Three things have helped deliver me to this point, here in 2017. Throughout the 1980s, my muse, my creative North Star, was to try and be as smart and funny as Drew Kampion was during his '69-'70 SURFER heyday. 

 subscription, unbroken to this day, lifted me dripping and afraid from the cheap blue plastic lawn pool with "SURFERS ONLY!" Sharpie-marked on the side and dropped me beachfront on the Bay of Finnegan, to observe and learn and wade forth. I am still wading.

 took my interest finor surf history and tricked it out. Gave it a little kick. Do the research, always. Know your business. Know twice as much, ten times as much, as what you put out there. But lighten it up. Make it dance. Add sparkle. 

 director Stacy Peralta does this again and again throughout his superb movie, but for me the real come-to-Jesus moment is seen at 00:34 in the clip above. Two quick shots. Paperboy riding on the sidewalk, followed by an 

 smacking down on a brick porch. Zoom in. Oh, It's that famous Makaha pic with three surfers riding in formation, the legendary shot heard 'round the American surf world, the siren call to pack your duffle and steam over to Hawaii to live in a moldy Quonset hut with five other surfer-campers and ride the big ones.

Surf nerds like me had seen the photo. We knew AP wired it out in late '53 and the thing got printed all over the place. We knew it was life-changing for Ricky Grigg and Fred Van Dyke and others. All fine and good. What Stacy did 

was put us in the doorway when the paper hit the bricks

What a rush! For the surfer bending down to snatch up his paper in 1953, and for me in a theater seeing 

 for the first time in 2004—partly because I felt connected to that surfer of 50 years, but also because Stacy had just handed me a sharp new tool with which to chip away at surf history.

Like I say, trick it out. As in, use trickery. Don't lie, but do what you gotta do to make it pop and sing. That first shot, of the paperboy, is just some period-appropriate stock footage. It's the setup. The shot of the paper itself is where the magic happens. I'm just guessing, but Stacy or an assistant probably spooled through the 

 on microfiche at the local public library (

 wasn't made pre-internet, but I doubt the 

 was online in the early 2000s), found the issue, had the front page mocked up, carefully wrapped the mock-up around a 2002 

, then filmed the thing hitting the porch. In other words, a shitload of work for a three-second shot that on some technical level isn't history at all, but sleight of hand. Then again . . . it is perfect. It literally raises the dead, and history, surf or otherwise, can do no better than that.

STACY DOES MAKAHA: AN ODE TO "RIDING GIANTS"

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