Who would’ve guessed that Mickey, the arrogant bald guy (played by Matt George) in 1998’s In God’s Hands would’ve predicted the future of big wave surfing? Photo: Tristar Pictures
The scene is a familiar one, at least to anyone who has been following the arc of progression in the realm of big wave riding. A few years back a five-story northwest swell is exploding on the reef at Peahi, on Maui, where southeast winds are whipping the deep-bellied walls into gigantic barrels across the inside bowl. A surfer floats in the channel, sitting on a red 10’6” gun, staring into the massive tubes. In his late 30s, the surfer is bald but handsome, and obviously well muscled under his black neoprene vest. He was once one of the world’s top professional surfers yet at an age when most of his peers have begun angling for a sales rep job he’s become determined to reinvent himself as a big wave rider. He figures Peahi is the place to do it. But in a radical way, the term ‘radical’ applied in its literal sense, meaning “a return to the origin.” Which is why, as a handful of tow-in teams buzz in and out of the lineup on their skis, this surfer sits on his big gun, weighing the odds of success, psyching himself up to attempt paddling under his own power into giant waves previously thought to be unrideable without jet-assist.
As the bald surfer sits in the channel a ski approaches, with a younger blond surfer at the helm.
“Grab the rope,” the young guy says. “I’ll tow you in.”
“It can be done, you know,” replies the bald surfer. “You can paddle into these waves.”
He looks hard at the young surfer on the ski, taking his measure.
“You could do it,” he says.
And he was right. Because the bald surfer was Matt George, playing the role of “Mickey” in the 1998 Hollywood surf epic In God’s Hands. The young surfer on the ski was none other than Shane Dorian, who during the making of the film experienced his very first Peahi session, revealing, in the movie’s climactic action sequence, the early form that would one day see him regarded as the best big wave surfer in the world.
Yet at the time everything that was happening in big waves was happening at the end of the tow rope, that particular discipline experiencing perhaps the greatest paradigm shift the sport has ever seen. Go back and watch In God’s Hands Peahi sequence with this thought in mind; Brian Keaulana’s deep, behind-the-bowl barrel still blows minds by today’s standards so you can imagine the impact it had almost 20 years ago. Laird Hamilton’s performances, in the meantime, were quite literally off the scale. As the new millennium dawned big wave tow-in surfing was changing the sport so fundamentally and so fast it was hard to even imagine where we’d be in a decade or so.
But who could have imagined that by 2015 the heavy water vanguard would, for the most part, put down the rope, eschewing standards of progression applied to virtually every other form of surfing in a very demonstrative return to an older, more traditional pursuit? Who could have imagined that big wave riding would, for all intents and purposes, go backward?
Mickey, that’s who. Say what you want about In God’s Hands‘ often incoherent plot development and bombastic dialog, considering the session that went down on Maui on January 15 the scene where Mickey looks up at Shane and tells him that he could be the one to paddle into big Peahi is remarkably prescient, and perhaps the most authentic single moment in any Hollywood surf film (save for when Lily Kilua’s mom so effectively stereotypes Steamer Lane for being a lazy beach bum in 1964’s Ride the Wild Surf, Hollywood’s first—and still its best—big wave movie.)
Matt George’s “Mickey” even looked like Shane Dorian does today, with his shaved pate, black vest and big red gun. How appropriate, then, that seventeen years after this scene was enacted Shane is the one surfing Peahi on his giant John Carper pintail, proving that it can be done.
“It’s funny how art imitates life sometimes, right?” says Dorian today. “Or how life imitates art. But the concept in the movie kind of came to life because all these years later we found out that you really don’t need a jet ski to ride these giant waves. You can actually paddle them.”
Yes, you can but exactly why Shane and so many of the world’s best big wave surfers have chosen paddle over performance isn’t as easy to articulate.
“I get asked that all the time,” says Shane. “They’re like, ‘Why would you want to paddle it on a giant board where you’re basically going a lot slower and you’re more clumsy and it’s almost a miracle if you make the wave?’ You know, when you could just tow into it on this little board, get way more waves, go super fast, get more barreled, and have better performance.”
The standard answer can be found on page one of the new Paddle-In Surfer’s script: paddling into big waves is much more difficult, much more of a challenge, and thus much more satisfying. But strip away this pragmatic assessment, in itself representing an accepted standard of measure, and you’ll find a motivational element rooted more in emotion than execution.
“It kind of blew me away that we could paddle big Jaws,” says Shane. “The first couple of times a real barrier was broken. I think those early sessions were really similar to back in the day when Waimea was first surfed by those early big wave pioneers. I guarantee we went through the same emotions, the nervousness and anxiety of facing the unknown. And you know, it was cool to have experienced that all these years later. I’m really thankful that I was a part of those early sessions.”
This is what makes what Dorian and Crew are currently doing at Peahi so inspiring. Unlike those very few surfers whose performance parameters include aerial 720’s and Slob Airs, surviving bottomless pits over damp barnacles in Ireland or hiding in 30-second Desert Point barrels, most of us can at least relate to the direction Shane’s surfing has taken. The appeal on either end of the wave scale is that which is most basic about surfing. It’s not a step backward but is, in fact, the rediscovery of something wonderful, something essential: the primal joy of paddling into a wave and riding it to the beach. Or, in Dorian’s case, successfully to the safety of the shoulder.
“When it comes down to it that’s what’s appealing to me,” say Shane. “That’s what keeps me coming back.”
As we knew he would.
Because Mickey was right.
