About 30 years ago, Heather Hudson paddled headfirst into the male-dominated world of surfing when she was just a teen in Malibu. Intrigued by the desire to explore what has drawn other women to this sport, Hudson worked with local filmmaker Peck Euwer to produce a documentary surf film, The Women and the Waves, now available on DVD.
Leslie Dinaberg: I know you’ve been surfing since you were in high school. Do you surf everyday?
Heather Hudson: I love to try, but you know life kind of gets in the way. When we moved to Santa Barbara about 13 years ago, I started longboarding because you can surf when it’s one foot or really big. … Surfing for me was just an outlet, but it really saved my life in many ways as a passion, something that I really would look forward to. I came from a broken family, but I always had surfing.
“Surfing has come so far, it’s changed so much, and that’s kind of what I wanted to express in the movie. … I always felt like it was kind of this secret that we kind of had, there was this surf culture. But in the last few years people like Laird Hamilton have brought it out to the surface where people are really interested in the big wave riding … I guess you would say. It’s becoming more mainstream.
LD: I grew up in Santa Barbara, so it seems like there’s always been surfers around.
HH: In California surfing has always been a part of it, but gosh, I submitted our film to the New York Surf Film Festival.
LD: New York has a surf film festival?
HH: Yeah. It’s all over the country. People are just really interested in it.
I still like to go to surf alone. You see your friends there, but it’s changed a lot. Where now with the women I’ve noticed over the years, there are groups of women that go together and that’s different.
So much has changed for women in surfing. When I started and before me you really didn’t see other women. I was usually the only one out. It occurred to me about five years ago, I was looking around and there were so many women surfing. It’s so much more acceptable now and normal for any woman now to just say, “Oh, I want to try that.” Back when I started it was like you really had to persevere to keep doing it.
LD: Do they address that in the movie?
HH: Yes. We explored a lot of different themes … what I notice is the younger women, they don’t feel hindered. … I wanted to do generations, and ask them all the same questions. … I love hearing their answers and the differences in how they approached the answers to their questions. There are the young women, a few who we have in the film, they go and ride 20-foot waves. … One woman in our film, we discovered her in Waimea Bay. We were there to shoot a big, big day, because we wanted to talk about fear and big waves and all that, and she wants to ride the biggest wave for a female. That’s her goal. And I love that. I just love that these women don’t see themselves as hindered at all.
We have older women. I wanted to do as old as I could and Linda Benson is our oldest in the film. When did the film she was 64.
LD: She was the surf double for the Gidget movies?
HH: Yes, she doubled for Gidget and all of that. And she’s like 5 feet tall; she’s the first woman to ride Waimea Bay. She’s amazing. In the surf world I always knew who she was; I’ve been a surfer that long. There were certain people who I always thought it would be neat to get them in the film, and Linda was the first one who said yes in that age group.
There’s another woman, Ashley Lloyd, who competed in the surfing world, and she said yes also. So we kind of started with those two, she’s in her 20s. But I also wanted everyday surfers, too, not people who competed, just real woman. I feel like a lot of women are responding to that. My son, Wil, said something interesting the other day; we did a “Heal the Ocean” benefit at The Marjorie Luke. And he said, “Mom, the thing I like about your movie is I feel like I could surf a lot of those waves.” When you see a professional surf movie, you can’t even relate to it. I mean, Kelly Slater dropping in a pipeline with a 12-foot face. But our movie we show all different sizes of waves, lots of different conditions. It’s what everyday surfers see because the movies sort of stereotype what a surfer is. But everyday surfers, we see everything. All different types of conditions.
LD: This is the first movie you’ve ever made. How did you decide you wanted to make a movie?
HH: Peck Euwer, my co-producer, is a filmmaker. He’s been in the business for 15-plus years. He’s done a few independent films on his own, one of which was “The Craving,“ which was about surfing. … He made that in a very short time on a very low budget by himself, and I was one of the surfers her interviewed (click here to watch the interview). (Watching that movie) I remember thinking oh, my god, what a great way to express something. And he was so talented. … I’m a surf movie aficionado. … I was the only woman in The Craving and then I just had this thought that we need to tell more, we really need to tell more of the perspective from the females.
Now that we have been through the whole process, because it took like three and a half years, I realized how much work it is. I knew it would be.
LD: Was he the one who taught you how to do it?
HH: I’d ask him lots of questions. I am a good organizer. I’ve done other projects before. I’ve done a lot of volunteer work and a lot of stuff for the kids’ schools and then worked previous to being a mom, so it just kind of worked but there were lots of technical things I had to ask him about. … We were working on a really limited budget.
LD: Did you fund the movie yourself?
HH: I did. It’s been a passion, and I’ve wanted to do it. But you know it feels really good to have this movie and just say I’ve done it. You know and hopefully we’re doing the film festivals and little by little we’re getting it out there. The Internet’s amazing, too, because I’ve been getting e-mails from Bali, Puerto Rico, Spain.
LD: That’s awesome. It also sounds like what you’re doing is relatable far beyond the surfing.
HH: It’s also just everyday life. I know what’s been going through my head for 30 years as a surfer and as a woman, and so we asked them a lot of those kinds of questions, everyday life stuff.
I also wanted to show a lot of women, a lot of young girls, there’s a history with surfing … there are people who have come before and there are women who have come before for you to be in the position that you’re in to be out there. So in a nutshell, that was my motivation.
LD: Have you caught the filmmaking bug? Do you want to make another movie?
HH: I’d love to, but it takes a lot of time. It’s funny; you think, as your kids get older you’re going to have more time, but teenagers take lots of time. …
But, yeah, I could definitively see doing something else.
LD: What else do you do when you’re not surfing or making movies about surfing?
HH: I love to be with my family. I love watching my kids play baseball. I love going to the games. We like to go on trips. We’ll go up to Idaho in the summer. It’s nice to get away from, I hate to say it, but it gets really crowded surfing in the summer now, so I kind of just like to go up to Idaho and go to the mountains.
LD: If you could pick three adjectives to describe yourself, what would they be?
HH:: Well I would say optimistic, inspired and hopeful. I always try to look at the glass as half full; I’ve always been that way and I just think it’s so important, especially these days.
LD: These days is right. You got evacuated because of the fire, and here we are talking and you’re so upbeat.
HH: Oh, yeah. I’m hopeful that our house is still going to be there.
LD: Is there anything else you would like to share with Noozhawk?
HH: I’m really thankful for all of these people who gave their time and energy to this film without again, without expecting anything in return. I just feel like that’s a message … It’s aloha; it’s what you need to give because if we’re all taking it’s not going to happen. We’re not going to make it, but these people did give their time to me and I’m really thankful for that.
Vital Stats: Heather Hudson
Born: Glendale, on Nov. 30, 1961
Family: Husband Keith Crummer, sons Jack 17 and Wil 13
Civic Involvement: Roosevelt School, Heal the Ocean
Professional Accomplishments: Filmmaker, producer of The Women and the Waves, worked in advertising prior to having children
Best Book You’ve Read Recently: Surf is Where you Find It, by Gerry Lopez
Little-Known Fact: “I really like reading Martha Stewart Living Magazine. I love looking at the pictures of how perfect life could be.”
— Noozhawk contributor Leslie Dinaberg can be reached at leslie@lesliedinaberg.com.