Sundance
2004 With Ben Marcus
Latest Update: January
14, 2004
Hello,
There
was a time when I was infamous for writing Daily Dispatches about
my travels with my beloved cat Ike (sniff).
I haven't done it for awhile but will start up again for this
trip to Sundance, because it could get interesting, what with
Black Ice and movie stars and all that.
Enjoy, or not. This one will be a bit long-winded to catch up
on what I am doing and where I am. But the rest will be about
the Sundance experience.
Ben
21:27
NIGHT TIMEÊ THE OFFICE AT TOM MOORE'SÊ TUESDAY THE 13TH OF JANUARY
It
is 21:27 at night and my back is wrecked and I can barely walk.
I surfed Malibu for two hours tonight and two hours yesterday
and now I am paying for it. Tomorrow I will get on a plane and
fly to Utah and stay in a hotel near the airport in Salt Lake
City and drive up to 23,000 feet and hang around Park City until
Saturday night, and I can barely walk. Oh fun.
Right
now I am in the office on Tom Moore's property on Wildlife Road
in Point Dume. I have been staying here for a couple of months
now and it's great, although I miss Ike. He is buried on the property,
so I will always have an attachment here.
Tom
Moore is 70 and works hard, but can be a bit cranky at times.
He is working with me on Malibu Fire and I turned his raw materials
on the Fredrickson Brothers and the House of David into a screenplay
called Nine Sons in a Row that is still at Playtone, I think,
and might be going to Warner Brothers soon.
I
am wondering when Tom is going to throw me out but for now the
situation is great. I have lots of work to do and a nice place
to do it. I love Malibu and I want to stay here, although I wish
I had a better back.
Tonight
I am rewriting Malibu Fire so it starts in Malibu and then goes
to Montana. I have started the show in the parking lot at Zuma
Beach, because that is where I see the fire-fighters from Station
71 playing volleyball every morning. I start the TV show with
them playing volleyball and then responding to a call up on Kanan
Dume Road.
I
am rewriting Malibu Fire at the suggestion of a woman named Kathy
Henderson Martin who I met at Paradise Cove. She is a Casting
Director with a long list of credits. She read Malibu Fire but
only got 24 pages in before she realized it needed work. She told
me to restructure it, start it in Malibu and take out all the
celebrity references to John McEnroe, Gary Busey and Laird Hamilton.
She said no production company would take it seriously with such
pie in the sky casting ideas and she also doesn't think any Malibu
resident actor will risk their privacy just to be on a TV show.
It
seems to me that all of these reality TV shows risk everyone's
privacy, but maybe she is right.
So
I am rewriting it.
Last
Sunday I drove to Brentwood and left two copies of Malibu Fire
and two copies of Nine Sons in a Row at the PO Box for David Chokachi.
He was an actor on Baywatch and he is taking both scripts to a
friend at Warner Brothers this week.
I'll
be curious to hear what the Warner Brothers guy says, if he bothers
to read it.
You
never know. Tonight I hope to finish rewriting Malibu Fire and
I also want to finish a book proposal for Reading Riding Giants.
Tomorrow I am flying Jet Blue from Long Beach to Salt Lake City
to attend the Sundance Film Festival. Stacy Peralta's documentary
on big-wave surfing Riding Giants will be the premiere movie on
Thursday the 15th and I am hoping to cover it for SURFER, the
Surfer's Journal, Surfers: Germany, Malibu Monthly and the Half
Moon Bay Review.
Right
now I'm not even sure I will be able to get into that opening
night show. I thought I was getting in on Stacy's coattails but
that isn't going to happen. Larry Hammerness is going to Sundance
with me to shoot photos. Last Friday we shot Stacy's studio in
Santa Monica and found out we were on our own.
I
contacted a guy at Sundance named Levi Elder (who isn't Mormon)
and begged and pleaded to be let in. I sent in my application
on Friday and haven't heard from him since.
I
want to shadow Stacy around Sundance and see what the audience
reaction is to what I already know is a great project. I have
seen Riding Giants twice and I can appreciate how much work he
has put into it. This is easily the most ambitious, most intelligent
and best-crafted big-screen surfing project since The Endless
Summer. I'm not surprised Sundance is putting it in the spotlight.
Which of the other 100 featured movies are going to have as much
drama and grace and beauty and death as Riding Giants has, and
it is all real.
We
fly out tomorrow night at 19:55 and get to SLC by 23:00. The last
time I was in SLC was in May, when I was waiting to pick up New
York Person for that doomed trip to Fiji. That seems like a thousand
centuries ago. I had Ike with me then.
Shit.
Larry
and I are staying in Salt Lake City and will drive up to Park
City every day. I have no idea what Park City is like, but I'm
pretty sure it will be cold.
The
premiere for Riding Giants is Thursday and there will be a party
on Saturday night and I don't know what I will do in between.
I have reading to do and writing and taped interviews to transcribe
and I can burn a lot of time writing these things.
I
also will have 10 copies of Nine Sons in a Row and some copies
of Malibu Fire so maybe I can schmooze, although I would rather
just observe and share my observations with y'all.
Today
at Malibu I bumped into that young surfer rat kid who was playing
guitar on the stairs last Saturday. I heard him play a few bars
of Led Zeppelin's Over the Hills and Far Away and it sounded great.
I know a prodigy when I hear one. The kid also surfs hot and is
basically the living version of two characters from Malibu Fire:
Brock and Clark.
After
hearing that Led Zep on Saturday I wanted to find the kid to ask
him if he would provide music for the documentary I am working
on with Jon Austin. It is called Golden Years and it is about
the Malibu Surf Legends Denny is featuring in his t-shirt line.
We are stealing all the footage and music and already have used
Golden Years by David Bowie, Wipe Out by the Surfaris and Summertimeby
Janis Joplin. There is a part that needs an instrumental and this
kid could be the kid.
I
talked to him in the parking lot and said I would try to make
him a little famous and then maybe a lot famous. He was coming
in from surfing as I was going out. His name is James MacLennan
and he reminds me of me a little when I was that age, and also
Michael. He's just a stoked kid who is one of a crew of hot longboarders
out at Malibu, which was really fun today: Three foot waves and
offshore under perfectly blue skies. I caught some good waves
despite my horrid back, and felt like a surfer.
I
also got good Malibu on Saturday and yesterday. I actually caught
a really good wave off First Point at high tide yesterday It was
a three-foot wave that lined up all the way inside and I felt
like a surfer for the first time in a while. The 10' 6" felt too
long and I did some turns.
Malibu
is just a fricking blast of a wave. The crowd at Malibu is generally
pretty bad, which is kind of surprising.
All
that surfing should make me feel better, but it's making me worse.
Oh well.
Today
I surfed between two edit sessions on the Malibu documentary.
I got coffee at Trancas Starbucks this morning and bought a copy
of the LA Times which had the article by Steve Hawk on the missing
footage of Greg Noll's wave at Makaha in 1969. I gave that idea
to Steve, kind of, but he did a good job. If the companion book
to Riding Giants happens, that will be a perfect sidebar.
The
photo with the article shows Greg Noll's board stuck in the lip
of a big wave at Makaha. I once took that board to Hawaii so Brock
Little could ride it at Waimea. That board is 11' 4" and a monster,
but it looks like a toothpick in the lip of that wave.
That
is a big wave.
On
my way up to Trancas I saw the Station 71 guys playing volleyball
and when I got back to the office I started rewriting Malibu Fire.
I just finished the new intro and now have to shorten the rest
of it.
I
also went to Denny Moore's office and picked up a check for $500
from Longboard Magazine and a check for $350 from Denny. That
is going to have to cover Sundance and it might just barely do
it. The flight is $160 and the motel is $98 a night and I don't
know how much the rental car will be. I thought I was going just
for Wednesday and Thursday nights, but now I will be there until
Saturday, to go to the official Riding Giants party.
Not
sure which of the Big Shots will be at the party, but I want to
record what happens and get photos in case they let me write the
book. The book will be about the documentary of course but there
will also be a sub-story of Stacy's slings and arrows to make
the documentary and getting it into Sundance. I have to get going
on that proposal soon and get it printed tomorrow.
What
else? A lot else. I shortened the profile on the Malloy Brothers
and their Jalama Ranch for Surfers: Germany and sent it last night.
This morning Dirk sent an email saying he was happy with it at
4700, and gave my next assignment: Surfing and Art.
I
am still reading a biography on Peter Lawford for that article
and I am also reading Get Yamamoto, a Satchel Paige biography
and a Marilyn Monroe biography.
Busy
busy busy. Good thing I don't have a job to get in the way of
all this work.
Tomorrow
I have to buy a decent pair of pants and get my sunglasses fixed
and mail some Marilyn/Peter photos to Drew Kampion and some Strange
Bedfellows stickers to the DemocracyMeansYou.com website. I also
have to pick up 10 copies of the baseball movie at The Printing
Palace and if I get my act together I also will have had some
new copies of Malibu Fire printed, along with the book proposal.
I
want to try to surf tomorrow if my back will let me and I have
to be at Larry's by 15:00. I would love to buy a new computer
because I can no longer travel with this laptop. The computer
repairmen broke it and couldn't fix it. But I need a new one anyway.
If
only someone would pay me.
Today
I also got an email from the guy who is taking seriously that
idea to do guided movie tours of San Francisco. I am hoping to
write and research the tours and have been buying $3 videos at
CineFile. He sounds serious and I hope he is. That's it for now.
Time to write the revision of Malibu Fire and check my laundry
and pack for the big adventure.
It's
now 10:05.
Good
night.
Now
I am having an IM session with Patti McGee, skateboarding's It
girl from the 60s. She is likeable and now on the dispatch list.
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