Sidetracked

Feel free to envy Chris Malloy.

After all, he’s got it good. No. Actually, he’s got it real good.

The Ojai native has traveled the world surfing. And while he’s made a career of surfing, he’s not a sellout. He’s a soul surfer, who makes mellow, music-driven surf movies (“Thicker Than Water”) with his co-op, Woodshed Films.

Malloy and his brothers, Keith and Dan, appear in the movie “Waveriders,” which screens at this year’s San Luis Obispo International Film Festival. While we will include him in our preview of the movie in the Tribune, we also talked about surfing, film making and his buddy Jack Johnson.

Have you surfed here much?

 Not a ton, When I was a little kid, my dad worked in Atascadero, so we lived there for a couple of years and messed around at the beach breaks. My zone growing up has been mostly from Guadalupe to Point Magu. That’s where I grew up. And we’ve made some missions up there – I’ve surfed Morro Bay Rock there.

 It’s still under the radar.

 It’s great that it’s that way. And I honestly really respect that it’s like that. I always tell myself, “Gee, you’ve got such good waves out here – I’ll leave it to those guys, let it be their little sanctuary.”

 It is nice not to have crowds.

 It’s huge. I live right behind the Hollister Ranch on a big cattle ranch. So I surf a lot out there. And I get out to the islands a lot. I have a good boat so I have my adventures here.

With the Woodshed group, you’ve sort of created a genre. What do you think is they key to a good surf movie?

 I’m partial to the stuff that’s maybe a little more grounded and films that are based on place and experience rather than the aquatic jungle gym stunt surfing that’s being perpetuated right now. What makes a good film, whether you like the music or not, is a film where you have a group of friends who are good surfers and a film maker who’s got a good eye. And they’re a real cohesive group of friends, and they travel for a year or two, and they don’t have big funding. They find a way to do it themselves, and they have total control creatively, and they come out with a film that represents what they experience.

 I think when you start to get big investors and you start to have people that aren’t intimately involved in surfing start to tell you what music to use or which surfers you can use or which waves you can use, I think that’s when they get watered down, and they lose their way.

Do you feel like you guys have created a genre of surf movies?

You’ll find most surf film makers – or the good ones – will make two or three films, and then you just can’t get the money to make them any more. They cost too much. With our films, we made our first one and got lucky and sold a few, and that was enough to get us back in the black. And we got to make another one, and that paid for itself. And all of us have other jobs to get to make these films. And that’s what’s special about them to me.

 When you’re making a Billabong movie or a Quicksilver movie, you’re basically making commercials, so you have to film the right guys. And then their art director gives you the coolest music that they can find that’s hip. That stuff seems to date itself pretty quickly. But it’s great – kids love it. It’s certainly dynamic. But it’s the independent surf film that’s really special to me.

I know you were involved pretty early on with Jack Johnson’s music career. Did that help financially for the movies?

 I’ll tell you what – it didn’t hurt. He was living in a van in Europe with his girlfriend. I had like a film festering in my mind. I was involved with so many surfing films, and I’d go to these magical places, where the cultures were unbelievable. And I’d come home and watch the film – as a pro surfer – and I’d come home and I’d watch the movie, and it’d be tight, just on the surfer doing these maneuvers, and I would get so dissuaded with the experience.

 And then I became a student of film and photography on my own and I just saw that there could be so much more. And I knew Jack had a similar aesthetic. So I said, “Jack, what are you doing when you come home?” And he said, “I don’t know. I gotta get a job.” So I said, ‘Well, let’s make a film.” So that was “Thicker than Water.” And he wrote his first album while we traveled that year.

 His career didn’t take off for a year after the film took off, but it certainly kept the film alive, that’s for sure.

It must have been weird to see how big he got after that.

I was a little skeptical because . . . these agents would start making all these promises and talking about being huge and selling the most albums. And I would just be like, “Jack, don’t listen to those idiots. They’re just yanking your chain, and I’ve seen these kinds of people before.” And then it all happened.

 

Photos: Patagonia

Posted on March 10th, 2010 by Pat
Filed under: Surf stuff, Uncategorized