Customer Reviews

Surf Movie Tonite!: Surf Movie Poster Art, 1957-2004

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Matt Warshaw has already staked his claim as being one of the top surf writers. Having edited SURFER Magazine, written THE book on Mavericks (the monster big wave spot in Northern California we saw in Riding Giants) and then penning The Encyclopedia of Surfing, a 770 page door stop of a book that packs in more information about the sport/activity/lifestyle than anyone needs to know, Warshaw has more than demonstrated his chops as a researcher, writer and editor.

Now Chronicle Books has released Surf Movie Tonite!: Surf Movie Poster Art, 1957-2004, a nice looking 143 page book of surf movie posters reproduced in full color and big enough to actually see and appreciate those ephemeral graphic gems.

In the past, surf movies tended to be made by surfers for surfers, or by Hollywood Studios, looking to catch a fad. The surfer made enthusiast films were produced and screened in the tradition of pre-television travelogues, and their period piece posters reflected that amateur effort with their lack of sophistication and abundance of stoke. The surf community by and large didn't care for the Hollywood product. Warshaw quotes his own remarks critical of Hollywood from a 1998 SURFER'S JOURNAL article, but oddly enough this book seems to be more impressed by the slick fiction pics and dismissive of the less refined contributions. But these insights are mere value judgments, largely a matter of taste, mine and Warshaw's. and as the book's author, he's certainly entitled to his bias.

The real question is: where are the artists' credits? Warshaw writes about the film makers, the music and the stars, and he does mentions artists Rick Griffin and John Van Hammersveldt in his introduction. But for the almost all of this catalog of posters, the writer and/or editors choose not to credit the designers and artists whose works are herein displayed. This omission can not be dismissed as a simple oversight; Surf Movie Tonite! isn't a book about surf movies, its a book of surf movie posters! In some examples, the poster artist signed his work, but usually this was not the case. However, the surfing community isn't that large, and the missing information is pretty easily obtainable by any diligent researcher. By leaving the images uncredited and the designers overlooked, Warshaw and Chronicle Books ignore the significant contributions to the films advertised, to surf culture in general, and to their own book itself, of surfer artists like John Seversen, Bill Ogden, Jim Evans, and Terry Lamb, as well as artists unknown to me and the above mentioned Van Hammersveldt and Griffin, whose works are all reproduced without clear credit.

Warshaw finishes his Introduction with the flippant line, "Get Jim Jarmusch to direct, work up a good-looking poster, and it'll make the next edition of this book." Gee, Matt, ya think? With the kind of effort they put into this volume, Chronicle Books and Mr. Warshaw don't deserve another edition.

Warshaw, Matt Diligent and prolific writer, editor, and surf historian; former pro surfer (ranked 43rd in the world in 1982), editor at Surfer magazine in the late 1980s, he moved to Berkeley in 1990, took a degree in history (Phi Beta Kappa), and eventually settled into a San Francisco neighborhood just two blocks from the pounding peaks of Ocean Beach. There Warshaw embarked on his writing career, producing a series of meticulously researched and nicely-illustrated tomes: Surfriders: In Search of the Perfect Wave (1997), Above the Roar: 50 Surfer Interviews (1997), Maverick's: The Story of Big-Wave Surfing (2000), and Zero Break: An Illustrated Collection of Surf Writing, 1777-2004 (2004). His greatest contribution to surf history and culture to date, however, is his sidewalk-cracking compendium, The Encyclopedia of Surfing (2003), to which he and a small staff devoted three hair-raising years of research and writing. Warshaw's latest book, comic relief in this man's oeuvre, is Surf Movie Tonite!: Surf Movie Poster Art, 1957-2004. An exquisitely mounted oversized softcover volume, it chronicles surf culture through its films - more precisely through the posters advertising its films - over the past 40 years. The posters range from the earliest Bud Browne movies, through the heydays of the '60s cinematographers, to the bad and better of Hollywood productions, to the video uprising of the '80s, to the DVD cult films of today. Throughout, Warshaw's descriptive captions are diverting and witty, his contemporaneous extracts are on point, and his introductory essay is both breezy and pithy. See also: Another one for the ages.
- Drew Kampion for The Surfer's Path [surferspath.com]

If you ever attended a surf movie in the 50's/60's and wished you had collected or kept those posters, this is the book for you!
This book is a trip back to a time of carefree innocence and a time of pure enjoyment. A fantastic collection that is very complete.

The definitive compendium of surf movie posters from 1957 to 2004. All the posters featured are beautifully reproduced...it's a real stroll down memory lane for us old dudes who watched the original movies in theaters, back in the day. The intro by Matt Warshaw is well written and doesn't ramble on for too long. My only complaint is that I'd like to see posters of the best films of recent years (post 2004) added - c'mon publishers, print a new edition!!

I enjoy these old surf posters. I bought this with the idea of taking out pages and framing for decoration, but never got around to it and now we are out of wall space.

This book is very cool. I like leafing through it. It is not literature, just fun.