The Endless Summer has been listed as one of the greatest films of all time. The 1966 Bruce Brown surf documentary ranked on Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the “best movies of all time,” holding court among classics such as The Godfather, The Wizard of Oz, and Alien.
The Endless Summer followed surfers Mike Hynson and Robert August as they traveled around the world on a surfing trip in search of the perfect wave. The movie was narrated by Brown, and the soundtrack music came from The Sandals.
Described by Turner Classic Movies as a “cinematic time capsule,” the film showcased the 1960s beaches in Malibu, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Ghana, and Senegal as the two surfers made their pit stops. TCM noted that the film's charm was “derived from its haphazard construction.”
“Shot on 16-millimeter film, with post-synchronized sound, it's a glorified home movie that nevertheless captures a short-lived period in American popular culture,” the outlet shared.
The Endless Summer was self-financed by Brown and cost $50,000 to produce, according to AFI. The filmmaker reportedly hitchhiked to filming sites while carrying his camera gear.
In an interview with The Guardian, Brown revealed that he stretched his budget when he started working on the film in late 1963.
“Originally, we were going to go only to South Africa, but tickets to go around the world turned out to be $50 cheaper,” he said. “We worked out a schedule so that we would miss connecting flights and purposefully had to stop over. We were hoping to get the airline to pay for our accommodation that way, but they never did. The movie ended up costing $50,000, paid out of my own pocket. It was guerrilla filmmaking. Often, there wasn’t much time to do anything other than sit up real quick and grab a shot.”
Brown told The Guardian he couldn’t get any major Hollywood studios to distribute his film, so he rented out a theater in New York himself. Distributors then came calling, with Cinema V, agreeing to distribute the film without making changes to it.
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Good reviews helped the film take off
The theater release of The Endless Summer sparked great reviews from unexpected critics. "For some reason, the real entrenched film critics seemed to like it, maybe because it was different from what they were used to seeing,” Brown said, per TCM. “If they did a review and wrote, ‘Brown did a s---ty movie,' we'd have been dead. But nobody knew who I was, and maybe they felt it wasn't worth criticizing, so they pretty much gave us good reviews and helped us out."
'The Endless Summer' movie poster.Photo by LMPC on Getty Images
A 1967 review by famed movie critic Roger Ebert described The Endless Summer as “a completely uncomplicated film, fresh and natural, designed only to please.“
“The film itself offers exactly what it promises — 91 minutes of wish fulfillment,” Ebert added. ‘Shunning the tons of equipment ordinarily taken along on location, Brown used only what he could carry. The beautiful photography he brought home almost makes you wonder if Hollywood hasn’t been trying too hard."
All of the low-budget grunt work paid off. “It ended up making $33 million worldwide,” Brown told The Guardian of The Endless Summer. “It caught people the right way. It was a couple of young guys taking off around the world on blind faith with a mission to find some waves. Even if they didn’t start surfing, it told people to follow their dream.”
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