The Endless Summer

By Lee | March 25th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

I’ve been feeling sick lately and this freezing cold weather in New York is starting to become a real bummer so I decided to watch one of my favorite movies of all time last night, The Endless Summer. It’s one of those movies that every time you see it, it just makes you relax and takes you away to the places where the two main characters are in the movie. The movie is timeless and so brilliantly simple. If you had the time and the money, you could follow the summer around the world wherever it goes, making it endless.

The 1966 film follows two surfers, Mike Hynson and Robert August, on a surf trip around the world. Despite the balmy climate of their native California, cold ocean currents make local beaches inhospitable during the winter. They travel to the coasts of Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, and Hawaii in a quest for new surf spots and introduce locals to the sport. When the movie was first shown, it encouraged many surfers to go abroad, giving birth to the surf and travel culture, which prizes finding uncrowded surf, meeting new people, riding the perfect wave and just enjoying life.

The Endless Summer is about so much more than surfing. While I love surfing, I see the film as it relates to peoples outlook on life in general and the way people live their lives. It illustrates that there is so much out there to see and do and to experience. If you’ve seen the movie, the main characters head to the west coast of Africa in the mid 1960’s. At that point they could have been and probably were the first white people many of the natives had ever seen as illustrated in the film. It’s just fun to watch their interractions and you can just imagine that being you.

The Endless Summer 2 came out in 1994 and basically retraced the steps of Mike Hynson and Robert August. The film also shows some great footage of surfing in France, South Africa, Costa Rica, Bali, Java, and even Alaska. It is also a very fun film to watch but the original will always be special. Check it out, even if you don’t like surfing-the carefree style of life is a breath of fresh air and the beaches are great. Wouldn’t we all just like to live an endless summer.