Wave warriors

By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer

Peter Mel takes a giant wave at Mavericks. This dangerous wall of water was ridden only by Jeff Clark for 15 years, as chronicled in "Riding Giants." Sony Pictures Classics photos

Big-wave surfers pay respect to Mark Foo, who was killed riding the waves at Mavericks, in Northern California, in 1994.

The film, which opens Friday, is an epic testament to the free and innovative spirit of big-wave surfers. It operates in the normally grinding chronological manner of many surf-history pieces, but Peralta ("Dogtown and Z Boys") — like the all-star ensemble of surf legends he assembled for commentary — is more storyteller than academic.

"Riding Giants" is a chronicle of whims and what-the-hecks run amok, of incidental occurrences and collisions of circumstance that lead to quantum leaps in the progress of surfing's most extreme pursuit.

From a newspaper photo that sparks a migration of California surfers to Makaha, to a backyard exploration that leads to the discovery of one of the sport's most infamous surf spots, to the providence of the world's best surfers time after time encountering the world's biggest waves, Peralta posits a world in which typhoons can indeed form at the flap of a hummingbird's wings, and where the accepted boundaries of surfing can be redrawn on a single death-defying ride.

The film focuses on the achievements of three larger-than-life figures in big-wave surfing — Greg Noll, Jeff Clark and Laird Hamilton — while also documenting the tumult of social change in America over the last 50 years.

Noll, in Hawai'i for an advance screening, said he was impressed with the result — and not just because he provides all of the best one-liners.

"It's the first time someone has really focused on the big waves," he said. "Sometimes a guy comes along and really captures the magic and the feeling — and Stacy did that."

The film opens with a Monty Pythonesque "History of Surfing in 2 Minutes," a wry and artful nod to the sport's Hawaiian roots. Then it fast-forwards to the birth of big-wave surfing in the 1950s, from a fringe scene of pre-counterculture rebels devoted to the pursuit of good surf and little else.

The most devout of these wave worshippers — among them Buzzy Trent, Pat Curren and George Downing — moved to O'ahu, where they surfed all day and took shelter in Quonset huts in Makaha.

The small, obsessed group eventually made its way to the North Shore, becoming the first of many generations to settle there for the sole purpose of riding the monstrous waves that break so close to shore. Here, the wrinkled pioneers explain, they slept on Salvation Army mattresses, dived for fish and lobster, and stole the occasional chicken to survive.

It was Noll, a Babe Ruth-like presence in black-and-white striped shorts, who first conquered Waimea, riding a 20-foot swell. He was just 19. In the next decade, he would become the most recognizable face in big-wave surfing, a flamboyant figure who stood in stark contrast to his more reserved elite peers.

With the "Gidget" movies of the 1960s, surfing entered its first phase of mainstream popularity, a period that spawned the first surfing magazines, surf music á la Dick Dale, and exploitation movies such as "Ride the Wild Surf," a Hollywood big-wave film that Noll said "makes me puke."

"Riding Giants" makes creative use of old surf footage, photographs and high-tech camera techniques. But it's left to surf legend Randy Rarick to describe what may have been Noll's greatest moment: the day in 1969 when a massive swell in the North

Pacific generated a mammoth wave that Noll caught, rode and somehow survived. Though no photos or film exists, the half-dozen other surfers who saw it say it was likely the largest wave ever ridden at the time.

The film tracks Noll's surf descendants as they seek out ever bigger, gnarlier challenges.

Peralta devotes the second portion of the film to Clark, who surfed the deadly California spot now known as Mavericks alone for 15 years before convincing others that it was possible, and the scene that grew out of his discovery. Included is a hard-to-watch recap of the mysterious 1994 accident that killed Hawai'i surfer Mark Foo.

The film wraps up with Hamilton, who somewhat awkwardly served as an executive producer of the film.

Acknowledged by many of the interviewees as the greatest big-wave surfer ever, Hamilton comes off as remarkably humble. His account of growing up an outsider in Hawai'i and of the special relationship he has with his adopted father Billy Hamilton brings heart to a movie that already has displayed a surfeit of guts.

Hamilton, a founder of tow-in surfing, also provides what may be the most awe-inspiring ride of the movie: a stunning barrel at Tahiti's treacherous Teahupo'o.

"When Laird catches that wave, it's so dramatic," Noll told The Advertiser. "If he was just a split second off, he would have been a red stain on the reef."

The Hawai'i preview audience, many of them surfers, reacted loudly to each replay of the ride. In the film, Hamilton himself calls the moment transformative, saying, "It softened some hard corners in my life."

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2461.