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An Interview with Greg Schell: The Far Shore
Scott Bass
In 1972, a young Kevin Naughton and Craig Peterson took to the road with surfboards, camera gear and an untamable desire for adventure. For ten years they scoured the planet in search of perfect waves and the experiences only a traveller on the road encounters. The Far Shore film chronicles their journey.
Greg Schell is the young filmmaker whose dream it was to capture the youthful innocence of surf travel that Naughton and Peterson embodied. His movie is both retrospective and introspective. It allows us, surfers of the 21st Century, to examine the surf travel of the past. But more importantly, The Far Shore requires that we seriously consider exactly what constitutes surf travel today and in the near future. I urge you to check out this highly entertaining flick!
Sahara
S: Tell me what got this whole idea started, give me some background, how did this pipe dream evolve, what was the genesis of this?
GREG: Well I was at a party in Laguna Beach about six years ago and I walked into this beach house. When I looked up on the walls, and there were these great old photographs that I remembered from my collection of Surfer magazines. I looked at my friend who had taken me, and I was like, “Wow! Where did this guy get all these photos?” He kinda hit me on the shoulder and said, "You idiot, this is Craig Peterson's house! This guy's a legend!" Later I ended up meeting him and I asked if he had any old copies of the Surfer articles that he and Kevin wrote back in the '70s. He said sure and got me a bunch of old magazines. I started reading all the stories and envisioned the idea that the stories would make a great documentary some day. I just put that idea in my head and I kept it.
S: Jump ahead to your college days in film school?
GREG: I was in film school at San Francisco State which has a graduate film program. I had to come up with a senior year project, and it had to take a year. So there I was thinking “God, what am I gunna spend a year on that I'm gunna stay enthusiastic about?” So I just decided that the way to go was to make this documentary. I contacted Craig and Kevin and they said, "Okay, let's do it."
Baja
S: What are you trying to convey in the movie? What is it you want people to leave the theatre with…what is the theme or purpose?
GREG: Well the theme of the movie, I think, is really this idea of free will and determination. The idea that you can do anything you want within reason. You know here are two guys who were teenagers in the '70s, who decided to take off and go around the world looking for waves for ten years. They went through all the hardships: malaria, dysentery, and passport hassles and dictatorships; just to catch a couple of waves. So it's really a story of adventure, determination and free will.
S: Which part of the movie do you feel best portrays that?
GREG: Definitely you could look at it as the whole trip. The ten year trip was filled with all kinds of ups and downs and little stories within the stories. I think that West Africa was the pinnacle of their adventures, because it combines all the elements of the faraway beach, camping on some remote coastline. Angola and Zaire are in a civil war, and they’re stuck kind of in the middle, they can't leave. At that moment it's like it could be pure terror or pure ecstasy, and they’re right in between. Finding perfect waves in the middle of a civil war in itself, to me, seems so cinematic. When I started reading the West Africa articles that's when it really clicked for me. That's when the idea for a documentary crystallised. Most people who have seen the film have come back to me and said that that was their favourite part of the movie too.
Baja
S: What kind of hurdles did you have to jump? Was your senior project professor all for it?
GREG: It's funny, at first they were kind of dissuading me from doing the story. 'Cause they were like well, surfing, this is not really worthy of a graduate project. I tried to explain to them that it wasn't just a surfing movie. It wouldn't be a bunch of images of guys riding waves. It was going to be an adventure story like Lewis and Clark. Eventually I had to pitch it in front of a panel of academics, and then I had to go to through this question and answer deal with them.
S: How was that?
GREG: It was intense. It was like a Soviet Politburo. There was a big long table, and I stood up in front of the table in a tie to present my project with Kevin and Craig's slides. Everyone else was presenting their projects about the Chiapas, or whatever, doing the history of poverty in America, and there I was pitching a surf movie! It was pretty funny, but I think I won it after it was all over.
Costa Rica
S: The theme of the movie is, as you say, free will and determination. And I see you personifying that, in the same manner as Kevin and Craig. You kind of represent that, in that you go to this guy's house, you meet him, you have a vision and you thought, "I can do this. If I put my head to it, and take each step as it comes, and conquer each step." And your first step is walking into that party a few years back. It's come to fruition…in a weird way. Before you came in here I was thinking – wow I wish I had done that for my senior project. Hook up with these two legends…
GREG: It was timing. They had been asked before over the years, but they never felt it was the right time. They never felt someone could take the time to do it. I told them, "Look, I have a year. I'll take as much time as we need to make sure that this is the kind of film that we all want to present." It wasn't just gunna be my film and my film only. It was gunna be a collaborative effort.
El Salvador
S: Speaking of collaborative efforts, I know you've got a lot of footage from Craig and from Kevin, but in the movie you go back and revisit some of these places, don't you?
GREG: Yeah, we went back to Libertad. That's the only place we went back to because I felt since that was the first place they landed it would be a good place to start.
S: Did that help them rekindle some of their experiences you think?
GREG: Yeah, before that they were kind of…it just seemed like they were a little looser once we got down there. Maybe it was the heat, maybe the food…
S: Maybe it's the beer.
GREG: (laughter) I don't know what it is…Once we got into Libertad, all of their images and all of their memories started to come forward because they were actually there. They hadn't been back in 30 years, so for them it was a real trip. We hung out with Rotherham. He's a really nice guy, he's in the movie. I interviewed him. It was kind of interesting to see him too, because here's Kevin and Craig, who kind of did that and came back, he went there and stayed.
Fiji
S: I know you had a really positive response?
GREG: Yeah, we sold out every show. The response has been really, really positive. It's really amazing. That's another thing too. Somehow I feel like I am participating in a tradition, you know like Hal Jepsen, MacGivallry, all these guys who make surf films. They went on the road with their movie. They went with a reel and a projector and they would project it. I'm going back to the college that I remember watching Bill Delaney's Surfers 10 years ago. I remember thinking, "Wow, wouldn't it be neat if someday I could be in this theatre showing a film." Here I am 10 years later. The dream came true!
S: There are a couple of Hollywood guys who are hardcore surfers, like John Milius. Have you had any contact with those guys?
GREG: I think what I want to do is seep it into the surf audience first, then from the surf audience build from there. You kind of need approval from surfers before you can go out and present it to the world. But I am hoping a lot of people do see the movie and they realise that hey, surfers aren't just a bunch of flaky guys who just want to get babes, drink beer and surf.
S: What? We're not? (laughter)
GREG: Well you know, these guys are really intelligent. There is a lot of wisdom you can gain from being on the road. I think it makes you a more open person when you travel. People who stay at home, and are sheltered, tend to get rigid over time and have really strong opinions. Where as people who have been to third world countries, for example, are more open. They are more open to travellers, more open to meeting people. It makes you a better person, so hopefully the film demonstrates that.
Morocco
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