Jeff Bridges has probably never looked more like The Dude since The Big Lebowski. With a shaggy beard for Iron Man and a Hawaiian shirt loaded with island symbols, Bridges was the epitome of mellow at the Surf's Up junket. Held on the island of Oahu to fit with the surfing penguin film, Bridges blended in perfectly with the natives. He plays Big Z, the ultimate surfer who trains young Cody (voiced by Shia LaBeouf) to compete in the championship.
What about the character appealed to you?
“You know what really got me on board was this whole surfing aspect of things and how well they pulled the water element of this film off. I said, ‘They’re going to do a surfing movie? How are the waves going to look? Is it going to be almost like a photograph?’ Then they started to show me some of the footage they had worked on. Being a surfer myself, it was a thrill to be able to be a part of bringing to the audience what that feels like to be locked in the tube. That’s kind of what got me on board.”
What’s the feeling you get from catching a wave?
“Gee, I suppose it’s different at each level. I’m a pretty basic surfer. I stopped surfing about 30 years ago and I’m taking it up in the last 5 years again. I used to surf in high school all the time and it was pretty great. Now I’m kind of back to getting my balance back and getting my turns down. So it’s kind of challenging for me and I’m worried about hurting myself, my back, and so forth. I’m in the process of taking it a step at a time these days to make sure I can surf tomorrow, the next day.
But it’s a wonderful feeling whether you catch a wave or not. It’s a bit like fishing. You’re out there; you’re part of nature. You’re sitting in ocean, looking at the land. Most other times, it’s the other way around. You’re sitting out and looking at the ocean. There’s something about it that gives you a different perspective on life. It’s a wonderful metaphor, catching a wave, for how you can look at other challenges in your life.”
Did your renewed interest in surfing come about from this movie?
“No, no. I started getting interested before that, but it kind of all dovetailed together. It was fun to be a part of this one.”
What’s your take on voice recording? Does it feel disembodied?
“Well, it didn’t feel like that. When we did it, I had done animated films in the past and that was kind of a lonely experience where you sit in the booth and you’ve got your sides. You’re reading the stuff and imagining what the other person is saying, or doing the scene to their playback. They’re not in the room. But in this instance, the characters were often all there in the same room. I did a lot of work with Shia [LaBeouf] who’s a wonderful improviser. We were really encouraged by the directors to do that as much as we cared to, and we did a lot of it. There were cameras set up in the room that were capturing our movements and our expressions and that was all going to help the animators. So it was a lot of fun. It didn’t feel as lonesome and clinical. It was really a fun experience. Pretty loose.”
Do you feel like you’re loosing some of your tools as an actor when you work on an animated film?
“Yeah, but there’s always things like that in making movies where you…little parameters that you have to fit in. That’s part of the game of it. An analogy I could make, just like you’re playing football, you’ve got to stay in the lines. You can’t just go over there, go up in the stands. Everything gets narrower and narrower, and sometimes you just have to use the tools that you’re allowed to use. That’s part of the game. In this case, it wasn’t about wardrobe or makeup or any of that stuff, so you use what you have.”
Has surfing ever been adequately represented in movies?
“Well, I remember, probably the best are the documentaries, the old surf films. I just did narration for a wonderful documentary called Chasing the Lotus. That’s a lot of B-roll from all of the old surf films. They interviewed some of these great old surfers and you really get a sense of what surfing’s all about. Documentaries, I think, probably more than the fictitious versions of it.”
Did you have any influence in the look of your Surf’s Up character?
“Not too much. I tried to get the guy, I said, ‘Gee, Big Z is kind of a fat penguin. Can you give him a little more tone?’ He said, ‘No, that’s going against the story.’ I said, ‘Yeah, yeah…’ But no, I didn’t have too much to say about his look or anything like that. I got a kick out of it. It was kind of funny.”
Do you see young actors who have that potential, like Cody does in the film?
“Sure. Well, when we were making the movie, there was a bit of that. You could transpose surfing for acting in a sense that Shia and I are both actors and did it since we were kids. We would play together. There’s a lot of play in acting. Like when you were a kid and you used to pretend and that sort of thing. Not that it doesn’t have to be serious. You can play very serious. They even call it playing the piano, whether you’re playing Bach or whatever, it’s very serious music but there’s an element of play to it. That goes for surfing and goes for acting so, yeah, certainly I think playing with Shia there was a lot of that same kind of sense. Not so much teaching somebody because he’s a wonderful improviser and there’s a great willingness that he has to play, to maybe be the fool or not. So we got to surf together, we got to play together.”
