Ahead of the Australian premiere of Snapt5, one of the world’s most hotly anticipated surf movies, this Thursday at the Jack McCoy Australian Surf Film Fest we take a look behind the curtain at the life of Logan ‘Chucky’ Dulien – the creator of the Snapt series which has played an integral role in shaping surf culture and surf filmmaking for a number of decades.

In today’s online surf media glutted world, it is not often that an honest voice arises. With endless surf clips at our beckon and call it seems as if everybody is just having a hell of a good time out there without having to offer any perspective or context on the vanguard performances of our sport. The meaning of it. It’s almost inhuman in a way. Scrolled. Disposable. Designed to simply be consumed without any nutritional value in regards to the soul of surfing. But now and then a saving grace occurs. That feature surf film that comes along. One created with concept and forethought. The one that barnstorms around to live audiences and inspires mass gatherings on big screens that swerve our attention away from our phones and back to the visual wonder that surfing is. Where we as a tribe can look on together and hoot ourselves hoarse at just how great surfing makes us all feel. How much it means to us. And see just how outrageous what we do in the ocean really is. And so it is with the arrival of Snapt5, the final installment of filmmaker Logan ‘Chucky’ Dulien’s Snapt series. Something he calls a celebration of surf culture in ‘Its rawest, most unfiltered form’. Far from the confines of the WSL CT repetitive pageantry, this film is where you are going to see the greatest surfing on earth today offered without restraint. Featuring ‘wild animal’ rides from surfers such as Mason Ho, Harry Bryant, Noa Deane, Jack Robinson, Clay Marzo, Ian Crane and so many more. 

I recently caught up with the filmmaker on the cliffs of Uluwatu. He was packing up for his flight back to the US Open where he would be premiering his film in front of the largest live audience ever assembled for a surf movie on 2 August.  Dulien professed that his film is an ‘hour long rip-fest designed to set you free’. He was in a thoughtful mood and the following conversation offered not only the inside scoop on the making of these films, but on the deep meaning of what these movies have meant in not only his personal life, but to the lives of the featured surfers and the surfing industry itself. “Surfing is a hell of a ride,” said Dulien, “and if you look at it the right way, this movie is a thermometer reading on the current level of all our stoke and on the very health of our sport”.

The Nickname

Logan “Chucky” Dulien: I got the nickname from a …LOST movie. In it, Jason Kenworthy was calling out a guy, some kind of tweaker dude that was out at lowers, and he kept telling him to go back out at Trestles and do a 360 chuck. I thought it was the most hilarious thing. I think it was in the film What’s Really going Wrong. Yeah, so I just started calling everybody Chuck, the way you call someone dude, and it boomeranged back on me. And it turned into Chucky and I just ran with it. The funny thing was that some people thought it was based on that Chucky doll, you know, that horror movie? So Matt Biolos texted me, he’s like, how’d you get that nickname? It’s from that Chucky movie, right? And I’m like, no actually, it’s from one of your movies. And I’ve always wondered what he thought of that.  

On the Education of Chucky

Hell no, I didn’t go to film school. No, no, here it is. I started surfing super late at 14-years-old. I got a job in the parking lot at the Frog House surf shop in Newport Beach making sure that cars didn’t park there on the weekends to go surfing. It’s like the lowest end of the totem pole job that they had. But that was where I had to start because I could barely stand up on a surfboard at that time. I had just moved into the neighborhood and it was like, I wanted to feel a part of something. Like a lot of surfers, I came from a broken home and I wanted to belong to something again. And yeah, from there, things started happening pretty fast. Still 14,  I became the Frog House surf team manager of surfers way older than me. Todd Miller and those guys. But really I think I was promoted because this new generation of young super good surfers were hanging out at my house. Because I had a single dad and four good looking sisters and a new pad right on the beach. So it was the perfect setup for all the boys that came from out of town and out of the country to come hang. And if you have four sisters and each of those sisters have three hot friends…imagine how many girls are over at that house at all times with no parental guidance. And with River Jetties in my front yard, you start to get the picture, right? That’s how my Rolodex started filling up with the surf stars that became my friends, you know? Within a year, I got hooked up by Volcom as a sort of team manager there and that was when the film bug started to hit me. I had some pretty gnarly friends. Andy and these guys coming to stay with me, and we’d go to Newport Harbor High School with my sisters, go to the football games or whatever, and the boys would invite all the girls to the parties at my house. Things just escalated from there. The pad just became a global Headquarters of who’s who in the new generation. It was like an embassy with beer. My Dad told me I had to get a real job at the very least and so I scored a job with SMP as a team manager and that got me to Australia. And boom, things took off.  I am 18 now, and I am hanging with Mick Fanning, Taj Burrow, Joel Parkinson and Asher Pacey and it’s that Rolodex thing, you know? And then SMP went out of business and that was when it hit me. I am going to get a camera. Just like Taylor Steele.

The New Career…On Autofocus

So I went out and bought this camera. A Canon GL1 and I don’t know if it’s a good one or a bad one, or whatever. But the salesman just told me it was what everybody was using to make crappy porno’s and I thought surf clips were close enough to that. So I walked out of there with it and just hit autofocus and started gettin’ it on. And I didn’t even know how to film, but I knew where all my friends were and the sessions just started coming down hard. And if you watch my footage, the horizon’s off, the tripod’s shaky. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. But I know that the talent in front of me is just so damn good. It completely made up for how bad a filmer I was. And I had no plan whatsoever, I was just up against the big guys gathering footage. Like at the time you had Taylor Steele in his prime, Jack McCoy obviously doing his thing. You had Matty Gye making all the Taj movies, Bill Ballard’s making his movies, Josh Palmer’s making the Kill movies, and then you got the iconic …Lost movies. I mean, surf films were at a peak. So where did I fit in? Nowhere. But that was the blessing because I was just under the radar. There was no pressure for what I was doing. No one felt threatened by me. So I could set up tripod next to anybody and hit the red button and hope the autofocus was on. And the superstars felt the same way. Un-threatened. So they let me in the inside the global party and the rest is history. 

The Why

It’s strictly…I mean, this might sound corny, but this is all, all these Snapt films, is because I love surfing that much. It changed my life. That’s all I cared about. I wanted to make something that wanted to make kids and people excited to go surf. If I could put out a movie or a project that would make people want to watch it before they paddled out, then it was a win. That’s all that mattered, including myself. I wanted to watch my own shit as much as anybody. I wanted to watch Andy to a song that I picked to get me psyched to go surf. I wanted to put Taj in and watch these guys to music I wanted, edit it to how I liked it before I paddled out. And I think this is why the Snapt movies worked. Because I think they are perfectly imperfect. So it was kind of punk. People gravitated towards it because it wasn’t corporate. It was so wrong that it was good. Yeah. I eat and breathe these films and this sh*t consumes me. Like, if we have a trivia game about my surf films, please, don’t even try, I figure I’d do pretty good.

The Death Threats

But to be honest, it’s weird. Because when people refer to me as a filmmaker… I honestly don’t really consider myself a filmmaker. Because at the end of the day, I am and just going off of what I feel in my gut. Like, okay, this guy’s a gnarly surfer. I don’t care if he’s sponsored. I like to actually get behind a lot of guys that don’t have backing, that don’t have sponsors. To me, it’s easy to grab the guys that are in the spotlight. But if I can see talent that I feel belongs in the spotlight, then I am gonna put him in the spotlight. I feel like this has been a real strength of mine, being able to identify future talent. Guys I know the world will want to see. Like with Asher Pacey. No one had known who Asher Pacey was. But you integrate him into the movies with guys like Andy and Taj and all of a sudden you have a really cool movie of diverse styles and personal attitudes. It’s that eye for talent, for selecting who belongs. Because whether I like it or not, to be in Snapt 5 has become very prestigious. I mean people are taking it really seriously. No shit. I mean, I got a death threat recently because a certain name of a certain filmer wasn’t on the official poster of the movie. A fucking death threat. Oh my God. That’s where I’m thinking it’s time to kick out. You know what I mean? Like, this shit’s gotten way, way out of hand.

The Formula

I’m not gonna lie. It’s straight up, and I’ll give credit where credit’s due. The formula is super simple. It‘s called Taylor Steele. And I also loved the …LOST movies. Where they were the first ones I saw that really showed the darker surf culture at its true form. As far as like, dude, we’re not, this is not fucking rainbows and sunshine and trophies all the time. Surfers can be crazy, angry people. Those …LOST films cut loose. Randall and all that Chris Ward stuff. Those guys really rolled the fucking dice. If those …LOST guys put that stuff out now, could you imagine? It’d be impossible. Today’s robots would  be so confused. With their ice baths and nutritionists and shit. Their coaches would shit a brick.

The Moneyball

I was self-funded at first. That Gl-1 broke my back. But as Snapt grew I started fishing in different waters. I had Flight Center for travel…and…like when I got Vitamin Water and then got it into that photo of Andy and Kelly before their big battle at Pipe, at the Red Bull house, where they’re looking at each other like martians? You know, Steve Sherman’s famous photo? You look on the counter, there’s a Vitamin Water bottle right there. Because I had Vitamin Water crates being dropped off at all the Red Bull houses. Real underground promotion, you know? Ha! You’d get shot for that today. But anyway, funding a film career takes a suicide approach, you jump first and look for a soft place to land later.

The Red Carpet

When you learn how to surf six months into the game, and you’re hanging out with Andy Irons, right off the bat, it’s like, you gotta imagine, I always compare it, like, to, you know, Andy Irons, to me, is like the equivalent to Kobe Bryant. Okay, so when you meet a fucking Kobe Bryant six months into getting into a sport, it’s really hard to, at that point, be starstruck when you’re introduced to other superstars. When you’re around talent of that level at such a early phase of getting into that sport, if that makes sense. But the thing is, when Andy would come and stay at my house, Andy wasn’t getting the red carpet treatment that the other guys were getting. I remember that. No one was dialing out the red carpet for him. Andy would show up, he’d have no ride from the airport and he needed a place to sleep. And a few other guys like that too. So I’d end up doing those airport runs, whether, you know, I got money or not, to pick those guys up. But at the end of the day, like, Andy didn’t mind that there were hot girls from Newport High hanging out at the pad too.

The Junkie

It’s weird, right? Because I made Snap 1 in 2002, right after that, I went straight into Snap 2. And then I left making the Snap movies for 15 years. 15 years of a lot of highs and lows, man.

Getting completely addicted to Oxycontin and all that stuff, like a lot of my friends did. I mean, I’m completely public about this. I have been the whole time. I was a junkie. There it is. I was in and out of rehabs. Yes. The whole deal. And my life wasn’t working out at all. But by the grace of Mason Ho and by my love for surfing, I made it to the other side. It happened…ok, I was about 30 days clean at one point and wondering what to do with my life and I walked into my buddy’s house and there was Mason Ho. And I didn’t know him that well and he was such a hero of mine and such a…force. And I was still in pretty bad shape and feeling ashamed about it. But Mason looked at me…just straight in the eye, and he says to me…

“So Chucky, when are we making Snapt 3?”.

I never picked up Oxycontin again.

Chucky’s Back

So when I came back to my senses and got clean for good, you know, all the guys, they were so happy to hear from me and stoked to support me and then from that point, Chucky’s back, you know? So Snapt 3 was really the resurrection project to prove that A, I could still spot talent and B, I could still make a movie after 15 years in the hole. Because the whole game had changed. There was social media. Oh yes. And footage was on memory cards, not cassette tapes. So it was at that point I was thinking like, okay, who’s next? Like…and it’s hard to say this considering the circumstances…but Andy’s gone, right? And I don’t want to say anymore about that here… other than I loved him and that was a giant loss to all of us and surfing itself. Enough said. So… I’d been watching this Jack Robinson kid and he was the closest I’d seen to surfing at Andy Irons level. And Jack and I hit it off really good and I was like, Jack’s in Snapt 3 no matter what. Because at that point, Jack was starting to struggle on the QS. He was getting kind of shined. He wasn’t winning everything. Pressure, man. But I didn’t care, the guy ripped. So he was a real inspiration to charge forward with Snapt 3 along with Mason, The Moniz brothers, Bobby Martinez, all those surfers in that thing. So thanks to real surfers and real surfing, the redemption, the recovery, and the resurrection of my soul was underway.

The Vultures

Look, I don’t wanna sound like a grumpy old Dad at this point, but I am 46. I wanna enjoy surfing for surfing sake and I don’t like the direction that the surf industry’s going. I feel like a lot of the brands, now that they are conglomerates, are taking off the surfers, the filmers, and people like myself who contribute to surfing for the passion of it. The lifestyle of it. The culture of it. The belonging to it. Yeah, some of us, we make a little money here and there, but not because we’re surfing to sell stuff. We’re selling so we can go surf. And I’m doing this to get people enthusiastic to go surf, to watch their favorite surfers that could stoke their own surfing, get them excited to surf. But there’s a lot of suit and ties that have come in and I feel like they’re destroying the culture. To me they’re culture vultures. You know? Because forget the end of the day, for these vultures it’s all about the money from the beginning of the day. And soulfully? Real surfers are paying the bill.

The Fountain Of Youth

Look, man, surfing is the fountain of youth and we all know it. You felt it when you took off on your first wave. I know you did. And we all need to hold on to that. It’s like, these movies will come and go, sure, but you know, in the end, surfing is about a love of friendships and a wild relationship with the ocean and that’s it. And you hear that everybody’s searching for the fountain of youth out there, but the truth is that it’s staring you in the face every time you take off on a wave. And that’s what we should all be looking for right there.

The Pivot

Snapt 5 is the last one. The grand finale. And anyone else is welcome to keep carrying the flag. Because I’m gonna pivot in a different direction. Now Robbie Crawford, who is the real genius behind this, he wanted to create visual experiences to watch surfing in a way that we’ve never watched surfing before. And it’s insane. And we’ve already been doing it. We have the proof of concept. A lot of people have been wondering, why are these two at these wave pools so much? Well…when it comes out, you’re gonna be able to see surfing in a perspective and in a way and in a philosophy that you’ve never seen before. Robbie and I can guarantee you that. And…well…I guess you will have to just wait and see.

Purchase tickets to this week’s Snapt5 Australian premiere at the Jack McCoy Australian Surf Film Fest by clicking here.