Posted on 12/11/2017 8:08:25 AM PST by EveningStar
Bruce Brown, longtime surf filmmaker and director of the seminal “Endless Summer” just passed at 80 years old.
Drew Kampion wrote the following for our Surfing A-Z entry on Brown:
Prior to 1964, the media saw surfers as rebellious thugs, and Hollywood made them out to be a bunch of idiots. Filmmaker Bruce Brown single-handedly changed that with The Endless Summer. It portrayed the wave as a kind of Holy Grail and surfers as knights on a quest. In one stroke, he replaced Hollywood's buffoonery with the popular mythology that endures today.
(Excerpt) Read more at surfline.com ...
Love that movie!
RIP Bruce. Bruce was a true rebel and a genuine all-American nonconformist.
Me too!
RIP, Bruce Brown.
I saw that movie when I was quite young. They played it at the “Free Show” in our village. Sitting on a blanket in the Free Show lot with a bread bag full of popcorn and a bottle of Coke on a beautiful, warm Summer evening. Good times.
The Endless Summer was one of only two movies I remember from seeing all those Free Shows.
RIP.
Although very interested in the surfing scene at the time, I somehow missed this movie in ‘66 when it came out.
I did, however, see it a couple of years ago (TV). And for the 90-odd minutes the movie lasted, I found I was back in 1966, a 17 year old without a care in the world, getting ready to head off to college.
It was great!
And like a previous poster stated, it was (is) a reminder of just what America was like at that time.
We need stuff like that, reminders of that from whence we came.
Wish I had recorded that when it came on...
CA....
The clothing and sports styles and interests for young people, have been heavily influenced by surfing culture, etc. “Extreme sports” came from these origins.
Surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding have spread around the entire world.
It began in the 1950s with a small cult of watermen (and a few girls) in SoCal and Hawaii.
Actually a guy named George Freeth brought surfing to California from Hawaii, in 1907.
BTW there is a follow up film, titled “Endless Summer II” in 1994, also by Bruce Brown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Endless_Summer_II
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