The Endless Summer

The Endless Summer (1966) is considered by many surfers and surfing aficionados to be the Citizen Kane (1941) of surfing films. While it certainly wasn’t the first, for its time Bruce Brown’s film was the most ambitious, well-made and popular one of its kind. The Endless Summer not only changed the general public’s view of surfing but it also paved the way for countless films about the sport. However, none of them have quite been able to convey the carefree attitude and sheer joy of surfing like Brown’s film – not even his own sequel, The Endless Summer II (1994) or the film by his son Dana entitled, Step Into Liquid (2003).

The first shot of The Endless Summer says it all: the silhouette of two surfers with their boards against a setting sun. Brown follows this up with a shot of the surfers sitting on their boards in the ocean drenched in the orangish gold of the setting sun. Right from the get-go, with these shots and a montage of the ocean and the surf all bathed in this incredible sun, Brown establishes that this film will be an unabashed romantic take on surfing. Even the laid-back surf music by The Sandals conveys a hazy, lazy summer vibe drenched in romanticism. The film’s authenticity is quickly established with a title card that reads, “Filmed in the actual locations around the world.” In other words, there will be no use of cheesy looking rear projection a la Gidget (1959) or the Frankie and Annette beach movies. The Endless Summer is a film made by and for surfers.

Brown’s voiceover narration starts off perfectly as he says, “Summer means many different things to different people...” and rattles off a few hobbies that people like to do before yelping out the word, “surfing” excitedly and the film cuts to a shot of a guy wiping out on a wave. Brown quickly establishes a playful tone that never mocks its subject but instead conveys a genuine affection for the sport. In a few minutes, he covers a few styles of surfing while also conveying some of the basic lingo while identifying a few of its superstars. Brown does this all so effortlessly that you aren’t even aware of it because you’re too busy being entertained.

The Endless Summer takes us through some choice surfing spots in Hawaii and California and pretty soon Brown lays out his film’s premise: “Many surfers ride summer and winter but the ultimate thing for most of us would be to have an endless summer. The warm water and waves without the summer crowds of California. The only way to do this is by traveling around the world following the summer season as it moves around the world.” And so, the film documents two surfers from California – Robert August and Mike Hynson – who do just that. Brown introduces them in rather cheeky fashion as they read up for their first destination, Africa. August is shown reading a book entitled, Shark Attack: Field Dressings Illustrated, while Hynson is reading a Malaria manual. These books are obviously mock-ups done for comic effect.

August and Hynson arrive in Dakar, Senegal where Brown gripes about the $30/day each room rate (?!) at the government-sanctioned hotel that they’re forced to stay at. Fortunately, they find some tasty waves and there is a funny bit as August and Hynson try to explain to a taxi cab driver how to store their surfboards in his car. Many of the natives had never seen surfing before and the two young surfers were breaking new ground. Brown’s narration manages to be simultaneously informative and entertaining. For example, he points out how you could die in 15 minutes after stepping on a Stone Fish. He tempers this with shots of beautiful scenery, like a spectacular view of Cape Town from atop Cable Mountain. August and Hynson meet up with local surfers in Cape Town and travel along the Cape Peninsula.

One of things that strikes you about Brown’s voiceover narration is his way with words, like when he talks about a California surfing spot known as the Wedge: “Few people ride belly boards at the Wedge. Body surfing is bad enough because when you get wiped out it feels like your arms, legs and head are all going different directions. Add a belly board to that mess and it’s like an extra piece of shrapnel in a hand grenade.” As you would expect, there are lots of great slow motion shots of surfers catching fantastic rides on some really beautiful waves. Back in Africa, the guys meet some colorful characters, like a man named Terrence who catches animals for zoos and milks snakes for their venom. He is willing to drive hundreds of miles out of his way to take the two surfers to a sweet location for surfing.

Next, August and Hynson go to Australia where we see the locals riding catamarans and Brown gets some breathtaking point-of-view shots of what it’s like to sail one. They pet kangaroos in Perth and search for waves all over Western Australia but to no avail so they go to Bells Beach near Melbourne and find out that the surfing is better during the winter season. The guys go fishing in New Zealand and surfing in Ragland on the west coast, enjoying extremely long rides.

Bruce Brown started surfing in the 1950s. He took still photographs to show his mother what the draw of the sport was. While serving in the United States Navy on Oahu years later, he used an 8 mm movie camera to photograph surfers from California. Once Brown got back there, he edited his footage into an hour-long film. Surfer Dale Velzy showed it at his San Clemente shop, charging 25 cents for admission. He bought Brown a 16 mm camera and together they raised $5,000 to make Slippery When Wet (1958), Brown’s first “real” surf film.

In the winter of 1958, Brown went back to Hawaii to film the North Shore’s big surf. On the plane ride over, the novice filmmaker read a book about how to make movies. Brown said, “I never had formal training in filmmaking and that probably worked to my advantage.” By 1962, he had spent five years making one surf film per year. He would shoot during the fall and winter, edit during the spring and show the finished product during the summer. Brown remembered, “I felt if I could take two years to make a film, maybe I could make something special.” To do this, he would need a bigger budget then he had on his previous films. To raise the $50,000 budget he needed, Brown took the best footage from his four previous films and made Water-Logged (1962).

While editing The Endless Summer, Brown was contacted by the band The Sandals who were hoping to sell one of their songs to him for use in the film. He was so impressed by their music that he wanted to use several of their songs. The group even toured with Brown and his film, providing live backing for his live narration. Not surprisingly, The Endless Summer was a big hit on the local west coast surfing circuit where it debuted at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium during the summer of 1964 and played to sold-out crowds for a week. Paul Allen, the man responsible for arranging shows and coordinating publicity, thought that they could attract a national distributor. Brown took The Endless Summer to several Hollywood studio distributors but was rejected because they didn’t think it would have mainstream appeal. So, he took the film to where he felt would be the toughest proving ground: Wichita, Kansas in January. Moviegoers lined up in snowy weather in the middle of winter where the film went on to sell out its entire two-week run. Distributors still weren’t convinced and so Brown rented out the Kuyps Bay Theatre in New York City where his film ran successfully for a year. The Endless Summer was finally released nationally in 1966 where it proved to be a big hit both commercially and critically.

The Endless Summer faced with an uphill battle in the theater of public opinion. At the time, the national media regarded surfers as “beach bums” that were “anti-social” and “drug-induced.” Even one of the most influential magazines in helping shape public opinion in the 1960s, Time, jumped on the bandwagon with a January 1964 feature article entitled, “Shooting the Tube,” that linked surfing with drugs. To whit, “riding a board through the surf is a little like going on hashish.” Once middle America read these words, their mind was made up about surfing culture. However, Brown’s film changed all of this with its fun, positive image of surfing and surfers. August and Hynson weren’t hurting anyone or anything. They were just looking for the perfect wave.

The Endless Summer was well-received by critics of the day. Time magazine wrote, “Brown leaves analysis of the surf-cult mystique to seagoing sociologists, but demonstrates quite spiritedly that some of the brave souls mistaken for beachniks are, in fact, converts to a difficult, dangerous and dazzling sport.” Roger Ebert praised the film’s “beautiful photography” and compared it to Hollywood’s attempts at depict surfing culture when he wrote, “[it] almost makes you wonder if Hollywood hasn’t been trying too hard.” In his review for The New York Times, Robert Alden wrote, “the subject matter itself – the challenge and the joy of a sport that is part swimming, part skiing, part sky-diving and part Russian roulette – is buoyant fun.” Brown was pleasantly surprised by the critical reaction to his film: “For some reason the real entrenched film critics seemed to like it, maybe because it was different from what they were used to seeing.” The Endless Summer went on to gross more than $30 million. Not bad for a film that cost only $50,000 to make.

There is a wandering spirit, a searching for the perfect wave all over the world that makes The Endless Summer so enjoyable to watch. This isn’t just a series of montages of people surfing wave after wave. Brown has actually crafted a narrative that is part travelogue as he gives us a taste of exotic cultures all over the world. He also managed to craft a surfing film that is easily understood and can be enjoyed by the uninitiated while still having plenty of stuff for the seasoned surfer to enjoy which probably explains part of the film’s enduring appeal. The Endless Summer went on to launch and influence a whole cottage industry of surfing films, many of which did not impress Brown all that much who felt that they were “all bang-bang-bang, it’s all industrial. It’s all quick cuts and loud music.”

The pics used in this post come from Bruce Brown's official site which I highly recommend checking out if you're into surfing and surf films.

Point Break

Kathryn Bigelow has made three truly great films: Near Dark (1987), a vampire western, Strange Days (1995), a Cyberpunk thriller, and yes, Point Break (1991). This film is not great in the traditional sense. No, it is a great cheeseball action flick riddled with clichéd dialogue, stereotypical characters and by-the-numbers plotting. It also has some pretty quotable dialogue, kick-ass action sequences, and some breathtaking surfing footage. It was generally panned by critics upon its release, but did pretty well at the box office and has gone on to enjoy something of a minor cult following among action film fans who enjoy its breathlessly choreographed action sequences involving daring bank heists, car chases, skydiving and, of course, surfing – one of the film’s most important selling points.

So, here’s the premise: the FBI are baffled by a string of robberies committed by a group calling themselves the Ex-Presidents – thieves who disguise themselves by wearing masks of former United States Presidents: Richard Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Enter the clean-cut Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves), fresh from the academy and assigned to veteran agent and all around burn-out Angelo Pappas (Gary Busey). Pappas has a crazy theory that the Ex-Presidents are surfers when they aren’t bank robbers and he convinces Utah to go undercover as a wave rider-in-training so that he can get close to this tight-knit group. Unfortunately, Utah has zero surfing skills and nearly drowns before cute, tomboy surfer girl Tyler (Lori Petty) rescues him. He manages to convince her to teach him how to surf and she unwittingly acts as his contact to the exclusive surfing clique. She also introduces Utah to Bodhi (Patrick Swayze), a “modern savage” surfer/adrenaline junkie in search of the ultimate ride. Pretty soon Utah figures out that Bodhi and his buddies are actually the Ex-Presidents, but he has to catch them in the act first.

Point Break trots out and downright revels in stereotypes: Utah is the all-American good guy, Pappas is the burn-out cop and they are constantly being chewed out by their jerk-off boss (John C. McGinley) for their screwball antics. The film wastes little time breaking out the requisite alpha male bonding scenes, like the football game on the beach at night where Utah proves that he’s got the balls to hang with Bodhi and his crew. After the he-man bonding session, Bodhi tells Utah about his dream of surfing the ultimate wave which will hit Bell’s Beach, Australia as the result of a massive storm that forms only once every 50 years. As soon as he says this, you just know that it’s going to play a part later on – it’s that kind of film.

Matthew Broderick, Charlie Sheen and Johnny Depp were all originally considered for the role of Johnny Utah when Ridley Scott was attached to direct. After the project fell through with Scott, the producers took the screenplay to other directors and James Cameron, who was married to Bigelow at the time, expressed an interest in executive producing. Bigelow had just completed Blue Steel (199) and was looking for her next project.

At the time, the casting of Keanu Reeves in an action film was considered a risky move. Remember, this was before Speed (1994) and The Matrix films. In a film filled with clichéd characters and dialogue, Reeves’ trademark blankness is an asset rather than a liability. The actor actually liked the name of his character (in its own dumb way it is pretty awesome if you think about it) because it reminded him of star athletes like Johnny Unitas and Joe Montana. In an interview he described his character as a “total control freak and the ocean beats him up and challenges him. After a while everything becomes a game … He becomes as amoral as any criminal. He loses the difference between right and wrong.” Pretty deep stuff, right? But it is this total commitment to character that makes his performance so fun to watch. The casting of Lori Petty as Reeves’ love interest is an unusual choice. I’m sure the studio probably wanted some blond bombshell Pam Anderson/Baywatch-type babe but instead Bigelow cast the tomboyish Petty who brings a lot of spunky charm to the role.

Point Break was originally called the painfully obvious Johnny Utah when Reeves was cast in the title role. Not surprisingly, 20th Century Fox felt that this title said very little about surfing and by the time Patrick Swayze was cast, the film had been renamed Riders on the Storm after the song of the same name by The Doors. However, Jim Morrison’s lyrics had nothing to do with the film and so that title was also rejected. It was not until halfway through filming that Point Break became the film’s title because of its relevance to surfing.

Surprisingly, it’s Swayze’s Zen master/surfer/bank robber Bodhi that doesn’t fall into an easy stereotype and comes across as the most interesting, charismatic character in the entire film. And you have to give the credit to Swayze and his oddly fascinating performance. We find ourselves rooting not for Keanu Reeves’ bland FBI agent but Swayze’s thrillseeking surfer. Point Break came along right after Swayze’s phenomenal success with Ghost (1990) and he went completely in the opposite direction with this film. He had already demonstrated a capacity for action film roles with Road House (1989) and looks like he’s having a blast in Point Break. Bodhi could have so easily been played as a silly stereotypical bad guy – the pseudo-philosopher criminal but Swayze is a good enough actor that he sells pretentious surfer credos like, “It’s a state of mind. It’s that place where you lose yourself and find yourself,” with complete conviction. It works because the actor believes in what he’s saying. So, it comes as no surprise that Swayze felt a kinship with his character and that they both shared “that wild-man edge.”

What can you say about Gary Busey that hasn’t already been said? He brings a hilariously unpredictable quality to every scene he’s in as you wonder if the filmmakers just let him improvise most of his dialogue. Busey’s introduction in the film is priceless. Utah meets Pappas for the first time at an exercise where the veteran agent has to retrieve two bricks from the bottom of a pool blindfolded (?!). We are never told what this is meant to prove or do but it does speak volumes about Pappas’ gonzo attitude towards life. Unaware that he’s talking to his new partner, Pappas gripes that he’s being paired up with some “quarterback punk.” Reeves’ response is right on the money as he introduces himself as “Punk, quarterback punk.” While Busey does provide a lot of the film’s humor, he can play it straight when he has to. He and Reeves have a good mentor/protégé relationship that develops over the course of the film. They play well off each other with the looseness of Busey’s performance contrasting Reeves’ stiffness. This is evident in the scene where Pappas asks Utah to order him two meatball sandwiches. Busey takes what could have been an average scene into something memorable with his offbeat delivery.

As for the supporting cast, there’s the terminally pissed off boss played by character actor extraordinaire John C. McGinley who rattles of a scene-stealing rant full of rapid-fire insults years before he’d be doing it on a regular basis on the television show Scrubs. Look closely and you’ll spot independent film veteran James LeGros (Scotland, PA) in a small role as one Bodhi’s crew. Look even closer and you’ll spot Red Hot Chili Peppers lead singer Anthony Kiedis as a part of a gang of small-time criminals/surfers who “only live to get radical” as Bodhi puts it. His one line of dialogue (the classic, “That would be a waste of time.” – believe me, it’s all in how it’s delivered) is delivered so badly that he makes Reeves look like Paul Newman in comparison. Tom Sizemore has a memorable cameo as a pissed off undercover DEA agent trying to bust a group of drug dealing surf Nazis. He would work with Bigelow again on Strange Days.

The surfing sequences are beautifully shot with the camera right there in the water with the surfers riding the waves as Bigelow does an excellent job of conveying the exhilarating rush of what it is like to be out there catching a wave, riding it in and the euphoric feeling that one gets from the experience. For the most part, it is pretty obvious where stunt doubles were used and where the actors were inserted for close-ups – the waves don’t match up. But hey, at least their faces aren’t digitally pasted onto a surfing double like in Blue Crush (2002).

Petty, Reeves and Swayze trained with former world class professional surfer Dennis Jarvis on the Hawaiian island of Kauai two months before filming. Jarvis remembers, “Patrick said he'd been on a board a couple of times, Keanu definitely hadn't surfed before, and Lori had never been in the ocean in her life.” Shooting the surfing sequences proved to be quite a challenge for all involved with Swayze cracking four of his ribs. For many of the surfing scenes he refused to use a stunt double as he never had one for fight scenes or car chases. He also did the skydiving scenes himself, which is insane but there’s total commitment for you.

Ever since Near Dark, Kathryn Bigelow has shown an aptitude for well-choreographed action sequences but nothing on the level of what she would accomplish in Point Break. First up, is the raid on the red herring bank robbers that Bigelow expertly orchestrates by first building the tension as she establishes all the combatants and then the inevitable explosion of violence that culminates in an exciting struggle over the blades of a lawnmower. This is just warm-up however, for the next action sequence where Utah catches the Ex-Presidents robbing a bank and pursues their leader on foot after an exciting car chase through backyards and in the insides of houses in a suburb. The cameras pursue the two men as if we are chasing them (or sometimes being chased by them). Incredibly, Bigelow would top this sequence with an even more daringly choreographed chase scene in Strange Days, albeit from a first-person point-of-view.

Amazingly, Point Break received positive to mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "Bigelow is an interesting director for this material. She is interested in the ways her characters live dangerously for philosophical reasons. They aren't men of action, but men of thought who choose action as a way of expressing their beliefs.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin praised Reeves' performance: "A lot of the snap comes, surprisingly, from Mr. Reeves, who displays considerable discipline and range. He moves easily between the buttoned-down demeanor that suits a police procedural story and the loose-jointed manner of his comic roles.” However, Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "C+" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, "Point Break makes those of us who don't spend our lives searching for the ultimate physical rush feel like second-class citizens. The film turns reckless athletic valor into a new form of aristocracy.”

In his review for the Washington Post, Hal Hinson wrote, "A lot of what Bigelow puts up on the screen bypasses the brain altogether, plugging directly into our viscera, our gut. The surfing scenes in particular are majestically powerful, even awe-inspiring. Bigelow's picture is a feast for the eyes, but we watch movies with more than our eyes. She seduces us, then asks us to be bimbos." Rolling Stone magazine's Peter Travers wrote, "Bigelow can't keep the film from drowning in a sea of surf-speak. But without her, Point Break would be no more than an excuse to ogle pretty boys in wet suits." Point Break is the epitome of a guilty pleasure: to dumb to defend rationally but with action sequences too cool to dismiss totally. It’s a big, loud comic book of a film and it knows it and has the conviction to go for it. Where most action films have a tendency to collapse under the weight of their collective clichés, Point Break works because of them.