14

Just Add Water: The Movie

I think everyone would love it if someone made a movie about them. Surf movies are a big part of every surfer’s life growing up. Like every other kid, I dreamed of having a surf movie made about me. Every time I saw my favorite surfers, I thought about myself on-screen. I wanted everyone to watch me surf. I wanted to surf so perfectly because I wanted Adam [Klevin] and the other filmers to feel like they got the best footage ever.

 

I was really happy when Quiksilver told me they were making a movie about me. I wanted it to be the best movie ever, and I wanted people to hoot and holler when they saw me on the screen. Something I could watch over and over again and never get sick of. Will they think I rip? Will they like the way I surf? What about all the things the other dudes say about me? What if they don’t like it?

 

I wanted Just Add Water to be sick . . . really sick.

 

Hundreds of people stood outside the Maui Arts and Cultural Center’s Castle Theater on a typically warm, buttery summer evening to see one of their own star in a surf movie, but this wasn’t just another surf flick. The buzz behind the fifty-minute documentary—which had drawn a standing-room-only crowd—had been growing for months. It would not be an ordinary night of mindless hooting and hollering, although plenty of cheers would cascade throughout the theater once the lights went down.

Inside, Clay fidgeted uncomfortably, twirling his curly hair and almost pulling some of it out. He was excited to see the movie on which he’d spent so much time in the past year, filming and advising directors, producers, and cinematographers. However, the large crowd induced the edginess and anxiety that had always caused him to shy away, walk off by himself, or otherwise shut down. The ever-nagging questions ripped through his psyche like a serrated knife: Will they think I rip? Will they like the way I surf? What about all the things the other dudes say about me? What if they don’t like it?

At least there were no surprises on-screen. He knew what to anticipate: the sight of himself flying through the air, racing across faces of waves two to three times as high as his six-foot-one size and sinking deeply into barrels. Yet he didn’t care that the night would be focused on his brilliance in the water so much as he cared about how it would be presented.

Surf films have been part of the culture since Tom Blake, Doc Ball, Pete Peterson, Bud Browne, and Leroy Grannis, all iconic figures in the surfing world, started shooting photographs and home movies many decades ago. They grew in stature in the 1950s, when fledgling moviemakers Bruce Brown, Walt Phillips, John Severson, and Grant Rohloff ran story lines through their footage. They produced films with telltale titles like Barefoot Adventure, Waterlogged, Surfing Hollow Days, Have Board Will Travel, Too Hot to Handle, Once Upon a Wave, Sunset Surf Craze, and Big Wednesday (the 1961 original; it was remade by Warner Brothers in 1978). Hollywood’s superficial surf culture blitzkrieg, depicted in the Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello Beach Party flicks and the Gidget franchise, prompted surf filmmakers to dig deeper to present the authentic California and Hawaii surfing worlds. It also gave them an opportunity to broaden their audience. Surf cinema broke onto the world stage in 1965 when Brown took Robert August and Mike Hynson around the world, filmed them, and presented The Endless Summer, the most-watched surf movie of all time. A half-century later, it still makes commemorative runs through old beach town theaters. Seven years after The Endless Summer, the second most celebrated movie, Five Summer Stories, came along. In 1977, the first film to chronicle pro surfing, Free Ride, thrilled worldwide audiences.

A young Gino Marzo spent the 1970s watching these movies in Southern California high school gyms, local theaters, and community centers. He was no different than any other scruffy-haired, ­surf-stoked kid in the audience, except for something he didn’t yet know: a generation later, his son would be the subject of the most original surf documentary since the genre’s halcyon days. “I hadn’t really thought of it that way,” he says, “but it has always been a big deal to be in a surf film. Some of that is lost on kids now, because everything goes straight to DVD, you buy it in a surf shop, and then go watch it at home. Back in the day, you appear in a surf movie that goes to theaters and gyms, and you’re a very big deal. That’s what I think about Just Add Water. It’s a very big deal type of movie.”

Like his dad, Clay watched everything that came out, including his personal favorites: Thicker Than Water, Step into Liquid, Occy: The Occumentary, and Riding Giants. He visualized himself catching that wave, making that turn, slotting deeply into that barrel. “Every time I saw my favorite surfers, I thought about myself on-screen. I wanted everyone to watch me surf. I wanted them to be happy with me,” he says.

One of the first to consider a Clay Marzo–focused movie was Adam Klevin. While others pondered the idea and talked about it among themselves, Adam approached Clay. “Hey, let’s try to get a movie done on you.”

“We did that Transworld Surfing movie, Tomorrow and Today, and a couple other things,” Klevin recalls. “When Metal Storm [the original production company that Quiksilver hired to make Just Add Water] put me on retainer, I pitched them and said, ‘Hey, Clay is like the James Dean of the surfing world. He is way different than everybody else.’ And I can bring to the table a little glimpse into his mind; you guys have never seen anything like it. He’s brutally honest but quiet all the time, and interesting, and twirling his hair, and there’s just something raw about him, like nobody else.”

That conversation started the ball rolling. Wasilewski, along with Tierney, had already formed a set of ideas. They would become the primary decision-making team, with Wasilewski serving as executive producer and Tierney as director. They collaborated to not only obtain the money from Quiksilver to move forward but to make sure the Quiksilver brand was an intrinsic part of the film. With the mightiest brand platform in the surfing industry, they were assured of good reach. They had no idea how much that reach would expand.

They started shooting in Fiji in August 2007, three months before Clay’s Asperger’s syndrome diagnosis. Three videographers were on hand, but Klevin was the primary shooter because he knew Clay’s tendencies inside and out. He could anticipate next moves better than anyone, even though he, too, was sometimes blindsided by Clay’s sudden switches in direction or aerial blasts that stretched the tentacles of gravity. “I wanted to surf so perfectly because I wanted Adam and the other filmers to feel like they got the best footage ever,” Clay recalls.

Wasilewski listened to Klevin’s pleas about looking at the bigger picture about Clay: What makes him do the things he does? He studied Clay from that angle, thought about Quiksilver’s pressure to obtain a diagnosis, and decided that Clay’s unique relationship with the world was just as important as the surfing.

“Everyone knew there was something different about Clay, something unique about him. Let’s focus on that,” he says. “We conceived the movie before the diagnosis. A lot of people thought he was a kook, or a jerk, the way he’d talk to them. Or not talk at all. But really, he was this amazing guy whose brain works completely differently than anyone else’s, and I was lucky enough to be able to see it when I hung out with him.”

Wasilewski found Tierney, and they agreed to the approach. Clay wasn’t so enthusiastic. “They thought that because people didn’t know me, they would get more into a story about me, my story, instead of just an hour of surf action,” he says. “I wanted a pure surf film, but that’s what they decided.”

“Surfing has a tradition as a great storytelling culture, people telling stories of their successes, and building an aura and mystique around it,” Tierney says. “These personalities, these surfers, become larger than life, truly unique characters. Those are the guys who were around when I was getting into surfing—Tom Curren, Martin Potter, and Mark Occhilupo, and older guys like Mark Richards, Shaun Tomson, and Peter Townend. All were world champions, but more than that, personalities with mystique.

“Surf films had a lot to do with that. You see that in all the older surf films. But today it seems like 99 percent of all surf movies lack a story. It’s just clips put together. Just Add Water really hit home because it was a human-interest story about a great surfer. People are hungry for good stories.”

The team spent almost a year working on the movie. Klevin shot early footage in Maui, Fiji, Australia, France, and Tahiti. It included a return visit to Teahupo’o, where Clay had wowed everyone as a sixteen-year-old by challenging a monster of a wave, then receiving personal first aid from big-wave maestro Laird Hamilton for his painful effort.

The only way to reach Teahupo’o is by boat. Once in the lineup, a thick wave lip pitches directly ahead, and the rider looks directly at the reef below, where plenty of boards, broken bones, and scraped flesh have collected over the years. The barrels are wide enough to drive through with a small car, but they close out fast. Teahupo’o can reach twenty feet, not an uncommon sight for Hawaiian surfers any given winter, but as Clay points out, it’s “a sick twenty feet. People get hurt badly all the time. A few have even died there.”

When Clay, Tierney, and Klevin reached the airport in Papeete, Tahiti, they learned that Teahupo’o was maxing out, breaking so fast that surfers couldn’t paddle into the wave without tow-in help. Clay grew noticeably frightened, a rare sight. “He was freaking out because it was going to be the biggest swell of the year, a tow-in swell at Teahupo’o, and he was in the trials [of the Quiksilver Pro],” Tierney says.

“I’m going to die! I’m going to die! I’m going to die! I’m going to die!” Clay repeated rhythmically, like an apocalyptic mantra.

“No, no, you’re going to be fine,” Tierney said.

“I’m going to die!”

“You know how to surf these barrels. You’re going to be fine.’”

Clay shook his head. “No, I’m going to die!”

He didn’t die. However, he did almost win the trials.

“It was huge,” he recalls. “We had to tow in one of the days. I’m not a tow-in surfer, and really didn’t know much about it, but I got a couple of big tow barrels. Huge shacks.”

After the event, the group stayed for two weeks to shoot movie footage. It was there that one of Clay’s friends from Western Australia, freestyle surfer Ry Craike, noticed something he found amazing, as Tierney recalls. “When the waves are good, Tahiti’s a perfect place for Clay, because he loves the barrel, the clear water, the reefs, mountains, forests . . . it’s a natural, mellow environment. I remember Ry saying, ‘All life is for him is get up, surf, eat, sleep, surf, eat, sleep.’”

 

Just Add Water built on the premise that Clay’s brain is wired to focus on one area of interest with absolute clarity and certainty, a trademark of Asperger’s syndrome. Jill opens the movie off-camera by saying, “You ask for a label? A condition? I can just say that outside of the water, life does not come easy for Clay. He lives very much in the present, that place where most of us want to be. When the ocean’s going off and he’s not in it, he becomes uncomfortable in his skin. He has to feel it.”

Tierney shot the open after Clay had been diagnosed. Until the diagnosis came, they sweated through every filmmaker’s worst nightmare: the possibility of getting it wrong. “That was a big deal, finding out what was up with him,” Tierney says. “The thinking was, if we’re going to put this out, we’ve got to get him diagnosed, especially if we’re going to do these interviews with the other pro surfers and experts.”

“Even though his diagnosis came during the filming, the movie played right out to the original vision we were rolling on,” Wasilewski adds. “We just let it unfold in front of us. We told Clay’s story, and the diagnosis gave people a better idea who he was. It explained his world. It was unbelievably cool how the cards played in everyone’s favor connected with this movie.”

They also worked with their star beyond the live action. Occasionally, Clay would view the dailies and comment on what he liked and didn’t like. When they reached editing and postproduction, his musical preferences and previous experience producing home videos came into play. Some of the song choices on the soundtrack were his. However, he knew little about the terrestrial part of the film, the scenes shot on land. This included a telltale shot in which he spins around on a street corner in a large city, baffled and discombobulated by the noise, lights, and masses—and then the shot quick-cuts to him sitting in the water, thrilled to be back “home.” “They’d tell me about it, but I’d be like, ‘I trust you, just do what you want with that, brah,’” Clay remembers.

Tierney believes firmly in collaboration. With Just Add Water, he stepped outside the surfing world following principal shooting and contacted Shaun Peterson, the director of TV reality shows such as Rule the Mix, Electric Spoofaloo, My Date, and The Juice Box. He also produced the indie film Living in Missouri (1999), which captured nearly a dozen awards at film festivals worldwide. “We would edit from 6:00 PM until three or four in the morning, night after night,” Tierney recalls. “It was fantastic. He’s an exceptional editor. This was his first surf project, but that’s what we wanted, a great editor outside surf to put our documentary together.”

In a nod to Clay’s impact on the surfing world, Tierney interviewed many of surfing’s elite over the past quarter-century: Kelly Slater, Dane Reynolds, Ry Craike, the late Andy Irons, C. J. Hobgood, Mark Occhilupo, Jake Paterson, Jeremy Flores, and many others. Some of their comments in sharing their insights were hilarious, while others were poignant and moving. One of Clay’s favorites came from Irons, who won three world titles before dying suddenly in 2010. “His personality . . . he’s a trip, quiet and shy and reserved,” Irons says. “But when he’s in the water, he’s like radical Black Sabbath—he just goes for it. He’s a totally different guy. The way he rubs his hands . . . I love that. Whenever he sees a left, he’ll start using that one.”

“I think Andy really understood me. I miss him,” Clay says quietly.

Tierney also interviewed Drs. Bhakta and Attwood. During his bit, Attwood dropped a lot of jaws when he said about Clay, “What he’ll do is have a schema of many waves he’s ridden before, and then be able to predict what to do in that situation. So his brain disconnects from everyday functions and just becomes one with the wave. He’ll intuitively know what the wave’s doing, so he’ll anticipate that, and be ahead of everyone else.”

Despite all the work, Tierney was unsure if Clay would like the finished product. He and Wasilewski told him it would include plenty of surfing, but they didn’t offer specifics on the story line. Clay thought it would be a surfing film, with a mention of Asperger’s and a few interviews. It turned out to be much, much more.

“The movie was meant to be a documentary with some insane surfing,” Tierney explains. “Honestly, I was scared that I was going to show Clay this thing, and he was going to hate it and not want it to come out, because he was expecting a surf film.”

Eight months after shooting began, Tierney and Wasilewski walked into a Quiksilver meeting with a trailer in hand. After they saw it, everyone in the room realized the potential impact of the film. “The first thing that surprised me was the response to the trailer. It was great,” Tierney says. “After we showed it in the internal meetings, we put it on Surfline, the big surfing weather forecasting and news website. There were two hundred comments on it that day.”

Wasilewski, Tierney, and Klevin traveled to New Jersey to show the rough cut to a select audience. Among them was Klevin’s sister, Sloane Klevin, the winner of two Emmys, a Peabody Award, a Sundance Audience Award, and the 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary for Taxi to the Dark Side. She also made Real Women Have Curves and Freakonomics.

“She came down and met us in New Jersey, and we were showing the roughs on tour, and she said, ‘I love it, I love it, but you can’t have black transitions, there’s too many of this and that,’” Klevin recalls. “Jamie was there, he took notes and listened, he and Shaun Peterson changed it, and it turned out great. Jamie did what it took to make the film great, and you can’t ask for more as a videographer. Or, in my case, one who personally wanted to make sure only the very best shots of Clay got in there. I love the way it came out. I can watch it a thousand times.”

A couple of months prior to the premiere, Clay and a few friends watched Just Add Water at Klevin’s house. Only Clay didn’t know it beforehand. Klevin fired up the trailer, surprising everyone. Before ten seconds had passed, the “Yeah, dude!” and “You da man, brah!” and other surf lingo superlatives were blowing through the house.

“He was looking at me and seeing if everybody liked it,” Klevin recalls, “and making his little sounds, rubbing his hands. He was so excited.”

After the trailer finished, one of Clay’s friends turned to him. “Ah yeah, Clay, that’s gonna be the sickest movie.”

“Wanna see the movie now?” Klevin asked.

“What?”

He played the whole film, which stunned the roomful of surfers, who were used to seeing an entirely different type of format. “To this day I get chicken skin and my eyes almost well up remembering that night, and watching that movie, because of what we put into it and because of how special he is and how it actually showed what he’s made of,” Klevin says.

Tierney learned of Clay’s positive, excited reaction to the movie. “I was totally surprised when he watched it and liked it,” he says. “I know it’s not exactly what he wanted, but he liked it, learned something about himself, and liked what the other people said about him too.”

Just Add Water played throughout the United States and Australia in the last four months of 2008 and was then shipped to surf shops, movie stores, and major booksellers as a DVD. It became the most talked-about surf film in years. “Clay was a star before Just Add Water came out,” Tierney says. “After it came out, he became a star outside the surf world too.”

Wasilewski agrees. “The response was amazing. People were stoked to find out what was going on, that there was an explanation. The nonsurfing world was touched by seeing someone so challenged doing so well. I had people from different parts of the world coming up and saying, ‘It’s so great to see this.’ We saw this from community to community. People from all over love it. There’s a story there for people to grab hold of. It’s beyond the surfing niche.”

“I saw Andy Irons a couple months after the movie came out,” Tierney recalls. “He had done a couple interviews with us. He said to me, ‘I’m so happy I was in that movie. I’m bipolar and I’ve always been afraid to tell anybody, I’ve been afraid for that to come out, but I’m happy Clay got his situation out there.”

The response was followed by outreach. Varnes and Clay started receiving letters from parents of kids living with full-blown autism or Asperger’s. They looked up to Clay because of the film’s revelations, and because of how he happened to be a world-class athlete in the coolest sport on the planet. “I don’t really know what to say to them,” Clay points out, “but it was really cool that they got to see me surf, and maybe they’ll want to go surfing one day. Surfing is good for everyone. I like to help kids get into the water.”

Certainly, the flood of letters planted a seed that Varnes, Jill, and Clay would cultivate into a new direction for his career, one that will continue into the future.

“Most people know someone who deals with something like Asperger’s or autism, or they have a kid that does, a friend, or even themselves,” Tierney adds. “It’s sort of everywhere in this society. These types of stories are out there, but they’re very rarely told. When people put them out, you get this human connection that doesn’t come with a regular surf film. Suddenly, you want to know this guy, root for this guy, and you gain interest in him as a person. It changes things.”

As Just Add Water gained traction, its makers found themselves encountering people far outside their realm, in places where a surf movie would ordinarily be regarded as a flick from another planet. “I know a lady in New York who’s gotten the movie into the New York school system,” Wasilewski says. “They watch it to show there’s a different world, to show people with challenges, but that just because these people have challenges doesn’t mean they can’t excel at something. Thousands and thousands of kids have seen it, probably millions by now. It’s a very cool thing.”

Only one piece remained to complete the film’s remarkable journey: recognition. It didn’t take long. The movie won the prestigious 2008 Surfer Poll Video Award. Furthermore, Clay won Best Video Performance by a Male over two of his personal heroes, Andy Irons and Dane Reynolds. He also placed fourth in Best (Individual) Video Maneuver.

“I don’t think there’s another surf company out there that would have understood what we were trying to do,” Tierney says, “or had the guts to actually do it.”

 

As Just Add Water continued to garner attention outside the surfing world, people seemed to catch on to the story in all corners. Even the international media, like everyone else, was fascinated by the young Maui surfer with a drop-dead handsomeness that continually drew neck-snapping looks from women, an ability in the sport of kings unlike any other in the world, and a disorder that begged the question: how can he be autistic and a world-class athlete at the same time?

What followed was a four-month descent on Maui by top-flight media outlets—networks and cable outlets, mainstream magazines and news sites, a harrowing proposition for even the best-adjusted, most camera-loving teenager. For a kid whose most difficult challenge was communicating?

“We were really stoked about them visiting me, but it was hard,” Clay recalls.

“A lot of people think I just didn’t want to say anything, but what scares me is that I will say the wrong thing and people won’t like it. They’ll think I’m rude or an asshole or something is wrong with me. I wanted everyone to be happy with what they could write or say about me. It wasn’t the surf media, where I could say something and everyone would get it right away, because they know the language and waves or whatever, or just go, ‘Yeah, that’s Clay.’ It was like they were on the beach and I really wanted to hit the wave for them.”

Acting on behalf of the family, Jackson took charge and prepped Clay for the visits from people who for the most part, Clay quickly pointed out, had never paddled or stood on a surfboard. To someone both surfing-centric and autistic, that recognition means the difference between speaking to someone as a “brah,” a friend, and fidgeting through non sequitur questions like, “What’s it like to surf with Asperger’s?”

Jackson sent him off with an ideal antidote to the challenge that would freeze him most of all: a tough question that would require some thought while a camera was staring him in the face. “They can shut off their cameras. Don’t think you have to say something,” she told him. “Be who you are. Let them ask you the question, and say what you think. Just accept that they’re here to hear your answer.”

Which was exactly what happened, as Varnes recalls. “They focused on how good he is as a surfer,” he says. “People with Asperger’s and highly functioning social disorders tend to focus more on the mind, things like mathematics, music, the things they collect, whatever. Athletics is not normally a strong quality, but they do have strong structures—except for the least structured sport of all, freestyle surfing. Which impressed them even more.”

For Clay, two people stood out most: ESPN’s Lisa Salter, who regaled Gino and Clay—both huge LA Lakers basketball fans—with tales of her always positive dealings with superstar center Shaquille O’Neal; and Paul Solataroff, whom Rolling Stone sent out to write a feature on the mysterious wunderkind—but who received quite a revelation of his own, as Clay recalls.

While poring over memorabilia, Solataroff noticed a photograph of Clay sitting on his board, his arms raised to an approaching twenty-foot wave in pure supplication, as if to say, Sweep me away, my love. “It was taken while the wave was coming at me,” Clay explains. “I remember everything about sessions like this.”

“What do you think when you look at the picture now?” Solataroff asked.

“Besides wanting to be on the wave right now?”

“Yeah? What else?”

“When I was out there, even though that wave in front of me was blowing up, I knew there was a bigger one right after it.”

Earlier, while they were checking out the surf at Windmills, Clay’s favorite daily winter spot on Maui, Clay had told Solataroff, “Waves are like toys from God.” Later, he added that surfing saved him.

“What from?” Solataroff asked.

“I see things different, from the back of my brain, while other people see them from the front. It’s not good or bad, just how I am. Sort of makes it harder, you know?”

Solataroff then asked Clay how his perception made matters harder. “I need help to get some things done and to get to places on time,” he said.

It was a telling comment on the other side of Clay’s world: his life struggles outside the water.