Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton

[The Ultimate Nullifier]

deadline.com/2017/04/laird-hamilton-surfing-documentary-take-every-wave-sundance-selects-1202070885/

Laird Hamilton Documentary ‘Take Every Wave’ Acquired By Sundance Selects

EXCLUSIVE: After making his bow at Sundance last January, extreme surfer Laird Hamilton has caught his wave with Sundance Selects. The distributor has acquired U.S. rights to Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton, the documentary directed by Last Days in Vietnam and Ethel helmer Rory Kennedy. The film seemed to take the baton from Riding Giants, another seminal surfing film that briefly described how Hamilton was growing from Hawaii surf rat toward the sport’s version of Chuck Yeager (the greatest fighter pilot of his era who did not participate in NASA space launches). Take Every Wave completes the ride. The ruggedly handsome Hamilton eschewed competitions and movie parts and was all about conquering fear to take on 60 foot walls of water off Hawaii, using innovations like rope tows via jet ski to access waves no surfers could get to, to adding blades below the boards to elevate above the foam to sustain longer rides on larger waves.

On the day of his press conference in Sundance, it snowed about a foot in Park City, and I swear I saw Hamilton get out of a truck on Main Street in a track suit (I think he was wearing flip flops), and push a stuck car that was stuck in the show, out of his way, like a scene in a movie. Hamilton plays that rugged hero role well in the documentary, but the film also delves into his rough and tumble upbringing, the ruthlessness he sometimes showed to former team members he felt were holding him back from his ultimate goals, and also the depressions that arose and put his marriage on the rocks, when his techniques seemed to hit the wall on the most dangerous waves, or when his body began to betray his ability to execute these impossible death defying rides that obsessed him. The film is written by Mark Bailey and Jack Youngelson, produced by Kennedy, Paul Speaker, Bailey, Youngelson, and executive produced by Jonathan S. Marshall and William Cawley.

“With Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton, Rory Kennedy has traveled beyond the surf genre to create an in-depth portrait that explores the fear, courage and ambition that pushes a hard-charging athlete to greatness – and the cost that comes with it. Everyone at Sundance Selects is thrilled to be working with Rory and her team to bring this film to U.S. audiences,” said Jonathan Sehring and Lisa Schwartz, co-presidents of Sundance Selects/IFC Films.

Said Kennedy: “It’s an incredible opportunity to join forces with Sundance Selects to share Take Every Wave with a wide audience who will be able to experience the artistry of Laird Hamilton’s surfing on the big screen. More than a world renowned surfer, Laird is an inspiration whose life and accomplishments transcend the sport itself.” UTA Independent Film Group brokered the deal with Arianna Bocco.

[The Ultimate Nullifier]

variety.com/2017/film/festivals/san-sebastian-film-constellation-take-every-wave-1202569590/

San Sebastián: Film Constellation Rolls Out Rory Kennedy’s Laird Hamilton Portrait ‘Take Every Wave’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Kennedy talks about the human focus driving ‘Take Every Wave’

SAN SEBASTIAN — Suggesting the pull of major documentaries on extreme sports legends, London-based Film Constellation has rolled out Rory Kennedy’s weighty “Take Every Wave: the Life of Laird Hamilton,” a portrait of legendary big wave surfer, to multiple major territories.

In banner international deals, Film Constellation has closed France (Groupe AB, Canal Plus), Germany/Austria, one of Europe’s biggest extreme sports movies markets (Universum), China (Jushi Films) and Latin America (Polar Star). Cai Chang has acquired Taiwanese rights, Captive those for airlines.

Previous sales were closed together with UTA Independent Film Group for Canada with Mongrel and for Australia with Madman.

In a deal announced this April, UTA brokered a U.S. sale to Sundance Selects/IFC Films, which will release “Take Every Wave” on Sept. 29. The U.K., Scandinavia, Spain and Japan are currently in negotiation, according to Film Constellation founder Fabien Westerhoff. The two-hour documentary feature world premiered at January’s Sundance Festival and had its European premiere this weekend at Spain’s San Sebastián Festival, playing in its Savage Cinema section. “Take Every Wave” will now segue for its U.K. premiere on Oct. 5 at an IMAX screening at the BFI London Film Festival.

Directed by the Academy Award-nominated Kennedy (“Last Days in Vietnam”), “Take Every Wave” is written by Mark Bailey and Jack Youngelson, produced by Kennedy, Paul Speaker, Bailey, Youngelson, and executive produced by Jonathan S. Marshall and William Cawley.

Mixing archive and new footage with interviews with Hamilton, multiple friends (and sometimes ex-friends), surf journalists, his step-father Bill Hamilton and wife Gabrielle Reece, “Take Every Wave” flashes back from a present where Hamilton is nervously listening to radio reports about El Niño creating historic sea swell. “Take Every Wave” records his early life growing up in on Pūpūkea beach on Hawaii’s Oahu North Shore, where, “100% disobedient,” as his half-brother puts it, he was beaten by his father and bullied at school, but found peace in the ocean.

As its trailer suggests, the bio-doc goes on to feature spectacular footage of Hamilton in the early ‘90s surfing big waves at what came to be known as the Jaws surf break off the north-central coast of Maui. There, with the rest of the Strapped crew, he invented tow-in surfing, the practice of a surfer being towed by a jet-ski into the ocean so as to catch big waves – which caused huge controversy. It also naturally takes in his historic feat in 2000 at Tahiti’s Teahupoʻo break when he surfed what is described as the heaviest wave ever, plus his present passion for foil boarding and fated decision to bring in cameras to shoot his Jaws exploits – which turned him into a celebrity and changed the face of surf forever,

But the real focus of “Take Every Wave” is as much psychological, and a question which Kennedy says she asked herself when a child whose family friends included tennis champion Billie Jean King: What drives an elite athlete to attempt such extraordinary feats? Variety talked to Kennedy just before “Take Every Wave” played San Sebastián:

“Take Every Wave’s” press notes talk about your films addressing some of the world’s most pressing issues: poverty, corruption, domestic abuse, human rights, mental illness. What is the most pressing issue addressed by “Take Every Wave?”

This is a different kind of films from most of the ones I’ve done. It’s part of the appeal, frankly, that it was so different. I was challenged in ways I hadn’t been in my other films. There’s the technical questions: How do you capture a guy on a wave? But what drew me is that I felt it had a great story, the character’s so rich, one of the great individualists, someone who’s forged his own path, who’s changed the sport in radical ways. If you look at other sports, you haven’t seen so many extreme changes.

You go beyond the what to the why: What drives Laird Hamilton? You seem to locate two important answers: One, his childhood and another the need to justify technology in general, in what it allows big wave surfers to achieve. I don’t know if you’d agree….

I think Laird is definitely driven by demons from his childhood, and we explore it in the film. And I think he has an internal drive, which, y’know, nature/nurture. He was driven, from a very young age had a love and passion for the water, he’d push the envelope at home and school, with people in positions of authority. But he managed to harness that part of himself, invest it into something that ultimately was quite satisfying for him. The surfing is a nice backdrop. But at the forefront what drove me was what it takes for a human to achieve greatness, push the envelope, do things nobody else has ever done, at the risk of great personal peril.

One important thing is chance. Just as big wave surfing was coming onto the media radar, he met Gabrielle Reece, who was working on TV, and was more clued into what the man she fell in love with could offer as a media brand.

I think it played a role. But it speaks to something bigger; when you are so singularly focused in your life there’s gonna be cost and consequences. Those [Strapped] friends were of great value to Laird at that time. But he has to move on and find some other people who’ll continue to help him achieve his goals. If you’re onboard with that, it works. If not, it doesn’t work so well. I think you can say with Gaby and other people in his life, it is the cost of greatness, to some degree.

Laird himself says that he “didn’t reject competition as much as judgment.” To what extent did he’d view you, as a director, in the interviews or finished film, as a possible source of judgment, and thus feel slightly uncomfortable.

That’s a brilliant question. I think he and Gabby are very open, he was incredibly generous, he put me in touch with family and friends that he has a strange relationship with. The interview was done over four days, three hours a day, we covered a lot of ground and I think he was largely open with me. But I think it was not always a comfortable place for him. It was a process of making him feel comfortable and not really forcing anything per se. Some things I did force in the beginning, I really wanted editorial control. There were some ground rules agreed to early on.