Riding Giants: Surf’s “Way” Up!

Off the success of his “Dogtown and Z Boys” documentary in 2001, filmmaker and former skateboarder extraordinaire Stacey Peralta, of Powell Peralta fame, managed to out-do himself with his jaw-dropping docu-project entitled “Riding Giants.” From the beaches of Hawaii to the shores of California, riding big waves is a task not fit for the ordinary civilians of planet Earth. In “Riding Giants,” Peralta and his gang give merit where it is sorely needed. To the Greg Nolls, the Jeff Clarks and to the Laird Hamiltons, praise may be overdue. What Peralta does so effectively in his film, is make his viewers understand that big-wave surfing is the ultimate source of living; taking risks, using your instincts, brain and body, meeting people and forming friendships, and of course, catching waves. Surfing has never looked so surreal. The film begins with a montage of the history of surfing. Dating back to colonialism, it was banned for many years, then found its way back to the shores of Hawaii. Surfing was loved by only a handful of people, but by the fifties and sixties the secret was out. Scores of people collapsed on the beachheads with boards, the latest fashion to emulate numerous horrid surf movies and television shows. Meanwhile, “real” surfers sat in disgust of how remarkably trendy their sport had become. Such advertisement did marvels for the marketing world of surfing, but the hardcore surfers that persevered through the changing times needed to distance themselves from the norm. Greg Noll did just that. Noll was the man in black and white prisoner trunks, a surfing pioneer who was as charismatic on his board as he was off it. He ruled the swells off the North Shore of Oahu and Waimea Bay, soaking up and riding down forty to fifty foot waves and, of course, taking his fair share of wipeouts. Then arrived Jeff Clark, a man who rode a fifty-foot wave everyday for fifteen years before anyone else caught on. Off of Northern California rose the behemoth Mavericks, a wave that thrust the world of big-wave surfing over to the West Coast of the USA. Noll and Clark are two of the groundbreaking forces of surfing, but when Laird Hamilton eventually grew up, he was to take their place and help forge a new way of surfing. Hamilton was the son of 60’s surf legend Bill Hamilton and was always around the water, building sand castles or body boarding. When Laird grew up, his 6’3″ and 215 pound frame formed a new look for the surfer. With the help of his friends, he designed a safer way to catch a monster wave, a method called towing. Rather than risking life and limb by attempting to paddle over a wave, one guy would tow his friend out on his board with a ski-doo, and then lead him into it. When the ride was done, or the surfer had fallen, the man on the ski-doo would search for his partner and pick him up. Sounds easy? It isn’t. Laird Hamilton is the epitome of brains and brawn, expressing his creativity with his newly formed boards called “foilboards,” boards that strap your feet in, which give you plenty more maneuverability on such a tremendous surface. The footage of him and others in the film is incredible, and threats of sharks, coral reefs, and drowning all come in a days work. The ability of a person to maintain repose while being “twirled around in a washing machine for three hundred yards, while bumping along the sea floor thirty feet below” is something only the bravest and most physically and mentally fit humans are capable of doing. Big wave surfing is captured unbelievably in “Riding Giants” and is one of the better documentaries ever made.