BRUCE BROWN Writer/Director/Surfer • Interviewed about ON ANY SUNDAY, October 2001 Bruce Brown is the creative force behind two of the best documentaries in history: The Endless Summer and On Any Sunday (not to be confused with Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday). I spoke with him in October of 2001, just after the release of On Any Sunday Revisited and just before the release of Motorcycles, Malcolm and More, a second retrospective DVD. At Brown’s request, the phone interview was scheduled for 8:30 AM. This is quite early for me. I toughed it out though, knowing full well that Brown was a whole two hours behind me in California. As Brown had explained to me in an earlier conversation, once a surfer, always a surfer. Get up early, check the waves, then go about your day. It's a good thing I don't live near a body of water with decent surf. CHRIS NEUMER: Hi, are you ready to talk about On Any Sunday? BRUCE BROWN: Absolutely. CHRIS NEUMER: It's really an honor for me to talk to you. When I was growing up, my parents were always showing me your surf films, so even a little kid in Chicago I was grabbing a board and attempting to surf in Lake Michigan because of your movies. BRUCE BROWN: Well, thank you. CHRIS NEUMER: I didn't see On Any Sunday until recently and I really enjoyed the material. One of the things that has always impressed me is the fact that you're able to tell interesting stories for both people who are hardcore fans and people who only have a passing fancy in the topic at hand. Without any formal film school training, how is it that you account for your success in the documentary world? BRUCE BROWN: Well, I'm not quite sure. It's sort of a mystery. When you're making one, you're so close to it and so involved with it that you don't really have a clue, you know? You show it several times and get some reaction. The fear is always that maybe I made a real loser here. I think that part of it comes from editing the thing; you're sitting there putting it together and as you're putting it together you're narrating it in your mind, like what's the point of this? A lot of times you're like ?I said that a little while ago, I should say something else. I think it's just part of the process of being hands on, you know, doing all the steps: from shooting to editing and on and on. And then having a background where we used to show the films live, narrating them in front of live audiences for years you kind of get a sense of what the reaction is and it helps that Hollywood movies, or other kinds of movies, are the kind where you make it, finish it and then you show it. All of our movies that rearrange and change and editing process went on even after the films were done. CHRIS NEUMER: That's probably one experience that you could draw on that other documentary filmmakers couldn't. BRUCE BROWN: Yeah. Sitting up in front of a thousand people showing your movies you can kind of feel it if it isn't working. I mean if it isn't, you go home and change it. You know, take it out or whatever. (laughs) CHRIS NEUMER: Did you show On Any Sunday like that? BRUCE BROWN: No, no. CHRIS NEUMER: The live showings ended with The Endless Summer? BRUCE BROWN: Yeah. Actually we showed it?we premiered On Any Sunday and it really wasn't working right so we took it off the market for a week or so and made some changes on it. CHRIS NEUMER: I remember hearing on one of the discs that you had around 100 hours of footage that you had shot for this project before it was edited down. BRUCE BROWN: Yeah. CHRIS NEUMER: How did you go about editing it down? How did you choose what bits and pieces made it into the final cut? BRUCE BROWN: A lot of it was done as we went. It wasn't as if we shot it all and then started editing. We'd shoot something, take it to dailies and pull out the better shots. So it was kind of an on going process, editing and shooting. CHRIS NEUMER: That definitely seems like it would save you some work after all the footage had been shot. BRUCE BROWN: Yeah. CHRIS NEUMER: You first got into dirt bikes in motorcycles when you were in Japan after having seen The Great Escape, right? BRUCE BROWN: (laughs) Yeah. CHRIS NEUMER: Could you talk a little more about how you got into the motorcycle culture and why you decided to make On Any Sunday? BRUCE BROWN: Well, we were in Japan in '63, I think, and at that time everyone in Japan was riding around on little motor scooters. Then when I got home they just imported the first ones to this country and I got one of those and started riding around. Being a surfer, I didn't need a motorcycle, you know? And it all sort of evolved for there. From the little Honda Stetson to the Triumph, I went through several different bikes. I thought, Man this is a lot of fun. It started initially just to get up in the hills and ride the dirt roads and all that. All the surf guys around Dana Point, you know Hobie and Gordon Clark, you know, they all got interested so we all started riding and racing and doing different things. The more I got into it, the more I realized how much fun it was and how nice the people were. There was this huge public misconception of what it was all about. Then I though it would be fun about some other subject, if I could pull it off that is? CHRIS NEUMER: And it probably helped that you had a passion about that sport as well as you did about the surfing. BRUCE BROWN: Oh yeah! Otherwise I would never have done it. Some of the surfing and motorcycling stuff has this public misconception about it. I wanted to get both of the sports the dignity that they deserve and kind of show the general public what it's really like. CHRIS NEUMER: Not everyone is a little hoodlum. BRUCE BROWN: No. It's great that after all these years, the motorcycle community is still grateful [for On Any Sunday]. You know, geez, it really changed the way people think about it and there are still a lot of motorcycles and blah, blah blah. CHRIS NEUMER: And the bikes have gotten faster and lighter too. BRUCE BROWN: It's all changed but it's all basically the same too. CHRIS NEUMER: Is there a sequel to this film? I couldn't find any information that said one way or the other. Is there a sequel to this film? BRUCE BROWN: Well there was On Any Sunday 2, which I had nothing to do with. People who worked with me on the original one wanted to do a sequel and Steve and I let them go ahead and do it. It's not very good and I do get blamed for it, but I didn't have anything to do with it! CHRIS NEUMER: That's the worst of both worlds there. BRUCE BROWN: And then my son has just recently done On Any Sunday revisited where he used a bunch of outtakes from the film and interviewed people then and know, Merton and the guys, and it was all to do with the flat track stuff and he just finished one a couple of days ago about the other face of the sport called Motorcross Malcolm and More. CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah, they told me that wasn't quite ready. BRUCE BROWN: I think he finished it on Wednesday. Monterey Media had those films. CHRIS NEUMER: Yes. That was how I got hooked up with you in the first place. How does the idea of revisiting these films sit with you? I know you'd done one already with The Endless Summer as well. BRUCE BROWN: Well, actually, my son did it. The Monterey people called me and said "What about doing this or that" and I said, "I don't want to do that, I didn't want to go back to the editing room. But my son was going, "Geez dad, I know where a bunch of good footage is." He did a really good job on the first one, The Endless Summer Revisited, and on the On Any Sunday one, and he just finished the other one which I haven't seen yet. CHRIS NEUMER: Have you seen the On Any Sunday one yet? BRUCE BROWN: The Revisited one? Oh yeah. I like the way he did it. His style is different than mine, but I like it. CHRIS NEUMER: It's nice to catch up with the people and see what they're doing. BRUCE BROWN: And you know, I think part of the motivation of it was, through the years, a lot of the guys would ask me, do you have a shot of this or that? It was kind of like, God, if you only knew how much trouble it is to go through and find old footage of 100 odd shots? Now, I can hand them one of these things and say, "Here, Good luck." And plus the motorcycle thing we had so many good shots that we couldn't use because of the time constraints, the slow motion shots, guys riding on the mile track, they were really, really outstanding pictures, but they take a long time, so we were able to use a lot of that stuff. CHRIS NEUMER: You just said that there was a lot of outstanding footage that you didn't use, familiar with the sport of surfing and how to go about shooting that sport, was it a big change shooting the motorcycle races, down in the pits and all? BRUCE BROWN: Yeah. The motorcycle bit was a lot more difficult because in surfing, all the action happens near the breaking part of the wave, where in motorcycling, depending on the events, you could have a desert race that covers 100 miles or even the mile flat track, you'd think if you have six or eight cameras you're not going to missing anything, but you come back after the mile race and there are five spectacular crashes and find out that nobody got them. CHRIS NEUMER: So how many cameras did you use? BRUCE BROWN: Anywhere from one, like with the six-day trial sequence, and for other things we'd have eight or ten cameras. CHRIS NEUMER: That's got to be nice to be able to cross cut footage like that. Were there any interesting or more pointedly harrowing expereinces where bikes would crash into something next to you or the camera itself? BRUCE BROWN: Well, the very first shoot, we had a cameraman?I didn't know him?but he wanted to shoot and he had a camera, so we took him to Daytona and put him in turn one for a novice race and I told him to stand behind the barriers, the big cement walls, you know. The race started and I looked up and there he is, kneeling in the grass right where the?if you miss the corner where the run off is. A bike came right up and nailed him. It didn't kill him, but it broke his leg. CHRIS NEUMER: But, I'm sure he learned a lesson. BRUCE BROWN: What's that? CHRIS NEUMER: I'm sure he learned a lesson. BRUCE BROWN: Well, yeah, the lesson is don't go there when I told you that. CHRIS NEUMER: In The Endless Summer, you'd often add a few bits of footage for the purposes of humor or rearrange certain events for a slightly greater impact, like when you were going over the dunes a Cape St. Francis, was there any rearrangement like that on On Any Sunday? BRUCE BROWN: The ending sequence when they're out there trail riding, we shot that on two or three different locations, but we gave the impression that it was one long ride, just to get the feel that I wanted and the scenery with a variety of things. So we didn't do that with the competition stuff, but did we have fun with stuff, yes. We took some poetic licensee? Like the walking across the dunes thing. We didn't do that afterwards, but when we found the wave we knew that we had to do something. There's the beautiful sand dunes right behind the surf spots so we were like, maybe we came in that way. I mean that's the feeling you have anyway after year of looking all over the place for good waves and not really finding any, you've got to give the audience the same feeling you had. CHRIS NEUMER: That's true. Had you just come off of releasing The Endless Summer when you started preparing for On Any Sunday? BRUCE BROWN: It was, what, '66? The Endless Summer was in theaters and I spent almost two years traveling to different cities for the openings and then I sort of kicked back in '68 or '70. CHRIS NEUMER: You touched on this slightly before, but was it hard to shift gears from surfing to motorcycle racing? Or was it just a new challenge for you? BRUCE BROWN: Yeah, it was a new challenge. It wasn't that hard to shift gears, we used a lot of the same techniques to shoot surfing?things that people weren't really doing a lot at the time, big long lenses, things like that?for the motorcycle shots. We shot a lot of stuff that didn't come out the way we wanted too, so it was definitely a challenge to do it, but taking pictures is taking pictures you just have to figure the best way to do it. CHRIS NEUMER: That's a very grounded approach to the matter. Steve McQueen was involved in this as a producer as well as a sort of co-star, correct? BRUCE BROWN: Yes. CHRIS NEUMER: Did his presence in this open new doors in terms of financing etc? BRUCE BROWN: He financed it. I'd never met him. When I decided to do this project, I called up and met with him at Solar Productions with his producer people. He'd seen The Endless Summer, which was probably the only reason he talked to me, I told him what I wanted to do and he went, "Well, what do you want me to do?" And I said, "Put up the money." He kind of laughed and went, "I make movies, I don't finance movies." I just started joking with him, "Then you can't be in it." So he goes, "Let me think about it." He calls me up the next day and said, "yeah, I'll go for it," I sent him the budget and the whole deal. So, he's the one who put the money into it. CHRIS NEUMER: What was the budget for this film? BRUCE BROWN: $313,000 CHRIS NEUMER: Wow. When you hear about the production costs of films today, that seems like a pittance. BRUCE BROWN: At the time it sounded like a lot to me. CHRIS NEUMER: Don't get me wrong, if somebody offered that amount to me right now, it'd seem like a large amount. I know your experience working with New Line kind of soured you on filmmaking with the way they looked at the film and the product you were offering, but is there any chance you're going to return?come back out of retire to make Bruce Brown's On Any Sunday 2 or something else? BRUCE BROWN: I kind of doubt it. My son is working on a theatrical series of films and is half, three quarters done, and I'm one of the executive producers, which means basically I'm a cheerleader. I'm not really involved in the project other than to give moral support and I try to help out when I can. CHRIS NEUMER: That's got to be gratifying to be able to see your son following in some of your footsteps. BRUCE BROWN: Oh yeah. I asked if he needed any help putting together the people who put the money up. Endless Summer 2 we shot in 35 mm and he sort of a bigger crew. This one the idea is we can shoot in 16 mm with the new high definition video that they can turn into film, so the idea is to keep the group small and not have so many people and this way you'll be able to get more content. When we were traveling before we had like 3,000 pounds of camera equipment, for Endless Summer 2, as opposed to my windup Bolex on Endless Summer 1. So I've seen quite a bit of it and it's quite a bit different than?it's more human interest stuff, it's not a couple of min characters traveling the globe, but it's a whole bunch of characters?it's really more like On Any Sunday. It has a lot of short vignettes from different places. It has some guys surfing on the great lakes? CHRIS NEUMER: All right! BRUCE BROWN: It's totally different but it shows that the sport is the same. CHRIS NEUMER: I take it from what you're saying that this is another documentary? BRUCE BROWN: Yeah, It's a documentary feature. CHRIS NEUMER: I'm already looking forward to it. Anything where you can get third coast surfing on the big screen is worthwhile. BRUCE BROWN: Yeah. And as far as surfing goes, you got some spectacular footage. That Cortez Banks thing that those guys did, the went out there with those guys and the guys that they showed on the news were his. CHRIS NEUMER: Do you have any idea when that one is coming out? BRUCE BROWN: It's supposed to be out next summer. It's tentatively called liquid. It may be changed though. CHRIS NEUMER: I know I've heard of that title. Whether its this film or another, I'm not sure. I only have a couple of other questions for you here, was there any goal you had in mind when you were going into this project? Something that you wanted to accomplish? Or did you just want to capture the essence of the sport. BRUCE BROWN: I think that basically capturing the essence of the sport and do it right for the people who do it and also show the general audience what its really like. I know that Mert's in-laws, his wife's parents, had never been to a race and had no idea what it was that he did. He was kind of the black sheep of the family and then all of a sudden, there she is in a movie theater with her son-in-law on the big screen as a good guy and she stands up during the middle of the movie and says, "That's my son-in-law!" Suddenly, she's proud of him. That was part of the idea? CHRIS NEUMER: To get Mert in good with his in-laws? BRUCE BROWN: Well, sort of a? CHRIS NEUMER: To dispel the myth that bikers are all bad. BRUCE BROWN: Yeah. CHRIS NEUMER: It seems like quite a challenge to again create two likable lead characters in a fringe sport. You had done that with Mike and Robert in the Endless Summer, suddenly surfers had a quest. Is it hard to create characters like that? BRUCE BROWN: Well, I didn't create them, I just showed them as they are and if there were and bad guys?which there weren't any?my technique was to ignore. I just didn't show them. CHRIS NEUMER: Well, you do have to edit certain footage together to make the characters stand out in the final product. BRUCE BROWN: Like Malcolm. He's such a great guy. You're just trying to show people what he's like. I mean, that's exactly what he's like. CHRIS NEUMER: So here you had two sports that the public thought were filled with delinquents and there wasn't a bad guy to be seen. BRUCE BROWN: Right. And there probably are some, there are other facets to the motorcycle thing, they just didn't interest me, only the competition aspect of it interested me, not the Harley people or anything else. So, I just show the parts that interest me and forget the rest. If you're a New York intellectual you'd go, "it wasn't a valid picture, you know, it wasn't a balanced picture with all the facets of the subject" CHRIS NEUMER: How about saying, "it wasn't supposed to be". That might quiet that New York intellectual up. BRUCE BROWN: Somebody else can do that. CHRIS NEUMER: It must have been great to find out that you were nominated for an Academy Award. BRUCE BROWN: Oh yeah! It was just awesome. CHRIS NEUMER: That's the kind of thing that makes it onto the business card, I'm sure. Academy Award nominated filmmaker, Bruce Brown. BRUCE BROWN: The Endless Summer didn't get nominated, which it probably should have, but at the time they were trying to put Born Free in as a documentary?which it definitely wasn't?and I think they go ?Born Free was entertaining, so was The Endless Summer and the criteria for documentary is that they're educational blah, blah, blah. It wasn't until more recently that a documentary film could be entertaining. CHRIS NEUMER: If it was entertaining, it probably wasn't a documentary. BRUCE BROWN: Exactly. CHRIS NEUMER: That's lovely logic. BRUCE BROWN: For years that was the way it was. You look at the film that has won the best documentary award and for the most part the things weren't even fun: Holocaust, you know? CHRIS NEUMER: Funny you should mention that. I was speaking to another surfer/skater turned documentarian last week, Stacey Peralta. When he heard that I was going to speak to Bruce Brown, he got all excited and made me promise that I would tell you how much he enjoyed The Endless Summer and how much of an influence you were on him. Just one drop of your name got me in and got me everything I needed to know. That was an interesting film because there was some footage of the guys surfing down in LA in, oh I don't remember where, it was nicknamed Dogtown, but they were surfing through the trestles of a pier. They were insane. The short version is that your work is respected by many people far and wide. BRUCE BROWN: Thank you.

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