I’m a huge snob this way, but the guys I admire most in surf media are the ones who did their time on the beach, learned what they could, graced us some with some fantastic early-career work, then got on with it. Onward and upward. Greg MacGillivray gave his artistic best to our humble little sport for a decade or so (partnered up for most of that time with Jim Freeman), leveled up to Hollywood (worked on Towering Inferno and The Shining, among other projects), then went on to become lord of IMAX. Awards, giant box office numbers, framable reviews, Oscar nominations—take a bow, Mr. MacGillivray.

Five Summer Stories is the surf movie that MacGillivray is best known for. My personal favorite, though, by a long shot, is Waves of Change. When I called Greg last week, we talked about both, but the best part was getting the lowdown his first movie, Cool Wave of Color, which he started filming at the tender age of 16.

Not much. Five grand, maybe. For a while I was mowing lawns and delivering papers to pay for it.

 when I was in high school and finished after my first year in college. So on one hand, yes, it was a hobby at that point. But on the other hand—it was hard. Just a lot of work. I don’t think people understand that sometimes. Those early surf movies are so much fun, so lighthearted, but I was really working at it. No time to chase women, get drunk, go to parties or football games.

Cool Wave was sort of your anti-big-wave statement.

Surf movies at that time were filled with all this take-off-and-die stuff. Big Hawaiian waves. Guys getting crushed. Cool Wave was my tribute to California surfing. The poetic side of California surfing. Perfect glassy high-performance waves. I mean, California surfing at that time was the best surfing in the world. Or that was my kind of semi-preposterous theme.

What was it like when you finally started showing Cool Wave?

I was 18, and just amazed, at first, that anybody would actually come and see it. That part was great. But mostly, again, it was a lot of work. Me and a guy from my dorm drove around and put the posters up, then went to the local papers and bought little teeny-tiny ads. We had to drive around and try to rent high school auditoriums. That was a whole deal in itself. Talking to the principal at each school, and calming them down. They were panicked. They didn’t want their auditorium burned down, which wasn’t out of the question. I mean, surfers had ripped apart auditoriums before. So I had to put up a big deposit, and almost every show I had to rent a cop. Like, $25 an hour to have an off-duty city policeman stand there at the front door and look tough and make sure nobody rioted.

All live, yes. Every show. Same for The Performers, same for Free and Easy. Waves of Change and Five Summer Stories were not live.

Didn’t Cool Wave come out around the same time as Endless Summer? The original Endless Summer, before it went mainstream?

My film came out I think in March, and Endless Summer came out in April or May. And of course, once I saw Bruce’s movie I just went “Oh my God. I am so far out of my league.” There was also, for me, this almost kind of supernatural thing about Endless Summer, in that it was so far and away Bruce’s best film; such a quantum leap from what he’d done earlier. There were some really artistic shots in there. Robert and Mike in silhouette, putting their boards on the racks, the sun going down behind them, that kind of thing. I mean, Bruce had never done stuff like that before! I wanted to do stuff like that!

Bruce was ambitious and picked things up really quickly.

Exactly. He was learning the whole time. He was gone for two years or whatever, making 

, and that whole time he was getting better at moviemaking.

Waves of Change is my favorite MacGillivray-Freeman movie now, but when I was a kid, and it came out, I think in 1970, the boards were changing so fast that the movie seemed dated right away

That was very much the case, yes. But having said that, we did a great job marketing that one and the film did really well. Record business, actually. Waves of Change at that time was the second-biggest grossing surf movie after Endless Summer. But you’re right. From a surfer’s standpoint, Evolution and Cosmic Children and Splashdown were all more up to date than 

Didn’t you and Jim [Freeman] run into Paul Witzig, in France, when he was filming Evolution?

We did. Yeah, we arrived with Mark Martinson, Bill Hamilton and Keith Paull, and Witzig was there with Nat Young, Wayne Lynch and Ted Spencer. Changes in board design, at that moment, were happening so fast. Our guys were really good, and really stylish. But Nat and Wayne at that moment were untouchable. They’d just advanced out in front of everybody.

Everybody get along? Peace among nations?

Totally. Jim and I and our crew were in Biarritz for about two months. Witzig and his gang were there for I think three or four weeks. Somebody tipped us off about this new break up north called Hossegor, and we drove up there and just got it perfect. Witzig and his guys stayed back and scored really good waves at La Barre. Then they went to Morocco for a few weeks, came back, and both camps went up and got another great day at Hossegor. That was late September.

How come we don’t see Nat and Wayne in France in Waves of Change?

Witzig and I at one point sat down, started drinking, got drunk, and made this pact to not shoot each other’s guys. Let’s keep the two stories separate. Let’s not confuse everything. Then a few weeks later we all packed up and went to Puerto Rico for the 1968 world titles, and we lived next door to each other in these two cabanas up on a hill. At that point, of course, we would shoot each other’s guys. Later, Jim and I ended up distributing Paul’s movies in America. We made Paul a lot of money.

Were you ready to quit the surf biz after Five Summer Stories?

Jim and I at that point had done just about all we felt we could do with surfing from a technical standpoint. Getting the camera in the water, riding a surfboard with a camera behind somebody, working with really first-rate telephoto equipment and getting right up there so we could see droplets of water as they flew off Nat Young’s feet—those kinds of images were really what we were trying to get. Make it look as beautiful and fun as it really is. Make it look as clean and fresh and pure as it is when you’re actually out there. We wanted to convey the kind of rapture you get while surfing. A tiny glassy afternoon when you’re sitting out there, feet dangling in the water, all slowed down, and here comes that one little pulse of wave energy. Or a perfect day where you’re pumped up, having the time of your life, surfing at your best. I wanted to keep all of that in my life, and I have. I’ve owned the same house in Laguna for 40 years. I can walk to the beach. I still surf. But in terms of work, after Five Summer Stories, it was just time to move on.

"PAUL WITZIG AND I SAT DOWN, GOT DRUNK, AND AGREED NOT TO FILM EACH OTHER'S GUYS" - GREG MACGILLIVRAY INTERVIEW (2014)

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