North Shore (1987)

A 1987 surfing film about an eighteen-year-old from Arizona who wins a wave-tank contest and flies to Hawaii to become a professional surfer, only to discover that the ocean is not a wave tank. William Phelps directs, and the film is the rare 80s sports film that treats the local and the spiritual as real things, not just obstacles for the protagonist to overcome.

What the film does

Rick Kane (Matt Adler) has just graduated from high school in Arizona. He wins a wave-tank surfing contest and uses the money to fly to Hawaii for the summer before college, planning to become a professional surfer. He has plans to stay with a surfer he met six months earlier, but finds him tending bar at a seedy club.

He meets two pro surfers, Alex and Mark, and stays at the house of Lance Burkhart (Laird Hamilton). On his first day in the ocean at Sunset Beach, Rick realizes surfing in the ocean is nothing like a wave tank. He cannot duck dive, he struggles to reach the lineup, he gets in the way of Vince Moaloka (Gerry Lopez), the leader of a local group called The Hui. Vince wipes out and Rick is chased off the beach. His stuff is stolen.

With nowhere to go, Rick runs into Turtle (John Philbin), who introduces him to Chandler (Gregory Harrison), a surfboard shaper and soul surfer. Chandler teaches Rick to appreciate and ride the waves, not just compete on them. Rick also meets and falls for Kiani (Nia Peeples), a beautiful local girl who happens to be Vince’s cousin. Chandler is struck by Rick’s talent for art and Rick designs a new graphic for one of Chandler’s boards.

The film’s antagonist is Lance Burkhart, a top-ranked surfer whose competitive, materialistic values conflict with Chandler’s spiritual teachings. The film climaxes at the Banzai Pipeline surf contest. Rick faces Lance in the final round. Lance cheats by pulling on Rick’s leash, causing him to wipe out. Chandler is outraged, but Rick reminds him the contest was never about winning, it was about going the distance.

Rick prepares to leave for college in New York. Turtle and Kiani see him off at the airport. Turtle shows Rick a newspaper: Lance was caught cheating and disqualified. Rick promises to come back to the North Shore.

Why it’s in the canon

Criteria blend is 1+3, loved it and want to remember it. The film is an 80s surfing film that takes the surfing seriously. The soul-surfer-versus-competitive- surfer conflict is a real philosophical divide, not just a plot point. Chandler’s single-fin-mentality speech is the kind of thing a film can only deliver if the film earns it first, by showing the ocean and the waves and the people who live there as real things. The film earns it.

The casting is a time capsule. Laird Hamilton plays the villain before he became the most famous big-wave surfer in the world. Gerry Lopez, the real-life Pipeline master, plays the Hui leader. The film puts real surfers in the surfing scenes and the result is that the surfing looks real because it is real. Matt Adler learned to surf for the role and the film lets the learning be part of the story.

The film pairs with other 80s sports films in the canon that are about a specific place and a specific culture and a specific way of moving through water.

A note on the title

The film is “North Shore” (1987). The Letterboxd and Wikipedia pages use this title. The slug is north-shore.

On hand

DVD only (no digital/download).