HOLLYWOOD DON'T SURF

They’re trying it again. Hollywood, I mean, attempting yet again to make a movie about surfing. The latest effort being to adapt William Finnegan’s Pulitzer prize-winning memoir “Barbarian Days”, a chronicle of The New Yorker magazine staff writer’s parallel surfing life, into a feature film. In response to this news all I can say is, “Yeah, good luck.” And if my response comes across as a bit cynical, I think I can be forgiven. You see, I’m in the position both of having actually been paid to write a half-dozen surf-themed screenplays, not a single one ever making it to the screen, but having also written and directed a feature documentary titled, appropriately enough, Hollywood Don’t Surf, a film that, though wildly popular at its Cannes Film Festival premier, couldn’t find a distributor here in the States.  A woeful record of writing and directing that makes me, without question, the most spectacular failure in Hollywood/surfing history. read the full story here