The Yin and Yang of Gerry Lopez (2022)
UK movie premiere at the London Surf Film Festival 2022
After an extended break during the pandemic years, the London Surf Film Festival was finally back at the Genesis Cinema in 2022 and it came with a bang: a documentary about the legendary surfer Gerry Lopez and a special workshop with director Stacy Peralta. Yes, you read that right. The UK premiere brought Peralta back to London and there was a chance to meet him. Charlie was lucky enough to get a ticket!
Drop-ins and snakes
In the opening scene of The Yin and Yang of Gerry Lopez, the Hawaiian surfer apologises to everybody he has stolen waves from. He also adds he hadn’t become so good at surfing, if he hadn’t stolen waves. He speaks these words in an honest and authentic way that sets the tone for the rest of the movie.
Born and raised in Hawaii, Lopez came from a family of great swimmers and practically learned how to move in the water before he could walk. He describes in an emotional way how his mum pushed him into his first wave and the feelings that came with that decisive moment in his life. There is no point trying to explain this feeling that only a surfer will understand.
Yin & Yang
Whenever Gerry speaks in the movie, he is sitting in a perfect lotus seat. Peralta chose the title of the movie on purpose because of the important role Yoga played and still plays in Gerry Lopez’ life. The movie explains and shows how he discovered Yoga, the first book he got and how it affected his journey. The Yin and Yang is for him a synonym for life that never goes in a straight line.
Stacy Peralta said something very similar during the workshop: “Life is like a wave; we get picked up on it. We’re learning to ride it as we go and there are many ups and downs. It’s never too late to start anything because you’re still riding that wave.”
And indeed, if you were to turn the Yin and Yang symbol sideways, it does look like a wave, right?
On the wave to success
It was the waves and the circumstances of the time that paved the path of Gerry Lopez. Surfboards became shorter and shorter towards the end of the 1960s, down from 10ft to 7ft. The young Gerry didn’t have the financial means to buy a new board and decided to shorten a longboard. He loved riding that board and it was the beginning of his career as a shaper, and it made him Mr. Pipeline. He had finally found the board that allowed him to master that wave.
In the documentary, The Yin and Yang of Gerry Lopez, several peers of Gerry describe his journey, amongst them surf champions like Shaun Tomson and Tom Carroll, Gerry’s sister Lola and his brother Victor alongside filmmakers and publishers from the world of surfing.
Jack Shipley with whom Gerry had founded Lightning Bolt Surfboards at the beginning of the 1970s talks about this part of history. Right from the start, they were onto a great success. The Movie Five Summer Stories contributed heavily. Peralta tells this story in the documentary and makes the audience at the Genesis Cinema burst out laughing at the sight of some particular fashion items by Lightning Bolt.
Meeting Stacy Peralta
Fans of Dogtown and Z-Boys or any other skate or surf movie in London had the opportunity that day at the Genesis Cinema to meet Stacy Peralta. The meet & greet took place in a small screening room at the cinema in the afternoon. There were around 30 people asking questions and listening to the great storyteller Stacy Peralta.
He talked about his first experience as a movie director and about being an actor in some badly made ones at the beginning of his career in film. It was all a matter of coincidence for him to end up being where he is today. He shared with the audience how badly he did at school and that he would have never thought about reading books voluntarily. Everybody who was in the audience that day would find that hard to believe. How could one become a great storyteller without reading? Stacy solved that mystery when he told them how he got into books and that he “didn’t expect to be successful in life.”
The Yin and Yang of Stacy Peralta
Listening to him sparked one question and a member in the audience asked Peralta directly how he managed to stay so humble. With great appreciation, he talks about being lucky to be in the right place at the right time and remembers the early days of skate boarding. Apparently, the place where he was in the 70s, California, was the only place on earth where pools had the right shape for skateboarding. Peralta talks about having talent and learning how to use it. He also considers himself lucky that he was already 16 when the Z-Boys became popular. Just a few years older than some others in the group made the difference to not forget that it was all about fun, not money.
When he starts talking about self-doubt, learning how to fail and meditation as a solution, his words seem to be taken right out of the Gerry Lopez interviews in the movie. Who might have been influenced by whom here?
Back to his greatest success
Everybody was at the Genesis Cinema that day to watch a documentary about one of the greatest surfers, but Peralta’s success came from his career as a professional skateboarder in the 1970s and the movie Dogtown and Z-Boys from 2001. Of course, the audience had questions about that!
One burning question was about the most memorable police chase, and he remembers an incident where he climbed over a fence and it started raining skateboards as everybody threw their board over before climbing. Now wouldn’t that have made a great picture!
Peralta has passed the age of 60 but he proves that day in London that you’re never too old to pick up a skateboard, without your hands and in a cinema. He also slides in a moonwalk style through the room just to demonstrate how hard it can be to film a skateboarding scene.
“The great thing about skateboarding, be it in the Olympics or not, is that it is always going to be illegal somewhere. Those signs “no skateboarding” are an invitation.” (Stacy Peralta, July 2022 in London)
He remembers how he impressed some kids in the street a few years ago who would not have expected “an old guy” knowing anything about skateboarding until he demonstrated what he could do and was recognized as the legend he is for skaters all over the world.
Planning a movie about Gerry Lopez
Peralta also explained that afternoon how he approached the movie with Gerry. Both knew each other from before and when Patagonia approached Gerry about a film project it was clear, that there was only one director he would work with.
Peralta told the audience in London how he spent months going through archives and writing down questions to ask in the interviews. He speaks about the many unique chapters in Gerry’s life and how they can be told alongside the history of surfing.
When it comes to music, Peralta talks about long drives that he used to just listen to all kinds of tunes. He remembers exactly the moment of a song that was great for the scenes about Gerry’s time in Indonesia.
Gerry’s G-Land: Uncrowded waves in Indonesia
Back in front of the camera in his signature lotus seat, Gerry Lopez talks about Bali in 1974. He remembers how they got lost on the way to the surf, how they took a boat over to G-Land and discovered the wave that didn’t stop. The images on screen emphasize his words: it was indeed a wave that didn’t stop. But what it mostly was is uncrowded, nothing like the Bali of the 21st century.
What the audience was certainly expecting in the Bali context and is missing from the whole movie is the dark side of surfing Indonesia in the 1970s. Drugs and psychedelics are mentioned on one occasion in the documentary, but the topic leaves a lot of room for imagination.
Hollywood calling
His time in Bali was necessary to forget the sad ending of the Lightning Bolt chapter, but it wasn’t the end of the Gerry Lopez’ success story. He explains in The Yin and Yang of Gerry Lopez how surrealistic it seemed to get a call from John Milius. The next we saw was Lopez on screen in Big Wednesday (1978), Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Farewell to the King (1989). Peralta embedded some scenes in the documentary. Laughter filled the cinema that evening in London.
The Hollywood hills aren’t far from the great surf breaks around L.A., but it was Maui that called Mr. Pipeline back:
“I like Maui. I don’t wanna be an actor.” (Gerry Lopez in The Yin and Yang of Gerry Lopez)
Family life
Once the Hollywood years were over, the next adventure was waiting for Gerry Lopez. He met a young woman who didn’t want to date a surfer again, but she fell for the Hawaiian. Toni Lopez tells the story of her and Gerry in the documentary. They got married in 1987 and had son Alex in 1989.
Another sport became dominant in their lives in the 1990s: Snowboarding. Lopez describes it like frozen waves. The family moved to Oregon.
Towards the end of the documentary though, it is revealed that they eventually returned to Hawaii and Gerry’s son Alex followed his father’s footsteps and became a surfer and shaper. That’s the closing of the circle. Gerry Lopez is still surfing and teaching Yoga. He is over 70 and fully enjoying life. Like Stacy Peralta mentioned: “Gerry doesn’t look back. He only thinks about the future.”
Riding that wave
Peralta mentioned during the meet & greet at the Genesis Cinema in London that the final scene of the movie was his favourite. Gerry Lopez learns how to foil surf. The movie makers got a view behind the curtain and noticed that it doesn’t even come easy for somebody like Gerry Lopez. He had to find younger friends to join him on such adventures which is not stopping him. He enjoys the freedom of being a kook and failing whilst trying something new. The movie ends with Gerry surfing a standing river wave which Peralta comments:
“Nobody from his generation would surf 1ft river waves. But he’s enjoying every aspect of surfing.”
A member of the audience that day asked Peralta to decide between surfing and skateboarding. He hesitated. Long pause. He eventually chose water over asphalt. He describes the feeling when the water carries you which brings us back to the opening scene of the movie and the words by Gerry Lopez about his first wave ever. Stacy Peralta admitted that he doesn’t follow current surfing or skating, but he is convinced that the Gerry Lopez of the future is likely to come from a wave pool or a river wave. We shall see!
