From the road trippin' to the beaches to the philosophical nature of creating your own version of utopia, Surfwise (2007) is a fascinating documentary about the Paskowitz family - and some surfing too.
Like the other documentaries that I've written about as part of this 9 Docs Project, I picked up this movie when the Movie Gallery went out of business. When you have nothing to go on except the cover of the movie you're setting yourself up to be surprised, and Surfwise did that in a great way.
On the surface it seemed like just a story about a family of surfing hippies, but in actuality it's about the conflict between total freedom and social responsibility. More specifically, it's about parenting. The Paskowitz family lived for experiences, but in an effort to be truly free from the makeup of everyday society they (as in the parents) made some clear sacrifices on the part of their children.
While watching this movie I just kept thinking about how much fun it looked, but how I'd come to despise the reality of constantly being stuck in a motor home for those long drives with 11 people. As you might expect, a lot of the kids felt the same way. The entire experience is essentially a way of life dictated by the father. His lessons are earnest and steeped in self-fulfillment through dedication and passion, but at the same time you're left to continually question the disconnect. I empathized with the kids, but felt like Dad was taking the easy way out under the banner of 'if I can't have it my way it's not worth doing'.
Obviously no one wants to be a slave to a job or live a life without enjoyment, but in some capacity you have to ask yourself what you are contributing to society - even in some small way. We can't be in it just for ourselves - or can we? There's not a right or wrong answer here exactly, which ultimately leaves you asking more questions.
Surfwise was fascinating, entertaining, and a great looking documentary. I was really impressed with how much this one got me thinking about so many of my own views in contrast to theirs. Whether you agree with how they did things or not, the truth is you can't deny that they got a great story out of it all. Check it out. 8/10
One of the worst jobs I ever had was in the summer of 2005. I was a student and back home in Medicine Hat trying to save some money for my next year of university. Looking for anything that paid better than service gigs, I found work as a picker in the yard of S.F. Scott Manufacturing, the company that makes Blue Imp playground equipment.
This job became the kind of work that you end up telling your kids about. Understaffed, overworked, and totally exhausting in every sense of the word, the summer only became bearable because of the amazing coworkers who helped turn misery into (what I can now see was) character building. In the four months that I was there I worked two of them as the sole picker in the shipping department before any help came my way. My job consisted of driving a forklift to pick components for playgrounds and organizing them into bays to load them when the trucks came in. It wasn't rocket science, but we were all doing more than our share to keep the operation going.
As the summer rolled on and the orders increased it became commonplace for us to work 12-15 hour days. I hadn't realized before this how little of a personal life it was possible to survive with. There were a few weeks in there where I literally did nothing but go to work and sleep. Endless manual labour did prove to be the best work out routine I ever had though.
When it came right down to it, the overtime was the only thing making the job seem decent. Looking at it now, it wasn't lucrative by any stretch of the imagination. I couldn't imagine doing a job like this now, that not only robbed me of my free time, but required so much rest when I had it. The funny thing is how much we all seemed to bond over the frustration, because we were all in the same boat. In the back of my mind I was always counting down to school, so the fact that it was temporary had everything to do with me sticking it out for the summer.
I remember making jokes about doing an office style mockumentary of our summer working conditions. We'd laugh at our own misfortune, recognizing that we couldn't possibly put in any more hours and yet we still couldn't meet the demands they were putting on us. Misery loves company as they say, and the entire experience just made me so grateful for my life back on campus. My friend Travess, who I worked with that summer, actually ended up helping me out a year later by acting in my 4th year film project, Elliot.
What I've realized about this job now is that because it was so outside of my comfort zone, I discovered just how much crap I could really deal with. Like I said about telling my kids some day, it was the kind of job that forced me to grow up a bit. It made me want to work harder, take bigger risks, and focus on finding opportunities that I actually enjoyed so I didn't have to do something that totally consumed me for a living.
It's what makes summer jobs like this invaluable I suppose, because you end up getting a life lesson that you didn't even know you needed. I'm just glad we snapped a few pictures of our crew before I left that summer, because now I'm grateful to have had that job as a plot point on the road to where I actually wanted to go. It makes me appreciate my journey a bit more, and it makes me recognize that as tough as it was, having people to share the ride with made all the difference.
