WHAT DOES 'BLUE CRUSH' MEAN? IS IT A SURFING TERM?
Stockwell: No, though maybe it will become one! It’s meant to be evocative, to suggest surfers’ infatuation with the water and with the sport - and also the danger of some of the waves they go up against.
WHOSE IDEA WAS IT TO MAKE A MOVIE ABOUT SURFING?
Grazer: I’d been thinking about it for 10 years, then I found a story in Rolling Stone magazine about girls that grow up extremely poor in Hawaii and become these great surfers, some of them professional. I just sparked to that. First off, I think the world of surfing is fascinating, both in and out of the water. Second, I have a daughter, and I loved that we found a story that was about women being empowered.
Stockwell: That’s what I thought was fascinating too. I mean, there hasn’t been a movie about women surfers before, and here was this story about these girls who work as maids in a luxury hotel and surf in their time off. One of them has the talent and skills to potentially become a pro-surfer, and the movie is about how these other girls rally around and help her get the chance to fulfil her dream, which is basically to surf the most dangerous wave in the world: the ‘Bonzai Pipeline’.
Surf movies have long been a Hollywood staple and seem to be coming back into vogue. First into the water will be Blue Crush,
which is about a strong-minded woman prepared to take a risk and put it all on the line. Producer Brian Grazer, fresh from Oscar glory with A
Beautiful Mind, and director John Stockwell, whose credits include last year’s crazy/beautiful, talk to Simon Banner about women surfers, killer
waves and the perils of working on water. |
THAT'S A REAL WAVE?
Stockwell: Yes, absolutely: on the north shore of Oahu, in Hawaii. It’s a wave that has killed and injured more surfers and body-boarders than any other on the planet - than all the other waves combined. The day before we shot there, somebody was paralysed. It’s really treacherous: hollow and fast and difficult to navigate, and it breaks in very shallow water over razor-sharp coral.
ARE THERE PROFESSIONAL WOMAN SURFERS WHO TACKLE IT?
Stockwell: Professional women surfers have had a lot less exposure than men. They’re paid less. They’ve had to survive for all these years operating in these basically all-male environments. But they’re hard to faze, they’re fearless and, yes, they take on any wave there is. It’s funny because, at the professional level, the sport has pretty much always been segregated: girl against girl and guy against guy. Sometimes at the junior levels, though, girl surfers would get so good that they couldn’t find much competition among other girls and they’d start entering the boys’ competitions. What would happen is, the minute the girls started beating any of the boys, they’d get banned!
ARE YOU BOTH SURFERS IN REAL LIFE? CAN YOU UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE GET SO OBSESSED WITH IT?
Stockwell: I think it’s a quasi-religious sport, one of the few where you truly can commune with nature. You might catch the most amazing wave, and dolphins might swim by you, or a whale, or sea turtles. I’m not a particularly good surfer, but I’d say I was obsessed with it. I loved that my research for the movie meant that I got to be six months in Hawaii and it was a business expense.
Grazer: I surf too, which I think is why I’ve been sent so many surf scripts over the years! Do I understand how it becomes an obsession? Definitely! I think it’s the only sport where there are so many variables and they change every time out. The physics of the ocean are just never the same. You take a wave and you don’t know what it’s going to be. And if you get a ride, there’s an adrenaline rush that transcends any other sport. Apart from that, I’m just fascinated by the whole surf culture, by its unwritten laws. You know, on some beaches, only locals are allowed. In some places in Hawaii, you have to be Samoan. Territorialism is really pronounced in the world of surfing.
