Somewhere out there, there’s a lost Jordy Smith movie. Ten years ago, at the onset of a long career, he started a film with Billabong that would never see the light of day. Now he’s looking for the footage.
Smith discussed the missing film on the latest episode of Sterling Spencer’s podcast, Pinch My Salt. Spencer was a particularly apropos host for the discussion, as he himself was involved in the project. As Smith described in the episode, the incident was right after he burst onto the scene with a World Junior Championship win in 2006 and started filming a solo movie with Billabong.
“We all grew up on that generation where making a movie about yourself was it,” he told Spencer. “You reached the tip of the iceberg. It still is today for me, personally… That’s been the driving force for when I really surf good is to make the best film parts. To be able to have the opportunity to make one with Billabong at that point, it was everything.”
However, capitalism soon got in the way of the production. As Smith’s star began to rise, it led to a dispute between his father and Billabong over a handshake agreement for a sponsorship deal. “I think my dad kind of shook one of their hands like ‘Okay cool this is a deal.’ I think it was like 30 grand 40 grand a year and then scaling up from there, not knowing where I was going to go the following year,” he described. “Then after all those other events happened, it just was like, ‘Hey, there’s a new market price now,’ but they were still stuck on the old market price.”
Though the production kept on going in the vain hope that the parties would come to an agreement, it never happened. Jordy and Billabong parted ways, and Billabong took the footage with them. Ten years on, Jordy doesn’t seem to hold any ill will about the whole dispute. The only thing he really wants is those clips.
“We looked for 10 years. I went from person to person to person. Still to this day, that shit just died,” he concluded. “So, if anybody’s watching this, name your price.”
