Have you tried it yourself?
Never! And I’m never gonna do it either. I’m fascinated, of course. Who isn’t when you see these people riding these gigantic waves. It’s so dangerous but at the same time so enthralling.
Why do you think there’s never been a good surfing movie before this?
I honestly don’t know. I’m happy there hasn’t. To me it was like finding a treasure. There are fantastic clips and sequences that no one ever did anything useful with. Unbelievable. What I’m most proud of in Riding Giants is that not one of the surfers say “dude” once. I tried to present the sport in a new light and I think that was one of the most important achievements. As well as not letting anyone explain why they surf, because you can’t. It’s like explaining poetry. It just turns into bullshit.
But why big wave surfing?
I needed a backbone to the story. Here I had the best characters. On the first day in Waimea alone I was told such incredible stories that it would have been enough. This side of surfing history includes a lot of tales of life and death.
When we were e-mailing beforehand, you mentioned that you had suffered from “surfer’s ear”. What is that?
It’s when your ear canals seal over due to all the cold water and hard falls. You have to, literally, drill them open again. It is not a very pleasant experience I can assure you.
Do you prefer surfing to skateboarding?
Yes. Always. You can skate anytime you like. Surfing is something different. You’re not standing on dry land. The waves are never the same. Then there is another advantage; regardless of how hard you do it you don’t sweat. If you’ve been surfing you don’t smell like an old gym.
Did you skate or surf first?
Skate. When I was at my grandparent’s I was given a little skateboard with handlebars. That was the starting point, a few years later I had a real one but by that time surfing had already become my great passion. Some older guys brought me when I was eleven. We had gone out quite far underneath a pier and all of a sudden they just threw themselves in the water with their boards. I followed and laid there, lonely, scared stiff and didn’t really have any other choice than to try and get onto the board and in towards the beach. I actually think I managed to already get onto the board at that time, but as everyone that has tried surfing knows it takes a couple of years before you get even remotely better. When I was thirteen I was ok. By then I could surf.
Do you remember the feeling?
I will never ever forget the day I really got a feeling for what surfing was about. I was just flying, up and down the wave. I had never experienced the enormous speed, I felt like a train. I was going fast and I felt like I was great. Which I wasn’t. That was only the beginning.
Did you live down by the beach outside Venice, the area later known as Dogtown?
Not at all. Although I went to high school there. Dogtown was just by the beach, we lived further into a normal middle class area. Almost all of us did.
What did your parents think about you hanging out in Dogtown and by the beach as much as you did?
Well, they didn’t know all the details. They knew about the beach, I mean, we practically lived there. And even if the place looks kinda run down when you look at old pictures, it wasn’t regarded as any kind of slum, which to be quite honest it was. But it wasn’t as if we entered a ghetto. It was just the way Los Angeles looked at the time. The city was just a bit more sleazy in general.
