Dan Levy's interview with Art Brewer ran in the February 2002 issue of Juice magazine.

What was it like being on the set of Big Wednesday?

There were times in Hawaii when all of the stars of the film were coked up and partying. I’m not saying any names but it was pretty crazy. They were all running around like madmen.

I had a lot of laughs. It was funny to see guys like Bill Hamilton getting their chests shaved so they could look more youthful. It was pretty much a constant party.

Do you have any mentors that you look to for advice?

I always looked up to a guy named Spyder Wills. He was a movie photographer, also from Laguna Beach, where I grew up, and he taught me a lot about using film and how to do follow-focus with a big lens. The composition part came from some of my art instructors in school who were very talented artists themselves. And then Bud Browne and Greg McGillivray brought a lot of that to surfing before I got there. Ron Stoner was also a big influence; not directly, but just from his incredible work.

What was it like meeting up with photographer Peter Beard in Montauk?

That was a great experience. It was a trip. He'd rented the Andy Warhol Montauk estate [in 1997] because he was putting together a show for Italy. He was so accommodating. He was in the middle of a project and just invited us in. I asked if he would mind if I took some pictures and he said not at all. He was enjoying himself quite a bit while we were there. 

[Note: Brewer was in New York for a magazine project, along with writer Scott Hulet.]

Oh yeah. He was getting high. He felt quite comfortable with us being around. Not apprehensive at all. He figured we wouldn’t be there if we weren’t in the loop.

What is the most intense situation you’ve ever had on a photoshoot?

It wasn't a shoot, exactly, but traveling with Bunker Spreckels, for sure. He was up and down constantly. It was a wild time.

Was Bunker a hitman or a diamond smuggler?

He wasn’t a hitman. He was a talented martial artist and he was quite good with guns. He liked to hunt. He used to go shooting with Clark Gable all the time; Clark being his stepfather. As far as the diamonds, yeah, that’s a possibility. The entire two months we were in South Africa we were followed by the police.

Well, Bunker was a bit crazy. He wasn’t normal. The diamond thing is a good possibility. I have a feeling that some diamonds were moved one way or another, yeah.

What was the craziest thing that happened with you and Bunker?

Probably the night of his birthday when he basically went nuts because he got jealous about his girlfriend. He threw her through a plate glass window and basically tore the place apart. She ran away and hid in a room and this local farmer came and took her to safety. Bunker didn’t know where she'd gone so he went on a rampage, kicking in doors at the beach hotel. He'd rented the whole place, the entire hotel. He totaled two Mercedes that night. I just sort of walked away from the situation at that point. It was pretty gnarly the next morning. I was eating breakfast on the patio and I see these two hands climbing this eight-foot wall in front of me. The hands come over the top of the wall and there's Bunker in the same blue blazer with German riding boots and a pair of white bell bottom pants, the same outfit he had on the night before. Later that day he tried to shoot me. He shot at me and this South African surfer, Tony van den Heuvel, tackled me to the ground just before the bullet grazed off the wall.

Artist-writer Dibi Fletcher, wife of Herbie Fletcher and mother to Christian and Nathan, interviewed Art Brewer for the April 2007 issue of Juice magazine.

Would you have ever imagined in the winter of ’69 when you lived next door to us at Pupukea, that we’d be sitting here 37 years later doing an interview?

I’m still amazed that I’m alive, and that I made it that far.

[Laughs.] Herbie and I used to hide from your camera.

Was that your first winter on the North Shore?

I was living with Spyder and [SURFER owner-publisher] John Severson, and then Corky and Sheryl Carroll came in for a little while. Louise Severson [John's wife] and their two girls were there, too. It was one happy family.

That’s when came back [to California] and sold the magazine and moved to Maui.

Which was great, because he was so straight.

Well, by then he was getting less straight.

Was being a surf photographer more difficult in the ’60s and ’70s because so many surfers on the North Shore didn’t want their photo taken?

Definitely. It was sometimes hard to even find someone to shoot. You were lucky to find anyone on the beach before 10 in the morning because everyone was still sleeping off the night before.

At that time, weren't you also a photographer’s assistant for Playboy?

That came later, around 1975. I did some work with [photographers] Dwight Hooker and Ken Marcus. I met Ken in Hollywood, and I had worked with Hooker down in Laguna Beach a few times. There was a skateboard girl that was "Miss Hobie" at the time. She wanted to be in Playboy really bad, so she came to me and I shot some test shots of her. Eventually, Dwight called me up and I took him to the locations where I shot the original stuff, and they basically recreated what I did. But she still never got in Playboy.

Well, they shot hundreds of rolls of film, and I got paid.

No, I never worked at High Times. But I did work with Terry Lamb and some other people who had money and were connoisseurs of really good weed. All types of weed, from Mexico, Thailand, Columbia, you name it. They would collect specimens. It got to the point that we did a calendar from 12 different specimens. They printed about 5,000 calendars, and those things were really expensive to produce. In the end, they sold maybe 1,000 of them and the rest of sat in a Dana Point garage for years.

The whole project wasn't logical. I told those guys, and they said, "Oh, no. Everyone will want one." I was like, "Why? They’re not smoking them. They’re looking at them." But it gave them something to do, I guess.

Did you take Ron Stoner’s spot after John Severson sent him to the hospital for shock treatment?

Yes, I did. That story keeps coming back kind wrong, the way it all went down. The way Jeff Divine tells it, the mantel was passed when the 1000-mm lens got to Jeff. Except I know for a fact that the year before, in 1969, I took that lens to Hawaii. I picked it up in August, after leaving the weed abatement crew. I was the one that went to Ron’s apartment to get it, and took with me to Hawaii.

I always thought it was funny that I shot all of these SURFER covers and photos with that 1000-mm lens that year, and the way the history books tell it, I never had that lens, Jeff did. What happened a few months later was, things got a little tight at SURFER, so John figured he could save some money by having me go on unemployment. So I did and they brought Divine in that winter. I was on unemployment for eight months.

You were still working for him as contract labor, but not on the payroll?

What’s the statute of limitations for John?

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