Surf movie: A fly in the champagne (2009)
A documentary about the greatest rivalry in the history of surfing:
Andy Irons vs. Kelly Slater
Watch the movie on Amazon Prime Video
If you follow competitive surfing, may it be the WSL Championship Tour, the Qualifying Series or a local competition, you might have noticed that there is always rivalry. The past season when Charlie attended the Quiksilver Pro France 2019, it would certainly be the Brazilians Gabriel Medina, Italo Ferreira, and Felipe Toledo, back in the day it was names like Sunny Garcia and Mark Occhilupo or Joel Parkinson and Mick Fanning… but the most iconic rivalry in the history of surfing was that between the surf legends Andy Irons and Kelly Slater.
It all began in 1998 when 20-year-old Andy Irons entered the world of competitive surfing. Kelly Slater, who already was a legend at that time, turned from an idol to look up to into a competitor.
The movie A fly in the champagne documents the rivalry that arose between Irons and Slater in the early 2000s. Ten years after it started, both professional surfers look back at the things that happened and they even laugh about moments where they wanted to punch each other in the face.
A fly in the champagne is a 2009 documentary by Irons Brothers Productions, directed by Matt Beauchesne, written by Chris Cote and Sal Masekela.
Rising up to fame
The movie starts with a retrospective on the careers of Kelly Slater and Andy Irons up to the point where they were facing each other in the waves.
Sponsors and friends of Irons and Slater share their memories and give a bit more insight into their biographies. You can hear Quiksilver CEO Bob McKnight talk about how he first met Kelly. Friends like Todd Kline and Strider Wasilewski talk about his early days and the advantage he had by being able to read waves very well. Images of Kelly at the beginning of his career winning amateur contests are shown.
Andy’s background is summarized by Billabong representatives as well as friends such as Kai Garcia and Shane Dorian. They point out that Andy had been admiring Kelly since he was a child.
As these people are introduced on screen, they are simply referred to as “friend” without stating whether it is a friend of Kelly’s or Andy’s. This is already the first clue and will be elaborated later on in the movie. Both surfers had a lot of common friends and necessarily had to get along with each other.
Heating up in the heats
After the first encounters, both Kelly Slater and Andy Irons had a career break. Andy re-qualified in 2001, Kelly joined the world tour again in 2002 and from then on, the rivalry heated up. Andy Irons talks in A fly in the champagne about the contribution of the media to intensify the rivalry.
“He wasn’t the guy I grew up looking up to anymore. He was the guy that I wanted to beat more than anything. Just seeing all this kind of crap. I just wanted nothing better than leave him on the beach with a loss.” (Andy Irons in A fly in the champagne, minute 18)
Both, Kelly Slater and Andy Irons, share memories in the movie about boxing training and imagining punching each other’s faces, voodoo dolls, and pranks that could have been mind games.
As the movie summarizes world tour stops and wins from 2003 to 2006, Andy and Kelly both remember contests where the scores might not have been a true representation of their performance.
You can see a laughing Kelly Slater as he remembers Andy shouting at him in the water and a confused Andy telling how Kelly tapped him on the shoulder before getting in the heat with the words: “I love you like a brother.”
The way they speak about their rivalry in the movie shows how the “I want to beat him at all costs” turned into a “If anybody beats me, it better be him” over the years.
Deep rivalry, but human beings
In A fly in the champagne, it is not getting as emotional as you might expect, but they’re touching on this aspect. Kelly Slater is sharing emotions about the year his father died, Andy Irons is talking about losing interest in surfing and partying too much. It wasn’t all that obvious in 2009 when A fly in the champagne came out, by now we know more about Andy’s situation those days as revealed in movies like “Andy Irons: Kissed by God”.
Kelly is telling how Andy opened up to him at some point whilst Andy is talking about his return to competitive surfing after getting married and finding his path again. These statements become a whole new meaning knowing what we know today about Andy’s life.
The movie ends with a trip to Indonesia Kelly Slater and Andy Irons went on together. By reading the description of the movie, expectations are high to see more of that, but it comes a bit short, unfortunately. There is no footage of them really interacting with each other. It feels like a forced trip that didn’t really serve its purpose. The viewer awaits to no avail a second “I love you like a brother” moment.
Andy Irons is talking though about how it was to surf with Kelly Slater, Shane Dorian, and Martin Potter. He admires his surf ability at the age of 43 wishing he would still be able to surf like that at this age. Unfortunately, some dreams never come true…RIP Andy Irons!
