Friday, August 05, 2005
The Bruce Movie Review
The Bruce Movie premiered at the Riviera Theatre in Santa Barbara last night, it's 4th stop on the West Coast Tour. It opened to 7,000 people at Volcom's Headquarters in Costa Mesa, then went to SLO, Santa Cruz, and Santa Barbara before going to San Diego.
Showing up at the normally sleepy
The Bruce Movie premiered at the Riviera Theatre you were greeted by Volcom's giant black bus, and hundreds of posters and stickers plastered everywhere. They were throwing out schwag left and right, and foam hat guys were everywhere. A lot of Carp and Pierpont kids making the trek up from points south, and I didn't see the usual SB surf flick suspects.
This being my first Veeco Productions movie, and only the 2nd surfer specific movie (the 1st being Laird), I had few expectations. Except for the fact it was going to be freaking awesome because every magazine has been talking about the Bruce Movie for months now. The surfing footage was good, but not mind blowing. I left with a lot more respect for Bruce's surfing, he is such a well rounded and fluid surfer, with thought out powerful turns, clean lines and his tube riding is some of the most "sixth sense" I've ever witnessed. It is like the tube is magnetized and he is a chunk of iron ore that just gets locked into the perfect spot and then spit out when the field collapses. The waves he was going for at Backdoor were impossible, and he made it out of many of them.
The movie is semi-chronological following some key WCT heats last year, such as the finals in France with his brother, and his last minute re-qualification at the Pipe Masters. It also covers his mind blowing win at the Eddie in December of 2004. This footage is pretty week, almost every other footage of this event shows the size of the waves and skill of the riders but this footage seems ho-hum. Even the footage of Bruce's insane tube going left in the shorebreak doesn't do it justice. Allthewhile making me wonder, "why did this movie take so long to make?"
If you've read a surf magazine in the last few months you've been exposed to "The Making of the Bruce Movie" which pumped it up as a huge work in progress. Photos of them interviewing Bruce have been splashed everywhere, and yet as you watch the movie you realize the interviews are the most slapped together thing about the movie. Maybe that is Volcom's way of doing movies, but having Bruce interviewed while he's driving, or while he's walking, pretty much no interviews where they sat him down, makes you wonder if Bruce was that big on his big movie being made. The interviews with friends and family are at least stationary, but not too enlightening.
As hard as the producers tried with annoying interview angles and a dissonant soundtrack, they could not take away from Bruce's surfing. Weather he is making it into and out of impossible Pipe waves, or landing aerial after aerial on a boat trip, or making powerful turns in a contest you realize this is one of the most well rounded surfers today, and a nice guy to boot. You perhaps think he is too much of a free spirit and too well rounded to ever take home a World Title, but time will tell on that one.
The movie is worth watching, but just make sure you tell those surf magazine marketing machines to stop pumping up movies that pay them the most return.
pope
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Santa Barbara Surfing. Created by Tim Maddux. Continued by Pope.
