Ben Marcus Rules

A long time ago, in a decade far far away - around 1996 - Laird Hamilton was anointed as one of People Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People. The honor inspired his wife Gabrielle to say the second nicest thing a wife has ever said about a husband: “He’s beautiful when he’s in motion.”

(The first nicest thing is what Ava Gardner said about Frank Sinatra, but you’ll have to look that up yourself. Warning: NSFW)

Which is kinda true. Laird is the surfing version of Rob Gronkowski or Lebron James or a charging grizzly bear - a 6’ 3” x 215 pound fella who moves with more speed and grace than you might expect. So Gabby finds something in the way he moves - but others aren’t so sure.

There are those who have trouble liking Laird - similar to people having trouble with Musk and Jobs and Wonka and other eccentrical innovators.  Laird sees and does things differently and leaves changes - and some controversy - in his wake.

Way back in those 1990s Laird and Darrick Doerner and Buzzy Kerbox and friends began experimenting with small boats and then Jet Skis to tow into waves otherwise considered uncatchable. Most of the surfing world gave this “tow surfing” activity the Bronx Cheer or the Lurch groaning noise. But then Laird towed into the Millennium Wave at Teahupoo in 2001, and now everybody’s towing, around the world, small and large: Piahe to Mavericks to Teahupoo to Dungeons.

Madness. Blame Laird.

Several years ago I wrote an instructional book for standup paddling. The Art of Standup Paddling included a fairly detailed history of SUP and where it all came from. Laird patiently and articulately helped me with that history, and said his part came from messing around with a tandem board at Hookipa to see if it was safe for his daughter, and also mucking about at Mudflats with Dave Kalama - paddling into waves standing up using outrigger oars.

SUP kind of existed before that in an obscure way - from Duke to Pops Aikau - but Laird and friends took something obscure but fun and were part of the movement to blow SUP up into a worldwide revolution: SUP saved a lot of surfboard shapers, created a lot jobs, made recreation fun for people around the world and created a market worth hundreds of millions.

And much of that goes back to Laird and friends messing around at Hookipa and Mudflats.

Around the Malibu, the emergence of standup paddlers caused some unrest, as people on huge boards were blundering into sacred surf scenes and wreaking havoc. Some people blamed Laird for this intrusion - rightfully so in some cases as it was like selling guns to the indians. But when some snarky scoundrel printed up BLAME LAIRD stickers and slathered them around Malibu and SoCal, Laird bought the rights to it all and sold them himself.

Laird puts the Ha! in chutzpah.

As loathsome and discomforting as it can be to leave the 13,300 acres, 21 Miles and 600 souls per square mile of Scenic Beauty and venture into the rattle and hum of Santa Monica, the invitation to a private sneak preview of Dawn Ready was beguiling and enough to entice three of us - YHN, Dirk Braun and Alison Bunce - to leave this nice quiet little beach community (and record Thursday Night Football) and brave the urban density of Santa Monica - which is 10,000+ people per square mile = 16X that of Malibu. 

Lionsgate seems to have survived that whole Megalopolis megillah, but the doors were open and security pointed us to a private screening room.  There was mingling, there was schmoozing and some familiar faces: Jamie Brisick, Luca Padua and Laird - wearing bandage #10,003 from God Knows What This Time.

The charming and glamorous Alison Bunce brought some of her healthy, gluten-free cookies and muffins from www.buncebakes.com and handed them around.

Your Humble Narrator is currently working on about nine different writing projects and he feels like one of the Gumby Brothers from Monty Python. My brain hurts from Too Much Information, so it was a relief when producer William Cawley announced that Dawn Ready was a quick 12 minutes.

Short is sweet in these days of media overload, but I wondered: “What can one accomplish in 12 minutes?”

Synopsizing: Dawn Ready is a character study of two characters one might describe as extremists or thrill seekers or high-performance adrenaline junkies - devotees and seekers of adrenaline, endorphins and other “Liqueurs of Fear.” 

Laird Hamilton we have met, while the other chap is Britisher Daniel Robinson who was a fighter pilot and is now the guy who flies over Malibu in that white experimental pusher plane that buzzes like a leaf blower. You’ve seen and heard him and thought: That looks cool, buzzing the California Riviera in a two-seater.

Three-fourths of this documentary is Daniel Robinson and Laird comparing notes on early inspirations, evolution, pushing limits, training to prepare for pushing limits and living on the edge, aware how close death follows.

Their conversations begin with them sitting in chairs in a hangar with faraway eyes, looking back to the past and the start of their paths. 

Dan Robinson talks about being inspired by Superman, then Star Wars then Top Gun and that was that. “That was actually a job to be a fighter pilot.” And Robinson also mentions having a tumultuous childhood and “the metaphor was just flying away. Getting away. I got my pilot’s license before my driver’s license.”

Laird remembers growing up in the beach culture of California and then moving to Hawaii when he was young - influenced as a keiki on the beach at Pipeline where all the best surfers congregated. “If you turned your head, I was in the water,” Laird confessed. “My dad made me a board when I was five years old that had my name on it.”

They speak of death.  Daniel Robinson quotes Jim Morrison: “Death makes angels of us all. It gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as ravens claws.” 

Laird smiles quietly to himself and his eyes fade a little farther away.

Robinson talks about how fighter pilots are in control of something that is out of control, and how they operate on very slim margins. He reveals that his father committed suicide, but Robinson felt a “visceral energy” outside of the physical vessel: “That fulfilled my belief system that death is not the end. And if it’s not the end, then what is there to be afraid of? I wasn’t afraid of not being born, and I’m really not afraid of dying.”

CUT TO Laird and an unidentified person sitting on chairs close to the water’s edge. Laird talks about how he was often scared as a younger person, and how those fears diminish as you get older, but Laird likes being scared and so is constantly looking for bigger and bigger ways to scare himself: Like hotdogging 25-foot Piahe, or towing into the Millennium Wave at Teahupoo in 2000.

Or staying behind in Latigo Canyon to fight the Woolsey Fire and save his house, then driving out in the middle of a firestorm that turned the 21 Miles of Scenic Beauty into a scene from Dante’s Inferno: Laird cackling madly as he “drovideoed” and filmed dancing fire tornados.

You heard what he said: He likes being scared, and Malibu firestorms are plenty scary.

Back in the hangar, Robinson and Laird compare notes on the Flow State. Robinson says: “When you’re flying something at such high speeds. Particularly at low level if you’re doing air combat maneuvering where it’s really high stakes - life or death. There’s stages you go through, where you are absolutely focused on what it is you’re doing and then as soon as you’re into it, that focus just transcend into what we refer to as Flow Statem, where you’re actually operating at almost a subconscious level where you are 100% present and in the moment.”

Laird agrees: “I think the highest level of Flow State is when the consequences are, the final failure could be fatal… There’s nothing more in the now and there’s no past. There’s no future. To complete the ride, to finish the flight, whatever that is. But where you’re just in that spot and there’s no distractions. And the only t thing that happens, I think, to get there once you have experiences it just needs to be more intense.

Laird then gets a bit metaphysical: “They say that the unconscious mind moves at 32,000 times the speed of the conscious mind. And so if you could connect into that you could actually see the future.”

Robinson and Laird talk about staying driven. With Laird:  “First of all? My love for the ocean of course. I mean it’s brought me every beautiful thing in my life: My wife, my health, my perspective. It’s like the grandmaster, right? So there’s gonna be a wave. It’s gonna be big. You don’t know when, but you better be ready.”

CUT TO: A tech juxtaposition. Laird and Robinson are suiting up with the flight suits and safety gear one wears to fly these days. Robinson’s accoutrement is a helmet with a visor - an “augmented reality helmet” being developed by the company Robinson is involved with: Red6: “We envision a future in which all warfighters across all domains are connected together in a joint augmented battlespace.”

In contrast to suited and geared up from head to toe, Robinson and Laird are then stripped down to not much, sitting on the edge of Laird’s pool. Laird straps on a low-tech dive mask and submerges to go through his breath-holding and oxygen-conserving exercises. 

That’s how it goes for the first nine minutes or so. Just when you could hear Elvis singing, “A little less conversation, a little more action please,” these two march each other into their respective comfort zones: Daniel by air and Laird by sea. 

The final third of the movie is a Folie a Flow of Laird foiling and Daniel flying that experimental plane.  After all the talk it is soothing and nice to see Laird foiling offshore of Malibu and Robinson swooping through the canyons and along the cliffs. On the big screen, it was recognizable and comfortable and beautiful and inspired an eagerness to get back to Malibu and leave behind the rattle and hum of 21st Century city life.

Part of the reason these guys do these things is they are connoisseurs of the Liqueurs of Fear. The other reason is their pursuits take them to beautiful places.

Daniel Robinson was a little mysterious until the movie finished and producer William Cawley and director Jennifer Cawley opened the floor to questions.

The first question asked was my standard question to all pilots: “Your favorite planes: Past, present or future?”

Daniel Robinson didn’t hesitate: “F22 Raptor, F15C, Spitfire, P51 Mustang and then… probably the SR71 Blackbird.”

Good answer. The F22 Raptor is a badass plane, the Tesla Plaid of the air. I lived on a boat in Kewalo Basin for three years and would regularly see Raptor pilots do a move called “Hanging 10” in which they go vertical on takeoff and rocket straight up to 10,000 feet, then turn out of it and go hotdogging around the Hawaiian Islands. Fun! 

I say about the Raptor what GRH said about Laird: “It’s beautiful when it’s in motion.”

Turns out Daniel Robinson was the first non-American to fly the Raptor, and I didn’t get to ask how he swung that, because he must have been an ace-plus to earn that opportunity.

The foiling and flying over Malibu was scenic and nice and familiar and made me want to go back under that tunnel and back into the Good Zone. What this documentary doesn’t show is Laird in some of those extreme situations he talks about and prepares for: Doubling up at Piahe in the 1990s with Pete Cabrinha, then straightening out so as not to collide with his buddy, and taking one on the head. Or Laird towing into The Millennium Wave in 2000, an incredibly ballsy move that lit the fuse for all that has happened since, right up to surfing at Teahupoo at the Olympics this past summer.

Laird has ridden waves bigger and longer than most, and if they had shown some of this foil rides at Chile, one wave would have extended this documentary by 24%, because Laird and friends rode waves in Chile for more than three minutes - and make it look good.

That’s Laird’s deal, but what would be the Daniel Robinson equivalent of that? I once spent 24 hours on an the aircraft carrier Independence watching John Milius film Flight of the Intruder. I did an arrested landing in the COD flight and took a cat shot the next day, and in between watched carrier operations for 24 hours and I can say from my own witness that there are few hairier human ventures than carrier operations.

What has Daniel Robinson gotten up to in his Raptor? Did he see combat? Does he want to be zooming around Ukraine right now giving Putin what for? It would be interested to know that, or have seen that in Dawn Ready. But it was only 12 minutes, and leaves a lto of the imagination.

(Raptors are flown by the US Air Force and are not landed or launched from aircraft carriers.)

As seen from Malibu, Dawn Ready is familiar and enlightening and cool. Twelve minutes that seemed longer and maybe don’t provide the background you might need to fully understand what is being said and done.  Dawn Ready will enlighten citizens to know who that is buzzing over Malibu in that funny-looking experimental plane, and who that guy is cruising through the kelp like he’s walking on water.

And how the one by air and one by sea see things the same, but on different planes. 

We made it out of Santa Monica with our skins, and I didn’t really breathe easy until we passed that Ferris Wheel at the Santa Monica Pier, all lit up and looking happy, off toward the sea. Returning to the 21 Miles of Scenic Beauty - sea and sky.

So close to the rattle and hum of the city, but so far away.