Ask Carroll

[foamy]

It remains a definitive bit of surfing lore. If you had to pick three primary surfing reference point movies I would suggest it would be MOTE, Endless Summer and..........( ? )

.............Big Wednesday

[ctd]

Point break :-D-:

[Beanpole]

Gidget?
Barefoot Adventure?
Over, Under, Sideways, Down?

[foamy]

Just to clarify, when I suggested Big Wednesday, I wasn't joking. It has a couple of clunky moments, but I think it is an excellent movie about surfing.
Not demographically accurate now, but still, it is a pretty exceptional dissection of the pleasures and glories of surfing and the small-time good and bad of surfers.

[Beanpole]

Sprout?

[foamy]

Getting a bit outside the remit of Ask Carroll, but this is a very nice film of Jan-Michael Vincent and Denny Aaberg's trip to Mexico, getting away from it all after the initial rather negative response to their film, Big Wednesday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdUlMc3B-4k

With the years, there has been a reconsideration that Big Wednesday is actually a pretty good film.

[Nick Carroll]

well that's your opinion foamy, I reckon it's mega cheese.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[purple pyramids]

oh man I have no idea. probably surprisingly few. The real number would be how many people have seen it.

I would imagine that there are a huge number of surfing households that have a MOTE DVD in the collection. Given pretty much every old surfie would have one plus hipsters and new surfers would probably buy that as a bit of primary reference material. I would imagine Alby would be thanking his lucky stars and using terms like Blessed about the whole enterprise.

It remains a definitive bit of surfing lore. If you had to pick three primary surfing reference point movies I would suggest it would be MOTE, Endless Summer and..........( ? )

...crystal voyager

the ramones first album, as famous as it is, only went gold (500,000) in the US this week. so the numbers for MOTE must be very small.

[foamy]

well that's your opinion foamy, I reckon it's mega cheese.Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Fair enough Nick. In matters of subjective taste, there can be no argument.
I would say, some people who didn't like Big Wednesday when they first saw it, watch it again decades later and find its heart and its rather wistful, valedictory tone (the cheese?) has much more resonance.

[foamy]

Sorry, one more thing about Big Wednesday. For me, the fault with the film is that the music does lay it on far too thick at times. The music does have moments of high cheese. The vision and dialogue, much less so. I kind of filter down the music when it goes over the top.

[Nick Carroll]

yes foamy again we differ, I regard the Big Wednesday dialogue as a major high point in Cheese Surf Cinema, outdoing even John Milius's acolyte Matt George and his efforts in In God's Hands

some deeply camp lines delivered during BW, courtesy of Milius's deep-rinse sentiment script

two extremely brief examples
Bear (sonorously): "You're always alone in big surf." (whoa, that must mean all those guys dropping in on me at Waimea are figments of my imagination!)
and later: "It's just the lemon next to the pie." (could you bring me some coffee with that metaphor?)

hell it's part of what makes the thing watchable (and quotable). Cheese is great; it's the natural home of any surf based movie, it's a hell of a lot better than humourlessness, and it might be the only place you can go with that sorta material

anyway so on and so forth

[Beanpole]

Well you have to hand it to Pointbreak over BW in the cheesiness scale I reckon. Although I find some of that dialogue in BW almost cringeworthy.
Nice surfing in parts though. I think I prefer the climax in Pointbreak.
I find all that admiration and shaking of heads peculiarly American.
Oh no a dangerous wipe out.
On MOTE making money I just imagined that Alby has made more money over the last few years than any time before. Or at least as much. I mean its one DVD that would be for sale in pretty near any suburban surf shop in the world wouldn't it?

I don't imagine any of them make much money anymore. few hang around for a couple of years let alone decades. He must get royalties from screenings.

My wife has a copy of the album. Worth a few quid apparently.

[foamy]

Hang on! Unfair and wrong, wrong, wrong!

The first quote, Bear actually said,
"You’re always alone, anyway. That’s the test of a surfer. You shouldn’t have to depend on anybody."
Which is probably something you tell your surf skills students.

As for the second quote, Bear was supposed to be a bit nuts by this stage. Let me give you the quote and the response.
-That’s the Iemon next to the pie.
-What?

You'll be arguing that Milius's Conan the Barbarian isn't a fine work of historical fiction next!

[PeepeelaPew]

...

[still here]

"That IS Matt Johnson "- such a classic line .... Big Wednesday rules !

[andy2476]

Well you have to hand it to Pointbreak over BW in the cheesiness scale I reckon. Although I find some of that dialogue in BW almost cringeworthy.
Nice surfing in parts though. I think I prefer the climax in Pointbreak.
I find all that admiration and shaking of heads peculiarly American.
Oh no a dangerous wipe out.
On MOTE making money I just imagined that Alby has made more money over the last few years than any time before. Or at least as much. I mean its one DVD that would be for sale in pretty near any suburban surf shop in the world wouldn't it?

I don't imagine any of them make much money anymore. few hang around for a couple of years let alone decades. He must get royalties from screenings.

My wife has a copy of the album. Worth a few quid apparently.

$50 max VG condition. You might get $100 for a mint copy maybe more if you luck onto some cashed up hipsters in Byron or Glebe.

[Beanpole]

Told you so

Also got a copy of Music for Beachniks. I think that's worth a bit more.

[ctd]

Nick

Not sure if I have a question really, but noticed in the SMH that some other former surfing champ has stolen your idea of writing a fiction book .... http://tinyurl.com/nfwh8qp

Written by former Bondi local and champion surfer Matthew Ellks, Scum Valley is also the name given to South Bondi by the local surfers, who became accustomed to surfing in polluted water....The blurb for Scum Valley describes it as a "story with a David and Goliath twist to it as a rich kid waltzes into town, sets up a surf shop and begins winning friends and influencing people". "A staunch local named Dan has a run in with him and eventually opens a rival surf shop in direct competition with the corporate kid," the blurb says. "And so starts a feud that divides the community and sets the scene for ongoing battles that are fought in the streets and in the water."

Its meant to be more or less based on reality, the corporate kid being David Gyngell.

Anyway, was this Bondi stuff anything you were involved in / aware of at the time? Any stories or thoughts? I know you werent a Bondi kid, and all that 'old localism stuff' is not really of interest to you nowdays, but not coming from Sydney myself and having no knowledge of it at all, thought I would ask the question.