What about the title?
SG: That was Ava. I mean, we all agreed. “Stephanie in the Water” was it. I don’t know, I was surveying the name. It could have been something funky and quirky, and I would’ve been okay with that.
AW: Yeah, I think we just wanted to keep it really literal. We definitely had brainstorming sessions where it was totally different – like quotes or names or songs or referenced ideas, and it was getting really psychedelic and crazy. And we didn’t want to regret the name in 15 years. Like “Oh man, why did we call it this wild thing that no one understands the reference?” So we decided to use Stephanie’s name and where she was or what she does. It’s so direct no one’s going to confuse it. Yeah… that’s the title, that’s the story.
One of the moments from the film that I really liked was a scene where you ask why you want to be the best in the world at something. That was a very candid, nice moment. What is the drive to become the best in the world? What do you think that is? Where does it come from?
SG: Well, I don’t know. I think that’s the question I was sort of after. Like, the first four years on tour, just from a young age. I don’t want to say it was easy, but it felt so natural and so comfortable – to just win. I didn’t want to go and try to be a rookie on tour and be top ten or top five. I thought, you know, “Why not just go number one?” What’s the point of being on tour if you don’t want to be the best?
The first four years of just being so consistently successful, I think I got to the point of – why? And what’s the motivation to keep doing it? And, the answer? It’s enjoyable.
To be able to go and win – it’s something you set out to do and achieve it. And it’s interesting to go through a stage where you have to let go of it to be able to achieve again. And, these are the kind of questions I would always think about. And at that moment, I hadn’t ever lost the World Title, so I didn’t know how to compare between a good World Title and an excellent World Title. Losing something and coming back. So I was like, “Why do I want to keep doing this when nothing physically happens?” I just had more junk in my house, because I kept getting all these trophies. Like, “Where do I put them? I’m running out of space.” So that is something that I guess had been brewing for a while, those questions. And I still don’t entirely know. I mean, other than it being purely enjoyable and feeling the satisfaction of achieving something you set out to do. And I’m competitive.
I remember asking Ava during the film, “Didn’t you ever want to be the best at something in the whole world when you were a little kid?” And she said, “Hmmm, not really.” And that’s kind of weird to me. I think it’s just a mixture of all those components, the competitiveness, achieving, enjoying…
Have you enjoyed the challenge of getting back on top? I think you have to. And with the attack, you seem to find the positive in everything. In some ways I guess it’s given you an opportunity to think about what’s important in your life and to have another challenge to overcome. And then maybe losing a World Title in the process possibly renews that competitive fire. Is there any truth to that?
SG: Yeah, definitely. It makes it more measurable, like the motions you go through when you actually reach that moment. And, yeah, I’ve always been pretty positive about everything – with the attack as well. I mean I could sit here and ask, “Why me?” It was traumatizing, but for some reason I was able to be say, “Okay, it has happened to me for some reason, and I’m going to learn something from it.” That was probably the most valuable year of my life, 2011. Since it happened, I was pretty well aware of how I could approach it and grow. And, it’s so true, because 2012 was probably the best, in my eyes, successful year in my career. I was so determined to win. Whereas before, I was floating, winning, having fun. And then I really had to fight for it. It’s like anything in life where you have to put something on the line and fight for it.
You already alluded to it, but you seem to enjoy bringing outside influences into surfing. I feel that’s been especially true in the last year or two. Could you speak to that?
AW: I don’t know if I was actively trying to bring outside influence. But, I grew up in Torquay, Victoria, which is a surf community, and I grew up in the surf industry and that’s how I met Steph. But, I had been living in New York City for about 10 years, and I went to University in New York and I had not spent any time around the surf industry for a while. And, we met up, we started working and my head was full of art films and books, and we just came together and were able to share ideas and have this really fun, creative, intellectual dialogue.
SG: The timing of it was just right, because I had been so one-track mind for a long time, and then when Ava and I got together and started working, it was just perfect because I was hungry for knowledge of meeting a better, badder world. And Ava was just so knowledgeable about all these crazy, weird, cool topics. Just like sponging off her world kind of, like, “Teach me more!”
