Monday, July 12, 2004
Riding Giants Review
I had the chance to see the new Stacy Peralta film, "Riding Giants" this weekend. From my standpoint, with an average surfers knowledge of surf history and culture, I thought it tracked a big wave emphasis of surfing's history quite well. What absolutely killed the movie for me though was the presence of Sam George. Not being a violent man, I found myself wanting to strangle him by the end of the movie. Peralta setup the movie much like Dogtown, by laying out the background very well and shoring it up with a host of interviews that edited correctly provide both insight and humor. Peralta starts with surfing's beggining in Hawaii, onto Duke, and then focusing on the mostly Haole surfers that explored the North Shore in the 50's. He then moved into the shortboard revolution and soon at Mavericks, giving the most detailed report I've seen of the Jeff Clark discovery of Mavericks and the subsequent media blowout. After Mavericks it's Laird and the tow in revolution, ending of Laird's wild ride at Teehoopu. I thought Peralta did a good job handling the history, but others more intimate with big wave riding may find that Peralta's version doesn't jive with their own.
Now, onto Sam George. Why Peralta had Sam George co-write this movie is beyond me. Why Peralta let his co-writer appear in the majority of his interviews is even more disturbing. I can imagine Sam's pleasure as he sat at his desk and wrote himself into and all over the movie. His interviews are completely void of any content, rather he is the cliche monster of the movie, as the interviews are obviously pre-scripted as Sam delivers the punchline that Peralta couldn't coax out of other interviews and wouldn't quite work with narration. Even more crossed up is Peralta's continued inclusion of Surfer Magazine covers shots, which of course Sam George is editor of. Seems like Stacy Peralta is on shaky ground here in the ethics department.
In summary I think this is a good surf movie about the evolution of big wave surfing. If you could somehow digitally remove Sam George it might be a great movie.
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Santa Barbara Surfing. Created by Tim Maddux. Continued by Pope.
