Farewell Bruce Brown – 1937-2017

Bruce Brown single-handedly changed the public’s perceptions of the act of surfing, and of surfers, with The Endless Summer – released in 1966 and still widely regarded as the greatest surf movie ever made.

Already a polished and prolific surf filmmaker - Surf Crazy (1959), Barefoot Adventure (1960), Surfing Hollow Days (1961) and Waterlogged (1963) – it was the ambitious The Endless Summer with its carefree mix of adventure, exotic line-ups and cornball humour that hit just the right romantic note - capturing the aesthetic of wave-riding as a pure act within itself and inspiring generations of surfers on a search for their own perfect wave.

Bruce Brown was born in San Francisco in 1937 and moved to Southern California when he was 10, falling in love with surfing and being inspired to document it by the early movies of Bud Browne.

The Endless Summer had a $50,000 budget and was released through movie theatres as well as the high school auditoriums and town halls (the usual surf movie route) and became a massive commercial success with core surfers and with broader mainstream audiences.

Brown was nominated for an Oscar with the motorcycle movie On Any Sunday in 1971, and co-wrote and directed The Endless Summer II with his son Dana in 1992 but otherwise had pretty much retired from filmmaking – maybe figuring he’d already nailed it with that enduring classic. And all power to him.

RIP Bruce Brown. Thanks for the movies, the memories, the inspiration, the charming narration.

  - words: JB