Surfing Without a Net

Director Doug Pray

Welcome to a "Waterworld" that works; had Kevin Costner accosted the surf turf that is owned by Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, he would have flipped out.

For here, in "Surfwise," now at the Landmark Ritz at the Bourse, director Doug Pray is doing the wave big-time in a film that dives below the surface of surfing and comes up waxing eloquently about ethos and the ethereal beliefs of hopes in impossible dreams.

And who better to surf without a net and be caught in the worldwide web of navigating life's troubled waters than a Stanford-educated doctor who stood up against the norms and plunged porpoise-like with purpose into the wild blue under hoping to find himself and his family.

Chairman of the board? Paskowitz was more on the beach than Burt Lancaster could ever hope to be, as he abandoned the AMA for the WOW factor that was the perfect wave in the '50s and, now, in his 80s, has become the big kahuna amid the kiddush set.

Hail, hail the surfers are all here, including the big kahuna himself

After all, when you're a married observant Jew with nine children, layin' tefillin and hanging 10 takes a surfeit of faith, whether you're a surfer or a dreamer.

Or, as in Paskowitz's case, a combo of both. Surf's up, Doc: His excellent adventure -- and that of his family, feuds and fun all -- takes him from Malibu to Maui to the Mideast on a sedimental journey that leaves a fine residue of rebellion, remorse and revival in Doc's wake.

What Doug has done here is awaken audiences to the wet and wild for those who have the wherewithal to revel in it. Indeed, director Pray has found the perfect wave in a film about the dramas of dreams: Paskowitz passed on a rich material life of medicine to watch dreams materialize in front of him, eschewing politics and a possible run for governor of Hawaii to govern his own life by his own rigid rules of revering good health and giving hell to excessive lifestyle, all the while retaining a belief in the rights and rituals of Judaism.

Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz

Gidget goes Haftorah? So much more than that as tallit bags tail his every move and Paskowitz prays for guidance in a guile-filled jungle of a world.

Prayers are answered with Pray as director -- if Paskowitz were concerned that his story be told right. But, ironically, the surfer hasn't surfaced at any of the screenings, opting for a wipeout cinematically, preferring not to see the film.

In a way, Pray concedes, isn't that all part of Paskowitz's Judaic beliefs, steering clear of self-glorification and attempting to shift the spotlight from self to the better good?

Certainly, God is in the details, but he is also in the duck-dive, a surfer's maneuver to survive a broken wave in tact.

Tactfully put, is it Judaism or surfing that is Paskowitz's religion?

"For most surfers, surfing is religion," admits the director. "It becomes a spiritual thing."

Surf board as bimah? "There's a quote left on the cutting-room floor," says Pray, "in which I asked Doc if he had to make a choice between the two -- surfing or Judaism -- what would he take. And he said he'd go with surfing."

Cowabunga! "But it's not a cheap shot. For him, surfing is more earth-based. Judaism comes out in the way he expresses his outrage and concern for the world."

And, in many ways, "Surfwise" is wise to the world, expressing itself in existential ways and waves that would have been unfulfilled at the hands of a less experienced director.

"There's a scene that will be in the DVD, just after Doc lays on the tefillin," that he lays into religion, calling it evil. "But he says God isn't evil, that love and respect of God is a wonderful meaningful thing."

Is it meaningful that Pray pries open this special world of a Jewish family who went to the ends of the earth -- and back -- in a small "cramper" -- a 24-foot van that could barely hold all 11 of them, not to mention their outsized dreams?

"That's a benefit of a kind," he says. "I am not Jewish and, as in my other films, I am an outsider. It allows me to be more objective."

Anyone watching this macking masterpiece -- for the quimbys out there, the novices, macking is slang for big waves -- cannot object to his masterminding a story about a master and his minions from the outside perspective. After all, this is not a surfing movie but a surviving movie, in which the family's field of dreams -- nine kids; enough for a baseball team! -- is sand-filled all the way.

But they are not sandlot players; the Paskowitzes are major league laybackers all, winning hearts and awards along the waves.

And if there is a sandbar mitzvah to celebrate, it is the one that the family struggles to accept, dealing with breaking waves and breaking traditions as they do.

Surfer's survivor guilt? The problems that plague Paskowitz are not hanging five, but Holocaust-related.

"He was not involved in the Holocaust; he was born here, in this country. And he did not lose family in the Holocaust. But," says Pray, "his mission in life is influenced by his feelings of helplessness in the wake of the Holocaust."

In a way, it was all a wake-up call for Paskowitz, who is shown learning about his people's past while visiting the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

"This is the first merger of surfing and Holocaust in the history of cinema," kibitzes Pray.

But it is no joke the direction that Doc dictated his family's journey take. He took his family to Israel, trading the sands of Hawaiian beaches for the hotbed of Zionism, where he was astounded by the value of asceticism.

"He would see bedouins walking 30 miles in the [blistering] heat" and benefiting, all while hungering for a food regimen that bordered on benign starvation. "He found a truer health there, living in the desert with bedouins; he realized how healthy they are. That inspired him."

Coping also ceded to copulation as Doc's speech is doctored with some graphic language that is at times startling and side-splitting -- depending on which side of four-letter words a viewer lays on.

"His time in Israel led to a total sexual awakening; he loved the dynamics of that country," says the director,

Doctor, heal thyself? "He found himself surrounded by the most amazing minds; it was a very heady time for him."

There were some headwinds as well. Determined to enter Israel's army, Paskowitz was disappointed when he was turned down for service.

But he turned his attention instead to surfing out beaches in the land of milk and honey, seeing a sign in the Sinai that his visit meant something.

"He is known as the 'Father of Surfing' in Israel," says Pray of the sobriquet bestowed on Paskowitz.

Climb every mountain, ford every stream -- surf every wave ("Not that there are that many in Israel," jokes Pray) -- until he found his dream.

The Don Quixote of the sand dunes? "In every way possible," exclaims the director of his dynamic subject.

The windmills of his mind were wind-whipped waves, all of which Paskowitz mastered in pursuit of not so much an endless summer as a beginning for mankind. "In some ways, the Paskowitzes are on a journey that never ends."

Just start with a look at the family. Of all the nine kids, some have settled down," but not settled; "others are on a quest."

Not that this quiet riot of a family isn't without its downfall dilemmas. Rebellion and radicalism can reap rewards -- and regrets. One son, David, thinks his Dad had not the right stuff but the ... Reich stuff?

Boogeyman of boogie boards? In a startling scene, "which surprised me," says the director, David is seen discussing his father's family-style as germanely Germanic circa World War II in its dictatorial direction.

"To this day, David is saddled with carrying on the dream more than the others," opines Pray. "He never got out of it; of all the children, he had the most bitterness."

Father's daze is nothing to celebrate: "He feels his dad is unable to let his kids move on in life."

And David has a song in his heart for his dad -- albeit one more of pain than a paean. In a particularly discomforting scene, he is shown offering an odd ode that one will never mistake for Rodgers and Hart. Rodgers and Hurt, yes, but not Rodgers and Hart.

Yet the kids coalesced into not a ragtag band of progenies, but a proud pack of parents. And all have taken to tikkun olam -- repairing the world -- as the Jewish tenet surfaces in all the surfers' lives as much as it did their dad's.

And Pray -- whose past wondrous and wonderful works include "Scratch," about the d.j. world; and "Big Rig," about trucks and the big wheeler-dealers who ride them -- keeps on truckin' with alt-level lifestyles, choosing "The Alchemists" -- about creative minds -- as his next art-felt project.

But hasn't he really done that already? Aren't the Paskowitzes pure unalloyed alchemists, spinning gold out of blue water and proving their mettle day after day, wave after wave?

He laughs. "Yes," agrees the director who has never surfed himself but magically walks on water with this film. "In a way, they really are."