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BUSTIN’ DOWN THE DOOR
Directed by Jeremy Gosch
Produced by Monika Gosch & Robert Traill
Written by Jeremy Gosch, Monika Gosch, Traill & Shaun Tomson  
Released by Screen Media Films
USA. 95 min. Not rated
Narrated by Edward Norton
With Wayne “˜Rabbit” Bartholomew, Ian Cairns, Mark “MR” Richards, Peter Townend, Shaun Tomson, Michael Tomson, Eddie Rothman & Barry Kanaiaupuni

Bustin’ Down the Door is like going to your high school reunion and trying to match your memories of the cute long-haired jocks to the middle-aged guys with receding hairlines and spreading waists going on about their glory days.

Director Jeremy Gosch has a lot of archival visuals to help us with these memories. Bringing a ferocious new style, these brash Australians and South Africans who invaded Hawaii in the mid-1970’s to conquer the traditional citadel of big wave surfing attracted a horde of photographers and filmmakers. With some brief biographical background establishing how surfing was an escape from home problems and pressures, six trend-setting champions are extensively interviewed.

The birth of professional surfing eventually emerges out of a squall of repetitive-looking clips and technical surfing jargon way beyond what has migrated to general audiences through pop songs and period slang. The film begs for on-screen definitions and diagrams, like during football games. Journalists, witnesses, including one who is now a state senator, and later champions also testify how these outsiders did not just change surfing styles with chutzpah. Aggressively courting the press on land, this highly competitive group believed surfing was a sport of highly skilled athletes and should be considered the equal of golf and tennis through international competitions and commercial sponsorship—all so these then-twentysomethings could keep catching the waves full time.

An intriguing section of the documentary is the issue of the outsiders’ naïvely insensitive attitudes towards Hawaii’s national pastime, one of the last bastions of native identity. (Lisette Marie Flanary’s Na Kamalei: The Men of Hula provides more background on the cultural issues for natives of the islands beyond the bare explanation here.) Included are interviews with native surfers who were conciliatory or antagonistic, including an organizer of the tough turf-defending surfers Da Hui. Buttressed by photographs, all credit legendary surfer Eddie Aikau for fairly negotiating a peace settlement (with apologies from the foreigners) to restore some aloha spirit. While the foreigners still insist they were just reflecting their own national identities, they do come across like Elvis Presley appropriating Little Richard’s moves for fame, even if not much fortune was earned in those days.

And the rest is commercial history, as CEOs of surfing-related companies casually recite the explosive growth in their revenues that now support formal sponsorships of professional surfers and competitions around the world. While Gosch resists obvious surf songs on the soundtrack and minimizes the obligatory shots of bikini-clad groupies, this is a boys’ club, one primarily for guys already familiar with the sport or other surfing movies. Nora Lee Mandel
July 25, 2008