If you missed his obituary in 2017 when he died of natural causes at the age of 80 you cannot miss Bruce Brown's influence on film, or for that matter, culture. Born in San Francisco in 1938, Brown took a completely DIY route to become one of the most successful sports filmmakers of all time.
While he came ashore in spectacular fashion with the motorcycle classic On Any Sunday, it's ocean footage of the young surfer dudes (and occasional dudettes), tanned and carefree, navigating the big waves set to Brown's laid-back and jokey commentary and a strumming guitar, that has inscribed Brown's name on sand that no tides will wash away.
Bruce Brown didn't invent surf movies, but he appeared in some of the earliest color examples, shot in the 1940s by pioneer surfer/cinematographer Bud Browne (no relation). Bruce started using a still camera to show his mother what surfing was and graduated to cine film.
In 1958 Bruce Brown was a lifeguard in San Clemente, California ("which to date is the only real job I've ever held," he once said). Brown possessed 8mm surf reels he'd done himself while serving on a US Navy sub in Hawaii. These shorts screened from time to time at the famous surf shop owned by a pal and casual employer, Dale Velzy.
Patrons at these shows were charged a whole quarter per admission. Audiences would number in the tens. Velzy urged Brown to upgrade to 16mm and shoot fresh footage in the semi-professional celluloid format. Their summer project, with Velzy as a producer, became Bruce Brown's first surf feature, Slippery When Wet, on a budget of $5,000.
There followed Barefoot Adventure, Surf Crazy, Surfing Hollow Days, and interim shorts and commercial jobs. Generally Brown followed a schedule of lensing in the fall and winter, editing during the spring (an arduous four-month process that he said took special pains to make the results seem "effortless"), and by the next summer, a new Bruce Brown production would be opening—but not necessarily in theaters.
Brown and his partner would self-distribute, renting out auditoriums and school halls and acting as their own projectionists, sound techs (the 16mm footage was silent; the soundtracks were on reel-to-reel tape) and often narrating live. Recutting between engagements for maximum impact, Bruce Brown was his own private film school, learning what worked best with the crowds.
Dreaming bigger, Brown released a best-of compilation, Waterlogged, as a low-risk fundraiser for his grandest endeavor, a world tour of surfing that would visit the great surf haunts of the world and chase the season around the globe. The two-year effort cost more to make than all Brown's other films had earned in total and was called The Endless Summer.
Initially, it was schlepped by the indie film team from venue to venue like the others, but now they included such off-the-dune-buggy-track locations as Wichita and NYC. Record-breaking attendance and critical raves convinced Hollywood to take a chance on wide release.
The Endless Summer became a canonical film of the 1960s, and it is still saluted for rescuing the image of surfing, from both Tinseltown's goofball beach-movie stereotypes and newspaper accusations of delinquent idlers and bullies.
Another Brown production of note was his oldest son Dana, born in 1959. Dana got his first Super 8mm camera at the age of 10 (with the provision that Dana would have to storyboard what he was going to shoot before Bruce would buy the film stock). Dana was soon using his brother as a stuntman and shooting a variety of pieces.
He also, inevitably, took to surfing. In the late 1980s, Bruce employed Dana, now a director in his own right, to shoot updates of his early films. These become Endless Summer Revisited and On Any Sunday Revisited. Dana subsequently struck off on his own with Step into Liquid, Dust to Glory, Highwater, On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter, and more.
In fatherhood of another sense, Bruce Brown's use of mellow, jazzy instrumentals on the soundtrack was the genesis of surf music. Brown and Velzy, having a few hundred left over from their initial Slippery When Wet, hired jazz great Bud Shank and his quartet to squeeze into a tiny office and improvise to the projected film.
Similar surf melodies became a Bruce Brown trademark, and of course, the Endless Summer theme became a hit. So any time you hear "Wipeout" or Dick Dale, you have Brown to thank.
His side interest in racing drew Bruce Brown out of the water and not only to On Any Sunday but also to compete in racing himself—motorcycles, sprint cars, and rally cars. Brown came out of retirement in the 1990s to make Endless Summer II with a full 35mm crew.
Being a cog within the Hollywood system was not a happy experience, and he was content to return to classic-car restoration and the ocean view from his Santa Barbara home.
Overall, Bruce Brown's films are credited with raising awareness of surfing to the extent that, from 1957 to 1967 alone, the active surfing population grew from a few thousand to millions.