Jack Johnson
SURFILMUSIC
Jack Johnson’s SURFILMUSIC is a Love Letter to Friends, Family and a Creative Life.
Michael Venn, contributor
My first thought while watching Jack Johnson’s documentary film SURFILMUSIC was that it feels like a love letter.
It’s a love letter from Jack to his friends, to his wife Kim and his family, and to the three creative forces that have shaped nearly every part of his life: surfing, filmmaking and music. Obviously, all three are right there in the title, but what the film reveals is how inseparable they have always been for him.
At its heart, SURFILMUSIC is about carrying life forward with your friends and continuing to explore creativity together. It’s about the similarities between filmmaking and music as collaborative art forms, and how the people surrounding you can help shape not only the work you create, but the person you become.
Jack is the common thread, but the foundation of the film is built from his relationships, his memories and the people who have been beside him for the past 25 years and beyond.
You see it in the old photographs of a young Jack and his friends playing mud football while growing up on the North Shore of O‘ahu. You see it in the grainy early surf footage from his Uncle "Skills" camera, the homemade movies and the moments that probably didn’t seem historically important when they happened. They were simply friends surfing, filming and creating something together. Looking back now, those moments became the foundation for everything that followed.
The film chronicles Jack’s early life as a surfer growing up near the Banzai Pipeline alongside friends who would become some of the most recognizable names in surfing, including Kelly Slater, Rob Machado and Tamayo Perry. As Rob Machado explains in the film, Jack grew up beside one of the most dangerous waves on the planet. Pipeline was not simply a famous surf break that Jack occasionally visited. It was his backyard, his classroom and, in many ways, the center of the world he grew up in.
He was surfing there alongside some of the sport’s greatest figures, including Michael Ho and Gerry Lopez. But it was also at Pipeline where Jack suffered a serious accident on the reef at 17 years old, an accident that changed the direction of his life. While recovering, he had time to learn guitar and begin recording music on a four-track recorder that Kelly Slater had left at his house. In a film filled with fascinating intersections, this might be one of the most important. A surfing accident temporarily took Jack out of the water, and in that space, music entered his life.
At 18, Jack moved to California for college. That is where he met his future wife and muse, Kim. In a story that will feel familiar to anyone who knows Jack’s songs, he locked his bicycle to hers as a way to create an opportunity to meet her. It worked. Kim’s presence runs quietly but powerfully throughout the entire film. It becomes clear that so many of the creative turns in Jack’s life are connected to her encouragement, influence and belief in him.
One of the most pivotal moments came when Kim brought him to the Reel Loud Film Festival on their college campus. At the time, Jack was studying math and had reached the realization that he could work incredibly hard on a problem only to arrive at the exact same answer as everyone else in the class. At Reel Loud, he saw something completely different. He watched filmmakers create their own unique stories while bands performed the scores live alongside the films as they screened. For Jack, it was a revelation. He immediately connected with film and changed his major the next day.
Considering everything that followed, this is another reason Jack Johnson fans should probably be thankful for Kim. Along with inspiring and contributing to so many of his songs, she helped push him toward the creative space where the surfer, filmmaker and songwriter we have all grown to love could begin to develop.
In Jack’s world, almost everything he creates seems to be either a love letter to her or a thank you note to his friends for the time, memories and moments they have shared along the way. Sometimes those moments happened on a surf trip. Sometimes they happened while touring. Other times they happened during an acoustic guitar session after surfing or through a chance encounter with someone like G. Love or Ben Harper, people who recognized early on that this quiet guy holding a guitar possessed something special.
The film also gives us the chance to hear early versions of familiar Jack Johnson songs, including music from bands like Limber Chicken and his college band, Soil. There is something fascinating about hearing the beginnings of songs and ideas that would eventually become part of the soundtrack to so many people’s lives. Before his music career took off, however, Jack was deeply committed to filmmaking.
He and his friends made surf films in the purest DIY tradition. As a kid, he created Grommets the Movie using a VHS camera and two connected VCRs for editing. Later, Jack and the Malloy brothers made Thicker Than Water, traveling, surfing and capturing footage without necessarily knowing what they would have until the film was processed months later.
Emmett Malloy says it best when he explains that watching the footage allowed him to see the world through Jack’s eyes. That observation is one of the keys to understanding both Jack Johnson the filmmaker and Jack Johnson the songwriter.
Jack was designed to be the guy in the water with a camera, surrounded by dangerous waves, trying to capture the image so few people were capable of. But what made his work special wasn’t simply his ability to get the shot. It was his ability to notice the small moments happening around the action. Even if it meant getting worked over by a wave in the process. The same instinct eventually became central to his songwriting.
Jack could spend a day filming on a surf trip, pay attention to what he saw and heard, and then build a song around those observations. He could capture a feeling that was somehow bigger than the footage itself. His friends noticed that ability almost immediately, encouraged it and helped create the space for him to continue developing it.
Watching the old surf films, hearing the songs and then listening to the stories behind them changes your perspective on Jack’s music. You begin to understand how seemingly insignificant moments from 25 years ago became lyrics and melodies that now mean something to audiences around the world. The songs weren’t created separately from the life. They grew directly out of it.
For Jack, surfing is the throughline connecting his films, music, friendships, family and, for that matter, his entire life. That joy is palpable throughout the documentary, and it translates easily to his fans.
This documentary film also captures a defining period in the 1990s and early 2000s, when Jack and his friends approached filmmaking with a DIY, almost punk rock attitude. They didn’t know they weren’t supposed to simply pick up a camera, book a surf trip, film their best friends and hope they had captured something usable by the time the footage was developed six months later. No one told them thats not how you make a film, and sometimes not knowing how you're "supposed to do something" is exactly what you need to create something new and inspiring. And that is exactly what they did. It was guerrilla filmmaking at its finest, handmade by friends, with friends.
Jack’s journey into the music business followed a remarkably similar path. When he didn’t have a manager, his wife and friends helped manage him. Why? Because they didn’t know any better, and because bringing the people they trusted along for the ride made more sense than handing everything over to strangers.
Those were the people who knew Jack, had his back and would look out for his best interests. More importantly, they were the people who could keep him grounded, or maybe floating out in the lineup when that was what he needed, and where he needed to be.
One of my favorite moments in the film is seeing early footage of Garrett Dutton, better known as G. Love, jamming with Jack on “Rodeo Clowns.” After hearing the song, G. Love invited Jack into the studio to record it the following day. Watching that moment unfold on the screen, now feels iconic to me.
But it also represents one of the film’s central ideas. A meaningful creative life isn’t only about living authentically. It’s also about surrounding yourself with authentic, genuine people and keeping them in your inner circle as your life begins growing beyond anything you could have imagined.
There are so many moments in SURFILMUSIC when you realize that beneath the surfing ability, filmmaking instincts, storytelling talent and songwriting skills is a grounded and humble guy who is mostly trying to write love songs to his wife and thank his friends for being there along the way.
That genuine gratitude and humility are a large part of what makes Jack Johnson so likable, and such an enigma in a world increasingly consumed by a me first, gimmie gimmie attitude. Maybe we could all take a page from the Jack Johnson playbook.
Be present with your friends. Slow down. Pay attention. Look at life through a different lens and notice the small details that eventually form the bigger picture of your journey.
The film comes full circle near the end, when Jack performs onstage alongside many of the people who helped him reach that point. Behind them, footage from his early surf films plays on the screen. It mirrors the Reel Loud Film Festival that Kim brought him to all those years earlier, the night when Jack saw films being projected while musicians performed live and suddenly inadvertently discovered a new path for his life. Only now, the films are his. The music is his. The people onstage are the friends who helped him create it all.
SURFILMUSIC is more than an origin story about how a semi-professional surfer became a filmmaker and then unexpectedly became a musician. It is a film about friendship, collaboration, gratitude and the importance of bringing the right people with you as your life changes and evolves.
More than anything, it is a reminder that Jack Johnson’s music has never existed separately from his surfing, filmmaking, family or friendships. They are all part of the same story. And after seeing where those songs came from, you may never hear them in exactly the same way again.
I hope everyone gets a chance to see this film.
Check for screenings in your area at surfilmusic.jackjohnsonmusic.com.