Surfing enthusiasts sprawled across the lawn of Long Bay Beach Resort on last Friday evening to watch a screening of Take Every Wave, a documentary about surfing legend Laird Hamilton. Director and producer Rory Kennedy and her husband Mark Bailey, the film’s writer, were at the screening with their three children, and they answered questions afterwards.
“When I see the kind of waves he goes on, I want to run in the opposite direction. I like this idea of leaning into that fear, leaning into things that scare me,” Ms. Kennedy explained when asked if there was an overarching theme to the film. “The idea is the same: How can we kind of lean into that and learn from it?”
Mr. Hamilton is an American big wave surfer who was born in 1964. He grew up around surfing in Hawaii, became a model as a teenager, and played surfing characters in films including North Shore and a 2015 remake of Point Break.
He married Gabrielle Reece, a professional volleyball player and model who was raised in St. Thomas and New York.
Mr. Hamilton is the co-inventor of tow-in surfing — a method of using boats or jet skis to catch large waves — and spent years experimenting with the foilboard, a surfboard with a hydrofoil attached to the bottom to lift it out of the water.
The film covers the highlights of his life while also looking into his psyche through interviews with him and close friends and family members.
“He follows his dream,” Ms. Kennedy said. “He just wants to be in the water, and he’s figured out a way to live a life where he’s totally in the water all the time. I love that message for all of us to follow our dreams.”
During the question-and-answer session with the audience, she described how her film crew had to use jet skis and drones but found that the best way to “keep up” with Mr. Hamilton was in a helicopter.
Mr. Bailey said adventure and innovation were at the heart of the film. The results of the things Mr. Hamilton and his community created — like foiling and tow-in surfing — can be seen today, he said.
After the talk, Mr. Bailey and Ms. Kennedy told the Beacon how the Friday event came to be.
The family was vacationing in the Virgin Islands for three weeks, and the screening of Take Every Wave took place on the last night of their holiday. It was through her friend Alex Dick-Read, the former editor of The Surfer’s Path magazine and one of the owners of Surf School BVI, that the event was organised.
“I came here with no intention of screening the film, and then I was in the mangroves with Alex. He had seen the film and we were talking about it. His magazine is profiled in the film and he was saying that he shows it to some of the kids in the surf camp here,” she said. “I said I’d be happy to show it here. It’s sort of fun for me because you get an audience that’s interested in it.”
Ms. Kennedy said her family is close with the owners of Long Bay Beach Resort, who were happy to host the screening.
The couple also spoke more about the development process of the film and others that they’ve worked on over the years. They’ve covered a range of social issues like the AIDS epidemic and the Vietnam War.
Mr. Bailey described Take Every Wave as “pretty intimate” since the characters are all very close to Mr. Hamilton.
“When you figure out who your storytellers are, that kind of shapes it,” he said.
Though Mr. Bailey sees filmmaking as akin to oil painting, where “you step back” and add colour here and there, Ms.Kennedy said she thinks of it more as a piece of marble waiting to be sculpted.
“I think there’s layers to it and that sometimes you do one pass, then you do many, many more passes,” she said. “You’re thinking about what is the beginning, middle and end; who are your characters; what are the act breaks.”
Ms. Kennedy said the film took nearly two years to make, and that the editing process itself took nine months. She conducted all of the interviews in the film and said her involvement was “pretty intense.”
She also played a very hands-on role in the editing process, she said.
“I find making films is always hard,” she said. “It’s an undertaking.”
She’s currently working on a documentary on Boeing for Netflix.