[man] Most people at Pipeline have
their hearts in their throat and there was Gerry Lopez,
meditating. [man] Gerry's this mellow guy on
shore, and this Tiger Shark out in
the water. [Gerry] This was me
and the waves becoming one. [man] Okay, go ahead
and roll cam. Here we go. [projector rattling] [beeps] [power dies] -How's the speed?
-[man 2] It's all good. -[man 1] All good.
-[man 2] Okay. -Good?
-[man 1] Yep. You know, I'd like to take
this opportunity to apologize to all the people
that I stole waves from, because, you know, I know that my surfing has been a subject of admiration, and the way my surfing
got to that level is stealing a lot of waves
from other surfers. You see, taking waves
from other people is really the same thing
as stealing, and if you do it enough,
and I did it a lot, you can become
pretty good at it. You also stop thinking
about what a low thing it is. [chuckles] You know, everything that
I read in my yoga studies talked about full acceptance,
no resistance, yielding, allowing, nourishing, understanding, love. And I guess
my disharmonious behavior with a lot of other surfers
I felt was, uh, balanced out by my trying
to be in total harmony with the waves. You know, I've come to realize
that yoga and surfing have been perhaps
the most significant yin-yang relationship, yin-yang balancing act
of my entire life. [percussive jazz playing] [distant waves lapping] [subdued percussive music
playing] [dramatic music swelling] I'd probably spent a good
30 years of my life surfing this wave, and I felt I'd kind of
learned something, learned how to ride it, learned to be
comfortable with it, actually felt I had a special relationship
with this wave. It really had a personality. It was so intense all the way, and you were dodging
landslides and earthquakes, and there was a big awakening
at the end of the Pipeline. Because that tube was so big, when it compressed at the end, the spit would come out and, whoosh... blow you right off your board. You know, the funny thing is
about the Pipeline is that it all happened
pretty quickly. I mean, in high school,
honestly, I never had any dreams
about surfing, going anywhere than
right where I was with it. Surfing didn't really click
for me till I was in college. [rock guitar playing] When I graduated high school, out of 500 people,
I was number 250, so I was as average
as you could be. I ended up going to California
to go to college in 1966. It was actually my first time
out of Hawaii. I didn't really give it the time
that I should have. It was like I was just kind of
going wherever life took me. ['60s music playing] I met a guy that lived
in Whittier. He was a surfer,
and we became friends. ♪ Ba ba bee
ba ba ba boo buh buh ♪ ♪ Whoo whoo whoo ♪ He had this great van. He goes, "Let's go take
a trip down to Mexico." [singer shrieks] You know, in those days
you crossed the border
with a driver's license. We went down and ended up at like K38.5 or so, and looked out, man! There are these glassy,
cool-looking waves out there. So we went out surfing. [acoustic guitar playing] It was cold.
The water was freezing. Eventually I got too cold.
I went in. The sun had been
out for a while so the rocks on the beach
were big black rocks, you know, and I knew
that they were gonna be warm, so I crawled on one. I was laying on my back,
I had my eyes closed, and I was seeing,
in my mind's eye, images of surfing. All of the sudden,
I looked a little closer, and it was the first time
I saw an image in my mind's eye of me surfing. [guitar playing hard rock] I was doing all these things
that I'd never done before
on a surf board. Suddenly, I'm just going, "Wow! Look at me, man, I'm ripping!" I was born to be a surfer. I didn't know it
until that moment. [cool jazz playing] Ala Moana was
the whole foundation of my development as a surfer. I mean, I surfed
every other place, but Ala Moana was the place where it kind of
all came together. It had a tube and was the first wave
that I saw legitimate tube riding going on
back in the early '60s. ['60s guitar music playing] There was a surfing milkman
named Conrad Canha, who for some reason was thinking
ten years ahead in his approach. [Gerry] When it came
to tube riding, I don't know if anybody else
was doing that before him. He was this short little guy
with a cannonball stomach that he would use
to his advantage and throw that stomach
to accelerate. He'd take off, and if you were
paddling out from the side, he would disappear. And, pfft,
come out the other end. And I watched that and went, "Man! I wanna learn
how to do that." [rock guitar playing] [man] Early mid-'60s,
Gerry, myself, and the rest of us
in the neighborhood were all riding long boards. Then in 1967 began what was known as the shortboard revolution, and it basically took from '67 to '69. Board went from 10 foot
to 7 foot. And in that period, it made a whole new generation
of surfers. [Gerry] My first surfboard
was a big longboard, and I didn't have enough money
to buy a new one. So a good friend of mine,
Buddy Dunphy, goes, "Well, let's make
our own surfboards." So we got our old longboards and we stripped
the fiberglass off them and, in his father's garage
on sawhorses. You know, he went first
and he made his surfboard, and then he was done
and it was my turn. I made my surfboard, and I went down
to the Hare Krishna shop and bought a poster
and cut out the blue
Ganesh elephant, and I glass that on the board,
that was my logo. And then we had
surfboards that we'd made. "Okay, let's go down
to the beach and surf them." [rock music playing] So we paddled out at Ala Moana
on these new boards and everybody's looking at them,
you know, 'cause most of the guys
are still on their longboards. And we took off,
and I remember thinking, "Man, my board rides
like the wind, man." "This is the greatest board
I've ever had," you know. And I look at Dunphy and he's
coming on the next wave. He comes up next to me and I go, "This is the best board
I've ever had,"
and he goes, "Same here." And we rode a few more waves and, you know, I paddled in, and there was another friend
in the parking lot, and he came up to me just as
I'm climbing out of the water, and he's got money in his hand,
you know, and he says,
"I got $80, I want that board." And I looked at the money
and I looked at the board, and I thought back, "Okay, $15 was all I paid
for this board." I grabbed the money
and gave him the board, and I was in the surfboard
business just like that. Pretty soon guys were
ordering boards from me, and the next thing I know, Fred Swartz offers me
a job, a real job at Surf Line Hawaii, shaping surfboards under my own name. It was kind of a big deal. I had a job! ['60s rock music playing] [Randy]
Up through the late '60s, Surf Line was
the main shop in Hawaii. It was the place to be. It had the best shapers,
designers. It was kind of the epicenter
where things were happening. And Jack Shipley was working
as the head sales guy there. Jack was managing Surf Line
for the owner, Fred Swartz. It was during that period,
we became pretty good friends. [Jack] I sold the boards and Gerry worked in the shaping
department in the back and we became
sort of fans of each other. He appreciated what I did,
and vice versa. [Gerry] We surfed together,
we did a lot together, and, you know, I realized that
if you want to be a surfer, this is the best job
you can have. So at the same time
all this stuff was happening, yoga came into my life. One day I saw a group of girls looking at this announcement
for a yoga class, and I went to that yoga class expecting to see them again. And this was like
an outdoor class, and the instructor
was this young gal. And I remember
just watching her move, going, "Wow! Look at how smooth
and fluid that is." By the end of the class, I was convinced that yoga was gonna make
my surfing better. Right from the start,
I dove into it. I embraced it in a bear hug. But I went to
the Honolulu bookstore and I said, "Let me see
all your books on yoga." The one that I still have and really made
an impression on me was "The Complete
Illustrated Book of Yoga" by Swami Vishnudevananda. From the beginning,
there was this relationship that I was striving for
between surfing and yoga. It wasn't something
that I had to bond with. I was already bonded with it. I remember thinking that if I could be as smooth
doing the poses on my surfboard,
then I could be a good surfer. [intense surf music playing] I was 20 years old. I felt like my surfing
was improving. I was doing my yoga. I was competing in events. I had gone
to the U.S. championships in Huntington Beach. [Sam] I saw an article
in "Surfer" magazine
about the U.S. championships in 1969, and there was
this kid from Hawaii, Gerry Lopez,
sitting in his contest jersey, in the full lotus position, meditating before going out
on his heat. The next thing you know,
he's on the cover
of "Surfer" magazine, 1970, ripping at Ala Moana. If you were on the cover
of "Surfer," that meant that you
are a real up-and-comer. You know, there he is
on the mainland, one of the best
surfers in the United States, and there was sort of
some foreshadowing that he was
really something special. [Gerry] In that time period, I was still working
at Surf Line, my boards were just
becoming popular. Working for Fred was tough. You know, he wanted it his way. [Jack] You know, the owner had
a little bit different vision
with things, and he was really into sales
and numbers and all that
kind of stuff. [Gerry] And Jack had the idea, "Well, maybe we could
start our own shop." There was this shop
that was up for sale. It was the old Hobie shop, which was the original
surf shop in Hawaii. So we got into the shop,
it was the summer of 1970, and then we had to come up
with a name for the shop, and a couple months before, a friend of mine
was smoking a joint, and he says,
"Hey, guys, gotta try this. I call it Lightning Bolt." And Jack smoked it and went,
"Wow, this is really great," and months later at the shop,
we're going, "Okay, well, what are we gonna
call it?", you know. And all of the sudden,
Maryann was in the kitchen, this is Jack's wife,
and she goes, "Why don't you call it
'Lightning Bolt'?" And we went... "Okay.
Let's call it Lightning Bolt." [thunder crashing] [rock music playing] It really escalated
very quickly from there. I mean, in a matter of months,
it was really popular. You know, and then we suffered
a pretty big setback, 'cause we started in the summer and it was the night
before Thanksgiving that all of the sudden
we got a call at like 2:00 in the morning, they go, "Hey,
your surf shop's on fire." What?! We went down there
and the whole shop was burned. The fire investigators
came around, they go, "Hey, this was arson. Somebody squirted
a flammable liquid under your back door here." They said, "This is exactly
how the fire started, and it spread to here." [man] Who did it? Somebody that was
not happy with us. [Randy] A year before that,
I left Surf Line and opened a Dewey Weber
dealership down the road. The owner of Surf Line,
Fred Swartz, I actually caught him looking
in the window of my shop, right before I opened it up,
and then the next day, all the windows in my shop
got broken. Well, a year later,
Gerry and Jack Shipley got their store up and running,
and there was a big fire that the whole shop
got caught on fire, and unfortunately it reflected
back on Surf Line. Everything was gone. So we started again. Right from the beginning, it was clearly delineated. Jack ran the shop, I went and shaped
and built boards. You know, Gerry wanted to work
as little as possible, but he was really good
to me and to the shop when the surf was bad. Luckily, the surf
was not good all the time. His talent was unbelievable. His hands, he's got magic hands. The boards that he made
were really special. None of them were ever hurried,
'cause he was pretty slow. He was slow because
he was a perfectionist. His work was real easy
to represent for me as the salesperson and real easy to sell
and get out the door. What was happening
with surfboards was happening and changing
on a day-to-day basis. Lightning Bolt was
at the forefront of that. Our shop was in town,
which is the South Shore. You know, the southern swells
coming from the southern hemi. In the wintertime, we were
surfing the North Shore, which was where
all the winter swells came to, and the North Shore
was a whole different mindset. There's a lot of great surfers that surfed the Pipeline
before me, but they weren't having
a lot of success because their equipment
was holding them back. [man] The surfer
had to overcome his board as well as survive
the power of the wave, which was jacking on the reef and the roundness of the tube and the immense amount
of water in the lip and the shallowness
of the bottom. [Gerry]
Because it was so intense, not that many people
surfed there. So this was this spot that was kind of empty. I liked that space, that space where I'm not having to jockey so much
with other surfers to try and figure a wave out. [intense music playing] I spent a lot of time there, and it took a lot of time
to figure it out. 'Cause it was a tricky spot. I mean, it was, you know,
way more than Ala Moana. I mean, Ala Moana was friendly. It was soft, it was forgiving. It really was welcoming. But Pipeline was fierce,
you know. It wanted to bite you. It could hurt you. Early shots you see of Gerry
trying to surf Pipeline, he's trying to figure how to get
those straight stiff boards to fit into the wave. [Gerry] That was a big obstacle
that had to be overcome, and I went through
a lot of surfboards in the process of doing that. Eventually,
we had tossed around this idea of a 9-inch tail, a foot up from the tail, and that was what
a Waimea gun had. Nobody had a board
for any of the other spots that had a tail that narrow, and I went,
"Well, I'm gonna try that." And I made this board,
and I looked at it, and I went, "Wow,
no one's got a board like this, but, well, I'll give it a try,"
and I went ahead and shaped it. Went out and, I mean,
right from the very first wave, I went, "Ooh. I think I got something here." You've got to remember, there was no history behind him. He is making it himself. [man] It's not that hard
to paddle into a wave
at Pipeline. You can force yourself
to do that. It's the really, really,
really rare surfer who can then
get to their feet and keep their heart rate down
and stay more or less relaxed. [sitar playing] [Gerry] Studying yoga, that's what allowed
everything to happen at the Pipeline for me. ♪ Tangerine ♪ ♪ Come back to me ♪ [Sam] There's a real
fascinating advertisement
in "Surfer" magazine in 1972 for a guru
named Yogananda. [Gerry] I started reading Yogananda's
"Autobiography of a Yogi." It really revealed to me,
obviously, the concept of yin and yang, which is more
of a Chinese philosophy, but also a very big part
of yoga philosophy, especially the part
where it said that health and harmony
is created when yin and yang
are in balance. [man] Can I read something
he said... -Yeah.
-[man] ...in "Surfer" magazine, that you also appear in. He says, "A person with
a calm mind is a happy person. Instead of becoming uptight, one should be able to swing
into intense activity and like the pendulum, return to the center
of calmness. Yoga produces that calmness." Isn't that amazing? And that was
in "Surfer" magazine. [Sam] What Yogananda
is preaching, so to speak, was this balance,
a pendulum swing, between dynamic action
and stillness and calm, and that it's
that pendulum swing, not living in one space,
not living in the other, but the balance of the two, and you can really see,
Gerry took that and he applied it
to the incredibly dynamic sport of surfing. ['60s guitar music playing] [Gerry] I understand that
that balance isn't static. You know, it's constant,
you know, readjusting. All of that requires
tremendous discipline. You know, you gotta practice, you gotta do it
over and over again. But that's what surfing was too. And that's why both of them were things that I embraced more than anything else in life, because to me
they were going the same way. They were side by side. I needed that same
stillness and calmness at the Pipeline. You have to be at peace
with this wave. You had to have that type
of concentration where your mind was steady. For your mind to be still,
your breath has to be still. And to calm the breath,
your body must be still. So, you know, a lot of times you'd see pictures of me
standing really still. Well, I'm not standing
really still, I'm going
like a bat outta hell because the surfboard's
going really fast, but my body is still because I'm trying
to still my mind. And that was really
the only way to really connect with that wave
at the Pipeline. In a western sense,
the concept is, you're riding this wave
and you're concentrating on it, but you're concentrating
by thinking all these thoughts about this wave. And yogic concentration
is much different. It's one-pointed focus
on the object of concentration. By focusing your mind steadily
on this object, you actually absorb the essence of your object of concentration
of this wave, and this is what developed
for me at the Pipeline. [contemplative music playing] To be a great surfer
you have to have some kind
of physical advantage. You have to have great balance, great awareness about your body. Every great surfer has to be
blessed with some kind of special,
and he's one of them. When you see Gerry Lopez, there's this connectivity
of tissue with the connectivity
of water. [Matt] You don't get to be
that relaxed and that calm and that serene without having put in
the 10,000 hours, without having taken
so many wipeouts and knowing that you can come up
and also getting hurt and knowing that
you're going to heal. And also looking
at so many waves until you know
just which one you want. There's
a hard side to Gerry that I don't think has ever been
part of his public version. Without a doubt,
he's incredibly competitive. Man, it was head to head
with Gerry at Pipeline. Gerry wanted that best wave,
that best barrel. [Gerry] I was a terrible person. I had no qualms whatsoever
about taking waves from people that were
already trying to ride them. Gerry was actually one
of the most aggressive surfers on the North Shore. He's out there to get waves
and surf well, and he's very serious about it. [Steve] Because he was so Zen
and elegant and smooth, it didn't mean he was passive. He went after what he wanted
and took it. He'll command respect
because he's Gerry Lopez, and people will part ways
for a little bit. [Gerry] In the early '70s, surfing was going through
this growth period where all of the sudden,
there were too many surfers, too many good surfers, and the whole traditional
social order of the lineup was being altered. In this new world, you absolutely
had to be aggressive. [Tom] Tempers flare, it gets
very aggressive out there. The air can get thick, and there can be
physical interaction between the surfers. It's primeval, you know. It is pretty much law
of the jungle at that point. [Matt] To own a spot
like Pipeline the way Gerry owned Pipeline, you don't do that by,
you know, Zen and mellow. You do it up by being hard ass. [Sam] Most of the people
at Pipeline have got their hearts
in their throat, that he would drop down on a big Pipeline widowmaker and tweak his nose a little bit before he pulled
into the barrel. Think of how
that subtle intimidation worked for the rest
of that crowd. If you take it
from a western perspective,
there's kind of an enigma there. You're thinking, "Well, Gerry's
just this mellow guy on shore and then this tiger shark
out in the water." You know, he can't be both, but from an eastern viewpoint, from Taoism,
from the yin and the yang, you can be both
at the same time. The true sage, the true bodhi, he goes down the middle,
and that's what Gerry does. What people don't say
about Gerry is, apart from getting
the most beautiful tube rides
in that period, I think he took the most vicious
wipeouts of that period, too, so the magic didn't always work, the sleight of hand
didn't always work. I mean, he just got
punished out there. I remember one time I had
this kind of unusual wipeout,
and I landed on my fin. And stabbed me pretty good,
you know, and I remember,
as I was being tumbled, reaching back and feeling
the tear in my shorts and feeling my hand
go into the wound, and all four fingers
went in all the way. I went, "Ah, shit." And all of the sudden,
he comes walking up the beach and he's holding his butt,
you know, he comes up, he goes, "My board flipped over
and I landed on my fin." [Gerry] Came in the yard,
you know, Fat Paul looked at me, looked at the cut and goes, "Oh, you gotta go
to the hospital." I had this Delta,
Oldsmobile Delta 88, man, the thing drank
more than I did back then. I could lay rubber
from Chun's Reef to Waimea. [engine revving] We go to Kahuku Hospital, then the nurse comes
and she cleans it all up and says, "Doctor will be
in here in a minute." And Gerry's looking at me
and he goes, "I got to fart." And I go, "Go ahead,"
you know, "Why not?" And he farts, and blood
comes out of the wound. He looked at me and he goes,
"What's wrong?" And I said,
"Blood came out of your wound," which meant he had
punctured his intestines. So the doctor walks in,
I tell the doc, and he goes, "Well, okay, we'll call up, you know,
the next hospital in Honolulu and, you know,
wait for the ambulance." I go, "Forget the ambulance,
I got the Delta 88!" [engine revving] [Gerry] The next thing I knew, it was the next morning,
and I woke up, and then the doctor walked in,
and he goes, "Yeah, you're gonna
have to wear a colostomy bag." Surfing came really hard to me. I put in a lot of time and a lot of agony and pain
and suffering, you know. For me it was very difficult. [peaceful guitar music playing] Growing up, we lived
every weekend at the beach. That's what you did. My parents were both
really good swimmers, And when we had lessons,
it was all three of us. [man] It was a magic childhood, growing up in Waikiki. We'd pack a lunch,
they'd just drop us off. We'd bury our towel
and our $2 for the day, go surf, come in, buy a hotdog. We spent a lot of family time
down at the beach. The surfers were right out there
riding the waves, and we looked at that and we'd
go up on the wall there and watch the guys body-surfing,
paipo boarding. We went down one day. I was 10, Victor was 8. We got to pick a board
out of the rack. My mom swam out, and I just remember
the first time she shoved me into a wave. I was still on my belly, but I just distinctly remember that feeling of gliding. It was just like magic. I got back to my mom, she goes,
"You wanna do that again?" I go, "Yeah." She goes, "Okay, this time
try to stand up." When you were standing,
the feeling was amplified, that gliding sensation, that feeling like you were
flying like a bird. [gulls crying] Both those first two waves have stayed with me
my whole life. [man] Did you ever expect
that you were going
to become a famous surfer? No, that was just... There were photographers
filming and, you know, there were surf movies, and, you know,
I was in some of them, and... [man] Well, you were in
all of them. Well... [laughs] Where I come from
in South Africa, that was a long way away
from the center of surfing. Our only conduit into surfing
was the surf magazines, and then when the surf films
would come to town. [Gerry] In 1972,
Greg MacGillivray, him and Jim Freeman
came out with a move called "Five Summer Stories." [rock music playing] "Five Summer Stories"
is the first major
quality documentation. There was other surf movies
that were nowhere near
as good a quality. [Shaun] When that surf film
came to town, every single surfer
would gather. The electricity
in those small auditoriums... We used to sit there
and we used to wait for that first wave
to come on the screen. Wait and wait and wait. And the screen would happen
and we went, "Wow!" [rock music playing] And those moments, man, that
I saw up on the screen there, they just burned
into my consciousness, burned. When I say "burned,"
talk about not imprinted, burned into my consciousness. [Matt] You had the two best filmmakers working in concert. They're covering it
from multiple angles. Because it was Gerry
and super slow, you would be sort of hypnotized. [Sam] Filmed
for the first time at 200 frames per second
in super slow motion, Gerry's surfing
in "Five Summer Stories" was like nothing
we'd ever seen before. [Steve] That film was big
in the evolution
of the sport of surfing, and Gerry had
a starring role in it, which made him hugely important. [Randy] Gerry,
all of the sudden,
"Five Summer Stories" came out, and boom, everybody wanted
to ride a Lightning Bolt. [thunder crashes] [Jack] We started this program
of loaning surfboards to pro surfers. [Shaun] Us young guys coming
over from South Africa, we just didn't have much money,
we couldn't afford boards. Lightning Bolt gave us
as many boards as we needed. [Matt] All of the sudden,
almost everybody in Hawaii is riding Lightning Bolt
surfboards, and it was a glorious time,
visually, 'cause the boards looked
so beautiful. Everyone's on Bolts. Every poster,
every magazine cover was basically
a Lightning Bolt ad. And there's
not even any letters. It's just the bolt. [Jack] That's really
what launched our program outside
of the Gerry Lopez thing. We got coverage bigtime from
so many different pro surfers, and just massive sales. [Randy] Every kid across America wanted to be Gerry Lopez
in a tube, and if you're gonna do that,
what do you need? You need a Lightning Bolt. Guys were drawing
lightning bolts
on their own boards. [Michael] Having the bolt
on your board was the ultimate badge
of authenticity. [Sam] They had status like
no other company had ever had. They had the whole
surfing world behind them. "Give it to us!
Give it to us, Lightning Bolt! We want that energy,
we want the pure source!" And that was even their motto,
"the pure source." And the irony of this,
they're selling a lot of boards, but they're not really
making any money. [music slows, stops] Nobody makes
a lot of money on surfboards. The margin is tiny. I got paid, I think,
like $1,500 a month. In the '70s, that was making
a fine living in Hawaii. We lived in a house
right on the beach and it was 425 bucks a month. And Gerry got paid well
for his work. Gerry's never been a fancy guy. He always wanted
a truck that worked well and a place to fix his food. [Gerry]
We paid for our lifestyle. Paid the rent, we paid
for our health insurance, which was only $18
a month back then. That was all we expected
out of this. [Sam] You have to realize
that at the time that Lightning Bolt
was really becoming the most recognizable
brand in surfing, they were just coming out of
a short but very potent period
of anti-commercialism. And the thing
that Lightning Bolt had
more than any other company, they had Gerry Lopez. They had the ultimate
in authenticity. We had a friend,
his name was Duke Boyd. He had started a company
called Hang Ten. [Steve] Hang Ten clothing
was the first commercially
mass-produced brand that actually were accepted
by the surfing community. Duke started coming
around the shop, looking around, and he said, "You know, you have
a really great brand here." [Steve] So he got
Jack and Gerry to agree to allow him
to license the brand. [Gerry] I didn't really have
any specific dreams. I liked to go surfing and I didn't like
to work that much, so I thought, why not? Well, I had the secret thought,
maybe it could be another Nike. [Gerry] Jack had a dream. He wanted to have a house
in Hawaii Kai on the cliff there. We were thinking, well, hey, maybe you're gonna get
that house now. [Shaun] I think Lightning Bolt,
for that time, was one of the greatest brands. Just the representation of... power, tube-riding, soul, and Gerry just riding
that hurricane. [rock music playing] ♪ Every time
I'm drivin' down the road ♪ ♪ Feels like I'm flyin'
through the sky... ♪ Gerry was the embodiment
of Lightning Bolt. Gerry Lopez was the brand.
Gerry Lopez was Lightning Bolt. There was a period from like
1972 up until the late '70s where Gerry Lopez was easily the most famous surfer
in the world. [Randy] He's all over the place
in all these movies, all the magazines
are featuring him. He didn't realize the impact
that he was making as he was making it. [Jack] He had a very good,
strong advertising program, emphasizing Gerry, and we really got off
to a good start, licensees
all over the world, and we were prepared
for greatness. Sales got up
to quite a high figure. It got to about 12 million
bucks a year, pretty quick. [Sam] Somehow,
from the humble little shop
on Kapiolani Boulevard, Gerry Lopez and Jack Shipley
were on the cusp of the biggest brand
in surfing. They were right on the edge of that explosion
of the surfwear market. They were perfectly positioned
on the takeoff. [Gerry] Suddenly it wasn't
just a sportswear company, he announced that,
"Well, what we have
is a licensing company," and, you know, I didn't know
what that was, and I went, "That's bigger, right?" And he goes, "Yeah, it's huge." [jazz orchestra playing] [Matt] They put "Bolt"
on a lot of stuff, and most of it wasn't very good. The Lightning Bolt necklace
and the bracelet
and the surf wax and the backpacks
and the skateboards
and the beach towels. [Gerry] I don't think
anyone had ever sold that much surf shit before. [Sam] They'd marketed it
and licensed it to anything
they could put it on, but ironically,
it was the least pure. [Matt] Bolt went
from being untouchably cool to kind of not cool in the space
of just two or three years. They really overcooked it. Surfers realized,
"Hey, they've left us. They've almost betrayed us." And Gerry Lopez
went from that pure source to being the most
commercialized, marketed surfer in the world. I think that, though,
that is a measure of his approach to the sport, that he could survive that with his reputation intact. [Matt] I've never understood
how he pulled that off, except to say that he had
so much cool in the bank that he was able to flog
some really awful stuff, but it doesn't stick to Gerry. [Gerry] I don't know
why I did all that stuff, but I just,
I did it because I felt that that was
one of my obligations to being a part
of Lightning Bolt. He'd poured everything
into the Lightning Bolt brand. It was his first business
of his life. It was a very,
very successful thing. And he was very young
and a surfer, and all of the sudden, all these things
started happening. [Gerry] The two principals
in Lightning Bolt was the company called Keepers
in California and Duke Boyd, and the money started coming in and they started fighting
over how to spend the money. The whole relationship unraveled
from that point forward and turned into
a big legal battle, and Jack and I, of course,
got sucked into that. Gerry and I picked different
sides in the argument. I was trying to get him
to go the way that I went, and he had to choose
between me and Duke, and he chose Duke, you know, and I went, "I respect that,"
you know. "I love you, but I've
got to go this other way." [Steve] Everyone in that lost. It was a juggling act
that was very delicate
and easy to fumble, and they did, they just did. The Bolt shop finally closed. It just sort of dried up and had its day. Gerry and I were
in a little restaurant, a health food restaurant
called the Summerhouse, and in the kitchen was a picture my partner, Dick Hoole,
had taken of Wayne Lynch. [Gerry] A picture
of Wayne Lynch, who, to me, was one of
the greatest Australian surfers. You know, he was
a big hero of mine. And he's surfing
this bitching wave, I mean, this barreling,
you know, really nice wave, and I went, "Where is this?" And I go, "It's that place
I wanna take you to, called Uluwatu in Bali." And I said, "Man, we're going." The plane lands there,
the door opens. First it's just
a rush of things. It's the heat and the smell. [Jack M.]
It smells like perfume. And it's actually
these clove cigarettes that all
the Balinese people smoke. Everyone was so happy
and uplifting and joyful. [Gerry] Somehow
it was all familiar. It was like, "Wow, I'm home." We get taken to this incredible
little fishing village, this little place in Kuta. There's no tourists,
coconut trees everywhere. It felt familiar.
It was comfortable. [Jack M.] The next day we get up
and go to Uluwatu, and we all knew that it was
the end of the Bukit. It was a peninsula
that sticks down at the bottom
of the island of Bali. So going to Uluwatu
was about an hour drive. [Gerry] Got out there, and it's just jungle
on both sides. "Is this it?" And there was like
a little trail. So we grab our boards
and we start going. The farmers stick cactus
in the ground, which grows,
so it's actually like a maze. And, "now let's go this way." And the next thing you know,
we've been walking
for half an hour and I go,
"Jack, where's this going?" We're an hour on the trail,
we don't know where we are. We don't even know how to get
back to where we're going. [Jack M.] We wander off
for another 15 minutes or so, and, ah, like manna from heaven, these two surfers
come walking down the track. And it turns out to be
Mike Boyum and his brother Bill. They look at us and go,
"What are you guys doing?" "We're lost,
what does it look like?" They go, "Well, follow us." So we got right down
to Uluwatu. [Jack M.] To get into the surf,
you had to walk down the hill into this ravine that had a little drop-off and a little bamboo ladder, about three big
bamboo poles together, that you have to tightrope
your way down with your board and get into this cave
and paddle out. [Gerry] This is dreamy
as surf could be. And there'd just be lines
to the horizon. There's nobody in the water. [guitar strumming] It was the most consistent,
perfect, clean, uncrowded waves
that I'd ever seen. It was just like that
all day long. [Jack M.] Couple of days later,
Mike Boyum invites us over to his house, which is just across
from where we're staying. He has half
a dozen house workers cleaning the place,
cooking food, doing everything that he needs
to make it comfortable. [Gerry] Mike had been there
for a while. We're all kind of asking,
"Who is this guy?" My brother's name
is Michael Boyum. And he was basically
a hoodlum. [Jack M.] We'd heard he had done
some sort of smuggling and that he was on the run. The story came out
that Bill came out to Bali and found him
and kind of slapped
some sense into him, went, "Are you kidding? Look at
how good these waves are." [Bill] By the time I showed up, Mike just wanted to drop
solidly into surfing and drop the debauchery,
get into really good shape. [Jack M.] Mike, man,
to have Gerry Lopez
at his dinner table, first thing he said was, "When you come back next time,
bring me eight surfboards." [Gerry] We were surfing, to me,
a beautiful day at Uluwatu. Bill looks at him and goes,
"You know, this isn't even
a surf spot." And I look at him, I wanna
throw him off the cliff. You know,
what are you talking about? And he goes, "Right over there, that's the southeastern
tip of Java, and there's a wave over there
that I've been to that's so much better than this. If you see it, you're gonna say
'this isn't a surf spot.'" And I'm looking at him
like he's nuts. [Jack M.] This place,
which is just across the strait, was called Grajagan. But to have a little code word,
they called it "G-Land." [Gerry] It's 60 miles
from Kuta Beach to the southern tip of java. Mike built a boat
that would be a fast ride from Bali to G-Land. We put a bunch of food
and surfboards in the boat, blazed over there. [Bill] Going there on the boat,
that was problematic, you know. Anchor lines would break,
things would go wrong. [Gerry] Campaigning G-Land
from a boat was not the way to do it, because we had
no frame of reference. Coming from a boat,
it alters your perception of how you approach that wave
and how you surf that wave. You have to see the wall
of the wave from the beach to really get a feel
for what that wave is doing. So I said, "Mike, we gotta
get on the beach, man." Problem was you couldn't
go on the beach at G-Land unless you had a permit. [Bill] It was a national park. Up till then, people had been going there, European hunters, to get big game. [Gerry] Sumatran tigers
were there, you know. There was actually two of them that lived
in this jungle preserve. [Jack M.] So Mike decided
he's going to go to Indonesia to get permits. I remember hearing him say, "Oh, yeah, I was in Jakarta
and I had to go see the general, and I got to get his kid
a surfboard." [Bill]
He was really good at dealing with Indonesian red tape. It was a trick, you know, so shake hands with the guy, and he'd slide the Rolex
right off his wrist, and it was a beautiful move, but he had
this kind of air about him without being too blatant. And he got the permits for it, permit to build
all these bamboo structures on the edge
of a national park. [Jack M.]
There was nothing there. Nothing. And they had to bring
everything. I was one of
the first people to film there. In order to get out there, you spend three hours paddling across this big,
beautiful bay, and you come
into this little crack at the end of the reef. [Gerry] As we got to where
Mike had built the treehouse, I looked out and went,
"Oh, my God!" [rock music playing] [Jack M.] This wave didn't stop. As a kid, we used to dream
of this sort of thing, and here it was
in front of you. I found the best waves
of my life. Life in the camp was great. [Jack M.]
There were only allowed six to ten people
in the camp at one time, so it was very intimate. [Gerry] There wasn't
a lot to do, but I don't think anybody
ever got bored. [Jack M.]
Everything that you wanted, Mike had prepared for. He'd bring in these big Igloos
full of food. Half a dozen of these Igloos,
and you'd open one up and there'd be this giant tuna, this fresh tuna that had
been there sitting on ice. [Gerry] Mike had
the camp workers that did all the cooking
and kept the camp clean. -[man] And they got paid for it?
-[Gerry] Yeah. That was their job. He has his food trip down. [Gerry] He had
a very strict diet that was based off
a Zen macrobiotic diet. Because it was the food trip
that was together that allowed us
to sustain our bodies to keep us fit and healthy. You know, malaria
was a big fear. [Bill]
We tried the malaria pills, but they reduced your ability
to be in the sun. We stopped doing that and we just did prophylactic
type things, you know, covering up our ankles,
wearing socks, and then getting under our nets
in the evening. And being under the net
also required that you didn't bring
anything soft that the rats might like, like wax, surf wax. The rats would come in,
eat a hole in your net, and then at 2 a.m.
the anopheles mosquito would come in, bam, malaria. [Gerry] You couldn't afford
to get hurt. The entire reason we were there
was to surf that wave. It was a surfing
monastic existence. It was like we were monks. And this was
our all-day meditation. [intense music playing] [Bill] There were nights
when we'd sit on this bamboo and the offshore breeze
would just blow through, keeping the mosquitoes off, and just this thunderous
cannonade coming down the coast of really powerful waves and we'd just soak it in. I mean, it's just,
it's like being right in front of the pyramids
or something. [Gerry] There was one trip where
we were coming to the end of it, and Mike said, "All right,
well, we're going back," and I said,
"Mike, I don't wanna go back. I wanna stay." So everybody all left,
and I stayed. I remember waking up
the first morning, looking around, all the other beds are empty,
I'm going, "Wow, I'm here all alone. Oh, this is kind of cool. I feel like Robinson Crusoe." Being in there all alone, especially after the whole
Lightning Bolt thing, really had
a profound effect on me. We live in a world where there's constant,
incessant distractions. Losing focus is easy. A large part of attention is being able to be
in the moment, right here, right now. The solitude of that place, it was a real cosmic sanctuary
or something. It was like the temple.
It was the temple of surf. I was forming this very special, very personal relationship
with this surf spot, with this wave. Getting to it on a cliché-ish but a spiritual level. It was the beginning
of me and G-Land really... becoming one. So after that trip to the camp,
I went back to Bali, and one day I saw a guy
fishing with a throw net, and I asked him
if I could try it, 'cause my dad was an expert
throw-net fisherman in Hawaii. My dad came from New York. His dad Cuban, his mom German. Think it was the late '30s, my dad joined the army
and on the GI Bill decided he was going
to go to school at the University of Hawaii. Caught a boat out of New York,
through the Panama Canal, then over to Hawaii. My mother is local Japanese, Hawaiian Japanese. Her grandparents
came from Japan to work in the plantation. They all worked
on the plantation,
her mom and dad. [Lola] Japanese woman
did not go on past... I mean, the high school
was a big deal. And my mother
was going to college. [Gerry] My dad met my mom
at the U-H. They fell in love,
they got married. She was traditional
Japanese family. It was expected that she was
gonna marry a Japanese man. [Lola] My mother was
very strong and very smart, and my father was
a Haole man, if you will. A lot of the GIs
that were there would promise these women things and produce children
and then they left. And my grandpa thought that's
what would happen to my mother. But my father got to Hawaii
and he said, "I'm never leaving." [Victor] You know, our dad was
such a special person. He came to Hawaii, and he didn't try to change
his environment, he assimilated
into the Hawaiian culture. The way he did it was so cool, 'cause he met our mom,
got married, he learned how to throw a net
from our uncle. He gravitated towards
this throw-net fishing, with my Uncle Kodama,
and got really good at it. He was just like this ninja
in the water. And I remember watching him,
you know, and he'd just be still there, and I knew he saw some fish, and he was waiting for them to come within range
of his throw net. Whoo, whoosh! And he'd spread that thing
in a perfect circle every time. I distinctly remember
that movement of him throwing the net. Other throw-net fishermen,
local guys, they go, "Yeah, your father's
considered to be one of the top throw-net
fishermen in Hawaii." You know, here's my dad,
he's a Haole, he's from New York. It was really an art. I mean, it was
beautiful to watch. [telephone rings] [Gerry] I got a phone call
in Maui one day, and I got up, you know,
and went over and, "Hello," and said, "Will you please hold
for John Milius?" Who's John Milius? John comes on the phone. [gruff voice]
"Hello, Gerry, this is John. You don't know me
but I know all about you, and I'm doing a film project and I want you
to be a part of it." And, oh, shit, this
is Hollywood calling, man. [energetic music playing] [Sam] John Milius is part of
that new breed of filmmakers that included Steven Spielberg
and Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. He wrote "Apocalypse Now." He wrote "Jeremiah Johnson." The difference was that
John Milius was a surfer. He had some renown
by the mid-'70s, and he realized, "you know what,
I've got a few chips here,
I better play 'em. I wanna make a movie
about my youth as a surfer." [director]
Marker. Let's get that one shot. Get on his feet,
get on his feet. Beautiful! On his feet. "Big Wednesday"
is the biggest surf that comes in 20 years,
and... Greg, this isn't gonna make it. -[Greg] Sure, it will.
-No. Got all this water
moving out there and it's trying to hurt you. You could very easily drown. You could drown. [clears throat] This is dumb, Greg. [Greg, laughing] Just relax. Hey, hey, that's Lopez. Yeah, let's go. [bluesy music playing] [Gerry] So during the making
of "Big Wednesday," I got to hang out in Hollywood, experiencing that lifestyle which I thought
was great at first but eventually I realized
wasn't so great. Nighttime came around,
there was drugs, there was a lot of drinking. I guess I was 28, 29 years old. Old enough to know better,
but still dumb enough to do it. I remember waking up
one afternoon, and I looked down and there was
just this beautiful south swell. You could see the lines
out to the horizon, but by then the south wind
had already come in and blown it out,
and I went, "That's it, man,
I'm never gonna drink again. I don't wanna ever miss
a morning because I'm too hungover
to get up." And I never drank or, you know, took
those kind of drugs ever again. "Big Wednesday"
was the beginning of actually a very long
and great friendship with John. He was working
on this project in 1980, and John wrote in a part for me. I got the script
and I read it, I'm like, "Holy crap, are you kidding?
This is like a big role. I don't know how to act." He goes, "Don't worry about it.
You'll be fine." Who are you? I am Subotai, thief and archer. I am Hyrkanian. So, what are you doing here? [chains rattle] Dinner for wolves. [Schwarzenegger chuckles] [Gerry] To have a second lead
in a movie like that, you really get pampered. When John said,
"I have a new project, it's called
'Farewell to the King,'" I had already read the book. I said, "I'm in.
What do you want me to do?" He goes, "I got this great
character called Gwai." The mountain people,
we come in peace. I have this haircut
and all these tattoos and stuff. So that was really fun
doing that role. I got back to Hollywood and got a call from this agent, and she goes,
"Well, you're an actor now. I can represent you," and I go,
"Well, I live in Maui." She goes,
"Yeah, that's not gonna work.
You have to be here. There's readings you have
to go to, casting calls,
stuff like that. You have to be here." And I went, "You know what,
I like Maui. I don't wanna be an actor." [Hawaiian guitar music playing] It was right after the release
of the Conan movie that I met Toni, when she became interested
in wind surfing, about the same time that I did. Toni and I, we fit together. You know, we just
complemented each other. We were the yin and yang, and together we found the Tao,
that harmony that exists in the center of everything
in life. [Toni] I had dated
a surfer before that, and I thought, "Oh, I don't ever
want to date a surfer again. With a surfer, you're never
the number-one love." Here is Gerry,
the ultimate surfer. [Gerry] I remember
when Toni and I were heading to Hana
to get married, the waves were good. She knew what I was thinking. She's got a good eye for waves. We were driving there
and she's going, "Well, which one
are you choosing?" "All right. I guess I'm gonna have
to let the waves go today." Surrender is a huge part
of life. When I surrendered to Toni, which has been
a long process, by the way, when I surrendered to the fact that her judgment
is better than mine, her eyesight's better than mine, her hearing
is much better than mine, and her smell, everything, life really got better. I never thought that I wanted to be a father. Toni showed me the way, and it's been probably the most wonderful, complete thing that life can give you. When Alex was three years old, Toni and I,
with some other friends, took a trip
and spent a couple of days up in Bend, Oregon. [Toni] It was just like
going back in time there. It was such
a quaint little town, and it was nice 'cause nobody knew Gerry there. [Gerry] We liked it,
and we came back that winter because we were all jazzed
on snowboarding, the early,
beginning stages of it, and we were there three days
on that second trip and we bought a house. [Toni] I don't think
we ever just sat down and had a discussion, "and
this is what we're gonna do." We'd sort of fly by the seat
of our pants a little bit. "Oh, well, let's go try it
and see what happens." [Gerry] Just like that,
Bend became a really integral part
of our lives. The whole move to the mountain
was part of my path of life. The ocean's always moving. The ocean is considered
very yin in nature. The mountains are the yang side. But that's
where the stillness is. What I found at Mount Bachelor was all these frozen waves that the wind had created
out of the snow. A lot of people have asked me, "Wasn't it difficult
to leave Maui to move to Bend?" And the honest answer is,
"It wasn't." Anyway, it wasn't like
I had stopped surfing. I was traveling
to different parts of the world, surfing, you know, surf contests
mostly, at that point. The first few years
that we lived there, Gerry went on a lot
of different surf trips. I remember him being gone
a lot when I was young. I mean, I would miss him
'cause he was going to places that I'd never heard of. [Toni] Still go back
to Indonesia and he'd always end up
on the North Shore at some point in the winter. So he wasn't just
a stay-at-home dad or he wasn't just milling
around the house all the time. Being a surfer has got to be
the most selfish thing there is in the whole world. What about the relationship? What about the family? What about the job?
What about everything else? Well, yeah,
but the waves are good. That's selfish, you know.
That's thinking about yourself. But unlike surfing, in which my obsession
with waves wasn't really anything I could
share with Toni or Alex, snowboarding was something, as Alex became adept at it, we enjoyed as a family. I never pressured Alex to surf. I always felt it was something
that had to happen on its own and on his own terms. [Toni] When Alex was growing up
back in Maui, all the comments when we're
down at the beach is like, "Oh, you gonna be a big
wave surfer like your dad?" And we'd just kind of cringe every time somebody
would say that and think, "well, I want him to figure out
what he wants to do." He may not ever want to surf. [Alex]
Surfing is the hardest thing I think you could learn
how to do. [Gerry] Eventually,
Alex started to like surfing and surfing
did its thing on him. And we got to enjoy it together. I loved the days that
I'd get to share with my dad in the ocean. The closest we ever get
is when we're in the water. You know, I've come
to realize that... my next wave isn't
as important to me anymore as Alex's next wave. [Toni] We make surfboards here. The Lopez business
is really a mom-and-pop shop. Alex has his own line of boards. [Alex] I love building boards. Just getting lost
in doing something. [Gerry] Alex's boards
are different than mine, and passing on
what I can to Alex has really given me
a deeper appreciation for this thing,
the shaping thing that I've been doing
for the last 50 years. [piano playing classical music] I love shaping. Shaping and building surfboards really keeps me in my surf consciousness. Shaping has never,
never lost its appeal for me. I love it,
maybe now more than ever. [man] It's like a piece of art. [Gerry]
They're all pieces of art, in my opinion. [peaceful piano music playing] It's funny, you know,
we're four hours from the ocean, but this is what we do. [Gerry] I guess at this point
in my life I'm in my teacher phase. As I grow older, I find
that sharing what I've learned has become more and more
important to me. And so I've traveled quite a bit
to different parts of the world to do yoga retreats. [contemplative music playing] I hadn't been back to Bali
in about 30 years, and I went back
to teach some yoga and to help raise some money for the community there
at Uluwatu. I feel what my role is,
is I'm just a conduit for all this information that's been there
for a long, long time. [man] Do you like teaching? [Gerry] I'm a little nervous,
you know, because I don't feel as though
I'm completely qualified
to do it. You know, I've been practicing
yoga for over 50 years and... [man] That doesn't sound
like you're qualified. Yeah. When I teach yoga, I'm not making anything up. Everything I teach
comes from a source that I believe to be
completely unimpeachable. I've been studying this book
since 1968. I mean,
this is the original one, three dollars and 80 cents. There's all these poses
in here that, I mean, I've tried everything
a million times. This pose
is tremendously difficult. I'd love to be able
to do that one. I can't even do that one. I try almost once a week, still. I mean, this is 50 years
trying to do it. [Alex] My dad's determination,
his perseverance, that's something
that's inspirational and motivational, like, "Wow, how old is he,
and he just started foiling?" [Gerry] I want to keep
learning new things. I'm determined because
I know it can be done. One of the hardest things
in life is allowing yourself
that freedom to fail and be a kook. [Toni] When he picks
something up, I've never seen anybody
so driven. [Alex] Anything that he wants
to learn how to do, he has this tunnel vision
where nothing is gonna stop him. [Gerry] Sometimes
that frustration will just kill you and stop you
and go, "Screw it." It's only when
you're not trying, when it just happens on its own
and it's spontaneous, that the light bulb goes on. [Toni] As focused
as he is on surfing, he is on a lot
of different things. [Gerry] I was finding myself having to find younger friends
to do things with, because the ones my age are just not
that interested anymore. [Matt] Gerry's 70,
and he's going to end up sitting in full lotus position while the rest of us
are in senior living. [Sam] Whether you're
watching old movies of him surfing Pipeline, or watching him surf
a river wave in Bend, Oregon, you'll see him experiencing
the very same sensation. There's something about
the energy that is coming up
through the board into the soles of the feet
and into his soul that sustains him,
that drives him, and that satisfies him. [Gerry] We're only here
for a short time, and you have to find
some peace within you. Then sharing that peace, contributing
to other people's happiness, lets you find the true goal,
the true meaning of life. [peaceful guitar music playing] My beach, my wave, go home. [man] Yeah!
Saw this in a theater. It was great!
Can he just stop selling costco boards? One of his goons almost killed me this morning lol
Yeah, environmental guru, Costco foam boards all over Oahu, how long before they end up in the landfill? Lopez may be a great surfer, but he can KMA for his lack of environmental awareness.
Thanks for posting
Gonna watch this this weekend