Ocean, North Shore lifestyle stars of 'Blue Crush'

By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer

Kate Bosworth plays Anne Marie, a surfer trying to recover after a near-fatal accident, in "Blue Crush." Universal Pictures

To the Hollywood way of thinking, hybrids are intriguing as long as audiences can comfortably identify the genetic material being spliced.

Based on Susan Orlean's article "The Surf Girls of Maui" from Outside magazine, "Blue Crush" follows Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth), a promising surfer struggling to overcome the trauma of a near-drowning and trying to provide for her younger sister after their mother abandons them. Surrounding her are best friends, Eden and Lena (Michelle Rodriguez and Sanoe Lake), sister Penny (Mika Boorem) and new love interest, Matt (Matthew Davis).

It's "Rocky" with a feminist twist, a love story with potty jokes, a coming-of-age buddy movie with a 40-foot liquid monster.

But at its core, "Blue Crush" is, first and foremost, a surfing movie.

According to Universal, roughly 40 percent of the movie was shot in the water.

"No CGI, no blue screen," Stockwell said proudly.

Director John Stockwell saw it as an ocean-based action movie, and his notion was confirmed on the first day of shooting on O'ahu's North Shore.

"The Universal safety person came out for a day, looked at the Pipeline, shook his head and got back on the plane," Stockwell said. "He couldn't even factor in how to make the shoot safer.

"This is a world where you don't get to wear padding or a helmet or a three-point seat belt," he said. "If someone got caught in the Pipeline, they could very well be dead."

To mediate the danger of the North Shore surf, Stockwell and producer Brian Glazer recruited Brian Keaulana and eight other local water experts as the production's ocean safety team.

To capture the power and danger of the surf on film, Stockwell and Glazer turned to cameramen Don King ("Cast Away"), Sonny Miller ("In God's Hands") and Michael Stewart, the nine-time champion bodyboarder.

Judging by reactions to a "Blue Crush" preview, the crew succeeded in capturing the ocean's dramatic, ad-libbed performance.

At an advance screening of the film in Honolulu, surfers, school kids and studio guests loudly applauded the film's intense surf sequences — from a tracking shot of a swell gathering strength a mile offshore to shots of an all-star cast of stunt doubles taking their very real lumps in the violent tumult of the crashing Pipeline.

"For point of view, we really wanted to get that feeling of living inside someone else and experiencing what they would experience under water," Glazer said. "It was critical that the movie feel valid to people who surf."

A trickier proposition was re-creating the North Shore community in which the lead characters live.

"The terror in doing a film like this is people watching the movie and going, 'Oh, you didn't get this right.' "

Again, Stockwell and Glazer let those who knew best lead the way. They handed the original script over to local members of the cast and crew for a reality check.

The final product shows Stockwell and Glazer's due diligence. From the sheetless bunks the characters sleep on to the rusted Impala that delivers them to their dead-end hotel jobs, Stockwell has crafted a very credible North Shore for the screen.

"There are people on the North Shore who give up a lot just to be near the ocean," said Lake. "I think the movie really captures what that lifestyle is like."

Another concern was finding the right actors to people the locale.

Rodriguez had the look and the name recognition to play Eden. Lake brought credibility as a surfer and had enough natural talent as an actress to pull off the quirky Lena. But finding the right Anne Marie was problematic.

"We had to decide if we were going to cast a surfer who could act or an actor who could surf," Stockwell said.

In the end, they chose an up-and-coming actress who couldn't surf, but was willing to die trying.

Said Stockwell: "I thought if we could get her to paddle right, it would work. When I let some of the pro surfers see her, they commented on her paddling. They could tell that it looked legitimate."

Not everything works, however. Some in the preview audience didn't buy Bosworth as a local surfer.

Others were put off that her character fell in love with a visitor at a expensive hotel.

There were also some audible groans in the preview audience when, after a scene in which local heavies rough up Matt for surfing in a "locals only" spot, Anne Marie explains: "They're just so protective of their land and their waves."

To its credit, the movie doesn't shy away from suggestions of race, gender and class tension. Neither does it linger on them.

Whenever the story flounders on land — and it does, at least two or three times — it wisely returns to the ocean.

As Glazer said: "The ocean is what's real."