“Before I go in the water I make sure I’m ok with
losing.”
The surf film god Jack McCoy spent two years
back in the early 2000s making a surf documentary called Blue
Horizon that would do two things: confirm the legend of Andy
Irons and show, for the first time before or since, a
version of Kelly Slater riven by vulnerability.
At a broad stroke, Blue Horizon contrasts the lives and
philosophies of two of the world’s top surfers at the time:
Hawaiian-born Andy Irons, a wildly competitive surfer driven to win
world titles and Dave Rastovich, able to draw cheques without
surfing in any damn contests, a man famous for his environmental
activism and endowed with a level of surfing that is as immaculate
as his coca butter skin and glowing smile.
Blue Horizon follows Andy Irons during his
campaign to defeat Kelly Slater and win the ASP World Title, which
he did in 2002, 2003, and 2004.
And it’s that rivalry that draws the viewer into the closing
sequence of the film, the 2003 Pipe showdown that broke Kelly
Slater.
Los Angeles born McCoy, who is seventy-six and who’s been in
rough health with an unspecified illness the past few years and
speaks with a ragged whisper, had broken his ankle two days before
he was supposed to hit the North Shore for the 2003 Pipeline
Masters.
He called Ben Davies, a Bondi surfer and documentary maker back
when he was a young shooter on the make and three years before he’d
roll into the big-time with the eighteen-season worldwide hit Bondi
Rescue.
Told Ben, you’ll stay in the Billabong house, I’ll pay you a
weekly rate and here’s a letter introducing you to Kelly Slater
who’s staying a few doors down in one of the houses at the
Johnson’s Pipe compound.
Ben took his letter over to Kelly whom he found “super charming
but closed to having a camera in his face weeks out from the world
title showdown.
“It took me a little while to realise that he was charming me to
get on his program. At first I thought, what a nice guy, he’s so
friendly and at the same time after meeting Andy, thinking, Andy is
pretty raw and brusque even offensive. If it wasn’t for the insight
from Occy, Parko and Taj who were staying at the house, I would’ve
found Andy hard to deal with. But I warmed to him. There was no BS
about him. He was as raw and honest and pure and unadulterated as
possible. Andy was this untamed good hearted, good spirited
beast.”
Meanwhile, Kelly didn’t want to be in the movie. Wanted to focus
on beating Andy. At the same time, when Andy heard that Ben was
going to follow him around he told him, “No, that’s not going to
happen.”
“He was open to an interview here and there but not being
followed around. That’s what I was there to do and I needed to
convince him. That was in our first meeting. Immediately, Kelly
saying no, Andy saying, no, no, no. But what I had was the name
Jack McCoy. It carries a lot of weight so I was sorta in. It wasn’t
a cold door knock for either of them. It was what I was proposing
that was the problem, filming, observing during the world title
climax.”
Ben put his mini-DV camera down for a few days and started
hanging with Andy and Kelly, separately, figuring if he could show
‘em he wasn’t going to throw ‘em down the well, they’d give him
access.
“The more I hung around with Andy, the more he realised, this
guy’s ok. The door opened wider and wider and by the time my
girlfriend turned up on the North Shore we’d go off and play tennis
with him and his girlfriend, surf Waikiki together. Andy was the
sorta guy that if he didn’t want to do something he wouldn’t try
and make excuses. He’d tell you he wasn’t doing it. And I respected
that raw honestly.
“And, then, with Kelly, he was the ultimate charmer. He was
saying no but then at the same time having me over for breakfast
with him at his house every other day, inviting me over to to talk
about stuff unrelated to surfing. Very interesting, tangential
conversations. Then, eventually, I put it to him: you’re Kelly
Slater. You’re focused on winning a world title. And if that
happens, and you expect it will, you can’t turn around later and
say, hey, can get those moments in the movie? The moment’s passed.
Here’s the opportunity now to get it. If we don’t, the moment is
lost forever. If you believe you’ll win, take advantage of it. Then
he said, ‘Yeah, cool, let’s do it.’”
Ben says he told Kelly and Andy, “All I’m doing is making a
faithful representation of both your seasons here in Hawaii and
nothing else. Not being part of the surf industry there was no fear
of fallout later if someone didn’t like me. If someone was going to
lose I wasn’t going to sugarcoat it because there was no
consequence for me later. I just had to stick to my word and be
faithful to events. And make sure I did a good job for Jack who’d
been a hero of mine for years.”
Viewers of the film will remember a few things.
There’s a heated-up Andy telling Ben he’s going to ruin Kelly’s
pretty picture. There’s Kelly saying the North Shore was secretly
gunning for him and not AI.
Those quotes didn’t just appear. Ben was smart enough to relay
comments back and forth between the two that would provoke
compelling vision for the film.
“It didn’t take much to get Andy going,” says Ben. “Andy was in
that boxer mentality, wanting to go in and destroy. Classic
journalist style. Kelly makes a comment and then you take it back
to Andy for his right of reply. And then Andy would say, ‘Kelly
won’t be welcome back here on the North Shore’ and Kelly would be,
like, ‘That’s bullshit.’”
Kelly’s vulnerability became evident when he admitted to
visualising losing to reduce the enormous pressure. It was part of
the game of an Australian ironman. The theory was if you can get a
little steam out of the blood pressure, you go into the contest
with a clearer focus and that should turn into winning.
“I bought it myself at the time. If you talk to a mindset coach
now, you’d never do that,” says Ben. “You risk manifesting the
opposite outcome and your belief in winning is corroded and
impacted by that.”
The peak moment of the sequence in the film is Kelly Slater, who
has just lost the world title and the Pipe Masters crown to Andy,
weeping alone in the Johnson’s outdoor shower, at least before big
bro Sean swings over and consoles him, while Andy and Lyndie and
Bruce and the Wolf Pack whoop it up next door.
The sequence was shot by a young Billabong filmer Jay Lancaster
who was told by Jack McCoy, don’t let Kelly out of your sight. Jack
told Ben the same thing about Andy.
“That was a very powerful moment in competitive surfing. A lot
of history,” says Ben. “And it’s funny. When I ran into Kelly a
year or two later in Sydney we had a beer together and I asked him,
‘How did you feel about your representation on screen? And he
thought about it. Looked at me. Said, ‘It was fair. It was
fair.’
“I never saw Andy again but I remember the nickname he gave me
for staying on his case that winter: Shadow.”
Jack McCoy is touring Blue Horizon coast to coast, Perth to the
Gold Coast and most places in between, through April and May. You
know Jackie’s shows are good, he’s gonna talk story before each
screening.
