What does it mean to live a good life?
If you were being dragged 300-yards underwater toward a rocky shoreline known as “the boneyard” would you be able to answer that?
It’s a question we don’t typically associate with surfing, but for Jay Moriarity, a 16-year-old big-wave surfer out of Santa Cruz and his mentor –– salty waterman Frosty Henson –– determining how to live a good life becomes paramount when confronting your own mortality on one of the most dangerous waves in the world.
Mavericks is among the four scariest waves on the planet. Half a mile off the central California coast, the waves are 40-foot freight trains in cold, dark water on a punishing shoreline. Just this last year, up and coming Hawaiian charger Sion Miloski drowned at Mavericks, leaving behind a wife and two daughters.
For a long time Mavericks was the secret spot of a small crew of hardcore Santa Cruz surfers (including Henson), but in 1995 a photographer from Surfer Magazine snapped a shot of 16-year-old Jay Moriarity falling down the face of the beast. Mavericks crashed onto the surf scene and has been tempting big-wave riders from all over the world ever since. The wave has made careers as quickly as it has ended others.
LA Confidential director Curtis Hanson’s, “Chasing Mavericks, “is a biopic on Morairity (Jonny Weston) and his tutor, an underground charger named Frosty Henson (Gerard Butler).
The relationship between Hollywood and the surfer world is tenuous at best. Since Hollywood capitalized on the Southern California surf scene with the Beach Party flicks in the mid-1960’s there has been a rift between Hollywood directors and surfer community. Chasing Mavericks will not help to bridge the gap. If you really want to learn about Mavericks, watch Stacy Peralta’s “Riding Giants.” Still, “Chasing Mavericks” is one of the only Hollywood surfing films you should see. Whether you’re landlubber or a wave rider, Jay Morairity is a man worth knowing about. The film is family-friendly and set among the beautiful beaches near Santa Cruz. Just try and ignore the rotting seal carcass that is Butler’s acting.
Butler makes Henson seem like a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, a 24-7 spaz who might jerk the car off the road and into a tree at any moment. Henson doubles as loose cannon surfer and wise teacher. With a deep snarling voice reminiscent of King Leonidas, Frosty shows Morairity how to play it cool as they paddle into monstrous sets and dive with great whites. Despite his lack of grace, the Eddie Vedder-look-a-like, finds a way to come across as something of an authentic working class surfer who knows the ocean well.
Morairity, played by Weston, is your all-around nice guy. Weston aptly handles the role of love-struck 90s kid helping his single-mother and rising above the local burnouts, without seeming like a whiney “Save by the Bell” character.
The movie paddles along and then finally catches the swell as Henson takes the fatherless Moriarity under his wing and preps him to ride Mavericks by having him do everything from hold his breath to write essays. In the process Moriarity embraces Henson’s “Four Pillars of a solid human foundation”; physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and faces his deepest fears, which as it turns out doesn’t having anything to do with Mavericks.
Henson and Moriarty experience personal tragedy together and they found solace in the ocean. The movie touches on themes of family, love, death, fear, and God as Frosty and Jay reconcile their inner-demons amongst the waves.
Chasing Mavericks comes out 11 years after the death of the real-life Moriarity.
His high-school sweetheart and wife, Kim, said he would often dive deep under water, sit on the ocean floor, and just relax. While returning to the surface after one such dive in the Maldives, Moriarity blacked out and died. Posthumously Jay’s epic ride continued. He became a local legend in Santa Cruz not only for the way he surfed but the way he lived.
One of the final scenes of the movie reminds us of that. Frosty tells us how Jay married Kim and, unlike his own father, stayed loyal to her his whole life. The scene finally cuts to a shot of a popular slogan in Santa Cruz, “Live Like Jay.”
pmorgan@hillsdale.edu