Chris Rock had it all wrong, as it turned out, when he once laid some cynical conventional wisdom about show business on Jack Johnson.
In December 2003, a 28-year-old Johnson found his way onto “The Late Show with David Letterman.” A few years prior, the Oahu native had been chasing a future as a professional surfer; now he was a bona fide music star whose second album, “On and On,” had just crashed into the top 10 of the Billboard 200. Waiting backstage with Johnson were his wife, Kim Baker, and best friend, Emmett Malloy, where they shared a memorable encounter with Rock.
Recalls Johnson, “We were in this little dressing room and I said, ‘Oh, this is Emmett, and I’m Jack. We’re best friends. He’s my manager, too.’ He looked at us and said, ‘Ah, you guys blew it. You guys are going to hate each other in about five years. You’ll see.’”
Rock had been around Hollywood long enough to know how the typical story goes: a rising young talent, swept up in the pursuit of fame, sheds his old skin and slowly detaches from the very people pivotal to his journey.
But in “SURFILMUSIC,” a documentary that traces — as the title suggests — Johnson’s evolution from pro-surf prodigy to aloof surf documentarian to world-famous superstar, the throughline is that Johnson himself never really changed. Fittingly, that’s driven home by the fact that the film is directed by Malloy, who was right beside him for that defining debut on “Letterman.”
“That was about 20 years ago now,” Johnson says, laughing about his encounter with Rock. “It’s all worked out. That’s our biggest success, for sure. The friendships are all still intact.”
“SURFILMUSIC,” which opens in more than 100 theaters nationwide on June 5, stitches together rare footage from the formative surf films Johnson and Malloy made as kids with present-day footage of the old North Shore crew reminiscing on the good ol’ days. Aside from higher-quality cameras and a bit more gray hair, the time jump is almost indiscernible.
“It’s not a surfing film; it’s not a music film. And that will probably be its curse,” Malloy says. “But it’s also the best thing about it. It’s about friendships and making things.”
One scene shows the crew in a garage deconstructing a surfboard and passionately debating where the fins should go. That playful spirit defines the meandering nature of the entire movie, which isn’t too concerned with staying within the confines of a traditional structure or hamming up elements for mainstream appeal.
For instance, the movie’s real dramatic thrust arrives almost immediately: one where the surfing prodigy smashes his head into a coral reef while riding the Banzai Pipeline on Oahu’s North Shore. The brutal wipeout required more than 100 stitches — and tentatively ended Johnson’s professional surfing ambitions. “We didn’t play it as heavy drama in the film,” Malloy explains, “because it was just sort of a life shift for Jack.” During the isolated recovery period that followed, Johnson found a lot more time to play guitar. The rest was history.
What did change during the making of the film was the loss of longtime friend Tamayo Perry, who died in a shark attack in June 2024. The revelation is built toward in the film’s third act, which is ultimately dedicated to Perry’s memory. Malloy said the shocking loss led Johnson to feel “a little more emotionally open” about revisiting and sharing stories from their past.
“I was kind of dipping my toes into the project at first; we were just having fun going through the old footage,” Johnson says. “When we lost Tamayo, I really intentionally started watching through hours of footage to find little bits that never made the movie. More and more, it felt like he was the type of person where everyone knew he was the quintessential friend. He was the moral compass of our group. Losing him just made me reflect a lot about friendship in general.”
Tickets are now available for pre-order.
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