Children Of The Endless Summer
The Sunday Age
Sunday January 25, 2004
Surfers tell of their love for the sport in a new movie. By Guy Davis.
Dana Brown's passions made their presence felt early. ``I think I was about four or five when I rode my first wave standing up," he says. ``And I was 10 when I had my first film camera."
For Brown, the twin loves of surfing and filmmaking converged in a career that has seen him work as writer, director, editor and camera operator on more than 50 sports-related film and television productions.
Following in the footsteps of his father, Bruce, the director of surf classic The Endless Summer, Brown's latest project is the documentary Step Into Liquid, which combines eye-popping footage from some of the world's hottest surf spots with an eye-opening perspective on the joys of the sport from veteran surfers and young up-and-comers.
``It's about surfing, but it's also about more than that," he says. ``The whole movie is about fun. I think that's what God put us on the planet for, not to acquire big houses and shiny cars.
``The stories in the movie are what make it interesting, not just the surfing shots - they're great, but once you have seen them once or twice they lose their impact. The (surfing) culture now reaches around the globe, and I knew there were so many stories to tell."
Brown and his crew travelled the globe to get the stories: Irish brothers who try to bridge the gap between Catholics and Protestants through surfing lessons; a team of ``heavy-water" surfers who travel hundreds of kilometres into the open ocean to tackle truly mammoth waves; and the Texas wave-riders who take advantage of the wakes left by supertankers in the Gulf of Mexico.
``I wanted everything to be as natural as possible, so I let the camera roll and allowed situations to occur," Brown says.
``I didn't ask people to go and run in the water a certain way or say certain things - it was all natural. You couldn't write stuff like that. When something is true, you feel it and believe it and get involved in it. The audience can feel it too. Something happens and you see people grinning back at the screen. They really get involved in the movie."
The ``something" could well be what Step Into Liquid calls The Stoke. More than one interview subject in the film sings the praises of this ephemeral sensation, but what does it actually mean?
``Being stoked means you're passionate, like stoking the fire," Brown says. ``I think people can understand it if they're passionate about something, anything. If they wake up at 5am to go fishing or running or something like that, they can understand it. As far as a definition, though, some things are just beyond defining. Surfing certainly is, but I think passion is too."
And for Brown, the passion of The Stoke is found not only in surfing but in making movies as well. ``Surfing is like making films. It's easier because it's a hobby, but it's the same kind of elation at work. The Stoke is in the fact that you're communicating, as dumb as that sounds. I just like to see it work. It's just fun," he says.
Step Into Liquid is in cinemas now.
© 2004 The Sunday Age