Riding Giants (2004)

Directed by Stacy Peralta

Written by Stacy Peralta and Sam George

Starring a host of surfers including Laird John Hamilton, Buzzy Kerbox, Greg Noll and many more

Rated PG-13 for brief strong language

105 minutes runtime

USA Release July 9, 2004

Warren Miller meets the Pump House Gang in this moving and spectacular display of surfing the big ones around the world.  Stacy Peralta builds on the phenomenal success of his giant low budget hit “Dogtown and the Z-Boys” to delve further into the surfing culture of California and Hawaii from the 1960s to the present.  As the bar is raised higher and the waves get bigger, surfers find themselves jumping off walls of water that are as high as low-rise apartment buildings.  Some don’t make it back for beach party bingo.

As you may recall from “Dogtown,” the sport of skate-boarding started coincidentally with surfing in southern California in the early 1960s.  It was always all about surfing, but the waves would get blown down by the offshore winds in the afternoons, so the surfers looked for other diversions.  The skate board allowed them to practice their surfing moves while waiting for the next morning’s waves.

As the movie documents with some excellent surfing movie footage, California in the 1960s was the epicenter of surfing as far as America was concerned.  But surfing actually had its start in Hawaii and the South Seas many years before, as “Riding Giants” accurately portrays.  Natives used wooden boards to ride miniscule wave fronts into shore, and the movie even has some amazing footage of that.

The California surfers started out using wooden surf boards, and also started riding small waves.  The first big change in surfing came with the advent of fiberglass surf boards.  The application of fiberglass over a foam core allowed the surf board to be much lighter, longer and stronger than previous designs.  This allowed the surfers to paddle out through the breakers to where the big waves started.  It also allowed them to paddle faster to catch the big waves, which is the crux of surfing bigger waves.  The bigger the waves are, the faster they travel.  But more on that later.

More than almost any other sport, surfing is about a lifestyle.  The whole point of surfing is to flip society the bird and go live on the beach.  Surfers (and skateboarders) are all about breaking the rules.  They don’t work, break whatever laws are required to eat and obtain shelter and generally refuse to support society in any way.  Their sport takes a certain amount of practice and though native ability is helpful it is not critical.  Anybody can learn given enough time.  And time is one thing surfers always had.  The only other sport that is anywhere close to surfing in its anti-societal ethos is skiing.  Hence Warren Miller living in his car and shooting ski movies in the 1950s (and today---although he’s no longer living in his car).

But what really counts in surfing, as in skiing, is raw courage.  Nature is big, and regardless of whether one jumps off a fifty foot snow covered cliff or a fifty foot mountain of water, nature is a lot bigger than you.  Death is a distinct possibility.  It’s this raw courage that forms the cornerstone of the surfing mythology.  The belief is that if a person has the right mind-set and the right love of the sport they can do anything in the water.  They will emerge unscathed as if protected by some spiritual force that protects those who refuse to work (or bathe) out of their love and respect for nature and who reject the false trappings of civilization for the authenticity of the ocean waves.

The only parts of civilization the true surfers embrace are the fiberglass surf boards, the cars that they use to get to and from Mother Nature and now, minor conveniences like jet skis.  And then there’s TV and movies that have launched at least a few of the surfers into the super-natural world of endorsements and royalties.  Stealing chickens like the early Californian immigrants to Hawaii seems a long way off.

In spite of the logical shortcomings of the surfer philosophy, surfing has, by its very isolation, given rise to a social order that is unique to say the least.  This is the driving force behind “Riding Giants” and the rest of the movie is more or less the carrier wave (no pun intended) for that message.  As the waves increase in size, the stakes are raised in the technology of catching the huge waves and staying on them, but the driving force of the sport remains the same: to break the rules and live. 

When surfers die in the attempt to become one with nature, their death is mourned with all the ancient rituals accorded to the Roman legionnaires.  There are moments of silence and a period of mourning during which nobody goes to work (how could you tell?).  Then the sport resumes as usual, with the cameras rolling and the surfers looking for the next big wave.

“Riding Giants” will go on the record as a fairly honest movie with only a limited amount of hype and narcissism.  It is clear that Peralta is not in the movie business for the money.  Unfortunately, his skateboarding movie’s biggest asset was Peralta’s direct connection with the Z-Boys---he was one of them.  He doesn’t have any such connection in this movie.  He is interviewing the great surfers, but he was not one of them.  As good as the interviews are, they can only be interviews, rather than the inside feelings and emotions that made up “Dogtown.”  In spite of that, “Riding Giants” has some legitimate history combined with some archival footage and some great wave shots.  A very entertaining, if lightweight, film experience.