70s changed surfing in Hawaii, with the most difficult and amazing waves you could get.

It's a great movie and it's a great story because it's told by the surfers themselves with an open heart. They make you cry and they make you dream. They make you fear the waves and they make you love surfing more than ever.

Also, it's very interesting, to say the least, to listening to -almost old- men tell the story of their youth, and feel how age and wisdom -of some sort or any sort- has changed and put things in perspective.

I guess there are two things that stay with me after watching this movie: the love for riding waves and the consciousness that life goes fast, and you really should try to enjoy your time, this time, now, as much as you can.

It's great and scary at the same time to watch such beautiful and brave and great young men surfing Hawaii and seeing their older, current faces and bodies telling you what happened. I feel like driving to the Gold Coast and shake hands -to some of them- right now. And tell them thank you. Thank you for sharing this. Thank you for your surfing. Thank you for reminding us that beyond every old man or person, there's a world of experiences, and love, and fights, and life and things.

Two quotes:

"The white water picked me up, shot me forward, and I leaped to my feet and stood up. That feeling of stoke instantly imprinted itself on my being; happiness and fear, exhilaration, speed, and conquest all melded together into one rush of sensation. And the view! looking over and above it all, racing along on an invisible band of energy, two inches above water, separated by just a sliver of glass fiber - for a brief moment a master of my little universe. Right there, right then, surfing gripped me hard and fast- and it just never let go." 

Shaun Tomson

"Very few people can go through life and say they have been doing something for forty-five years. What have you been doing for forty-five years? I will surf till I die."

Mike Tomson


Ps- BDTD is also a beautiful book. Which I have, of course.

Four surf movies

Recently I've watch four surf movies/documentaries.

I've to say that I'm missing so many of them that I'll need some years to catch up. But anyway.. 

The first of them was "Chasing Maverick".
Well, as it's out on dvd it won't happen to you to have to pay a ticket to watch it, and you should thank for that. With all the respect for the real story that it tells, this movie is embarrassing.

Think about a guy who surfs all his life and at half movie someone tells him that a swell is coming from the other side of the Pacific Ocean and he says:"Really?" I said it all. 

Mr. Miyagi and Daniel-san were a more believable couple than the two in here. The scenes at Maverick are good but there's nothing else. Sharknado is way more enjoyable! (and if you didn't see it yet, be sure that there's a great surf scene!) 

The second one was "Drift".
This is a nice, average Hollywood movie is which people happen to surf. The script follow the usual path, the characters do the usual things, bad guys and good guys, and all the rest. Obviously it's a hundred steps ahead of Chasing Maverick, but it doesn't surprise you a bit. Surfing scenes are good. I guess the authors were too busy in being realistic with the surf and the era that they forgot to go a bit deeper with the content.
Nice. Just nice. One of those nice that you forget in a while.

At this point I have to say that I'm a film enthusiast and I'm very, very picky with them. I can count on my fingers how many movies I loved in the last 10 years. Don't even ask me about super heroes and stuff, please. 

The third one was "Billabong's J Bay", narrated by Shaun Thompson.

It has great old footage of the wave and it tells the story of the Bay from its discovering to today. And many are the pro surfers involved. It's nice, fun, and it peels off like a perfect wave. Thumbs up.

At last but not least, I watched "Bombora, the story of Australian surfing".

It's a tv product and it's made by two episodes of one hour each. I believe if I was Australian I would loved this. Going back to the old days and seeing things that my dad, or some other old guy would have told me.. linking to the past generations and finding the roots of my surfing reality today.
Unfortunately I lack all of this.. and I'm so envious..
But still, it's a beautiful product! Such a great real story, and real old and new surfing.
I didn't get many chances to actually see much if the old famous guys in action, and this was perfect: name, date, and contest.. not just someone surfing some wave somewhere some time ago..
Very good product.

At the end of all this watching I think two things: I can compete in the fifties but in the sixties they were already too good for me. Can you believe that? We tend to think that we are always at the top, and what was before us it's just old. But no. It's not like that. I'm such a beginner!

Second: I like Shaun Thompson.
I also read "Bursting down the door" by him, and I have to say that he's a storyteller. I'm not saying that he's a great storyteller. That's is not possible because he already was a great surfer in his life. But I can sense his love for stories and his pleasure to tell us what happened. And I like it. 

I still don't know much about the past in surfing but I'd say I love the seventies and Shaun Thompson and Mark Richards are my favorite surfers.

The Endless Summer

Con un leggero ritardo di 40 anni ho visto il film documentario The Endless Summer, una pietra miliare dei film sportivi e della cultura surfistica piu' specificatamente. Un must.

Un titolo cosi' famoso ed evocativo che perfino durante la mia adolescenza nel Mediterraneo, lontano universi interi dal surf, ne avevo sentito parlare.

Il film visto adesso risente del passaggio del tempo, come capita a tutte le opere. Sia per contenuti che per gesti atletici. Ma non e' una colpa.

Cio' che mi e' piaciuto e' stata l' ingenuita' e la freschezza del prodotto. I due surfisti protagonisti della pellicola si imbarcano in uno sprovveduto giro del mondo per surfare onde allora sconosciute ed evitare l'inverno della California. Si capisce che non avevano idea di dove fossero ne di cosa aspettarsi e le piccole avventure a cui vanno incontro sono genuine e piacevoli da seguire. Il regista che li segue e commenta la pellicola ha senso dell' humor ed e' capace di trasmettere il senso di scoperta a cui tutti loro vanno incontro.

Ma.

Non ho la minima idea se quello che sto per scrivere sia una critica gia' espressa e datata o se nel culto del film ci si e' dimenticati un minimo di senso critico.

Cio' che non mi e' piaciuto, e che credo al giorno d'oggi sia impossibile ignorare, e' il razzismo con il quale il regista commenta le immagini e le interazioni con i locali.

Traspare tutto il tempo un sottofondo di superbia determinata dal fatto di essere americani e uno sfotto' insopportabile. 

Tralasciando la parte relativa all'Africa, quando si arriva all'Australia ci sono una decina di secondi dedicati alle facce dei ragazzini surfisti di Sydney. Facce inglesi, facce sdentate, facce di chi aveva pochi soldi in tasca e poco cibo in pancia, facce di mascalzoni, come in tutti il mondo, facce  mostrate in silenzio ed accompagnate da una musichetta tipo Stanlio ed Olio. 

E' solo un esempio. Uno dei tanti. Uno dei troppi. 

Sono sicuro, o voglio credere, che sia tutto frutto del buon umore che voleva accompagnare il racconto. Cio' non toglie che il messaggio di sottofondo sia "noi siamo americani e gli altri dei selvaggi".

Ovviamente non ho mai letto una cosa del genere in merito al film e cio' e' forse dovuto al fatto che chi ne scrive e chi lo cita forse parla per sentito dire e non lo ha mai guardato. O e' americano e non si e' accorto di nulla..

Fortyseven years after its release I watched The Endless Summer. A cult for the surf culture. Such a famous title that reached me in my youth when I was worlds away from surfing.

I liked the fun approach of the director and the fresh, simple, ignorant look at the world they were discovering. You can tell they didn't have idea about where they were going, about the people and the culture they were meeting, and the good and/or bad spots for surfing. No to mention the seasons and the right conditions. (They came to Australia and they weren't able to find surf!)   

But what surprised me the most was the constant racism that run underneath the story. It's very disturbing. The director, while telling the story, doesn't loose a chance to make fun of the people they meet and the reaction they have about the two protagonists and their huge boards. 

Leaving aside Africa, when they come to Australia there's a good few seconds of young australian surfing faces. Skinny, pallid, dirty, maybe teethless, maybe hungry, funny, smart, young faces. With a kind of Lauren and Hardy soundtrack. C'mon!

I'm sure, I wanna believe, that's all because Bruce Brown wanted to give a funny and easy account of their adventures. But I can't help my brain to receive the message "we are americans and they are salvages" all the times. 

I've never read such critics about this movie and I wonder if that's because at that time racism comments were perceived with less concern, or not perceived at all, and/or because who writes about it now didn't watch it at all. Or maybe he/she is american?

(This last question, which tries to sound funny, has the same bad taste as many jokes in the movie)