Riding Giants
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:31:00
When you look at surfing's history...
:31:03
...everything has to be perceived
as either pre-Gidget or post-Gidget.

:31:07
- You can't mean...
- I'm a surf bum.

:31:10
You know, ride the waves, eat,
sleep, not a care in the world.

:31:13
From the movie Gidget in '59,
when there was fewer...

:31:16
...than 5000 surfers, to 1963,
there was probably 2 million surfers.

:31:21
So in five years it went from 5000
to 2 or 3 million people doing it.

:31:33
Following the film release
of Gidget...

:31:35
... surfing underwent
a radical transformation.

:31:38
Surf shops opened doors
up and down...

:31:40
... America's West and East coasts.
:31:42
John Severson's Surfer Magazine
began publication...

:31:46
... and in 1962, surf-music pioneer
Dick Dale sold 75,000 copies...

:31:52
... of his album Surfers' Choice
in Southern California alone.

:32:06
Suddenly surfing was perceived
as hip. People assumed surfers...

:32:11
...were in the know. Look at
the life they were leading.

:32:14
The sun, the bikinis, that sort of aura
of sex, beach blankets and fires...

:32:19
...and then all that
golden flesh in the sun.

:32:25
Hollywood followed Gidget with
a medley of surf exploitation films.

:32:29
Then, in 1964, the Hollywood film
Ride the Wild Surf turned its lens...

:32:35
... on Hawaii's big-wave surfers
challenging Waimea Bay.

:32:39
Man, I've been hot to surf Waimea
since I was 13.

:32:42
But the question is, can we do it
without winding up in traction?

:32:51
The theme is all the same.
:32:52
Chicks in bikinis wringing
their hands that their boyfriends...

:32:56
...are gonna go out and risk his life
for some big wave. It just...


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