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Maverick's "Next Level" with filmmaker Eric Nelson.

Ever since Jeff Clark went public with Mavericks in 1990, Eric Nelson has been the break's premiere filmaker. Starting with footage from his cable TV show "Powerlines" and footage from ace cameramen Curt Myers, Steve Spaulding and Frank Quirarte, Eric produced a series of videos that captured Mavericks legendary sessions. "High Noon at Low Tide" won Surfer Magazine's "Best Wipe Out of the Year" in 1994 showing 16 year old Jay Moriarty's "Crucifixion". "Twenty Feet Under" was a "K2" contender. "Know Fear" records the 98/99 season. Erics most recent video, "Year of the Drag-In" was invited to EXPN's "Tube 2000 Action Sports Film Festival"-an event showcasing the best in extreme sports filmmaking. Steve Hawk of Swell.com calls "Year of the Drag-In's" footage, "Stunning". The film's monster surf and tow-in performances rank it among the most intense Mavericks films ever made. In the following interview Eric Nelson talks about his new film, last winter's carnage (including the "Men Who Ride Mountains Big Wave Event") and a fabled Hollywood epic about Clark and Mavericks.

BC: How many videos are you selling these days?
EN: Well, "Year of the Drag-in" has not come out yet. We sold alot of "Know Fear". "Twenty Feet Under" did pretty well. I pretty much hit a home run with that. It pays the bills..I'm still eating rice and beans and now I can afford the tortillas to wrap em in.
BC: Last year, in the interview with the Mavericks photographers, we ended up talking about "The Next Level" in surf photography. And nobody had any thoughts on what the next level was...but then a week later Frank Quirarte shot a photo of Dan Moore destined to appear on the cover of Surfer Magazine...
EN: Tow-in was "The Next Level". I would say ironically March 20 (1999), the first day of spring, Ken Bradshaw towed Dan Moore into a monster. People had been surfing earlier that day, it had been 25 feet at 17 seconds, and later in the day it seemed like there was just no way you could paddle in. So these guys towed out and the rest is history. It was a beginning and an ending chapter in Mavericks history. Because if you look at the video, there were alot of people on the cliff and you could hear the sounds of hooting and hollering as Dan Moore got barrelled. Then sometime in the summer, the Air Force shut the cliff down; putting up an exension on the fence, poured concrete so you couldn't crawl underneith the fence, razor wire on the outside and on top so there is no way that you can get around it. So the crowds now are down to the people who are part of the "Water Patrol" that are actual spotters who keep an eye on surfers that get pushed into the rocks. There's like 4 or 5 people now where there used to be 40, 50, 60 or a hundred people up there.
BC: Tell us about your new video...
EN: The new video that we're working on is called "Year of the Drag-In". Peter Mel, "Skinny"(Ken "Skindog" Collins), Jeff Clark and Flea... these guys just did some phenomenal tow-in surfing. It's basically a highlight of three days; October 28, which I call "The Monstrosity Day". January 31...a huge, huge day and then February 2. Just two days back to back...not quite as big as October 28. Super clean, super glassy and there was actually no warning at all. It (the Oct 28 swell) came out of nowhere. Usually you can see the storms lined up and you just know it's going to happen. In this case the storm was only 500 miles away and it sat, it was a low, and it spun and it spun and it was a duration of 40-50 knot winds blowing over a period of 72 hours. If you do the math, it shouldn't create waves that big, but it did. Some of the guys say the faces of these waves are 50-60 feet high...But by my calculation, the wave that we have in our new video, "Year of the Drag-In" Peter Mel is dropping into this Bomb...Its got to be the biggest wave ever caught in California.
BC: Just how dangerous is tow-in surfing?
EN: It's dangerous......no one has wiped out bad enough, knock on wood..on October 28...Skinny pulled into one or two barrels, Jeff Clark pulled onto one or two barrels. They got shut down and they ended up getting punched right through the back of the wave, and they escaped with nothing worse than just your average wipeout. But it could have been alot worse. Ken Bradshaw has said that, people don't realize that in bigger waves the beatings are gonna be ten times worse...and nobody has been hammered. I mean think about it...you had Niel Matthies (in"Twenty Feet Under") on a two wave hold down on a paddle-in wave on a twenty to twenty five foot wave, maybe a thirty foot face....He eats shit, his board is tombstoning...then the second wave comes in and mows his board down. It was as close as you could get to a three wave hold down. And he was under for well over forty seconds which is an eternity.I've never seen a board tombstone like that before or since. It's a scary sight. That's how the video got its name, "Twenty Feet Under".
BC: I was very impressed with the film's water shots.
EN: Curt Myers has got some unreal water angles. There's a shot he has from the 31st where Pete is literally flying down the line at you...he's got to be going 30 or 35 miles an hour and he is one step ahead of disaster...I mean if he caught a rail or if something went wrong....trouble....and no way could you paddle into some of these waves...absolutely no way. And these guys have now got it down to an artform where they've got what Pete calls, "The whip"..and that is, you're towing in a straight line, you size up the wave, and you hang basically a U-turn. And the guy, like in wakeboarding, is taking the outer radius of the turn so that he generates even more speed than just being towed. So when he spins around, he lets go and he's in the wave.
BC: Insanity..
EN: One of the great things in the interview is Skinny talking about Pete...He's whipped him into this wave and Skinny says, "This wave was so big that I was going up the back of the wave to look down to make sure that he was not getting eatin alive." And he had to jet up the back of the wave which was a 20 foot BACK.....and here's Skinny talking about going up the back of this wave and trying to keep up with the wave to see that Pete has made it. And then the interview cuts to Pete's saying, "That was it. I made the wave, we got out, I say we're done. Let's get out of here." And they had both caught like 20 or 30 waves each. I mean that's more waves than some people get in an entire season and they did it in a couple of hours. So this tow-in surfing has brought in a new level of surfing....
BC: In what ways?
EN: Jeff Clark is constantly changing and improving the surfboard designs. He's really stoked on this "Quad" set up that he has going with the four fins. Because his beliefs and ideas are that you have the two front fins and that you have the two back fins. The two back fins follow the two front fins and they are able to hold you into the wave. So even if the wave face is really steep, you still are going to be in the face of the wave and driving and not loosing any speed because now there's no drag. At least that's the way I remember him telling us.
BC: Are new levels being reached behind the lens too?
EN: Frank's (Quirarte) shooting video and still. He shot the January 31'st footage. Doug (Acton) is shooting video now too.I've already taken a water safety class with wave runners.
BC: Are you shooting from Waverunners now?
EN: I will be in some capacity involved with "personal water vehicles". I'm starting to swim..I took a class with my brother. I'm getting into shape and just doing everything to be more focused on water. I love shooting from the cliff, but if the opportunity presents itself, it would be awesome to be on the back of Pete's waverunner..and if something happens to Skinny, then I can just dive off and he can go in and get him. Those things are pretty big..they'll hold 3 people. But I've already taken a safety course...so, like anything...."mentally prepared" not to panic and do what needs to be done. So next year, there is going to be some new shooting. We're gonna get a balloon or helicopter or do some sort of aerial shooting. I would love to rent a huge boat-50 feet from water to top-a crows nest. Rent a huge boat and park it right off of Mavericks because the water is deep enough, and shoot right down the line. I think if you could shoot from 30 or 40 feet, that would be awesome.

BC: Is "Year of the Drag-In" your best film so far?
EN: When I shot October 28 and when I shot the 2nd and the 31st, I looked at all those days and just put em away and really didn't think about it. And now editing, "Year of the Drag-In" it's really had an impact on me because I had a chance to step away from it, and see it with fresh eyes, and it's truly mind blowing. Its really, really amazing..the interviews are really good. And you've got these really interesting characters and you've got Barney, Flea and Skinny and Peter.
BC: Were there any problems putting the film together?
EN: When Curt and I edited "Know Fear", we had different tastes in music and different tastes in the rhythm of how the video should go and the room is not big enough for the both of us. But the hardest part is when you have all the pieces of the puzzle in front of you on the table: We had interviews in one pile. You have the footage in another and then you have still more footage. We had to go back and reshoot some interviews because, its literally like hitting a wall. We'd go, "You know what? We never asked Pete about the 28th on this. We had to drive all the way back down (to Santa Cruz) to do reinterviews...And Curt went in and hammered away. We kinda have the same sense of path from point A to point B. Obviously, you do it in chronological order; the 28th, the 31st, the 2nd...and then what you want to do is you want to do is string a story line there. And I think that you can just get a broader audience.
BC: What about the fabled Hollywood Epic about Mavericks and Jeff Clark?
EN: You'ld have to ask Jeff but I think that it's on the back burner for a while. I think Ben Marcus has written some story ideas and may have been hired as a consultant. The rumor I had heard was that John Melius was going to be one of the writers. (From Big Wednesday/Apocolypse Now).
BC: I talked with the real life "Masochist" portrayed in "Big Wednesday" earlier this year and he was critical of the film. He felt that Melius was trying to capture Malibu in its epic period and couldn't do it.
EN: That's funny though because if you ask any surf filmmaker, myself included, what movie has Hollywood put out that is as close to being entertaining and truthful to the spirit of surfing, everyone always points to "Big Wednesday". Every scene in "Big Wednesday" is classic. But when you're that close to it, as "The Masochist" is. I mean it's HIS character....if anybody did a movie on you or on me and you looked at it..you'ld go, "That's not the Eric Nelson I know". And somebody as complex as Jeff Clark??? Which portrait are they going to paint? There's many layers to Jeff...and it would have to revolve around Mark Foo somehow.
BC: How could you contrast the two characters?
EN: There's so many different aspects you could take; You could have Mark Foo growing up on the East Coast, running away to Florida, staying with his relatives. Then as soon as he was 18 he moved immediatly to Hawaii... Then you'ld have Jeff Clark over here who's surfing Mavericks by himself for years and years and years. Both of these guys have the same passion for surfing big waves. Where Jeff Clark is real "black and white" and low profile and was able to keep it (Mavericks) a secret for years and years and years...And here you have Mark Foo...the complete opposite..One of the first surfers to blatently exploit himself to get sponserships..and say, "Listen, I'm in this magazine, and people see me and".... Where Jeff is his own sponser. He just got hooked up with Quicksilver only a couple of years ago. So that you have two worlds meeting. You have Ken Bradshaw and Mark Foo comming into town to surf...Now Mavericks is really going to find some validation.
BC: Like gun fighters....
EN: Yean..."High Noon at Low Tide".
BC: The contest has certainly brought the Mavericks crew validation. What were the last minute changes in the Water Patrol for the contest?
EN: Jeff once again brought the Hawaiians in but...as gifted and as talented and as great as those Hawaiian lifeguards are, they're not used to cold water. They can do what needs to be done but think about it...in the sixth hour? If something goes down?...Flea's horriffic wipeout?...what if that was a tombstone? It was going into a minus tide, ledging, barrelling....they haven't seen the break. I mean anything can happen out there.....nobody got hurt and everybody did a great job...except the judges...
BC: What do you mean?
EN: The big controversy with the contest was Kelly Slater comming in second. I don't know what the story is...actions speak louder than words.. The SURF NEWS magazine did a big expose on Slater dropping in on Moriarty twice and Matt Ambrose once. He dropped in on three guys and literally shoulder hopped and the judges were told there was NO INTERFERENCE RULE in a big wave contest, so anybody could take off on any wave that they wanted. I didn't understand the controversy until later that night... It was like, "Wow...Moriarty got robbed. Moriarty should have been in the finals..." but Kelly Slater is Quicksilver's poster boy and its a Quicksilver contest...It was a double kick in the teeth because even Slater himself didn't think he had surfed that well.....and then he gets second place. That pissed off alot of people.
BC: But Clark was pretty impressed...given that it was only Slater's second time out and it was "Maximum" Mavericks.
EN: Oh yeah, that's true. I mean Kelly Slater is six time world champ...AND he can surf big waves....He's from a different planet.
BC: Do you think there has been any effect on you Mavericks photographers from all of this exposure? What effect do you think all the hype is having?
EN: Oh Yeah...I mean what has NOT been affected? Everybody's been affected. What surprises me, I don't know if he's burned out or what, is Bob Barbour. Another excellent photographer. When was the last time Bob Barbour shot Mavericks? I think that Bob's just burned out on it..and it's like why bother with the competition if your going against Quirarte, Treftz and Don Montgomery and then you've got Surfing (Magazine) and basically, Doug's "the Man". Although Aaron Chang came up for the contest. I was really amazed that they used five or six photos of Aaron and then one of Dougs. So..there's competition there and maybe Bob's got something else going on and just figures why bother?
BC: What surf films do you look at?
EN: I have to say that I'm really jaded..I can rarely sit through a surf video... And I have surf shop owner friends who say, "You've got to check this out! This video is UNREAL". Then I'll look at it and usually its some surf trip that Quicksilver has put together with Kelly and the boys..and those can be pretty good. But the last video that I was really blown away by probably, "Wake up call" other than my own stuff.
BC: What kind of equipment are you using?
EN: I'm all digital. I always feel like I'm a step behind cause Curt (Myers) was shooting with digital last year. "Know Fear" was shot on Hi8 and digital. And now this year Curt was shooting on digital and I was shooting on digital. Frank and Curt have done the bulk of the editing and it's Frank's computer. I don't know what packages he was using. I know it's NOT Adobe Premiere and it's for a PC. Its not Final Cut cause that's for Mac.
BC: We were talking about "the next level"...what is the next "NEXT level"?
EN: Is this the end of the interview????......Kite surfing....that's all I'm going to say.... I've been sworn to secrecy...but there's going to be kite surfing next year....
BC: Kite surfing..at Mavericks?