The Screengrab : surfer dude

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: August 31-Sept. 5, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:00:00 GMT

My friends, it has come to my attention that the liberal media elitists at the Screengrab are at it again, spreading their un-American brand of smutty snark – or is it snarky smut? – about movies all over my computer. Don’t get me wrong. I’m always up for a good Tarzan picture or inspirational sports story like The Express. And nobody mourns Don LaFontaine and Jerry Reed more than myself.

But it’s time for us to draw a line in the sand. A line between good, hard-working Americans and Michael Moore’s Slacker Uprising. A line between the God-fearing patriot and the Surfer, Dude. A line between your bank account and any theater showing Babylon A.D.

The elite liberal Screengrabbers would have you watch anti-Iraq War propaganda like No End in Sight online. They would tell you that The Top 18+ High School Movies, full of drug references, pre-marital sex and anti-authoritarian notions, are worthy of your time. They would decry made-in-America products like Gigli and Epic Movie as unwatchable. And unlike any of us in this room tonight, they would get away with saying Towelhead.

I say, enough! Enough with the Blue Velvet soundtrack, enough with George Romero’s Knightriders and enough with Robert Altman’s A Wedding! Let’s all go elk hunting with Lee Marvin, and may God bless America!

Screengrab Review: “Surfer, Dude”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

It’s not always a pretty sight when documentary filmmakers make the leap to fictional features. See – or rather, do whatever you can to avoid seeing – Michael Moore’s Canadian Bacon and Errol Morris’s The Dark Wind. As I implied in this post yesterday, I’m a big fan of S.R. Bindler’s documentary Hands on a Hard Body. Even so, I wasn’t exactly stoked to learn his follow-up (nearly a decade later) would be a surfing movie starring The Shirtless One, Matthew McConaughey. I dunno, maybe it’s just because I watched the entire goofy-ass David Milch series John From Cincinnati, but there’s something about the whole mystical-spiritual aura surrounding surfing that makes otherwise talented people a little loopy.

Surfer, Dude definitely qualifies as loopy – even that comma in the title is a little too self-consciously quirky. McConaughey, a friend of Bindler’s since high school, produced the film through his production company j.k. livin and brought his essential dudeness aboard in the lead role of Steve Addington, a free-spirited “soul surfer” who lives for the waves. Upon returning to Malibu from his latest world tour, Addington is informed by his manager (Woody Harrelson) that his board and shorts sponsorship contracts have been sold to Eddie Zarno, a former surfer turned multimedia mogul. Zarno has big plans for Addington, including a role in a beach house reality series and a virtual reality videogame bearing his image.

Addington’s “not feelin’ it.” He’s an all-natural dude and all he needs is his friends, his weed and his waves. “I’m not some assclown in a green room. I’m a surfer, dude!” Despite his manager’s warnings that cash is in short supply, Addington wants nothing to do with the digital world. His spiritual crisis arrives when the waves disappear. As the days pass with no surf to ride, he goes on a fast (including the ganja), but can he remain true to himself and resist selling out to the Man? Duuuuude.

Surfer, Dude has a green theme in more ways than one – in addition to McConaughey and Harrelson, Willie Nelson is on hand as a goat farmer to complete the trinity of Texas stoner icons. But the movie is so lightweight, it’s hard to invest too heavily in Addington’s existential dilemma. It’s a vanity project to the core, an ode to its producer-star in all his toned-and-tanned golden glory. With his lazy honeydew drawl, allergy to shirts and “awright awright awright” party-guy vibe in full effect, McConaughey isn’t playing a character so much as his US magazine persona come to life. His wink and nod towards his lovable rogue image recalls the Burt Reynolds of the late 70s, and that’s one way of looking at this movie: it’s Smokey and the Bandit with surfboards.

Related:
Woody Harrelson Eats Your Brains
Trailer Review: Fool's Gold

Watch It For Free: “Hands on a Hard Body”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:00:00 GMT

It’s been nearly a decade since S.R. Bindler’s debut film Hands on a Hard Body reached theaters, and the director hasn’t been heard from since. That’s about to change as Bindler’s first narrative feature, Surfer, Dude, is set to premiere this Friday in an exclusive Austin engagement and expand to more markets the following week. (Watch this space for a review.) The title may make it sound like a Spring Break sequel, but Hard Body is actually a documentary mostly confined to the parking lot of a Nissan dealership in Longview, Texas. Despite this seeming limitation, Hands on a Hard Body is a mini-epic spanning the full spectrum of human emotion. It’s also very difficult to find: used copies of the long out-of-print DVD are going for upwards of $85 on Amazon. But now you can watch Hard Body right there in the privacy of your cubicle.

The movie’s subject is the contest that shares its title, an annual endurance competition (since discontinued after one participant in the 2005 contest killed himself) with a brand new, fully-loaded pickup truck as the grand prize. The rules are simple: keep at least one hand on the truck at all times, but do not lean on the truck to support yourself. Last one standing wins the truck. If visions of Jeff Probst are dancing in your head, it’s worth noting that Hard Body pre-dates the reality TV craze by a year or two, and its elimination structure has provided the template for a wave of documentaries from the little-known Karaoke Fever to the crowd-pleaser Spellbound. If you’ve never seen it, here’s your chance: the full movie can be found on Google Video here.

Related:
Truth and Consequences in the Documentary World
The World of Lists: Documentaries Get Their Due