Official Press Release

THE GREAT SURFBOARD REVOLUTION.

AUSTRALIA v AMERICA.

Who REALLY is responsible for the shortboard revolution?

Jan 2010: It’s an intriguing ‘David Vs Goliath’ tale that, after 42 years, still rages across the Pacific, set to once again re-ignite when Australian feature film GOING VERTICAL hits the big screen nationally from late March 2010. Will one of the surfing world’s biggest questions finally be answered? Which country is really responsible for the shortboard revolution?

The shortboard is the surfboard that is commonly used today. Why is there such an incredible fuss over what is simply used for one of Australia’s most popular and loved sports?

At the centre of this debate are two men, now in their ‘60s: Australian Bob McTavish and American Dick Brewer. Which of these men was truly responsible for kicking off this surfing revolution during the tumultuous 1967 ‘summer of love’ that turned the sport around the world, literally, upside down? Was the pioneer, as legend has it, Dick, who lead the way to shortboard commercialism in the United States, or was it the brainchild of Australian surfing legend and surfboard designer Bob and a few of his mates such as Nat Young and George Greenough?

Over the last four decades, dozens of books, movies and magazine articles have presented differing views of this most important moment in surfing history. Did Australia lead the way? Is the claim true? Not according to a groundswell of opinion that’s erupted recently in the United States, reigniting the debate.

Filmed in Australia, Hawaii and California, and featuring extraordinary archival footage of surf legends of the past four decades as well as the hottest surfers of today, GOING VERTICAL, for the first time, tells both sides of this compelling and fascinating story.

Today, Bob McTavish is the youngest 65-year-old big-wave barrel-rider on the planet. But back in 1967 when he was a wild larrikin and leading Australian surfboard shaper, discovering breaks even before the sport’s big names surfed them, it has been widely claimed that he led the Shortboard Revolution after he cut three feet off the average length of a surfboard. He took the new designs to Hawaii and California, and claims to have ignited the fuse that led to the surfboards of today.
Thousands of miles across the pacific, American Dick Brewer quickly established himself in Hawaii as a big wave rider by charging big Waimea Bay and Sunset Beach. A master toolmaker, aircraft designer and model aircraft champion, he found his calling making boards in 1961, establishing Surfboards Hawaii and creating the ‘Dick Brewer Gun’. During his famous Bing Pipeliner era, he continued to shape shorter boards.  He met Bob McTavish in Hawaii in 1963, where a life-long rivalry between not only between both men, but both countries, erupted.

GOING VERTICAL is narrated by one of Australia’s finest exports, Simon Baker, produced by Robert Raymond (Schindler’s List, Somebody’s Sweetheart, Lust in the Dust) and directed by one of Australia’s best-known and highly regarded film-makers, two-time Academy-Award nominee David Bradbury (Frontline, The Battle for Byron, Public Enemy Number One, Chile: Hasta Cuando).

Set to a powerful 5.1 surround soundtrack including new surf music sensation The Break (featuring members of Midnight Oil and Violent Femmes), plus tracks by Pearl Jam, Powderfinger, Spoon and Boards of Canada and iconic artists from the summer of love including Manfred Man, Russell Morris and Thunderclap Newman, GOING VERTICAL is the story of a pivotal era of our time, of a revolution and the outrageous characters who made it happen.

Official Website:         http://www.goingvertical.info

Twitter:                      http://www.twitter.com/Going_Vertical

Blog:                            http://www.goingverticalmovie.com

USA VS AUSTRALIA? Who was responsible for the short surfboard?

We are starting this discussion to get your thoughts, opinions on who you think was responsible for the shortboard revolution. We have many varied opinions on this, and our recent blog written by ESPN that we shared here gives alternative views to this also.
So now lets get this discussion rolling. Let us know what you think?
Aussie’s believe it was Bob McTavish.
Americans consider it may have been Dick Brewer, or was it Bob Simmons?

http://espn.go.com/action/news/story?id=4250006

Rethinking The Revolution
A seldom-seen look at the Shortboard Revolution and the roll a few under-the-radar San Diego designers, shapers and connoisseurs covertly played.

By Kimball Taylor
ESPN
Archive

Surf historians have long regarded San Diego as a holy site in the development of the modern shortboard. It’s a sentiment with which a cadre of legendary residents will agree—adding quickly however, for all of the wrong reasons. This is because surf media continues to attribute one moment in the city’s history to the advance of the shortboard revolution: the day in ’66 when Australian Nat Young rode a board named “Magic Sam”—a 9’4” Gordon Wood copy of a Bob McTavish hull—to victory at the World Championships held at San Diego’s Ocean Beach.

Both Young and period journalists have been successful at stamping that contest as the turning point toward today’s performance continuum. But that line of thinking is flawed in two ways. The first was recently pointed out by Bob McTavish, the designer on whose concepts Magic Sam was based.

“The San Diego World Championships was not the beginning of the shortboard revolution,” McTavish said in May, “It was the pinnacle of the longboard era. Magic Sam was a longboard, only shrunken down.”

Other than George Greenough’s high aspect fin, McTavish also indicated that the greater Australian contributions to the shortboard, mostly 6-to-7 foot flat-bottoms designed by McTavish himself, wouldn’t occur until the following year.

The second problem with the idea that Young introduced the shortboard to the world in San Diego, is that stand-up boards in the 6’0″ range and multiple fin set-ups had been simmering in Southern California, and San Diego in particular, since the late 1940s. Bob Simmons has often been described as the “mad genius” who invented rails as we know them, nose-lift, foil and the use of multiple fins. Yet he put all of those aspects into boards as short as six-foot.

Tragically, Simmons died early while surfing San Diego’s Windansea, but his ideas were quietly passed on to younger area surfers. Windansea surfers Carl Ekstrom and the Mirandon brothers went on to employ Simmons’ take on hydrodynamics (as applied to surfboards), and the Mirandons would eventually create a dual-pin tailed twin-fin. Elements of that design were later appropriated by Steve Lis for a personal knee board that would eventually become the fish, a design honed by San Diego shapers Skip Frye, Rich Pavel, and Larry Mabile.

A Brief Shortboard Timeline:
Bob Simmons is born: 1919
Nat Young win the U.S. Champs on “Magic Sam”: 1966
Steve Lis shapes his first “fish”: 1967
Mike Hynson’s down rail first appears on the North Shore: 1967/68
The Campbell Brothers invent the Bonzer: 1970
Simon Anderson riders his Thruster in competition for the first time: 1980

John Elwell, a friend and contemporary of Bob Simmons and an early North Shore surfer, stands next to Carl Ekstrom and Bill Bahne—a living testament to the argument that the shortboard revolution may not have began with Greenough, McTavish and Young.

Going Vertical Website coming soon

Going Vertical The Shortboard Revolution, has a new website about to become live very soon. Keep checking http://www.goingvertical.info for when it hits the web.

We will have stories, photo’s, trailers, mini clips, all sorts of great little bits of information for you to get excited about seeing the movie and the story that changed the way we ride surfboards, skateboards and snowboards.

Movie Premiere Coming Soon

Dates, times and locations soon to come.

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