‘The Surfer’ Director On Aggro Locals: ‘All These Strong Guys Who Are Confused About Their Masculinity’
Aggro local surfers are everybody’s favorite part of surfing. I remember when I first caught the bug as a teenager in Northern California, waterlogged used board in hand, I couldn’t wait to make the trek from my car to the water’s edge.
“I hope those guys who sit in the same spot at the top of the cliff and heckle me are there today,” I’d tell myself. ” I really like how they are there every single day, whether I show up for dawn patrol or a sunset session, letting me know how much I suck. Heck, maybe they’ll even act on their threat of putting a brick through my car’s windshield this time. That’ll be rad.”
Pumping southwest swell, crappy onshore conditions — they were there. Every. Single. Time. Walking by their perch along East Cliff Drive was the only path down to the water. Deal with them or go somewhere else (and deal with it there).
Man, aggro surfers are the best. Of course, plenty of people will tell you some of the greatest humans they’ve ever met are surfers. That not all surfers are like this. And if you’re lucky, somebody might even rationalize all the wonderful aspects of localism with a solid “give respect, get respect” quip.
Film director Lorcan Finnegan probably won’t be one of those people. His new film, The Surfer, has seen a wave of mostly positive critical reviews for its take on those who shout, “don’t live here, don’t surf here.” In a nutshell, the film is about a wealthy man (Cage) returning from America to his childhood home in Australia. Cage wants to surf. The guys who live there don’t like that idea. Chaos ensues.
While Finnegan doesn’t surf, he told Variety in an interview published over the weekend that he grew up around it. He had some nice things to say about surfing and the perception of (some) surfers, but he also didn’t hold back on the real-life people the film’s antagonists were based on: aggro locals.
“They had to be mean to him. It’s a weird therapy he undergoes in order to find himself, but surf localism really does exist. And not just in Australia,” he told Variety about Nicolas Cage’s character. “A lot of surfing beaches tend to be in wealthy areas. You have bankers, CEOs, all these ‘strong’ guys who are confused about their masculinity and fall into a weird trap. They listen to Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, explore neo-shamanism and long for a tribe, which makes them vulnerable to ‘father figures’ like Scally, played by Julian McMahon. We had fun exploring it in the film.”
Given how much the kind of people Finnegan described (the cultish Joe Rogan-loving “masculinity is dying because woke” types) enjoy hearing the opinions of anyone in show business, I’m sure his assessment will be taken well.
The post ‘The Surfer’ Director On Aggro Locals: ‘All These Strong Guys Who Are Confused About Their Masculinity’ first appeared on The Inertia.
