Dana Brown Interview

Dana Brown

Documentarian Dana Brown comes from a family of surf filmmakers. His father, Bruce Brown, made The Endless Summer and his son, Wes Brown, produced Highwater. Chris Neumer sits down with Dana Brown to discuss filming waves, getting away from the image of Spicoli and what Wisconsin has to do with surfing.

by Chris Neumer

Extra Information

DANA BROWN: It’s a channel island, like Catalina, San Clemente, and all these islands off the coast of California. It’s been worn down below the surface.

CHRIS NEUMER: The thing I couldn’t quite figure out from watching the film was why it was breaking in one point but it wasn’t breaking over here.

DANA BROWN: Well, it kind of was, a little bit. The swell comes from a direction and then bends around it. Where it breaks initially is one place, but if you looked around, this one wave is panning, breaking, while another wave is starting. You wouldn’t be prone to ride there at – as Robert August called it — the low edge, the escape place. It was all kind of breaking all over that, though.

CHRIS NEUMER: There was a movie, not a good movie, but it was directed by Zalman King, called In God’s Hands.

DANA BROWN: Sure. A buddy of mine Matt George was in that.

CHRIS NEUMER: Oh, that’s right. I should remember, I love any bald surfer.

DANA BROWN: Matt wrote a three-hour movie and they made it into an hour and a half. It was a weird mix. You get Matt’s script, Hogan’s doing this, and we’re hiring a surfer. Yeah, I mean, you could have had actors do it and had surfers double in the water but… They hired Sean Thompson, who’s a great surfer, and he’s playing a role where he just never even gets in the water.

CHRIS NEUMER: Who was he? It’s been awhile.

DANA BROWN: I only saw it once, I went to the premiere. It was one of those deals where it’s your worst nightmare for other people come true. By the time it was even out, people were looking the other way. There were already people pointing fingers. I felt really bad for Matt especially because it was his script. Zalman had done the Red Shoe Diaries. That’s his deal, he’s a visual guy and surfing is a very visual sport.

CHRIS NEUMER: They had that one sequence, the only one that I’ve seen more than once in the movie, and Mike Stewart’s sitting there in front of a map, pretending to do something with physics.

DANA BROWN: Yup. That was Jaws.

CHRIS NEUMER: And he’s talking about the side channel that you use to get out. I was thinking, “So that’s how you do it.” About a year ago, I was on the East Coast in the fall, Cape Hatteras, and they had a huge swell roll in. I’m talking 15- to 20-foot waves. I only had a body board with me, so I’m trying to get out. And I swear, I tried for 25 minutes to get out and nearly drowned twice. Since then, whenever I see a surfing film, I keep looking for something that would help me learn how to get out. But on the East Coast, there are no channels and I couldn’t paddle out.

DANA BROWN: Well neither is there at Jaws. That whole explanation is made up bullshit. The way you get in at Jaws is that you go three miles down the road to this bay, this natural inlet, and they launch out of there. They take the jet skis and go all the way around the outside and they jump off and then they surf. After that, they paddle back out to the jet skis and go the other way. Outside, it’s just cliffs.

CHRIS NEUMER: That’s kind of disappointing to learn.

DANA BROWN: It keeps it a step above at Jaws. To do that at this place, you need a commitment, you can’t just wander down to the beach and hop in. You can at Pipeline, and you can get your ass kicked just trying to get out, if not drown.

CHRIS NEUMER: There’s nothing scarier than paddling out, seeing that wave just starting to break and knowing that you’re not going to make it there. You know you’re going to get trounced.

DANA BROWN: It’s that sick feeling and you say, “Should I sit here like an idiot and get hit for sure?” I like that shot in the movie of the Captain at Cortez where he’s going out on the big breaks and bails on his board. It’s everybody’s nightmare. And he actually got lucky, the initial white water broke over him, so he got out to the other side. But that was a long day.

CHRIS NEUMER: Having experienced this myself and been there in this position, knowing full well that if my leash breaks I am really screwed, I’m always surprised to see that there’s not more made of what happens if you wipe out. I know you showed a couple of wipe outs, but what goes on, what happens if you’re going down a sixty-foot wave, and you wipe out?

DANA BROWN: It’s kind of like a pit bull grabbing hold of a poodle. I ask that question to everyone and we get all kinds of answers. So we just simply say, “Hey, it’s dangerous.” You know, Brett dislocated both his knees. I just decided to keep the plot to more of a script. I have seen some pretty big waves but nothing like that. I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine that shot of Laird [Hamilton] in the white water, it eight times taller than him. All that stuff just dazzles me. Even though I am in the boat and on the beach, I was thought, “What does that feel like?” It seems like there’d be nothing left, just pieces of skin!

CHRIS NEUMER: Or if you’re underneath the water, you would just get churned up, you’re going to lose your breath. What then?

DANA BROWN: Yeah, it’s such a mental thing — the panic. But those guys really rescue each other, really watch out for each other. It’s so specialized, the Pipeline and all these other things are at one level, and then there’s this next level, something beyond. Just when you think you’ve reached the end of the level.

CHRIS NEUMER: That’s something interesting, particularly with the sport of surfing compared to something that has more regulations, like football or basketball. A lot of people don’t know what separates the good surfers from the great surfers. You drive down to Malibu and you see people out there doing some pretty nice tricks. But what separates them from a Kelly Slater?

DANA BROWN: Well, there’s a lot of ways to answer that question. One is that you just have to know the sport, and there’s a lot of validity to that. It’s the same way you can appreciate basketball. But then again, with surfing, that’s kind of the neat part of it; (laughs) it’s also what prevents it from becoming a more mainstream sport. Who’s to say that hanging ten is any harder than getting barreled? As you say, it’s hard getting air. Who’s to say how that compares to tube riding? I don’t know. A lot of people debate it. Is one more important than the other? It seems to me you sit down and look at someone who is very watchable and there’s something about it, you can tell, they’re maybe more connected to the waves. It’s a very individual interpretation of it.

CHRIS NEUMER: It seems like it’s distinctly non-verbal. Not to compare it to skateboarding or body boarding, but there are tricks you can pull.

DANA BROWN: There are tricks. You’re right, it is distinctly non-verbal. Hell, the fact that they can give Tony [Hawk] in skateboarding his own moves… But it seems like it cheapens it to name the maneuvers, maybe not hanging ten, but the other maneuvers. You know what amazes me? I look at the movie and I think it’s just there. The minute you try to make too much of it, it disappears. Like liquid, it goes away.

CHRIS NEUMER: As you say it is full of metaphor and the experience itself is a kind of meditative experience. I have experienced it myself, you go out and you kind of lose yourself in the waves.

DANA BROWN: Yes.

CHRIS NEUMER: Making the film, you have to have points, connections and themes. Did you find that making the film about surfing – which I’d almost equate with yoga rather than a regular sport – did you find that you have to have a lot of points or had to try and verbalize things that you had trouble verbalizing?

DANA BROWN: Yeah.  In a way, it’s a good thing. You’re actually right though, because there is a point where the sky’s the limit as far as what are you going do about surfing is the worst of modern civilization.

CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah, then you could just watch Point Break.

DANA BROWN: Yeah, like trying to say, “Oh, surfing is this or surfing is that.” We had to make sure everything represents something. It’s not just like, “Oh there’s a hot guy, and there’s a hot girl.” There are connections between them. The connection is that they all surf.  It’s like making a regular movie. There are certain things that you have to do to make it work. After that, it’s sort of open to interpretation, whatever you want to bring to it. Which is a lot like film. That reminds me, I wrote a funny story about when I got into film. There are certain things, parameters under the writing assignment, but then after that you can just do whatever you want, which is cool, but then it’s like, wait, what do I do?

CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah, to make a writing analogy, it’s like having to write a two thousand word piece of the color red. You can talk about all the things that are red. But at a certain point your editor is going to say, “You have to make the point so people can understand it.”  It seems that’s the challenge.

DANA BROWN: That’s a good point. You hope that you’re telling a good enough story.

CHRIS NEUMER: Well, there’s a contradiction.  It’s an appealing contradiction, but it’s a contradiction nonetheless. Because when you tell someone else about a surfer, then they immediately picture kind of almost a stoner, like, “Dude!” but like a stoner in the sun. And you have made a conscious effort to get away from that in this film. I know you consciously called attention to that and said that this is not the case, that there are a lot of really intelligent surfers. But again, this is trying to make something tangible out of the color red. That they are not stoners, but still, if you listen to the words, they do sound a little like that, they sound the same.

DANA BROWN: Well, I guess. You know what I have always found interesting is that people try to make documentaries about coal miners or someone, and people see a dysfunctional surfer. But it’s like, here’s surfing, and it’s a simple act. And it’s a positive experience. If it were a negative experience that would be something different, but it’s a positive experience. I know what you’re saying, but it’s people united in a very simple act. If it’s really about being stoned, I feel bad for people who feel they need to be stoned to enjoy this. What else are you doing here? What’s the point being here? We’re all bees in the same hive. Be the best that you can be in what you’re doing. I don’t mean hedonistically. But it’s like people think they’re being mature by saying the world’s going to end, but actually they’re being immature to say the sky is falling, and everything is so bleak.

CHRIS NEUMER: Well, I better not ask you what you think of the current White House administration then!

DANA BROWN: Oh yeah, well those guys, that’s scary. It’s kind of like your worst nightmare because it’s like the rich kid won and he’s running the country, but he really doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he’s surrounded by all these kids who were the kids who were picked on in high school. I mean, it’s like every bad movie you’ve ever seen.

CHRIS NEUMER: What amazes me is that, in polls, fifty percent of the country still thinks he’s doing a good job. That’s what amazes me. I’m wondering, “Why?” But of course, we could go on for hours about this.

DANA BROWN: Well, the funny part is that he does get approval, I mean it’s like everyone else is dumb. I mean what are they doing? This Condoleeza Rice thing smacks of Nixon and Watergate. But traditionally, we don’t talk to Congress, traditionally, government doesn’t talk to Congress.

CHRIS NEUMER: Well, getting back to your film. It’s kind of a documentary, I guess. I mean, it is more so than The Matrix. When you create a documentary, one of the most important things, even more than on any other type of film, is the editing. Both the editing of what you put in or take out and the actual cutting of the film. How did you go about that? How much footage did you shoot for this film?

DANA BROWN: We shot about 200 hours.

CHRIS NEUMER; So how did you go from 200 hours worth of film down to 88 minutes?

DANA BROWN: Well, every place we went to film we had a certain objective. We went to Wisconsin, Sheboygan, and that sounds funny because can you surf in Sheboygan? To be honest, we kind of went in thinking that would be a funny interview. But then you get there and there’s a kind of sweetness to it.

CHRIS NEUMER: You brought up the Sheboygan example so we’ll take a look at that. What expectations did you have going in?

DANA BROWN: To be honest, I kind of expected it to be a funny stunt, like we’re going to do a cute little thing for one day.

CHRIS NEUMER: Like a PR gimmick.

DANA BROWN: Yeah, like a polar bear cub surfing. We thought we’d do a cute little one-day thing, like thirty seconds of film. We ended up spending a couple extra days. It turned out there was a whole community there and when we got back we had expected to find it funny, but it was actually sweet.

CHRIS NEUMER: It further enhanced the belief that even though you’re in a very different locale, the surfing is the one thing that is true.

DANA BROWN: Yeah, and the ideal is ultimately just to meet those people who are just passionate about something, it could be anything. It doesn’t even have to be a physical activity.

CHRIS NEUMER: Was there an overreaching principle or idea in your mind as you were shooting it? Let’s just say you shot six hours of footage up in Wisconsin. What did you do to get those six hours of footage down to three minutes or five minutes or whatever that segment was?

DANA BROWN: Well, ultimately you say you are going to tell the stories you shot, which was about what causes the waves, etc. So there’d be interviews and we got it cut to maybe forty-five minutes. You’re always walking the line to keep the audience interested, because too much of that and pretty soon, you don’t want to talk to anyone and you’re on sensory overload

CHRIS NEUMER: I can’t remember did you actually edit it yourself?

DANA BROWN: Yeah.

CHRIS NEUMER: Okay. And was it was done in the kitchen too?

DANA BROWN: Yeah. (Laughs) By the stove, I never thought of that before. We did a rough cut there. And that ended up being about three hours long. It was three of the finest hours we’d ever seen and we were just crying because we had to cut it. It sucks because we would have to cut more of it–it was far too long–and stuff that we thought was great.  Ultimately, you could do it a little longer, but if you set out to entertain you have to cut it down. You can go longer, but you know it’s got to be close to ninety minutes, no matter how great the material is.

CHRIS NEUMER: Did you personally put a camera on your shoulder and shoot it yourself?

DANA BROWN: Sure, a lot.

CHRIS NEUMER: Okay, and were they all shots shot for the project specifically, or did other people shoot any?

DANA BROWN: There are maybe four shots that weren’t shot for this, that were shot by a buddy of mine. We were shooting something and had shots from another angle, but it didn‘t work, and Jack said, “I have some footage for this.”

CHRIS NEUMER: There were a lot of similarities between this and The Endless Summer

DANA BROWN: I know, just the way it was accepted! It mirrored my dad’s acceptance. In my dad’s day, it would have never been done. But now, it’s like you go to NY and, for some reason, they accepted the heck out of it. All of a sudden we’re in, and we’re accepted. And once we’re “in” in Manhattan, doing this Tribeca film festival, it’s like, we’re in. It’s just funny that it mirrored what happened to dad. All of a sudden, people are telling you why it works and you’re like, “It’s the same thing it was five months ago [when you didn’t like it]!”

CHRIS NEUMER: And so you ponied up all the cash yourself, or from investors?

DANA BROWN: Yeah, exactly.

CHRIS NEUMER: What was the budget on this?

DANA BROWN: Two million.

CHRIS NEUMER: Okay and so you essentially shot everything yourself and cut it pretty much?

DANA BROWN: Yeah.

CHRIS NEUMER: And after the Tribeca, it got picked up by United Artists?

DANA BROWN: Yeah. After United Artists, the first person to champion it was Forest Whitaker, who I don’t know at all. But he saw it. One guy who doesn’t work for us now, sent out all these tapes and we didn’t know it and then we were accepted.  Forest Whitaker called me and said please come.  A guy from Variety wrote this good review of it, and that piqued the interest of the red carpet people. But we had it in Santa Monica at this fundraiser and it wasn’t even completely done yet. It was a chain of events that you look back on and we felt like there was a certain momentum to the whole thing. It’s hard to tell that kind of stuff. Sometimes it’s just the right time. Still, I am really grateful. But you have got to know the people.

CHRIS NEUMER: And they’re putting out some really bad stuff on extreme sports now. I’m saying this as a positive thing, you go into a movie expecting it to be terrible and then it’ll be the best thing ever. That’s the thing that true film critics don’t actually talk about is the baggage of expectations you actually bring into the theater.  I have a thing where I hate biographical epics. I think they’re stupid, I think they’re pointless. I don’t care if it’s Monster or Gandhi. I don’t like them. And I highly doubt Roger Ebert would ever come out and say that.  But everybody doesn’t like something.

DANA BROWN: But it’s so honest and I love that. The world is so much better off. You mentioned it as a documentary, and of course it is.  I have been asked that question before, but I am not really interested in labeling the movie.

CHRIS NEUMER: I asked your father, “How did you begin your project?” And he said, “Oh, well, we looked over one day and saw a bunch waves.” And I said, “Well, you posed it slightly differently in the film.” And he said, “Well, we had to do something.” And I thought, it’s billed as a non-fiction film, so you think it happened all at once. In Step into Liquid, did you do the same sort of thing?

DANA BROWN: Yeah. Not as much as that. My dad has flat out told people that over the years. And I’m like, “Well, it wasn’t just that we walked up to the beach!” It’s part of the dimension of it–you do occasionally have to go back and try to make it look better. But then dad just flat out tells people that. But Step Into Liquid, none of it is like that where you had to catch it in a way that makes it more dramatic. Sequentially, the way it happened, near the end, we thought this is such an adventure.

CHRIS NEUMER: Surfers get chased by polar bears!

DANA BROWN: Yeah! And there’s something so natural in the way that those guys reacted — and it was so funky, fun, scary and funny. Peter [Mel] and Mike Parsons, and Mike is the nicest guy and him and Pete Mel, I mean Pete has been chasing big waves forever. All of it, just to be there, just see nature. There’s something really primal. It’s like watching a sunset.

CHRIS NEUMER: Well, it seems like you’re further out and you’re sort of on your own, you’re just on your own Lewis and Clark adventure, and you are sort of in God’s hands, I guess.

DANA BROWN: You are; there is that feeling. You’re out there and it’s like everything seems possible. Last summer, we were doing a lot of promotion for the movie, and we were doing this “Meet the Filmmaker” deals.

CHRIS NEUMER: You’ve got to love those.

DANA BROWN: Well, everybody there was so nice, but it’s a trip. So we were standing there signing autographs. And this gal who was in line, she was about fifteen and she was crying. She and her friend with her had sort of goofy looks on their faces, and I was like why are you crying? And she said, “The Captain of Cortez, it was so beautiful!” I was really moved. This is the best of all of us. This is true and you can have fun and appreciate all the silly things. It’s hard to make the simple things. I mean how many people appreciate the smaller things? We’re basically taking something that is not sensationalistic, but here are these guys having a good time, and here are some giggles here and here it’s scary. But also, does it have an overall message, and I always thought it did. But a lot of people have written very eloquently about it, saying, “Oh, it could be more sensationalistic.” I’m like, “But don’t you see that it would be such a cheat, it’d be so easy to do what you want?”

CHRIS NEUMER: Takes away from the subtle beauty of the sport.  Well, going back to your porn analogy, it seems like there are certain acts that you can capture on film that seem like they might have a little more inherent interest to people than others, and surfing probably is one of them.

DANA BROWN: It’s about how passionate people are in general. People can identify with that.

CHRIS NEUMER: Let me ask you a question about the channel in Texas; isn’t there a lot of pollution?  I mean you have a lot of oil tankers going through? I was looking at one of them and one of the places there are big waves on Lake Michigan, kind of at the bottom of it if you look at it as a big teardrop, it’s down where Gary, Indiana is, where all the iron mills are, and I always think, “Yeah, there’s waves here, but I don’t want to get in them.”

DANA BROWN: Yeah, Santa Monica can be like that. I was so blown away by what they were doing, that I didn’t even pay attention. They were trying to explain it to me and how do they do that? I wasn’t even looking at the ocean. But yeah, you would think so.

CHRIS NEUMER: Tying into this, do you think that with more people doing this that either the pollution or the population is curtailing the sport?

DANA BROWN: Just the fact that people go surfing and they come back and say hey it’s a toilet, and we’ve got to clean it up. Santa Monica, every time it rains, they have to clean it up. New Orleans too. And it’s only going to get worse. The ocean has always been a dumping ground. Ultimately, surfers can be the first ones to say, or anyone in the ocean, that the ocean needs to be cleaned up. Like they say the polar ice caps are melting, but it’s no big deal and I’m like what!?

CHRIS NEUMER: Just buy a wetsuit?

DANA BROWN: Yeah. I’ll tell you, I was in Vancouver, and there must have been a thousand people there, and I asked, how many people surf and all these people raised their hands and I was like, “No way, here?”

CHRIS NEUMER: On a different tangent, I know you are doing a motorcycling film now. Are you at all worried about being compared to your father?  Insomuch as being compared to an Oscar nominated director can cause worry?

DANA BROWN: For a long time, I never thought I would do a surfing movie, but you know.

CHRIS NEUMER: You grew up with surfing and motorcycles in your house.

DANA BROWN: Yeah, and, well, if you’re around them, then you’ll probably get interested in them.

CHRIS NEUMER: So you acknowledge the fact that there is no way that someone could look at your career and not say, “Hey, it’s like Bruce Brown’s.”

DANA BROWN: Totally.  This motorcycling movie is just about a race, and is actually just as much about trucks and cars as it is motorcycles. But there are motorcycles in it.  And then it’s like, “Oh, you’re doing the same thing.”  But you know A) I love my dad. I think he’s a great filmmaker, so I want to be associated with him. And you get so much press out of it, so don’t complain. But B) you have to make people aware of the movie and get them to go see the movie. But there’s also genetics at work here. I was listening to my voice and I hadn’t realized, I sound just like him, so there’s a certain DNA to it. You can’t avoid it.

CHRIS NEUMER: So just to clarify, you can’t get away from it. It’s what you’re interested in.

DANA BROWN: Yeah.

CHRIS NEUMER: But it’s not a conscious effort to follow in his footsteps.

DANA BROWN: No, no.

CHRIS NEUMER: When Rolling Stone wrote  that Step Into Liquid was the ‘definitive surf documentary’, did you ever call your dad and rub it in a little bit?

DANA BROWN: Well, last summer, Rolling Stone did say it was the best surfing movie ever made. So I called my dad up and told him that. And my dad likes that. He goes, “Oh, that’s so great.” It’s about people enjoying it. And it’s about people enjoying it and making good surf movies. They could make bad movies, but what’s the point in that.

CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah, you want people to make good surf movies. And then for yours to still be the definitive surf documentary.

DANA BROWN: Yeah. And it’s great because you get to hang out with all these guys, like [director] Errol Morris. And it’s nice because you get to meet all these people. You get to hang out for an afternoon and just shoot the shit with people you maybe wouldn’t have the opportunity to hang out with otherwise. So it’s fun. Like I say, it’s a magical thing when it works right. There is logic to it, and there are certain parameters you have to make it fit into, but within those parameters you can do good or bad. And the simplest little thing can shift it this way or that way. There is kind of a constant amazement in that.

CHRIS NEUMER: Usually comes from not casting Eric Roberts.

DANA BROWN: (Laughing)