Last fall you published a letter from me thanking our Island community for their support of the American Heroes Fishing Challenge. Now in its fifth year and organized by the Nixon family and Beach Plum Inn, the heroes challenge is a tournament within the Annual Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.
Last fall a group of nine soldiers arrived in Menemsha to compete in the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.
For Doug Liman, directing is like navigating a class five river rapid. As you see the rapid in the distance, you have 15 seconds to figure out the best course of action. There’s no time to stop and think about it; you must act on impulse. He has the same experience showing up on the set of one of his film or television shows.
It was a time before Rip Curl or Billabong, a time before Gidget, before Frankie (Avalon) and Annette (Funicello) or Beach Blanket Bingo. In the early 1960s, surfing was still considered a cult sport, limited to beach bums in Southern California and Hawaii.
The Vineyard may yet be the scene of another big fish film under the eye of Steven Spielberg: the Jaws director’s studio, DreamWorks, has just bought the film rights for a soon to be released book about the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.
The book, The Big One: An Island, an Obsession and the Furious Pursuit of a Great Fish, by David Kinney, published by Atlantic Monthly, will be released on April 8.
Surfwise is only a surfing film in the same way that its central character Dorian (Doc) Paskowitz is, as he puts it, a “Jewish surfer.”
In fact Mr. Paskowitz is a Stanford-educated doctor who refused to send any of his nine children to school; an individualist who led his children each morning in a rendition of Chairman Mao’s March of the Volunteers; and a professed good husband and good father, who pursued his own dream with his family in tow. He also happens to surf.