agingrebel.com
Bruce Brown, a film maker who was
briefly famous for two landmark documentaries about a now vanished
America and world, died Sunday in Santa Barbara.
The films, were The Endless Summer about the joy of riding surfboards and On Any Sunday which was about the joy of riding motorcycles.
He grew up in Long Beach where, as the
writer Drew Kampion once put it, he “majored in not going to school.” He
did a hitch in the Navy and was working as a lifeguard when he started
making 16 mm films.
Brown shot The Endless Summer
in 1963 and 1964, It is about a couple of guys named Robert August and
Mike Hynson who surf their way around the world. Brown couldn’t find a
distributor for the movie so he “four walled” it. He rented out movie
theaters and showed the film there. It became a hit in Wichita, Kansas
and eventually grossed $30 million – which was a more significant sum in
1964 than it is today.
He made On Any Sunday in 1971 at the urging of and with the financial backing of the actor Steve McQueen. It was nominated for an Oscar.
For the rest of his life, Brown was mostly content to surf, shoot and play motorcycles. He told the Los Angeles Times
“I don’t want to go to Hollywood. I’d rather live in a trailer on a
perfect surf break than live in Beverly Hills in a mansion with 50
servants and Rolls-Royces.”
Working with his son Dana Brown, he released The Endless Summer 2 in 1994 and a sequel to On Any Sunday in 2014.
He is also survived by his son Wade Brown and daughter Nancie Brown, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Bruce Brown was 80. He lived his life his way.
Requiscat In Pace