Director Bruce Brown treats us to the ultimate Sixties hymn to young, footloose surfers everywhere, as he embarks on a round-the-world odyssey in search of the Perfect Wave with two surfers – Mike Hynson and Robert August.
Capturing the subculture at the precise time it was having the most profound influence on popular music and Californian lifestyles, the duo visit the virgin beaches of Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti and Hawaii for time-lapsed sunsets and fabulous shots of them riding the wild surf.
Groovy music by The Sandals, a five-piece surf music outfit, accompany the beautiful images and Brown’s hip surfer-speak is a history lesson in itself.
The film is justly famous for Brown’s go-for-broke attitude in recording some of the most spectacular, brain-jangling wave-rides ever captured on celluloid.
Twenty-eight years on, the search for the “perfect wave” continued in The Endless Summer II (1994) with tanned and toned beach boys Pat O’Connell and Robert “Wingnut” Weaver being followed around the world by Brown. This time it was Alaska, Bali, Fiji, France and Java getting the photographic picture postcard treatment.
Mike Hynson
Mike Hynson Robert August
Robert August Sammy Lee
Sammy Lee Butch Van Artsdalen
Butch Van Artsdalen James Blairs
James Blairs Narrator
Bruce Brown
