This feature was written last year when Jack and Occy were touring ‘The Occumentary’ in celebration of its anniversary and appeared in Issue 600 of our mag. However, since Jack’s unfortunate passing last month, we thought it would be a fitting time to release the article for free.
Written by Sean Murphy.
Filmmaker Jack McCoy and his long-time subject, Mark Occhilupo, have to be one of the great double acts of modern surfing.
A quarter of a century after the release of the groundbreaking ‘Occumentary’, thousands flocked to see a digital remake in a 10-stop cinema tour of the east coast of Australia.
‘The Occumentary’ covers Occhilupo’s compelling comeback from self-imposed hibernation and radical weight gain, to the 1999 World Title.
It was the first real surfer profile documentary, breaking the well-worn travelogue format surfing movies had evolved into.
As a film genre, surf movies are easily dated, but ‘The Occumentary’ stands the test of time. According to McCoy, it’s because of the heroic story, but also his good friend’s timeless surfing.
“When you see the sequence of him at Bells Beach for the Skins event, that surfing today is as good as, if not better than any CT (Championship Tour) Bells contest you’ve watched in the last five years. His surfing has not aged,” says McCoy.
“He’s still out there at Snapper blowing people’s minds.”
Occhilupo believes the movie’s greatest strength is its soundtrack, featuring bands such as the Foo Fighters, Powder Finger and WA’s psychedelic surf rockers Storytime.
The 58-year-old thinks surfboard design has evolved so much since his World Title that he feels like he’s surfing better today.
But he admits watching the Skins sequence on the big screen during the recent tour made him re-think that call.
“Maybe that was the peak of my surfing then and there, but I’ve tried to get better still at this tender age of 58,” Occhilupo says.
The evergreen goofy-footer reckons giving up alcohol about five years ago has prolonged his prodigious talent.
“I used to have a lot of pain from niggling injuries, especially lower back. The alcohol just did not help that at all. It did temporarily but definitely not the next day or in general.
“I surf so much more now. I used to miss a fair few surfs hungover, but I don’t do that anymore. It just keeps me totally motivated to surf as good as I can every day.”
Reflecting on his partnership with McCoy, Occhilupo says it helped that they were good friends.
“I love Jack, he’s such a good mate. We actually hit it off. We used to make each other laugh a lot, still do. He’s more like a big brother really.”
Their celluloid collaboration shines in the Occumentary’s brilliant in-water tube riding sequences at places like Sumbawa in Indonesia.
Occhilupo says getting that right was much harder than it looks.
“There’s an art to lining up a shot when you’re surfing, you’ve gotta kind of line up not just yourself and Jack, but where the wave would be doing its best thing.
“Jack was so good at being in the best spot of the break that you were usually there, but sometimes a little whistle here and there would move him around. We’d work with each other to line up those barrel shots. “
Occhilupo says the Occumentary tour gave him the opportunity to publicly acknowledge the role McCoy played in his World Title.
“I owe so much to Jack, he got me back in shape. I wouldn’t have won my World Title without him,” he says.
For McCoy, the Occumentary tour was a back to the future experience. He was one of Australia’s original, surfing- picture showmen for close to a decade until 1982. He started out taking other filmmakers’ movies on the road and eventually distributed the first of his own near 30 productions.
“I’d show in all the little towns and Country Women’s Association halls, any halls we could get our hands on,” McCoy says.
“I would set up the projector, sell the tickets, introduce the show, start the movie and pack up and go to the next town.”
In the 1980s surf movies evolved into a VHS video stay-at-home market, but McCoy never forgot the thrill of taking his show on the road.
It was something ingrained in him from his teenage years when he saw his first ever surf movie at his high school auditorium in Hawaii.
That was Bruce Brown’s ‘Surfing Hollow Days’ and the filmmaker’s showmanship left a lasting impression. Brown kept the crowd amused with live narration and door prizes, all the while working his projector and reel-to-reel soundtrack with great skill.
“I watched him as he used his finger to slow the picture down or speed it up to stay in synch with the sequences and the thing that blew my mind was that he was funny. He took me on a journey,” McCoy says.
“I couldn’t get enough of it and I went home that night and said: ‘God how cool was that guy,’ and it took me ‘til years later, when I started distributing surfing films, to realise what it was, it was the fact that he was sharing the stoke.”
‘The Occumentary’ tour was more than just a film tour. It was also a big show with an opening half hour of clips and stories about McCoy and Occhilupo as well as door prizes, questions and answers and some strong ecological messages.
McCoy reckons a nightly show of hands revealed about half the audiences had not seen the original ‘Occumentary’. He’s hoping a new generation has been spawned for a big screen surf movie revival.
“Occ and I had so much fun and we couldn’t have been more pleased with the end result, it was like we were high-fiving each other each night when we came off stage, you know it was like, we just loved doing it.”
The duo took the show back to Sydney in August with screenings on the Northern Beaches and at Randwick’s Ritz Cinema before a final east coast show at the Balter Brewery on the Gold Coast. Then it was on to Western Australia.
“I had people threatening to come and get me, saying how dare you not bring it to WA,” jokes McCoy.
He wants to do another tour, taking David Rastovich on the road with ‘Blue Horizon’, his epic 2004 film that documents two years in the lives of freesurfing Rasta and the three times World Champion, Andy Irons.
They are big plans for a 75-year-old with an incurable lung disease, who was told he’d be dead eight years ago.
“I started working on myself with western medicine and alternative medicine, using the two and I’m still here,” he says.
McCoy says it’s ironic that he’s literally running out of breath when he’s spent his adult life and especially the last 25 years, spreading the message of Aloha.
“Aloha. The Ha is the breath of life and it’s about sharing it unconditionally without expecting anything in return,” he says.
He believes Aloha was instilled in him by his boyhood hero, Duke Kahanamoku, when he met the man universally credited as the father of modern surfing.
“When I first shook hands with him when I was introduced to him I feel that he put that spirit of Aloha into me. He used to carry around a card that had this creed: Try giving or receiving Aloha with your friends, neighbours, countrymen or nobles. You’ll be surprised by their reaction to Aloha with love. I believe it and it is my creed.”
McCoy says he’s at peace with what may be coming.
“I’ve almost drowned many times and it’s really not that bad. You’re down there underwater being held, you’re panicking and then all of a sudden you go into this dream- like, la la state, the harp starts playing and it becomes peaceful.
“I feel when my time comes and I do run out of breath that it’s not gonna be that bad.”
No doubt his legacy will also include his outstanding body of work. Nearly 30 films that blur the lines of high art and entertainment.
But for now, there are still shows to plan and imaginary waves to ride. These days his surfing is strictly in his imagination.
He often watches the surf at a point break near his home on the New South Wales mid coast and imagines gliding into a few on his 7’4” balsa Varuna.
“Mind surfing is just as good, you know, you can still dream right?”
