The Search for Freedom

1

I watch my 16-month-old son,

and he's fearless,

and he wants to just walk out

into the shore break.

I mean, there's something

so interesting about that,

to watch him just stare at the ocean,

stare at waves coming in,

and watch them just crash on the shore,

and that's super entertaining.

So much of it is just, you know,

you put your feet in the water,

and you feel your toes sink

into the sand, and to feel that draw,

the pull of the tides

and the surge of the shore break...

You know, and you want to go out deeper.

You could live for three months

on 100 bucks.

We didn't think of it

as any kind of a culture.

We just thought of it as like,

"Aren't we lucky to be doing this?"

There was less than 15 chairlifts

in the world,

and I bought my first pair of skis

for two dollars.

We were kind of disenfranchised

from society.

I mean, we had totally different

lifestyles than our parents.

It was obvious

that this was going to go someplace,

but, man, we were like broke hippies.

We were kind of on the low rung

of the totem pole.

You were kind of an outlaw,

kind of an outcast.

And there was no future in that.

You're 100% focused on what

you're doing right now, this instant.

This instant is the most

important thing in all of your life.

The past is the past, and the future...

Well, who knows what's coming?

Somehow, every time you do it,

at whatever level,

I mean, whether it's your first day

or you've been doing it

your whole life...

It somehow manages to free you

from a lot of the things in life

that are going to try and sink you,

try and drag you down,

that are going to try and make you

unhappy or negative.

It somehow allows you

to leave all that behind

for maybe just a moment,

but sometimes that moment's enough.

It's a basic instinct of a human

being, his search for freedom.

And still the search for freedom

is within all of us.

Whether you're young or old,

male or female, it's the same thing.

It's that thrill of the first ride,

and once it gets under your skin,

you can never stop.

We would all be in prison. I think.

If you're kind of a misfit kid

and you want to rebel,

you need a place to do that

in a positive way.

Some guys grab skateboards and did it.

Other guys grabbed climbing ropes

and came up here.

My number-one goal

was to cover the Earth with bikes.

You know, it's going to happen.

This is going to happen.

There's no doubt.

It's just a matter of time.

To me, being in the wilderness

is what it's all about.

Wilderness is the battery

that recharges all of your energy.

Gives us life, gives us inspiration.

You're touching it. You're feeling it.

You're a part of the cliff.

You understand the power of this thing

that you're interacting with.

I think what motivated me

when I was young

and what motivates me now

are basically the same things.

That sense of glide,

and that sense of weightlessness.

There's a host of sports now

that didn't used to exist,

and they all have that same sensation

that is sort of core

to a lot of people's nature.

Adventure, to me,

is just getting out of your comfort zone

and going into the unknown.

That's where I feel every emotion

of life and feel the most alive.

Most sports are a form of art.

It's no different than an artist

having a big piece of canvas

and a paintbrush.

Having a skateboard and going out

in the city is a similar thing.

Skateboarding happens

to be one of those sports

that allows you to push pretty far

into a creative place.

Well, I just wanted to see what it felt

like to be fifth gear, pinned,

and just sail in the air

as long as I could.

It just seemed like such a great idea.

When I started surfing,

there were maybe, you know,

not more than a thousand or two surfers

in the world, for sure.

So we felt very, very elite

because we knew about this thing

that the mainstream had no idea existed.

Surfing was the antithesis of organized

social behavior when it began.

See all those guys in their cars

leaving for their nine-to-five?

Who's got it right, them or us?

And that was the question.

That was the question.

A bum is somebody who won't work,

and I've never worked, so that fits.

If you love what you're doing,

it isn't work. It's fun.

I made my first movie in '49, '50.

I did all the photography,

all the editing, stole the music,

booked the shows, got the ski clubs

to put it on, designed the posters.

I showed up on time, set up

the projector, set up the screen,

set up the microphone and the PA system,

and narrated the show live.

110 cities in one year.

I made movies of people skiing.

Now, of course they said,

"Who is going to watch that?"

They were right in a lot of cases,

because there was many times,

I can't tell you how many,

where I showed up in a high school

auditorium, 1,000 seats, 1200 seats,

and there'd be eight or ten people there

and that was all.

But those eight or ten people,

I really screwed up their lives,

because at least two or three of them

took up skiing.

We all tried to figure out

something we could do

that we could stay at the beach

and live how we wanted to live.

I mean, obviously, like,

a surfer would rather live

in an expand-o trailer

on a perfect point break

than have a mansion in Beverly Hills

with 45 servants and eight Rolls Royces.

I mean, it's just

where your priorities are.

At the time, if you go, "I'm a surfer,"

they go, "Oh, God, poor guy."

The high school I went to had 3,000

kids, and I was the only surfer.

- And where was that?

- That was in Long Beach.

In 1959, the movie "Gidget" came out,

and surfing went from just a small

amount of surfers, trace amount,

to several million by '63.

The Endless Summer came out in 1964,

'65, and opened in Kansas City.

And there were guys driving cars around

with surfboards sticking out the trunk

that had never seen the ocean.

"Endless Summer"

showed the rest of the world

what surfing was really like,

and it was correct

for the people that were in it.

It entertained a general audience

who didn't know

anything about the sport.

It's just a home movie.

You just shoot it,

and then when you get home,

you look at the footage and edit it.

But that's what I'd always done.

We shot, edited, narrated,

not because I thought I was good at it.

It was the only one I could afford

that would work for 50 cents an hour.

Every time a new movie would

come out, you'd go to the opening,

and it was a gathering of the clan.

What the surfers found in them

that was so compelling

was what other good surfers looked

like, what they were doing.

So they were the basic form

of communication.

And the surf magazines came along

in the early '60s,

and it was the beginning

of the lifestyle culture.

It was the first time

they'd had a language

and a dress code and behavior

that left where you did it

and was taken to school,

or wherever you went.

And then the funny thing

about surfing is,

is that it spawned skateboarding.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes