Five Summer Stories
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Producer: Greg MacGillivrayProducer: Jim Freeman
Audio: English (Unknown)
Running Time: 94 unknown-units
Published: 1994
Studio: MacGillivray Freeman Films
Sports reviews of Five Summer Stories
Customer Review: The best surfing movie of all time!
Sport shop rating: 5 Stars
I was lucky enough to catch this movie in Laguna when it was new. Corky Carroll, David Nuuiwha, Mike Hopps, Rocky (thanks for the ride home, bro), and a crowd of hooting locals watched it. Honk produced a thumping soundtrack in sync with the action, the beat punctuated with saxophone; the intervals pulsing with piano. Gerry Lopez captured the imagination of the surfing world in this movie. A dozen copy-cat movies would follow. Everybody started riding seven-six pintails at California beach breaks hoping to emulate Gerry. Mac/Freeman got rich off this movie as they re-released it or toured the surf movie circuit with it again and again, with updated versions. It was really popular.
I especially enjoyed the insightful commentary by the likes of Dru Harrison (a really hot South Bay surfer that passed a few years ago, RIP), Drew Kampion (one of the few surfing writers with any literary talent), and Chuck Dent (an anti-hero of the highest order). Some of the sixties (which lasted until 1973) philosophy seems dated today, but most of resonates truth. The surfing seems stiff and simple, compared to the manuevers done today, but it was state of the art at the time. My old surfing buddy, Mike Hopps, for example, shown on 3 waves (blond guy on a white board at Rocky Point and Pipeline), really labors just to complete a bottom turn and off-the-top. The portraits of David Nuuiwha and my high school classmate, Brad McCaul (one hardly ever saw him in Algebra II, because he was always in Hawaii) focus on the best California surfers at the time. McCaul's surfing at the Santa Ana River Jetty used to blow my mind. Nuuiwha's surfing was poetry in motion, smooth, like a yoga or zen master would surf. Mike Purpus, hated at the time, surfs really well in this movie. But most of the surfing features Hawaii, glorifies "da country" (it's not the same anymore on land) living, and especially Gerry Lopez. Chuck Dent's (RIP) diatribe at the commercialism creeping into the sport was prophetic. Rick Griffin (RIP), a famous surfing and psychedelic artist, did a neat poster for the movie.
The movie documents the end of the golden era of surfing, when it was done for the love of the sport, not money, fame, or competition. It was a great time to live, and I'd love to do it again on today's boards, to tell you the truth.
If you were a surfer in the 70's, you've probably seen this movie already. It will bring back memories. If you haven't seen it, it's a good look back into the history of the sport.
Description of Five Summer Stories
Heralded as "the finest surf movie ever made," Five Summer Stories is a cultural icon, a time capsule from a watershed era when the world was at a critical crossroads and its reflection was clear in the emerging sport/art of surfing. Against a backdrop of the Vietnam War and the Nixon years, Five Summer Stories was the culmination of the joint surf-film careers of Jim Freeman and Greg MacGillivray. Code named "The Last Surfing Movie" during production, the movie portrays a young, outlaw sport at a strategic point in its creative evolution - and at an historic crux in time. Now you, too, can do what audiences of the 1970's did - you hoot and scream and go crazy - all in the privacy of your own home.Sports and Outdoors
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Five Summer StoriesPublished: 1994; DVD
Best price: $19.95