Bruce Brown interview

        Following the great surf movie director I have been writing about (nothing more than legendary Bruce Brown) I found a great interview he made some time ago for dailystoke.com (and by the way I strongly recomend this fantastic website to everyone). At the time a special edition of his masterpiece Endless Summer had just been released. In the next lines Brown recalls his past and explains some of his thoughts on modern surf and modern surf cinema. Hope you enjoy this interview as much as I did.

Source: Dailystoke.com

Dailystoke.com:  First, we want to thank you for taking the time.  Your contributions to the sport of surfing are unmatched, so it’s a real honor.

Bruce Brown: Well, I just feel real fortunate, glad you said that…

Dailystoke.com:  We recently interviewed your son, Dana Brown (see it here), and he said you bought him a super 8 movie camera when he was 10 years old and how you influenced him, so it begs the question: who influenced Bruce Brown?  How did you get your start and what drove you to make films?

Bruce Brown: Surfing influenced me!!  I got some cheap still camera to take pics of me and my buddy surfing.  Back then, we were the only surfers.  Then I got an 8mm movie camera to show other people, and to recruit someone to go surfing with.  I took it with me everywhere.  I was on a submarine in Pearl Harbor back in ’56 or ’57 and I took bunch of 8mm movies on The North Shore and other places.

Dailystoke.com:  We checked out the Director’s Special Edition of Endless Summer, and were amazed at what a great job they did with the sound and video — really good stuff….

Bruce Brown:  Yes, they did really good job.  I am really pleased to be with Monterrey Media, they have all my films now, and they are like family.  Many years ago, god maybe before VHS, they had Endless Summer, and years later I went back with to them with Endless Summer and On Any Sunday.

Dailystoke.com:  In one of the behind the scenes segments on the new DVD, you say “the perfect wave was just what we found, not necessarily big…something that anyone could surf.”  That statement says a lot, and made us think.  Do you like what the sport of surfing is all about today?  Are too many kids jumping on shortboards too early and is the attitude more aggressive today than it was, say, back in the ’60s?

Bruce Brown: Oh yeah for sure….All the spots today are more crowded and the only place you had any aggression back in 50s was Malibu.  Most other places you wouldn’t have to worry.  Not only that, but how about trying to find a place to park today?!  Some days, I say, maybe I’ll stop by and watch a bit, but jesus, I can’t find a place to park! (laughter).  At Cape St. Francis that day, anyone could have surfed it.

I am not much for the competition aspect of it because so much has to be held in crappy surf.  But, people are now making a living from surfing.  That is something we never dreamed of.  When I first met Wingnut, he said he wanted to make living surfing, and I said wow that’s cool.  Now it’s mainstream, but in the ’50s and ’60s you were an outcast, you didn’t want to mention it some circles.  Then when drugs entered the scene, too many good guys got caught up.  I’m a super anti-drug guy, but thank god it wasn’t my era as I would have been hooked!

DailyStoke.com:  When did drugs really hit the scene?

It started in the late ’60s I think, since I was never into it, you never knew the people that were doing it.  Then you had people saying Mike Hynson was smuggling marijuana during filming…that was bullshit.  He didn’t do it during the movie, he mentioned in India he smuggled drugs in film cans, his recollection is different than reality.  I would have never given those film cans to anybody.

Dailystoke.com:  OK, switching topics.  We have a bunch of surf filmmakers as readers, if you started BROWN BROWN FILM SCHOOL what would be the steps to make a great movie?  What would you tell our readers who are aspiring surf moviemakers?  What are the keys to success?

Bruce Brown: Well, number one, don’t go surfing!  Unless you have a camera in the in water, because you’re going miss half of the good stuff.  Some guys want to film, but go surfing and miss it.  You can go on crappy days.  It’s a lot of work.  People don’t realize it, to make things happen, because nothing ever goes according to plan.  Oh, the sunset is really good, but then it’s something else.

The other thing is to make sure you have a good surfer to shoot, a good surfer can make crappy waves look much better.

Dailystoke.com: So who is/was good to shoot?

Bruce Brown: In the old days, Bill Edwards, Dewey, Butch, all those guys.  Pat O’Connell and Wingnut were great.  Today, there are so many guys that are so good, it’s just amazing.  You used to be able to drive by a surf spot and know who it was, now there are tons of guys.

Dailystoke.com:  On Any Sunday was a huge success.  Are you amazed at how far the actions sports industry has come since then?   Today we have action sports 24/7 on Fuel TV, X Games, etc….

Bruce Brown: Yeah, it’s amazing, all the stuff people are doing.  I’m a fan of some of it, other parts of it not so much.  That doesn’t mean I don’t admire people doing it.  Guys like Travis Pastrana, he is a great role model for Motorcross.

When I filmed On Any Sunday, we had trials going over logs, now they are jumping over houses and road racing is now a multi-million dollar business.  Visually, it’s still spectacular.  The only thing that hasn’t changed is the flat-track.  Motorcross back then was Levis, a t-shirt and a helmet.  Now you have sponsors and vans.

Dailystoke.com: What is the craziest thing that happened while shooting the Endless Summer?

Bruce Brown: Oh god, every other day was crazy.  I guess when we flew to Senegal, we had all this excess baggage and they wanted to charge us $300 bucks (a ton of money back then).  We would have had to stay in Senegal.  We somehow talked them out of it, though.  The funny thing is I met some guy a few years back, he was a member of Senegal Surf Club, there are a lot of good surf spots in Senegal we didn’t even know about then!

Dailystoke.com: What is your favorite movie all-time, surfing or otherwise?

Bruce Brown: The Great Escape, I met John (Sturges, the director) once at Steve’s (Steve McQueen) and asked him do you sit in the editing room for months on end?  and he says, oh yeah.  He started out as a film editor.  That’s what a lot of guys don’t realize, its a lot of work.

Dailystoke.com: So what’s next for Bruce Brown?

Bruce Brown: I switch interests about every 2 years, I was into restoring old cars, motorcycles, model airplanes, hadn’t owned a gun (rifle) since the ’60s and now I’m interested in that again on my ranch.  I target practice, that’s all.  I haven’t been surfing in a few years.  When my wife got cancer I felt it wasn’t appropriate.  Then when I did surf, I was in such bad shape I thought I was going to get killed!

Dailystoke.com:  OK, thanks for taking the time to sit down with us.  We’ll be sure to tell our readers to check out the Endless Summer Special Director’s Edition DVD.

Bruce Brown:  Thank you.

Great Directors - Bruce Brown (Part III)

That´s right, Bruce has also a thing for dirt bikes

The theatrical release of "Endless Summer" turned into an huge success. At first the movie conquered the surfing audiences, but slowly it became more and more known by the mainstream ones. Brown struggled for the film to have a national release because he was very aware of the quality of his masterpiece. Brown was also sure of his abilities as a filmmaker and the resounding success of the movie proved him right and gave him the little confidence he might have needed to establish himself on the film biz.

The financial stability that followed the success of Endless Summer, allowed him to build new offices on Dana Point and to devote himself to his other passion - motocross. His movie on the subject called On any Sunday (co-produced with his friend Steve McQueen) even gave him an academy award nomination in 1970.

Soon after Bruce retired to a ranch near Santa Barbara where, according to Surfline magazine, he "surfed, rode his motorcycles, built a house, got into car restoration, raced sprint cars around his track and, more recently, got into rally cars -- an all-wheel-drive turbo-charged Mazda". 


Only in 1992 did Brown came out of his retirement and filmed the fantastic sequel to the first Endless Summer. In this second film, two friends (Robert Wingut Weaver and Pat O´Connel) followed the steps that the first pair made around the world´s waves.


Nowadays, still according to Surfline, Bruce  races his rally car and occasionally surfs for the sake of the his great past as the man that was capable to make a whole generation to dream with the perfect surf trip around the world.

Billabong Global Big wave awards 2011 results

Congratulations Danilo Couto. The brazillian surfer has won this years edition of the ride of the year contest. Since the contest started back in 1998, the surfing world has been presented with some spectacular footage. Enjoy these fantastic scenes.

Great Directors - Bruce Brown (Part II)

     

Robert August, Mike Hynson and Bruce Brown: they were about to make the greatest surf film ever
 Picture taken from(http://www.brucebrownfilms.com/endless.htm)

 Bruce soon began one of the best periods of his career: he travelled the world, sleeping on the beaches and filming every talented surfer he could. The result of those first experiences was Slippery when wet, the 1958 flick that is a relaxed, layed back documentary about the beach boys culture of the time.

As Bruce began to get more experienced about making films, the quality of his work improved greatly over the years. You can see that evolution in the next set of movies he made: Surf Crazy, Barefoot Adventure, Surfing Hollow Days and Waterlogged show the maturation process he was doing. 

In 1963 surf culture had already exploded all over the nation. However if it is true that more and more surf movies were being made to feed a growing audience eager to watch films with their surf idols, it is also true that que quality of those flicks was mainly of low quality. Something had to change and Bruce had the exact idea on how to make surf movies more attractive to mainstream audiences.

He convinced two friends, Robert August and Mike Hynson to participate in a journey with a simple purpose: to take advantage of the fact that while it is winter in Northern Hemisphere, it is summer in the Southern and vice versa, a fact that would enable both surfers to live an endless summer - the dream of every surfer.

End of part II

Great Directors - Bruce Brown (Part I)

 Bruce Brown was inducted to the Surfers´ Hall of Fame

    He is the pioneer and the first filmmaker to put surf movies definetely on the map of great cinema. When, in 1964,"The Endless Summer" went mainstream with a nationwide theatrical release, Bruce Brown had already made five other respectable surf flicks. However the path to success was not an easy one for Brown. The raise from the underground scene to international recognition was done with many obstacles, setbacks and advances, but above all with great determination.

   Bruce was born in San Francisco and raised in Southern California. At that time (50´s) Surf culture was growing and Bruce was one of the many children that started to adopt the local beach as a second home. Later, when reflecting about that period of his life he had only the following words to describe it: "I majored in not going to school". Instead, he spent his days on the beach taking photographs of the best surfing moments.

    As a proof that his life was always connected to the sea, Brown graduated from High School and enlisted in the navy. While in duty, he was assigned to Hawaii, already a world mecca of surf. It was in the exotic pacific islands that he started to take the first 8mm movies. After his discharge, Brown returned to California and worked some time as a lifeguard. What Brown did not know was that his films had already beginning to gain notoriety between the community of surfers and as a result of that, Dave Velzy, a pioneering surf enterpreneur offered him 5000 dollars to make a film that would promote the Velzy Surf Team. Brown had just been offered the opportunity that would change his life.

(End of part I)

More on Dave Velzy ( Surfing Magazine courtesy) - http://www.surfingmagazine.com/news/velzy_052705/

Bruce Brown Film (the filming company) - http://www.brucebrownfilms.com/

Great insight on Bruce Brown´s career (by surfline) - http://www.surfline.com/surfing-a-to-z/bruce-brown-biography-and-photos_768/

The Living Curl (1965)

Jamie Budge captured through his lenses the golden era of Californinan surf

"The Living Curl" is one of the local classics of the 60´that kept all its charm up to the present. Much thanks to the figure of legendary surfer Jamie Budge, who also became a prominent surf filmmaker, an activity that he began at an early age. He started filming with 8 mm with only 16 years of age. The stars of those first "homemade" filmings were Budge himself and his friends. However, Budge soon earned status as a film director and great californian surfers of the time (such as Dewey Weber, Lance Carson or Miki Dora) followed to be the main subjects of his next movies.

In "The Living Curl", Budge captures the Malibu scene in all its splendor. Another reviewer summed up with great exactitude the quality of this movie: "Great shots of surfers who were the icons of the day demonstrating their trademark styles as well as some front edge progressive moves. Great footage of early contests which were won more for takeoff rights in the line-up than anything else.

Essentially what you get with this piece of history is the essence of the golden era of american surf.

TLDR: For those of us that grew up surfing in the sixties, "The Living Curl" is like having Surfer Magazine circa 1961-1964 come alive.