Day: April 5, 2019

Movie Review: The Endless Summer (1966) #atozchallenge

~ Liam ~ 3 Comments

This is my entry for “E” in the Blogging A to Z Challenge. Throughout April I will be watching and reviewing a documentary movie from A to Z. Previous “E” documentaries I’ve reviewed include Exit Through the Gift Shop.

Title: The Endless Summer
Release Date: June 15, 1966
Director: Bruce Brown
Production Company: Cinema V
Summary/Review:

The Endless Summer is one of those movies I’ve heard about being a classic for years and years, but never really thought what it was about.  Surfing, obviously, but there’s more of a plot to this documentary than I realized.  The first ten minutes of the movie introduces us to a number of surfers in California and Hawaii and educates the audience on the types of surfing, types of boards, and the standard surfing maneuvers.  The movie transitions into a travelogue of sorts as we follow two surfers – Mike Hynson and Robert August – as they travel around the world looking for warm air and warm waters in pursuit of the endless summer.

The tour brings the duo to Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, and Hawaii.  Bruce Brown filmed the adventures with a 16 mm camera and provides the sardonic narration.  We never hear Hynson and August speak, nor anyone else who appears in the film, presumably because Brown did not have adequate audio equipment.  Nevertheless, the visuals are magnificent, and Brown obviously put a lot of effort into setting up establishing shots, capturing sunsets and scenery, and making the surf scenes dynamic and immersive.

In the opening sequence, it was obvious that surfing at the time was the province of young, white men.  Nevertheless, that doesn’t excuse the narration that Brown provides for the scenes in Africa that rely on racial stereotypes of “the natives.”  It’s positively cringe-worthy, and even worse Brown edited in a scene of an actor in black face chasing Hynson and August through the “jungle” (actually some woods in California).  It’s sad because the footage of the two Americans showing Ghanaian children how to surf is actually a great moment of cultural exchange. Later in the film when they meet women surfers it’s used as an excuse to make gags about men looking at their bodies.

You may be reading this and thinking that it’s just a fun surfing movie and I shouldn’t be bringing politics into it.  But the action of traveling around the world is an inherently political action and privilege allows the filmmaker to decide what they will and will not include.  The Kennedy assassination occurred during their travels and is not mentioned.  It’s also not mentioned that one of the surfers was using the trip to avoid draft board notices that could’ve had him traveling to Vietnam. South African Apartheid is not acknowledged except in a one-liner about “sharks not integrating with dolphins.” The whole process of claiming and naming surf spots in this film has an air of colonialism.

What Can One Learn From Watching This Documentary:

The film is educational in the ways of surfing, especially the opening segments and footage from California and Hawaii intercut into the travel narrative.  By the time Hynson and August discover “the perfect wave” at Cape St. Francis in South Africa, I understood what the qualities were that made it so ideal for surfing.

If You Like This You Might Also Want To …:

Read a quirky horror novella about surfers in New Jersey called High Tide by Tom Bruno.

.Source:  Amazon Prime Video

Rating: **1/2

2019 Blogging A to Z Challenge – Documentary Films, Part II

A: Amy
B: Being Elmo
C: Central Park Five
D: Dear Mr. Watterson

If you want to read more, check out my previous Blogging A to Z Challenges:

And dig deep into Panorama of the Mountains, by checking out my:

And, if you like Doctor Who, I have a whole ‘nother blog where I review Doctor Who stories across media: Epic Mandates.

A Song and a Story: “Everyday Sunshine” #AtoZChallenge

~ Liam ~ Leave a comment

Today’s story is about more than a song.  It’s about an entire concert of songs.  Specifically the first concert I ever attended.  Fishbone is a Los Angeles band that plays ska, punk, funk, and alternative rock.  At the time I saw them in concert, they were touring behind their most commercially-successful album, The Reality of My Surroundings, which contained the single:

Everyday Sunshine

It was November 1991.  I had just turned 18, and was a freshman in college.  And I may be wrong, but a majority of the student body of the College of William & Mary joined a caravan to Norfolk to see Fishbone and Primus in concert.  I had six people in my car alone.

Now, this wasn’t the very first time I saw a live music performance.  I’d been to gigs for kids and families, seen jazz and world beat acts play at First Night, and even a group of Beatles impersonators play en plein air.  But this was my first REAL concert.  And as first concerts go, it kind of spoiled me for concerts.

The venue was The Boathouse which was literally a boathouse on a pier in the Elizabeth River of Norfolk.  The low ceilings, wooden pillars, and chicken wire fences only added to the clausterphobic crush of the crowd packed within.  Nevertheless, my companions and I made our way to the area in front of the stage known as the pit.

Do kids these days still mosh?  Because it was 1991, and that’s what did, slamming bodies into one another for the two plus hours that Primus and Fishbone played.  The dense crowd actually helped here because the bodies absorbed the shock.  It was more dangerous at the edge of the crowd where a mosher could find themselves violently thrown across the room.  There was also body surfing.  I tried it, but being tall and heavy, I was not easy to support and soon found myself heading head first toward the cement floor.  My downward progress was blessedly stopped within an inch of contact.  I didn’t try again.

At a point during “Everday Sunshine,” Fishbone’s lead singer Angelo Moore jumped into the crowd, climbed up into the rafters, dangled upside down by his legs, and initiated everyone in the room into the Fishbone Family.  I assume I’m still a member all these years later

2019 Blogging A to Z Challenge – A Song and a Story

A: Always on My Mind
B: Baby Come Back and Baker Street
C: Cheek to Cheek
D: Don’t Worry, Be Happy and Doctor Jones

If you want to read more, check out my previous Blogging A to Z Challenges:

And dig deep into Panorama of the Mountains, by checking out my:

And, if you like Doctor Who, I have a whole ‘nother blog where I review Doctor Who stories across media: Epic Mandates.