Have a close look at the opening two minutes of the video above. This was more or less the working environment under which most surf movies got made in the late '60s and early '70s. In fact, this particular Topanga Beach freakout took place about 250 yards from filmmaker Hal Jepsen's house, where he edited Cosmic Children and Super Session and all the rest of his rough-edged odes to hardcore surfing. Greg MacGillivray and Jim Freeman may have been living squeaky-clean down in Laguna (and their work was correspondingly five times better filmed and produced), but most surf filmmakers were doing it rough, the way Jepsen did it, with one hand on the Moviola and the other another two-knuckles deep in a baggie full of Colombian Gold. "We were all just hanging out and smoking dope, then going surfing, then coming back to do some editing," Nat Young said, recalling the post-production itinerary for Paul Witzig's 1969 classic Evolution. "It's a miracle the thing came out as well as it did."

The best part of surf movies from that time—or an essential part, I guess is a better way of putting it—was the music, most of it hotter than the jewels in Murph the Surf's suitcase. Permissions? Rights? Come on, now. Flip that Stones album over and hit "record."

Jepsen had a fine, deep LP collection, and the soundtrack he put together for Cosmic Children would have been the all-time best in surfing—except Scott Dittrich, his young protege, came along a few years later and one-upped him with Fluid Drive. I talked to Scott earlier this week.

You got started in surf movies working with Hal Jepsen?

 when I met him. Around 1971. He was living in Topanga, right off Pacific Coast Highway, and he was . . . let’s say a bit disorganized. He needed help on the business end, so I went to work for him. I organized showings, booked the theaters, delivered the film, that kind of thing.

Well, you know, it was the ‘70s and there was a lot of substance stuff going around, and that didn’t help the organizational side.

Kind of. Actually, no, it got postponed several times. But finally we booked the Santa Monica Civic for the opening, and on opening night—the movie wasn’t really finished. Mostly it was just a work print. Part of the movie was finished, and part was really rough. It had some issues, put it that way. We’d been up for three days straight before the Civic show, working on the movie, doing promo, and the clock was just ticking away. At one point I remember Hal hired [surf moviemaker] Grant Rohloff to come in and help on the edit, and that didn’t work out too well. So yeah, it was just nuts.

The audience could tell. They weren’t happy.

Hal get pelted with food and bottles or anything like that?

No, no. Nothing violent. Just this disappointment. You could feel it in the theater. 

 had been such a hit, and people were really expecting something great. 

 actually got better a little later in the year, because Hal was editing it between screenings. But those first early showings, like I say, it just wasn’t there yet.

 is that Hal really loaded the soundtrack. Cream, Stones, Hendrix, on and on.

But then you came along with Fluid Drive and out-did him! Robin Trower, Lou Reed, Zepplin, Pink Floyd. That bit with BK and Hendrix . . . 

How did you and Hal and everybody else make those soundtracks? I mean, technically?

You’d find the song you wanted for a sequence, cut it up and transfer it onto a 16mm magnetic film. Same as putting it on reel-to-reel, but the tape had sprocket holes. You’d have a nice flatbed editing machine that would run at least two soundtracks at the same time, and one film track. Then it was just a matter of lining the different tracks up and getting things to synch the way you wanted. That’s a really simplified version of how it worked. And it was a LOT of work, compared to what you can do now on a computer.

You guys were poaching all that music. Did anybody, any singers or bands, did they ever get pissed off?

Nobody knew, I don’t think. Or if they did, they thought it was good marketing. There were LA record company people at the Civic, for some of those surf movies. I saw them. They were stoked. What we were doing, with surf movies, was so small. And at the time, also, the music industry was just rolling in dough, so if they had any thought at all about us taking those songs, it was like “Great, go ahead, thanks for the plug.” That all changed a few years later. Which was too bad. Also, I should say that not all the music was taken recorded from albums. 

 had some great original stuff, from John Heuestenstamm.

You and J Riddle scored epic Scorpion Bay for 

We weren't first, no. But it wasn’t called Scorpion Bay. We named it Rattlesnake Point.

We drove down the coast, down Baja, me and J Riddle and Skip Smith, who was my partner on Fluid Drive. And you know, it was just a whole different deal than it is today. The maps were terrible, the little towns we were supposed to find along the way, some of them were just non-existent. We made it all the way to Cabo San Lucas and hadn’t really gotten much surf. But Cabo was nice, we got some fun waves, and stayed there for a while. Then this hurricane hit, a really big ugly one, it killed 19 people in San Jose del Cabo. In the middle of all that we load up the trucks and head back up the peninsula, looking for this place that we’d heard rumors about, a big long point wave. That was 19 straight hours of driving. Hot, dusty, bad roads. We arrive in the little town there in the middle of the night, fall asleep, wake up in the morning, drove out to where we figured the break was and surf is crappy. Back to town, kill some time, drink a couple Cokes or whatever. Then in the afternoon, we drive back to the point, it’s low tide, the swell has come up all of a sudden, and we look out to see these waves peeling in. Then it was just this mad scramble.

I love that scene where you guys are lowering the boards down the cliff with a rope.

It’s a rugged place, and we had no idea what we were doing at that point.

Just that afternoon and the next day. But I think all the footage we used was shot from that first session.

So Riddle and those guys were surfing it for the first time, figuring the place out, while you’re filming?

Yep. And Riddle, I remember, he’d take off, ride, keep riding, and just vanish. We wouldn’t see him for an hour; he’d ride all the way into town. The point is huge!

SURF MOVIE TONITE, WITH MICK, KEITH, JIMI, ZEP, AND MORE

Subscribe or Login

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Interviews

Features

The Sunday Joint

Videos