Newport couple trace ‘golden era’ for surfing

It was 1962 world champion surfer Ilima Kalama who gave a name to the documentary on Newport Beach’s early surf scene that a local husband and wife have been making in their garage for the past two years.

Rick and Ann Chatillon tracked down Kalama, a veteran of Newport’s early 22nd Street surfer scene, on a golf course in Maui to ask him about surfing around Newport Pier in the 1950s and ’60s.

Like many of the early Newport Beach surfers whom the Chatillons interviewed for their new film, which will make its debut at the Newport Beach Film Festival next week, Kalama still surfs some 50 years later. His son is famed big-wave surfer Dave Kalama.

“And I hope that we will always be livin’ it — forever,” Kalama told the Chatillons in an interview, raising his arms expressively above his head as he spoke passionately of his love for surfing.

Looking over film footage later from their interview with Kalama, Ann Chatillon, who wrote and directed the documentary, thought the surfer’s words rang true to the spirit of their project. “Living it Forever” finally had a name.

“It’s symbolic; they’re still living the dream,” she said.

The project started when Rick Chatillon, a Newport Harbor High School graduate who has been surfing at 22nd Street since the 1960s, got wind of a treasure trove of rare 16-mm film footage of local surfers that an old friend had preserved for the past 50 years.

The footage included some of the earliest known footage of some world champion surfers from Newport Beach from the 1950s and ’60s.

“I saw that he had really recorded a special time,” Rick Chatillon said. “It was an altogether different time back then, a kind of a golden era for surfing, and a golden era for the kids, growing up with not a care in the world.”

The old crew who surfed 22nd Street in the early days today includes successful businessmen, grandmothers and 60-year-old beach bums who are still “living it,” all these years later.

“The surfers at school were basically seen as a bad crowd,” famed tattoo artist Ed Hardy, who grew up surfing in Newport Beach, told the Chatillons. “Surfers up and down the coast were trouble makers ... that appealed to me.”

Local surfing veteran and Grammy-winning composer Phil Marshall wrote the musical score for “Living it Forever.”

Rick Chatillon ran track with him when they both went to Harbor High School together.

Several surfing legends interviewed for the film, including Kalama, are flying in for Wednesday’s premiere.

A 7 p.m. screening of the film at the Lido Theatre sold out so quickly that festival organizers have added a second, 9 p.m. showing of the film. Tickets are already going fast. Many of the attendees have a ties to the film, the Chatillons said.

“The old surfing crew was tight back then and they’re still tight now, 50 years later,” Ann Chatillon said.

If You Go

What: “Living it Forever”

When: 9 p.m. Wednesday at the Lido Regency Theatre, 3459 Via Lido

Price: Tickets are $12.

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