Did You Hear Harry Bryant Has A New Film Coming Out?

All photos/ screen grabs by Dave Fox.

By now it’s hard to argue that Harry Bryant might just be one of freesurfing’s most recognisable superstars.

Just reading that you probably already have the picture in your head: big airs, big smile, and a big bowl cut. And yes, Haz is all of those things. 

But he’s also so much more, including an aspiring full-fledged film director. Catching a full Haz edit is always an immense pleasure, as they consistently deliver the goods in spades. But his latest number, Motel Hell, well, it’s more than just a number, now, is it? It’s a full-length, sit in your seat, put the phone in the other room and pay attention, please, sort of flick. Teaming up with longtime collaborator Dave Fox, Motel Hell is a call back to the VHS (or DVDs) you used to watch over and over and over and again with a focus and dedication you might assign to an Olympic athlete or a silence-vow monk or a 13-year-old with too much time on their hands. It's touring all around now, so it'll be hitting your closest pub or surf shop soon. Until that happens, though, reading what Haz has to say about it and all the other exciting things going on in his life will have to suffice.

Hey, hey, hey, Haz. What’s up sir what's been going on in your world?

Oh, so much. So much has been going on actually at the moment. But like, all positive, good things. Buy, yeah, it just seems like the whole year has been a real blur, just a crazy one. Over the last few months we finished filming for the video and then we went to Indo in like… I think late July? And then pretty much since then, like the last three months, I've just been piecing the video together and working with musicians and getting music and other things made for the vid and editing and going back and forth. It's been a bit of a learning curve.

Being a bit of a critic of your own surfing as well, and you start watching things over and over again, it just turns into one of those things. You get really invested in it and it turns into a bigger project than I didn’t really expect or force. But, it's good! It’s just nice to watch all that footage and see the moments from those trips. It's cool looking back and reliving it a bit.

Was there an intention or loose framework or something you wanted to do differently with Motel Hell? 

 We pretty much just wanted to inject a bit of character into surf films again. I mean, I'm a huge fan of surfing and I watch a lot of things that are circling the internet and things like that. And having the opportunity to work on a full-length surf movie and have the creative control and things around it... I basically wanted to point it in the right direction and make it something that I'd be really interested in sitting down and watching.

It's kind of a more realistic look into, well... It's just basically a trippy surf with corny skits and things like that, but just kind of funny and random and weird. It takes people on a bit of a journey and is something that someone could watch and, even if they weren’t necessarily a full-blown surf fan, they'd be able to follow the storyline of it and actually sit and watch it from start to finish. I feel like people will be interested in it. Just because it's kind of different to a lot of things that I've seen in the past over the, I don't know, ten to fifteen years that’ve been circling the internet. It's like one of those old videos that you would have slapped in a VHS or a DVD player and you’d see a bunch of your favourite surfers dressing up and doing corny skits and just kind of taking the piss of it a little bit. That's kind of the direction that it's headed in.  

It’s a lot like Jack McCoy videos and those early, early videos that had those hallucinative, desert scenes. A little Mad Max and then there's almost that Australian cult classic cinema, like, horror film vibe to it.

It’s almost like Max Wax meets Chopper it sounds like.

(Laughs) Well, actually got one of the guys that we have in the skits was in Chopper.

No way! How’d that come about?

Yeah! It’s Keithy George (real name David Field). It’s kind of a funny story. He used to live around Wollongong and I bumped into him every morning at the coffee shop, and his face looked so familiar. But I just couldn't tell where I'd seen him before. Dave (Fox) lined him up to help us shoot this bar scene, though, in one of the skits in the video. And then he's like, ‘Yeah, I did one of the Chopper films,; and it was, like, oh my God, it makes sense now. It was really cool.

Oh, that's so good. It seems like a lot of friends from around home and beyond are co-starring too. Did that all that fall into place organically? Or did you kind of pick and choose that sick, little dialled-in lineup? 

I mean, everyone that's involved in the video is my friend. It wasn't as if a brand partnered me up with a team rider and was like, ‘We need you to go and do a surf trip with this person and we want that person to be involved in the video.’ All the surfers that came on the trips were basically very location-based. We kind of invited people to come to places that we thought would suit their style of surfing. And all the people that were involved in the trips too I've travelled with or I’ve looked up to and have been my favourite surfers at times, which is like a trip out in itself. The video is supported by Vans and Monster, but we've got everyone in there as well. Like, Craig Anderson's got a feature in there. It's a fairly loose style of casting.

And a lot of it was filmed around home then?

Pretty much. The whole idea bloomed through that COVID period when we were actually trapped in Australia. That was basically the whole idea, feeling like I'm stuck here and it’s this one bad dream that I can't really get out of. And then all of a sudden all these people start popping up.

During the whole COVID period, we're just thinking of putting out a more Australia-based piece of footage. But then with the borders opening again, it was just, like, alright let’s do a few surf trips for this thing and see where it leads.

So, we went to Europe, and that was somewhere that I’ve really wanted to go to for a long time. Half my side of the family's from there and I've kind of got Celtic blood. So I was really keen to go over to that part of the world and as soon as I went over there, it was like the stars aligned and everything. We were just in the right place at the right time. That’s when it started feeling like, okay, this is actually turning into a bit more of a proper surf movie. And then, yeah, we travelled around Europe for a while and then went to Morocco, India, back to Europe and did the whole Ireland, Portugal, and Morocco things again. There's even a little Namibia skit in there too.

So you basically did the Borat flight path around the world.

It was just a crazy journey, really. I almost can't believe that it all happened. It's one of those things now where I’m watching the videos of it and I'm just like, I can't believe that. I've been able to do all these trips and they exist. They're documented and there are photos and footage of it. Regardless of the surf movie, there's documentation that all these trips actually happened, and I'll be able to look back on it when I'm older and just remember this crazy around-the-world trip that I did. 

And you said it was your first time in a lot of those spots. How were the first impressions and initial thoughts when you rocked up to these huge surf areas and scenes you weren’t really quite familiar with?

Well, I lived in England when I was like, really? Honestly, I was like six or seven. I kind of have a fairly patchy memory of that period because I was so young. But when I went back it was that weird feeling of knowing that you’ve been there. I've travelled to a lot of places and things like that, and you can kind of tend to get homesick or feel a long way from home. But that wasn't really the case with going over to that part of the world. I felt really comfortable and really at home over there and just loved the culture and the people and really loved it all. 

All these trips that we started doing we were meeting all these people along the way and going to check these zones out and… it was more than just a surf trip. It was actually real, full-on life experiences that I'll remember forever, you know what I mean?  

It’s really lovely when you find a place that feels like home but it isn’t necessarily where you’re from, but it feels just like a place where you belong. Where things just feel right. That’s a good zone to be. Well, what's on the agenda for the rest of your day? 

Not too much. I'm just packing my stuff to go to Hawaii and then driving up the coast and doing these premiere tours. Then once I get to Noosa I'll be flying to The States where we will do another premiere. And then pretty much I’m flying to Hawaii the next day and then, yeah, I'll probably end up staying over there a couple of months or something like that potentially. I don't really have too much planned. But I'm just kind of keen for anything. I'm in a time in my life at the moment where I'm just, like, whatever, wherever direction.

Well it doesn’t get much more exciting than that. Thanks for chatting Haz!

Yeah, thanks!