Premiere Night Like WHOA

Wow I'm glad that's off my chest...

Holding Almost Cut My Hair back from everyone I know for the past few months has been both fantastically fun and painfully hard; even the guys IN the movie hadn't seen it before last night, what a pleasure it was to share that with everyone at last!

The turnout was insane.  Every time the lobby seemed to mellow out, and new pilgrimage of stoked souls would turn the corner outside and march through the doors...humbling is a good word for the majority of what I'm feeling at the moment.  We packed the theater pretty darn good, with barely any open seats on the ground, my 'no hippies' rule was pretty obviously disregarded...The crowd definitely ran the gamut and completely filled out the Santa Barbara surf scene as well as I've ever seen it.  Kinda like every lineup and art show I've been in the for the last 9 years slammed into one room...well, then ad in the crew from New Jersey, the one from Seattle and all the cats from the San Diego area that showed up as well!

What I really wanted to say before the movie on stage, where I totally lost all of my words looking over the crowd, was what the title means to me.  If you're familiar with the song, you likely get it.  David Crosby wrote Almost Cut My Hair as somewhat of an anthem for himself and his attitude to life.  The song has guided the hardest decisions I've had to make in my life, both professionally and personally.  So when I was well into making my movie with no title, I started editing footage of Mr.Tevor Gordon...the most moving images I've seen of him to date, shot by one Michael Kew, and I threw over it the song I wanted to listen to...Almost Cut My hair.  Shivers went down my spine and I knew without a doubt that I had just nailed the most meaningful section of the movie to me, as well as the title...The opening lines alone spell it all out for me so clearly:

Almost Cut My Hair

Happened just other day

It's getting kinda long

I coulda said it was in my way

But I didn't, and I wonder why

....

Its so easy in life to bend what you think is the way to live your life, to cut yourself short and do what you think everyone wants you to do.  The entire story of the resin dot on my boards comes from that thought path, as well as the decision to hand shape everything while nobody else seems to have enough pride to do the work, as does my break from Point Concept, as does every time I'm faced with a heavy decision in life.. I just have to remember that its most definitely not going to be the easy road, but its the only way I want to do it, and its the only way that I'll be proud at the end of the day.

I can't thank everyone enough for the overwhelming show of excitement and support, the hoots, hollers, whistles, drunken slurrs and cat calls were everything I could have ever asked for in sharing that with all of you!  My measure of success was in all of your responses during the movie and I could never say, after last night, that I could ever have asked for anything more...You all are amazing, and leave me feeling like I can do just about anything my little heart desires, as long as I stay true to my own vision of surfing and all of my curiosities, hold my line, and never 'cut my hair'.