Surfing for Life: documentary. With John “Doc” Ball, Woody Brown, Rabbit Kekai, John Kelly, Eve Fletcher, Anona Napoleon, Fred Van Dyke, Shay Bintliff and Peter Cole. Narrated by Beau Bridges. Edited by David L. Brown and Shirley Thompson. Produced by David L. Brown and Roy Earnest. Directed by David L. Brown. Now playing at Bay Area Theaters.

I don’t recall who said it, but there’s something about growing older that concentrates the mind wonderfully. Or I should say can concentrate, because so many people seem to quit as they wrinkle up and slow down, turning cranky, misanthropic and nihilistic as if, somehow, we’ve been lied to about growing old.  There’s this (very silly) sense of “This isn’t supposed to happen!” We give up and bluster with rage at the ablations of age.

Well, the bad news is, yes, it is supposed to happen.  Recent studies indicate a full one hundred percent of people who live, eventually age and die, unless accidents and disease get them first (excluding me of course . . . .). 

But while aging is inevitable, the good news is we’re still miraculously adaptable creatures. And proof of that adaptability can be found in a sunny new documentary surfing at the Roxie starting this weekend a full week before its scheduled opening: Surfing for Life.

Surfing for Life is a graceful portrait of ten senior surfers, who have chosen to keep living life as they always have as best they can instead of raging against the dying of the light. They keep surfing no matter what their aging bodies are telling them and their bodies respond in kind. Every one of them is still spectacularly healthy for their ages. They’re excellent examples of how life’s possibilities can keep unfolding no matter how much sand has fallen through the hourglass. And no matter what the culture at large tells us about aging.

“I don’t think you can be too old to be stoked,” says 73-year-old former Disney animator Eve Fletcher, who started surfing when she was 33.  That stoked youthful spirit shines through every one of these portraits.

Most of these old-timers are pioneers in the “Sport of Kings”, especially in the area of big wave surfing. John “Doc” Ball, 93, started surfing in 1929. He was the second man to start capturing surfers on film and in photos, culminating in what’s regarded as the first great book on surfing “California Surfriders” published in 1946. He not only still surfs, he’s even rides a mean skateboard.

They’ve all seem to have lived amazing lives in one way or another.  Still in the tube at 84, Woody Brown is also the inventor of the catamaran.  Anona Napoleon, 60, was on her way to becoming a championship surfer when, at 19, a diving accident paralyzed her from the waist down. A year of struggling to recover ended with her winning the Makaha International Surfing Championship.  You can call it miraculous. You can also call it a sign of hope for all of us.

Leroy “Granny” Grannis, 81 is another noted surf photographer and Doc Ball’s best friend. He took up hangliding in his 50s and sailboarding in his 60s, while Rabbit Kekai, the inventor of “hot-dog” surfing, is still competitive at 79.  John Kelly, 80, along with Kekai, is a pioneer of the epic hair-raising sport of big-wave surfing.  After serving in WWII, where he found himself burying Japanese and American soldiers together in the same coffin, Kelly became an anti-war and environmental activist.  He’s the main reason Hawaii is still a surfing paradise instead of one big shoreline condominium and golf course.

All of them have been passionate about surfing throughout their lives, often to the exclusion of all else.  Buddhist stand-up comedian Shay Bintliff, 64 and an ER physician, cheerfully recalls how she would get out of work by saying she was “going to a board meeting.”  Peter Cole, 69, and Fred Van Dyke 70, both former teachers, playfully bicker over just how much they skipped out of teaching class to grab the waves, while Rabbit Kekai’s face still lights up when his wife chases him out of the house to go surfing. Van Dyke ruefully admits being married to a surfer is not the easiest thing in the world and all the men discuss the image of machismo associated with surfing and the problems can that crop up as a result.

All the surfers see their sport as more than simple fun.  For them it is also a spiritual adventure that gives them “a feeling of completeness of being one with the heavens and the ocean” while Van Dyke speaks of “getting in touch with fear” while tackling the big waves. Van Dyke is still so stoked that, despite some health problems that forced him to give up big wave surfing, still takes to the ten-footers (click over to posthoc’s interview with him). They are all like aging baseball pitchers who find a new pitch to hurl instead of walking away consumed with fear and bitterness and whining about “the good old days.”

The documentary, shot on video by co-producer David L. Brown with assistance from several other cameraman, looks great and there are several astounding shots inside the curling waves.  Another treat is the archival footage of the surfers when they were younger and still studly. It’s also amazing to note how huge many of the early boards were.

But the best thing about Surfing for Life is its implications for Boomers and non-Boomers alike.  It offers a bright alternative to the usual method of dealing with age that involves neither rage nor denial.  The example of these men and women urges us to all get off our couches and out into the world.  Anytime is the right time, whether it’s surfing, hiking, or mountain climbing, before Nature takes us out on that great Last Wave.