Stacy Peralta Interview:

On Friday, August 3, Stacy Peralta unveiled his latest documentary project, Pipeline Masters, behind ZJ’s Boarding House in Santa Monica.

He asked the following questions and we did our best to answer.

Stacy Peralta:
What did you think?

Ben Marcus:
Well I have always said it’s easy to tell a good story when there is a good story to tell, and the Pipe Masters is a lot of good stories making up one great story. I’ll put a great Pipe Masters up against any sporting event in the world.

SP
Absolutely right, but did we miss anything?

BM
Off the top of my head, in the part where you are giving the early history of Pipeline you had Greg Noll but didn’t include that epic ride at Second Reef Pipeline.

SP
Right. We had that in Riding Giants but had to cut that for this. We had a lot of ground to cover.

BM
And in the Kelly Slater part, there was a wave he rode there in like 1991 or 1993 or something. It was big, black, nasty wedge over the inside reef that needed an exorcist. Kelly barely made the drop and the turn, but he made it. And according to his book, he said: “I can do this.”

SP
I guess I wasn’t aware of that one, but we covered Slater pretty well, don’t you think?

BM
No it was great. You obviously understood the material and divided it up by performance era: Phil Edwards and the Pipe Pioneers, Butch, John Peck, Lopez, the first Pipe Contest and the Corky Scandal. Then the backside attack, then Dane and Backdoor, then the New School. You know your material. Isn’t it right that you were working on a Pipe Masters doco that went nowhere and that lead into Riding Giants?

SP
We began Pipemasters about five years ago but it was put down for a few years when Vans was sold.

BM
How did you come across this project?

SP
Jay Wilson of Vans asked us to get involved in helping to re-edit what was then, five years ago, another version, the original version of the Pipemasters film which Allen Gibby had been working on. That version was a year by year take on the entire event. The original film was a year by year layout of each and every event and winner and it became a bit repetitive so we decided to break the film down into eras. This gave us the liberty to move around more freely and to focus on the most influential movements that have taken place at Pipeline over the years. The original year by year cut is now featured in the DVD extras.