Looking for examples of surfers, people talking about surfers, or people depicting surfers in media.

February 25, 2008 12:11 PM

Looking for depictions of surfers in mainstream media. Examples by people who aren't actually surfers (actors, reporters, wannabe surfers) are great, but people in the surf community are good too. The more common, well-known examples are better. I'm thinking of scenes from movies, passages in books, news stories, documentaries, blogs, comedy skits, but unscripted examples are best.

I've got the big ones covered...Point Break, Surf's Up, Endless Summer, etc.

Here are a few examples of the type of things I'm looking for (surfers, non-surfers, scripted, unscripted all good):

Documentaries about surfers/surfing (I've pretty much got this nailed, but if there's some good historical clips of surfers talking somewhere that I haven't thought about, well, that would be great. Bonus points if the bit is relatively well-known or representative of the community in some way.

A scene from a popular movie featuring surfers talking.

An interview or skit or piece on a talk show, SNL, comedy bit, news spot.

This is for a research paper. Thanks!

posted by iamkimiam to Society & Culture (25 answers total)

Jeff Spicoli
posted by box at 12:15 PM on February 25, 2008

Greg Brady's surfing disaster in Tthe Brady Bunch Hawaii special
posted by Sara Anne at 12:18 PM on February 25, 2008

Best answer: Surfer on the morning news in LA.
posted by ShootTheMoon at 12:18 PM on February 25, 2008

Have you covered John from Cincinnati yet?
posted by Shepherd at 12:29 PM on February 25, 2008

Best answer: Gidget!
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:34 PM on February 25, 2008

Sublime is a very 'surfer' band, with songs like Paddle Out. I'm assuming you have the whole genre of surf music covered, but if you don't, two words: Dick Dale.
posted by Mach5 at 12:47 PM on February 25, 2008

Cameron Diaz in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 1:06 PM on February 25, 2008

Kate Bosworth & friends in Blue Crush: The whole movie is about a surf competition, and it doesn't completely suck.
posted by cgc373 at 1:10 PM on February 25, 2008

Don't forget Skeet Surfing!

It's the opening song from Val Kilmer's movie, "Top Secret".
posted by DWRoelands at 1:22 PM on February 25, 2008

Best answer: Have you checked The Encyclopedia of Surfing? Matt Warshaw's other books might be helpful, too.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:23 PM on February 25, 2008

Best answer: Last year, on the Sundance Channel documentary/interview series "Iconoclasts," Eddie Vedder and Laird Hamilton interviewed each other. IIRC, it was filmed at Hamilton's surfside house.
posted by ROTFL at 1:24 PM on February 25, 2008

North Shore is heavy on the cheese factor, but is an old favorite and may feature something close to what you are looking for. If not, its still entertaining!
posted by Asherah at 1:24 PM on February 25, 2008

Oh, and the "Charlie don't surf" scene from Apocalypse Now. (It's about three minutes into this eight-minute clip; the line itself is at the very beginning of Part 1, just before the "Ride of the Valkyries" helicopter attack sequence.)
posted by cgc373 at 1:26 PM on February 25, 2008

Craig Venter is invariably described as a "ex-surfer."
posted by donovan at 1:31 PM on February 25, 2008

Riding Giants, and the surfing scenes at the beginning of Dogtown and Z-Boys.
posted by nicwolff at 1:33 PM on February 25, 2008

Seconding Blue Crush for the stunning cinematography alone. I've heard a lot of folks say that nothing has ever captured what surfing is like nearly quite as well.
posted by General Malaise at 1:36 PM on February 25, 2008

donovan reminded me of Garrett Lisi, who journalists describe as a "surfer-physicist." Last year he published a candidate for a "theory of everything" that was taken seriously by other physicists. (So he's not a crank, so far as I know.)
posted by cgc373 at 1:56 PM on February 25, 2008

Menino do Rio, but I have no idea where you'd get a copy of it. I saw it in an undergrad Portuguese class. Lotsa surfin'. Here's a short summary from the NYT.

Oh, and the song with the same title by Caetano Veloso is a great one. I thought they were perhaps related, but Caetano's song doesn't show up on the movie's soundtrack.
posted by Stewriffic at 2:11 PM on February 25, 2008

You almost certainly have Step Into Liquid on your list but in the event that you don't, I'll mention it here.
posted by jason's_planet at 3:19 PM on February 25, 2008

Puberty Blues
posted by pompomtom at 4:38 PM on February 25, 2008

Response by poster: ShootTheMoon, that is just the type of stuff I am looking for!

Examples of surfers talking, people talking about surfers, or people pretending to be (or identify with) surfers through the use of language.

Keep 'em coming folks!
posted by iamkimiam at 5:16 PM on February 25, 2008

I know you wrote that you had documentaries covered but if you get a chance look at Swell. It's a very sweet movie and it does something interesting with how surfers are represented. It was made at the beginning of the upswing in the interest in women surfers before Roxy Girl and companies like it really got rolling. To me it seems like there was a lot more space then to portray women surfers as human being who surf than there ever was to go beyond the "whoa dude, gnarly wave" stereotypes of male surfers in the mainstream media.
posted by rdr at 9:54 PM on February 25, 2008

Kelly Slater appeared in 10 episodes of Baywatch as a surfer dude.
posted by roofus at 1:04 AM on February 26, 2008

Oh and YouTube is barred at my workplace, but I recommend a video called something like "Most insightful articulate interview ever" in which a San Diego surfer tries to describe how awesomely gnarly and bodacious the waves are.
I think it's this one.
posted by roofus at 1:06 AM on February 26, 2008

Some Aussie classics:

Morning of the Earth

Coolangatta Gold
posted by goo at 2:53 AM on February 26, 2008