with Bali restaurant owner and big wave charger, Cacho

A Bukit Landmark Burns Down and a Surf Community Pulls Together

by Trey Highton

Cacho - Aviones, PR '77

Having made my home in California for close to a decade now, when I first came to Bali in ‘08 for a six-month stint, the only thing I had serious cravings for was authentic Mexican food. All my other “needs” were met beyond expectation – consistent great surf, beautiful scenery and people, and out on the Bukit Peninsula, a laid back island lifestyle that I’ve heard is comparable to Oahu’s North Shore in the ’70s – a goofy-footers paradise with no traffic lights, bare feet, lots of smiles, and a stretch of surf from Uluwatu to Balangan that rivals the 10-Mile Miracle when it’s on.

Indonesian food on the whole is uniquely delicious and satisfying, based around the main staples of nasi (rice) and mei (noodles), with common meats such as chicken and beef served sate-style (grilled on a stick) with peanut sauce, and also including more famous regional delicacies such as babi-guling (suckling pig) and roast duck. But after a while, I could not quell my insatiable desire for a plain and simple California burrito or some classic fish tacos after a long surf – the common comfort food of a Californian surfer. But ultimately, it was my girlfriend’s yearning for chocolate, not my own longing for Mexican, that led us to discover Sunset Grill, just before the Padang-Padang bridge on the road out to Uluwatu. Besides offering the only truly authentic Mexican cuisine on the island of Bali, Sunset Grill is also famous for their Chunky Monkey & Naughty Monkey banana/chocolate milkshakes and a homemade chocolate cake that is served heated with a giant scoop of vanilla ice cream. This chocolate cake, if you ask any woman that I’ve ever been with at least, is much much better than sex.

My first visit to Sunset Grill, I had my lady-friend on my arm, and I was a little weary of the homeless-looking guy who seemed to be holding himself up against the stucco entrance. I half-expected him to make a lecherous grab at my girl or take off down the hill with an arm-full of the patrons’ sandals that lay waiting outside the entrance. I never expected, in my wildest imaginations, that this unsuspecting gentlemen incognito was the proprietor of the restaurant. A self-professed ex-junky “who forgets people’s names instantly,” Cacho lived in Hawaii from ‘79 – ‘95, growing up surfing Pipe with the Ho brothers and Ronnie Burns. His daughter, Taina, was born in ‘01, and he loves to show off pictures and videos of her surfing to complete strangers in his restaurant.

The restaurant itself was plastered with priceless original surf photography and memorabilia, much of it signed personally to Cacho by the surfers pictured. The layout was that of an open-air cantina, with seating designed to allow patrons to stretch their legs and relax, not the normal cram ‘em in and crank ‘em out routine to maximize guests served and profits in the till. The kitchen was small and food came out when it was ready, which is why the restaurant’s motto – “people in a rush still not allowed” – was plastered on the front of the menu. And you could often recognize most of the faces in the restaurant from the faces in the line-up at Uluwatu, recounting their best rides of the day to Cacho and company.

Firetrucks on the scene at Sunset Grill

When I returned to Bali in early April this year (‘10), I couldn’t wait to go back to Cacho’s Sunset Grill. For one, I had a new girlfriend who was in desperate need of some chocolate cake, and I was stoked to see that completely unique smile of Cacho’s again and have a big blackened tuna burrito. I was completely shocked when I learned through the Uluwatu surf report on Surfline.com that Sunset Grill had burned down just before my arrival. In the following days, Cacho, one of the last people in the world I had ever expected to find on Facebook, was making his internet debut, to organize a fundraiser party in an effort to raise funds to rebuild his restaurant and livelihood.

In the weeks leading up to the party, I was impressed and humbled to see how not only the surf community on the Bukit, but the surf communities in Australia, South America, back in the Caribbean, etc., everyone who had been to Bali and touched by Cacho’s cuisine and personality, were pulling together to send well-wishes and financial support to their brother in need.

The party was held on the evening of April 25th, at the Uluwatu Surf Villas, overlooking the “Temples” peak, at the home of Tim Russo. Everyone was treated to a gorgeous sunset atop glassy waves while gorging on blackened tuna tacos and frozen margaritas. Tons of people donated goods to Cacho for a silent auction that took place during the party, everything from surf shop merchandise, custom spear-guns, original artwork, villa retreats, to a quiver of surfboards, including a classic Brewer gun were going to the highest bidder, with all proceeds going to the rebuilding effort. The upper echelon of the Bukit’s surfing society were all in attendance, including the monarch of Indonesian surfing, Rizal Tanjung and his family, and all had a great time coming together for a worthy cause.

What follows is a brief interview with the man behind the restaurant, the legendary Cacho Izquierdo, who you will generally only find in the line-up at Uluwatu or greeting you at the door of Sunset Grill, with no shoes on and a big, warm, toothless smile.

Cacho in front of the rubble

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Q: Where are you from?

A: Puerto Rico…..raised in Hawaii

Q: When did you first come to Bali and when did you move here? What made you decide to make Bali your home?

A: 1985….moved to Bali in 1995/to surf Uluwatu and enjoy a simpler life.

Q: When did Sunset Grill open up?

A: 2000

Q: How did you first get into the restaurant business?

A: I was born into it!

Q: What’s the secret to a perfect margarita?

A: No cheating

Q: And the secret to scoring perfect Uluwatu?

A: Know your tides ….. and the right boards

Q: How did the restaurant burn down?

A: Electrical

Q: What’s the best way for people not in Bali to make a contribution to the re-building of Sunset Grill?

A: Via Western Union ….. to Ernesto Izquierdo ……. in Bali …..confirmation code via sunsetpadang@hotmail.com

Q: Where and when will the new Sunset Grill be?

A: Same place in 3 months starting now!

Q: Any particular extra special thanks you would like to make from the fundraiser party, etc, so far?

A: Too many people to thank ……..it came and support still coming from so many angles

Q: A perfect day in the life of Cacho would be . . . .

A: Surf …… a big barrel successfully and go to work after with no shoes or shirt

Cacho charging in Bali

If you would like to help Cacho in rebuilding the delicious Sunset Grill, please visit “Help Cacho Rebuild Sunset Grill” Facebook Page.

Describe your relationship to surfing…

We dated for years and she was playing hard to get.  From an early age we went out on numerous dates and I found the whole thing pretty tough going, I thought I was getting somewhere and then out of nowhere I was in the doghouse. I remained interested though and I am glad I did. We used to go on dates and all I would get was stinky popcorn, but I dreamed of that perfect day where she would be clean and welcoming…and you know what, it happened, I lost my virginity and have been heavily corrupted ever since with an insatiable appetite for more.

What inspired you to translate your passion for surfing into a creative endeavor?

I am a bit of a hodad and I noticed Mother Ocean kept giving all the best waves to the arty folk and the musicians….so, I started hanging out with them more. Once I started hanging out with those types of people I started seeing surfing from another perspective and it is beautiful…so beautiful I had to document it.

How would you describe modern popular surfing culture?

I don’t…I am more interested in the ancient and unpopular.

What is the message behind Switchfoot 2?

Perseverance. If you keep dating someone long enough, eventually they will let you write a book about them, and all their mistresses.

What kinds of things are we going to find in the book?

368 pages hardbound….2kilograms of paper and cardboard….over 1000 images…interviews and insights with many surfers, shapers, photographers, explorers, artists…

What was the process you went thru to determine contributors for Switchfoot 2?

Most of them were friends, or friends of friends…all with a like-minded take on surfing for the glide…Contributors that were hard to find, or off the radar were generally the ones I was looking for….but it wasn’t elitist by any means.

How would you like to see surfing’s place in society evolve?

It would be nice to see it go in the opposite direction to what it has been going for the last 20 years. It would be nice to see all the ‘sporty’ types who have taken up surfing to simply walk away and not be interested anymore. That would be a nice evolution, for it to go back to where it came from…to not be popular ….for it to go back to the ‘pre-gidget’ era….someone please build a time machine and take me and my friends there.

It would be nice to see surfers come together and for you to be able to ask me a question about ‘surf culture’ and not ‘modern popular surfing culture’. Surfing is so fractured…Ideally it would be nice to see surfers evolve into a strong unit of people who all have one thing in common, the ocean. But, that is idealist. Within our surfing culture there are some lovely people, who collectively could do wondrous things, but like anything else there are also herds of *&^%$#@’s and the product of all the goodness within surfing is only as potent as the lowest common denominator and we all know how low that is….could we weed that out and evolve poetically? Possibly not at the moment, as surfing is being televised to the general public in an image that is attracting people on mass…

How does your wifey feel about your Oedipus complex with your Mother Ocean?

My Wife? … she has no idea that i am so infatuated with another lover….i mean, i am grooming myself for each and every visit, looking forward to our next encounter and wondering if it will be as illicit as the last. It is still exciting, its like being a teenager all over again. Seriously though, my wife’s cool… she surfs and loves being at the beach too, if she didn’t then it would all be a bit weird.

Bio:

Surfer, Ryan Thomas spent much of the ’90s drifting back and forth between his native Southern California as a freelance artist in the surf industry, and extended escapes to Northern Cal for the study of marine biology. In 1998 he picked up a super-8mm film camera from surf cinematographer, Greg Weaver (Forgotten Island of Santosha, Stylemasters), and soon finished the mysto road/art/surf film Scratch Miscellaneous (2000). He graduated from Art Center College of Design in 2001, and since then has directed surf films such as The Bruce Movie (2005) while becoming a key creative at Volcom’s Veeco Productions. RT’s filmmaking extends beyond the surf/skate/snow genres with his independently made music docs such as Concentration Face (2005) and Portals (2007) about the band Hella. And he continues to work in still photography and the other art mediums he formed his roots in prior to filmmaking.

Interview

What is your favorite artistic medium (ie, film, photography, dancing, etc) for your creative work around surfing. Which endeavor best conveys the stoke for you?

I don’t really have a single favorite. My roots are in drawing, graphic art, still photography, writing and music, which moved towards film as a place to combine it all. And since a film is made over a period of time, I enjoy doing the rest as a more immediate creative outlet along the way. Whether it reads in the work or not, they all inform each other in the creative process.

As Scratch Miscellaneous was filmed on super 8mm film, do you think (specifically in motion picture filmmaking) that new technologies in video can capture the essence of surfing as much as film?

That question can be easily answered in one word: Litmus. As far as I can tell, it wasn’t made on film emulsion, and it was a huge head change for countless surfers.

Hydrodynamica is primarily being shot on video and even the low-res rough cut edits on the Hydro blog are essential viewing. I’m pretty sure The Tyler Warren Experiments and Displacement are being shot primarily on video and I’m excited to see those films too.

I love the look of super-8 and 16mm, but the essence isn’t in any camera type or emulsion, it’s in what the camera is being pointed at and the choices the cameraman is making, coupled with the editing. Surfing is motion, so any medium that captures or even freezes motion has the potential to portray the essence.

Describe the differences you see in the two mediums besides personal preference?

There’re a number of differences. First off, they look different. Film carries a sense of sculptural density and depth that I feel like I could grasp and mold if I was able to reach my hand into the screen. It looks both pleasingly dream-like and totally real all at the same time. Whereas, video, when compared to film, has had a history of looking like, at least to me, more of a thin façade I’d poke my fingers through if I tried to reach into the screen. With some of the Progressive HD video cameras the gap between the two looks is norrowing. But it’s not so much a need for video to fool one into thinking it’s film, as much as it is video becoming a more pleasing look of it’s own. And on the flipside of new technologies, even some of the really old analog video types can be pleasing in their own lo-fi way.

Another difference between the two mediums is sometimes a video camera is the better tool for documenting in certain production scenarios. For instance, as one person running around with nothing but my own two hands to run equipment, there is no way I could have captured the amount of footage and audio in the immediacy that I wanted to capture it in when I was shooting the two Hella documentaries I made. If I demanded of my self to shoot film I would have missed capturing a lot of moments and the end product would have suffered because of it.

Also, Film can be cost prohibitive for a lot of people and the most important thing is to make what you want to make. If you can’t afford to make it with film, then make it with whatever you can before your inspiration or chance to make it passes. I’m totally supportive of anyone who will stall production until enough budget money is landed to shoot on film. But don’t stall so long and stoically that you end up never making it.

On one hand, I don’t think advances in video technology will ever be able to replace the visual qualities I love about film, and I hope film is never rendered unavailable by it. On the other hand, to completely disregard video is bourgeois.

What is it like making an underground artistic surf flick versus a more commercial approach with a major sponsor giving you a budget to complete a project?

I don’t think the difference should be one is artistic and the other isn’t. There’s no reason why the film backed by a single company’s budget can’t be artistic. One of the most distinguishing differences I’ve experienced is that money is harder to come by when you make a film independently, and time is harder to come by when you make one for a company. In the final phase of making my personally financed Scratch Miscellaneous, I lived out of the back of my truck for 3 months so that I had money to pay for super-8mm film transfers rather than putting it into rent. My truck shell leaked when it rained, but it was a really healthy and peaceful period of time. Making a company film, the rent is paid, but time gets swung into sleepless deadline mayhem for months on end.

Did you find it easier or more difficult?

Both are challenging. Completing a film is challenging no matter who or what you’re making it for. Even though it’s easier to put together a budget for a company paid film, it’s still gonna have budget challenges of it’s own. And even though the company paid film is gonna be more pressed for time, the indie will have time challenges too. With the company film you might not have enough time to do everything you want to do. Not enough time to think something through as much as you’d have liked to, not enough time to have as much input into the marketing or packaging of the film, etc., etc. There’s not always proper time to let things simmer and then go back to it later for revision if needed or wished for. It forces you to let go of perfection to a certain extent. Whereas a film without a deadline has the danger of taking too much time to let things simmer and revise and simmer and revise in sort of a vicious cyclical attempt at achieving perfection that stalls everything out. Time can be ruthless on both sides of the coin. The indie schedule, in general, is healthier and better for your personal wave count. But for me these days, when I’m making something independently its during my personal free time aside from my daily responsibilities at Volcom— So no matter how I cut it, time is always the hardest variable for me to master.

Were you inhibited at all in artistic expression with either? For example, was a sponsor too keen on showing a board logo in a certain section? Is it too difficult to work with the right folks without the backing of a corporation whom owns relationships with certain athletes, marketing folks, distribution folks, etc?

I can’t remember ever feeling creatively inhibited while working on a personal indie project. I’ve made a couple creative decisions on some of those projects that I haven’t been happy with after the passing of time. But it wasn’t due to outside inhibition as much as it was being so close to the project and loosing sight of the big picture at a challenging point in the process. As far as my company film experience goes, Volcom is built on creativity and there’s never been a mandate to force the logo into a film unnaturally. Obviously a Volcom film needs to focus on Volcom riders, but there’s never been any sort of unreasonable handcuffs within those totally valid parameters.

Being a surfer, its no surprise that you’re interested in marine biology. What kind of knowledge have you gained in marine biology that has had a positive correlation with surfing and/or vice versa?

Yes, I’m very interested in marine biology, but not so much in the scientific sense anymore. For instance, sitting between sets I love to pick up pieces of drifting kelp and find little creatures living in it, but I don’t feel the need to know their species names anymore. Not that my scientific intrigue is completely gone. Sometimes I still try and find out what something is or how it works, just not as a rule anymore. These days my analytical interests are more into surfboard design than they are the science of marine life. I didn’t finish my studies in Marine Biology because I’d be studying for a test and find myself wanting to make something inspired by the ocean more than anything. I discovered I didn’t need to actually know it all inside and out to feel close to it. And striving to know it scientifically started to interrupt where my inspirations from it were naturally pushing me. But studying Biology was an important period in my life. It required a discipline that unveiled what I needed to recognize about myself to find long-term direction.

As far as it having a positive effect on my surfing, I’d say it helped bring to my conscious level what was always at work in my sub conscious: I don’t surf just to ride waves. There’s more to the whole experience that keeps me wanting to be at the beach on a daily basis. You don’t even need a board. It’s good just to be in the water. Being cognizant of that helps keep me open minded to other people’s trips out in the lineup.

Please list your current quiver of wave sliding and shredding devices?

The boards I’ve been riding most lately are my:

5’4” Eric Christenson traditional twin keel fish
4’11” White Pony #2, twin keel oddity. The second of two White Pony’s shaped via Richard Kenvin’s Hydrodynamica project. Tyler borrowed it for about 8 months— I’m looking forward to seeing the footy of him on it in The Tyler Warren Experiments.
6’7” Greg Liddle single fin displacement hull
5’6” Nine Lights, hi-aspect twin with small center trailing fin & balsa wood “Open Face” composite sandwich board construction

And others I keep within arms reach are my:

6’0” Carl Hayward swallowtail thruster
5’11” Campbell Brothers 5-fin Bonzer. Sort of a stretched and foiled out version of the Bumblebee model.
5’10” Channel Islands 80’s quad that I had modified into a boxed single fin
5’8” single fin displacement hull, co-shaped with Jeff Beck of Nine Lights
5’4” Self-Shaped fish derivative, hi-aspect twin with small trailing fin

What kind of upcoming projects are you working on with Volcom’s Veeco Productions?

I just finished the film BS!. It’s primarily a thruster film. Dusty Payne and Mitch Coleborn are pushing it above the lip. They’re both radical, smooth, and go for broke, but it all comes together beautifully different in their individual styles. It’s also got Ozzie Wright, Alex Gray, Nate Tyler and Andrew Doheny in it. Punker Pat Towersey shows up surfing a displacement hull in Andrew’s segment. And I’m really stoked there’s a few shots of Ryan Burch on the White Pony and one of his self-shaped, finless, foam boards. The BS! DVD with bonus features just released and it has a 20 minute short called Tweakin’ on Boards with Ryan Burch that features Ryan riding and talking about a handful of different boards that I think will be appreciated by surfers with open minds.

There’ll be plenty more Volcom projects in the future, and I’m starting production on a personal independent surf film of mine as well. It’s gonna be pretty trippy. At this point I’m referring to it as: Temporal Collections In the General Vicinity of Inner & Outer Space. It’s a mouthful, but there’s not a better way to put my pre-visualization of it into words.

Whom are your biggest artistic influences?

It’s hard to put it all in a nutshell. Especially considering that even the things I don’t like can be influencing through my reaction to them.

Being raised by parents that are creative in their own ways and who supported the interests of my brothers and I is the primary influence. Of all the art I was exposed to as a young kid in grammar school, Picasso is what clicked with me. Over the years I’ve liked looking at a full range of art, from, say, Dada and Op Art to the California Impressionists, to what people are doing in the streets. I pay close attention to Graphic Design and Typography. Music has always been a big influence as well. The Who was my gateway into music other than what my parents were listening to when I was a kid. And then it was Punk, which led to Psychedelia, then American Folk which opened my ears to different world music and cultures, and then Jazz, etc. In my twenties I went through a phase of reading a lot of Herman Hesse. A short list of feature film directors that have been important viewing for me are: Sergei Paradjanov, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Nicolas Roeg, Andrei Tarkovsky, Barbet Schroeder, Eric Rohmer, and Jim Jarmusch. The surf film I probably watched most as a grom was Beyond Blazing Boards. And of course there’re favorites like Innermost Limits of Pure Fun, Evolution and Magna Plasm. Pacific Vibrations was the film I watched that inspired me to make my first surf flick, Scratch Miscellaneous. Reading the writings of cinematographer Nestor Almendros was influential for me at the time that I started shooting Scratch. Most importantly though, is the raw, unfiltered, inspiration and observations of my day-to-day surroundings. I’d say I get a lot of my best ideas on road trips.

Is there anything you’re hoping to learn how to do yourself this year?

Good question.

Selected Filmography:

2009, BS! (director, edit, animations & graphics)

2007, Hella: Portals (director, camera, edit)

2006, Escramble (co-director, edit)

2005, The Bruce Movie (director, edit, additional camera)

2005, Hella: Concentration Face (director, principle camera, edit)

2004, Chichagof (editor)

2002, Football Shmootball (editor)

2000, Scratch Miscellaneous (director, camera, edit)

Film Excerpts:

BS!:

(See Video Above)

Concentration Face (excerpt 1):

http://vimeo.com/5465742

Concentration Face (excerpt 2):

http://vimeo.com/6512593

The Bruce Movie & Creepy Fingers:

Escramble:

Blog:

www.wwaarrbblleess.blogspot.com/

Bio:

Nathan Oldfield is a husband, father, surfer, shaper, filmmaker, photographer, writer, school teacher, bonsai enthusiast, sea gazer, rock collector from the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. He is interested in documenting beautiful things and making stuff

Interview

Your latest film, Seaworthy, was a great work of beautiful surf footage and fresh music.  What’s it like to make a surf film and how fruitful are the rewards of your efforts after the film has been screened and released on DVD?

Making a surf film seems romantic, but it’s actually a lot of hard work, especially when you do it all independently. It’s much more than just standing on the beach shooting, it’s the endless hours of actually conceiving something and putting it all together over a sustained period of time. Seaworthy is an entirely self-made and self-funded work. I have a few friends who sometimes help me shoot the double angle, but other than that I do everything by myself: shooting, editing, writing, music acquisition, packaging, production, promotion. It can get a little overwhelming at times, because making a surf film all on your own is a massive undertaking.

Once it’s all done, there are rewards, but the rewards aren’t especially financial. I mean I could have made a lot more money spending all those thousands of hours doing something much more lucrative. But making money was never my motivation for making surf films.

In lots of ways, making films is like making my own surfboards. It’s just part of who I am as a surfer, it’s just an extension of my surfing life, rather than a conscious decision or whatever. And like making my own boards from start to finish, you know – shaping, glassing, fin-making, the whole deal – making my own films is similar, I do the whole thing. So it’s a very satisfying process. It fulfills a very real need that I have to make stuff.

A lot of filmmakers have been showing a lot of alaia riding lately in their films.  Do you think alaias will ever really catch on because of their difficulty, or will they remain a niche in surfboard manufacturing?

I feel so privileged to have followed Tom Wegener’s journey in two films now, he is such an amazing surfer, designer and craftsman. We first met while I was making my first film, Lines From A Poem. We have since become close friends, and our wives and kids too. Four years ago Tom started telling me about these boards he was starting to make called alaias, which are replicas of Hawaiian boards from pre-European contact times. I admit I was a little skeptical when I first saw these planks of wood, but Tom was frothing on them and his enthusiasm was so childlike and earnest and endearing; and once I saw him riding them and had a go myself, I was pretty interested. When I first started shooting the alaias, the laydown boards were seven feet and the standup boards were twelve. Back then, basically, it was purely point and shoot. It’s incredible how far the boards have come now, and how well they’re being ridden.

I understand why people are keen on documenting alaias, and why a growing number of surfers have been riding them. It’s because riding alaias is such a completely different way of surfing. I have been surfing for nearly twenty-five years, on all kinds of equipment, and the alaia is the most compelling piece of surf craft I have ever encountered. Will they catch on? Well, yes and no. Because they’re difficult to ride, and because it’s hard to catch waves with them in crowded lineups because of diminished paddle power, I think a lot of surfers will give them a miss. For this reason, they won’t take off like the whole stand-up paddle thing has. But at the same time, the fact that they are difficult to ride will ensure that there will always be a core group of experienced surfers who will persevere with them. I’m not alone in thinking that part of the beauty and appeal of the alaia is precisely because they are challenging. But the pay-off is that they’re so exhilarating to ride. Good surfers, quiver enthusiasts, people with open minds who are willing to embrace the challenge rather than shy away from it, will ensure the alaia is here to stay in surfing.

What kind of equipment do you use on your films, and where was the bulk of your time spent on making Seaworthy?

I shot the majority of Seaworthy with a secondhand Canon digital video camera. Then that got stolen, so I finished the rest of the film with a new Canon camera. I also used a secondhand Manfrotto tripod, a borrowed water housing made by Dave Kelly and I edit on a MacBook Pro laptop. Compared to a lot of other films out there, mine is very low-budget.

Can we expect a CD or vinyl release of the music on Seaworthy?

I’d love to do that. I actually planned to release a soundtrack with the film, like a double disc set, but to be honest I just got so tired finishing the film and getting it out there that I lost the energy to get a soundtrack together. It’s a lot of work in terms of getting permission from various record labels, especially, among other things.

But one of the things I’m most happy about with Seaworthy is the soundtrack, and I get lots of good feedback about it. I handpicked those songs so carefully, and really tried to connect them to the tone and narrative of the film. Incredibly, I was able to collect all those songs from close friends, and also people I met along the way, who were willing to share their work for free. I’m really grateful to all of them for providing a foundation on which I could build my film. In lots of ways the soundtrack is the backbone of Seaworthy, it carries the film and gives it structure. I’m pretty excited about the variety and quality of the music in the film and I’m stoked to hear that others like it too.

How did you determine who would be included in your film, from the surfers to the musicians?

I really wanted Seaworthy to cover diversity in surfing. I am always impressed by surfers who can ride equipment from across the whole spectrum, so that informed my choice of people to shoot with. Some of the cast in the film I had worked with before, others I had just met. I’m really happy that I was able to access such a broad range of incredible surfers, and document them approaching wave riding in different ways. I feel very grateful for the privilege of working with each of the surfers in the film. Each one of them contribute something unique to Seaworthy.

With the soundtrack, I wanted to balance that sense of diversity in terms of surfers and equipment in the selection of music itself. I wanted to use an array of tempos, textures, tones. It’s deliberately eclectic and varied. Who knows, maybe no one picks up on this kind of stuff when they watch the film. But no matter; it means something to me.

I recently spoke with Chris Rule, the owner of a new surf gallery in Pacific Beach, California.  He told me Seaworthy was the best selling DVD in his vast inventory of cult and popular surf films.  How did you market your film and what do you think was the most successful approach that you could share with fellow aspiring filmmakers?

Mate, it’s hard to answer questions like this. I honestly don’t feel like that I have suddenly arrived as a filmmaker, like I’m suddenly kicking down doors or anything like that, or that I’m qualified to give advice to aspiring artists. But I’ll have a go at answering anyway. What I learnt from my first film is that a movie doesn’t sell itself, you have to work hard to spread the word. So for Seaworthy, basically I did all my marketing using the internet: youtube, vimeo, myspace. Then people started talking about the film on some core sites and blogs. Before I knew it, an online interest in Seaworthy started to gather its own momentum.

Did you get any support from mainstream surf magazines on making this film or at least telling people about it?

A couple of magazines have reviewed Seaworthy since it has been released on DVD, and said nice things, and I have had interviews in a few magazines in Japan, Germany and here in Australia.

Did you work with any other filmmakers or artists in Seaworthy?

My friend Mick Waters, who makes his own independent surf films, helped me shoot the double angle with Beau Young and Rasta, which I was stoked about. Another friend, Jim Mitchell, designed the artwork for the film, and I really appreciate his wonderful contribution. Also, my good mate Mike McCarthy worked on a song or two, specifically for certain parts of the film. Apart from that, Seaworthy is pretty much a one-man show.

Who are your main artistic inspirations?

In terms of film making, Bruce Brown, Albert Falzon, Jack McCoy, Sonny Miller, Thomas Campbell, Chris Malloy, Scott Soens. But I’m also inspired by lots of other things: authors, photographers, musicians, poets, craftsmen, the play of sunlight on water, the unfurling of a leaf in Spring, the refraction of swell around a headland. Nature, especially, is my biggest source of inspiration.

What is your all time favorite wave riding vehicle?

Oh that’s too hard, because no surfboard does everything well, and the joy for me is that they all feel different. I’ll sit on the fence and avoid that question altogether! My all time favourite surf day, though, I can tell you about. It would be an overhead slabbing rockshelf on my thruster early in the morning; a fun head high beachbreak with a fish or just a pair of swimfins mid-morning; a peeling head high pointbreak with an alaia after lunch; and another pointbreak session on my log until sunset. All on my forehand preferably! I love rights!

Korduroy is all about empowering people to go out and make something.  To be more of a creator than a consumer.  What kind of advice can you give to folks who want to make a low budget surf film?

I think it’s incredibly important to be a maker of things, if that’s the way you have been wired together. Some people aren’t made that way, and that’s okay, but for those of us who are compelled to make stuff, well, we need to make stuff. Whatever you do, whether it’s painting or writing or boardbuilding or photography or filmmaking or sculpture or whatever, do it from a pure place in your heart. Then it’ll be right. Maybe not perfect or popular, but right. And all of us could do worse things than making simple, good things that are right.

What is next for you?  Is there a third film on the horizon?

Absolutely. I’m already starting to shoot for it. I think I’ll probably always make films. It’s become part of my surfing life.