Lost reels resurface in surf culture film

Director Greg Schell had nearly completed editing his second feature film when a phone call convinced him to cut his movie by nearly 45 minutes and replace the footage with shots thought to have been lost forever.

Photographer Greg Weaver, who spent nearly 40 years documenting the evolution of surf culture in the hottest and often most secret surfing spots in the world, had found a long-lost reel of his best work.

“I got this excited phone call that [Weaver] found the footage; I had to go back and re-cut,” Schell said. “All this stuff was like 40 times better than what I had.”

For decades, Weaver and fellow photographer Spyder Wills circled the globe to then-remote locales to film surfers and the people who inhabited the areas.

“Wherever surfing was becoming hot they would travel to,” Schell said in a phone interview. According to Schell, the film documents the two filmmakers as much as it does their discovery.

“Chasing the Lotus, The Lost Reels of Weaver and Wills,” narrated by Jeff Bridges, will have its Southern California premiere tonight at the Surf City 6 Cinemas in downtown Huntington Beach.

Previously, this footage was only shared in private in-home screenings with close friends; now it’s going to belong to the world.

Schell, who lives in Santa Monica and has surfed since his middle-school years, was ecstatic to work with the two men recognized as pioneers of surf filming.

Opening with the California long-boarders of the 1960s, then following the movement to Hawaii as the neo-surfing Mecca, the film tracks the two photographers through their journeys.

In the late ‘70s in Indonesia, they used Super 8mm film to capture footage of surfing greats Gerry Lopez and Rory Russell, while mastering follow-focus cinematography along the way, Schell said.

“Instead of shooting a surfer from the beach, you would go about 300 yards away, to a tree or cliff or just further down the beach, use a long lens and you would see more of the background, not just the wave, which was important to Spyder,” Schell said.

“You may see a mountain or the angle oft the reefs, because you’re so far back you get so much more in the footage. It gives a richness to the film I don’t think you see today.”

Schell likened the surf culture of the 1960s and ‘70s to the beat poets of the previous generation.

“There was this code of ethics; everything was very free-flowing,” Schell said, adding that drug experimentation, “dovetailed around that culture.” But honestly, the drugs did more than just cruise around on the heels of the culture.

“I was not going to shy away from the influence of LSD and other drugs on the culture,” Schell said.

In the film, riders would often drop acid before paddling out, head back in after a sweet ride, cut the board in half and reshape it.

“You can’t deny that it had a part in how boards are shaped today,” Schell said. “Literally, it was like an LSD experiment.”

According to Schell, some people have started referring to his film as the surf version of “Dogtown and Z-Boys,” the 2001 documentary on the breakthrough boys of modern skateboarding in the late 1970s.

“During the making of [Lotus], I actually discovered some footage of Stacy Peralta and the Z-Boys team,” Schell said. “[Peralta] came down, saw the footage — a little homage — we got an interview and now he is in a small part of the film.”

One of the things that attracted Schell to making this film was tracking down the older surfers and just getting to know the culture behind the phenomenon.

“Like Dogtown, it’s not just the skateboarding you see the gang hanging around,” Schell said.

Schell would show the older surfers Weaver and Will’s footage of their younger surf antics before each interview, finding “it was the best way to sort of energize the subject — to show them the film would actually bring back memories of the experiences,” Schell said.

The screening is at 7 and 9 p.m. tonight, with autographs afterward from Wills and Weaver.

“It’s going to be a brofest,” Big Red Productions director Leslie Carlos said. Don’t miss out.