I’m old enough to know and appreciate all things Point Break (the real 1990s version) but young enough that I couldn’t jump on the film’s cult classic bandwagon until, well, until it had become a cult classic. Growing up in Silicon Valley meant I wasn’t raised on the beach or in the ocean. Surfing wasn’t something I was grandfathered into. My dad was my baseball coach, he took me to Oakland Raider games, and he and I would play street hockey and basketball when he came home from work for as long as I can remember, but he never pushed me into a wave or warned me of how much I would fall in love with climbing down the cliff at Steamer Lane or cranking the car heater after a cold winter session. As cheesy as it is, I navigated the beginnings of my love affair with surfing thanks to Point Break. As a kid with a non-surfing upbringing, living 45 minutes away from the ocean, I had to soak up my surfing pop culture however I could. Johnny Utah and Bodhi didn’t get me hooked. No, I managed that part on my own. But the really old copy I owned of that movie was often the first thing I turned to when I needed a salt water fix.
The thing is, I know my story’s not that unique. Keanu Reeves embodied a caricature of the surfer just as much as Patrick Swayze’s “Little hand says it’s time to rock and roll” routine did. They’re romanticized and equally ridiculous portrayals of people who end up falling in love with the daily routine of riding waves and never look back. But the awesome thing is I think that’s kind of what we all relate to one night surfing/skydiving/bonfire football/beach side brawl at a time. That’s why hearing Keanu Reeves look back on it all is equally as awesome – from Swayze being a real life Bodhi, to how Kathryn Bigelow really did create something groundbreaking in the action filmmaking perspective, to how his role as Johnny Utah genuinely inspired people to, as Bodhi would say, “live to get radical.”
Vaya con Dios.
