Ages ago, I watched a movie, possibly made for TV, that, for some reason, I’ve never been able to forget. Unfortunately, I don’t remember all that much useful information about it either, so I’m not really expecting anyone to recognize it, but I want to give it a go anyway.
Anyway, the movie is about a bunch of probably Californian surfers. It’s divided (if memory serves) into four parts labelled “Swells from the East/North/South/West”. When the movie starts the surfers are young but as the movie progresses they marry, have children and so on.
The main character is the best surfer on the beach, but as he gets older his surfing gets worse. At one point a movie is made about surfers. The main character brings his wife and child to the cinema. There is a sequence about him mentioning how his relaxed style influenced surfers. “But”, the narrator says, “back to the present”. There is a new surfing hero now featured prominently in the movie-in-the-movie.
The climax is the main character going back to the ocean to prove that he’s still able to surf, and basically there’s a showdown between him and the new master surfer.
There’s also a part featuring a schism between surfers and lifeguards (apparently lifeguarding is the new trendy thing to do) and the main character, prior to his married days, wakes up on the beach and chides one of his old surfer buddies for turning lifeguard.
That’s basically what I remember about this film. Does anything I’ve said ring any bells or make any sense to anyone?