The first review (1958's Slippery When Wet) was posted on Letterboxd about 5 1/2 hours ago while the second (Surf Crazy, from '59) was just posted there minutes ago. Both are from Bruce Brown and these rarities were seen in an unexpected way...
Those that are fans of the 1966 surfing documentary The Endless Summer should be interesting in my two reviews tonight of the first Bruce Brown documentaries that were like the embryonic versions of The Endless Summer. Randomly out of nowhere, Turner Classic Movies devoted their primetime schedule last night to those obscure programs that are hard to track down and hardly garner any discussion on Letterboxd or even the IMDb. It may not have resulted in good ratings for the network on this night in other words but I certainly appreciated the programming.
The fascinating aspect of the early Bruce Brown films were that the footage was shot without sound; at whatever auditorium or high school gym he could find, he lugged his own print & projector to each screening, providing sound via a script he read and music accompaniment from his records. For home video, that script was read live to tape (blatantly in one take, judging by all the unnatural pauses and outright flubs) and a jazz score that admittedly was rather grand. It’s charming in a DIY fashion.
Those not familiar with The Endless Summer formula: quality surfing footage is shown alongside silly comedy bits and narration that’s always tongue-in-cheek. That formula is still present here, in a rougher embryonic form. For the target audience, assuredly it must have been a hit. Personally, it was captivating viewing the lifestyle of surfers in a sport soon before it exploded in popularity during the 60’s. After all, one lady surfer was identified as Gidget but I don’t believe she was THE Gidget. Yes, the figure in the Sandra Dee movie and later a Sally Field TV show was an actual teen girl (now known as Kathy Kohner-Zuckerman) who surfed for several years, her author father wrote about it and the 1959 movie was a key reason why surfing became popular.
Anyhow, the surfing lifestyle back in its niche days was a bunch of beach bums living a Bohemian lifestyle, driving POS vehicles, eating pork & beans constantly and either living in shacks or sleeping on the beach itself. To their credit, the surfers themselves were willing to poke fun at their lifestyle. Such entertainment may not be for many on Letterboxd but I am happy to give my thoughts on this (and in a few hours, 1959’s Surf Crazy) for posterity’s sake.
The second Bruce Brown surf movie I saw last night, the second he made, and the last one viewed last night via Turner Classic Movies. Those that didn’t read my review posted for 1958’s Slippery When Wet, I discussed how the network spent hours showing the obscure films that Brown made before the 1966 surf movie cult hit The Endless Summer. Two had to be viewed by me due to interest and the lack of presence anywhere on the Internet to stream, whether legally or otherwise.
Like w/ Slippery When Wet, what is on video for posterity was not originally what was screened on 16mm projectors to audiences. Back then it was Brown reading a script on a microphone while spinning his records. On video, he re-reads the script in one take while accompanied by a jazz soundtrack. Otherwise, it’s a micro-budget rough version of what was presented to audiences in The Endless Summer.
Neglected in my review of Slippery When Wet: mentioning the locations visited by the surfers. In Slippery, the action began in So Cal before moving to Hawaii. Surf Crazy featured those locations plus what was virgin territory at the time: Mexico. There is some stereotyping which occurs, but much of it was mild to me… a dumb white guy, yes. This includes the exact sort of music you’d expect to hear plus what I’ve heard called Montezuma’s Revenge, Brown called “The Aztec Two-Step” and via a Google search, now I’ve discovered it is known as Travelers’ Diarrhea! Alongside the surfing is some tongue-in-cheek narration and some comedy sketches that likely was hee-sterical to the target demographic.
Surf is the same as Slippery in representing the Bohemian lifestyle of the surfer in the days before the sport left its niche era in its transformation to a mainstream sport. In the late 50’s, I’m sure these guys (along with a few gals) would have been dumbfounded had they been told that in 2024, surfing would be an official sport in the Summer Olympics, that competition about to start a few days after I post this review. Its origins have been debated but for certain, surfing was a big deal in the Polynesian region. How fitting then that the competition is in French Polynesia-Tahiti, to be exact.
One late note: I can’t tell you about the 21st century genre documentaries but someone elsewhere mentioned that their only exposure to the sport was Point Break and… that one scene in Escape to LA, oof. Of course, The Endless Summer is a must; otherwise, I wish Brown’s other work was easier to track down—at least for the time being, the 1994 sequel The Endless Summer II is on YouTube. I should “add that to my collection” before it possibly vanishes one day…
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