Sizzlin’ Summer Surf Movie-“Riding Giants”: This killer homage to the history of chasing the world’s biggest waves is about to hit wide release. It broke box office records at Sundance 2004, and will no doubt inspire a run on surf lessons and baggy swimsuits. So why is director Stacy Peralta depressed? “I need to go surfing?” he tells Surfer magazine, in a wide-ranging interview about life, skateboarding, surfing and movie-making. Here’s some of what Peralta had to say about “Riding Giants”:

“I knew it was going to be tow-in surfing and I knew it was going to be Maverick’s and I knew it was going to be the whole history of the first big-wave riders, from California to Hawaii to Makaha to Waimea…When we started the film there was a couple of mandates that my editor Paul Crowder and producer Agi Orsi and I talked about. And the Number One mandate was no interviewee will ever say the words: “Surfing is just so bitchin’ but I can’t tell you how bitchin’ surfing is unless you do it.” No one would ever be allowed to say that on camera. If we had to cop out by just telling people they couldn’t understand surfing unless they did it, then we would have failed as filmmakers. We refused to do what has been done in too many surfing films. It’s a cop out.”

And… “There is so much surf pornography out there—watching guys slash and burn on waves over and over and over. To me that is not filmmaking. That is just putting together trick catalogues. Surfing is such a cherished piece of American culture and I wanted to get that across in a movie. I wanted to not just show surfing but to have surfers talking eloquently about it. What’s it like to get caught inside a 25-foot wave? What’s it like to wipe out and get rescued? Surfing is really misunderstood out there in what Sam George likes to call “the civilian world,” and I felt it was my responsibility to get it right.”

This civilian, for one, can’t wait to see this thing. I bet it’s bitchin’. Oops. Sorry, Stacy…



Filming Giants: “Uh, Pilot-Dude? Unless this bird’s also a submarine, you might want to pull up a bit…”