Here’s my new favorite adventure movie…
Moxie Marlinspike and his 3 pals find an abandoned, trashed sailboat, fix it up, name it the “Pestilence,” of all things, and sail the high seas through the Caribbean and such. What a story! What filmmaking! I’m in awe. These kids ROCK TOTALLY. They peg the meter.
Man, when I first saw the worthless boat that they picked, I shouted at the screen: “No! Don’t do it!” But they did it! …And they sailed it.
I also really like how he gives the “set and setting” for their adventure — giving props to Pearson, the guy who made their boat way back when and how he made the first cheap fiberglass sailboats thereby opening sail to the middleclass for the first time. Then Moxie shows us the current state of thrifty boating, with all the thousands of unwanted glass boats clogging up marinas. Then comes their Big Adventure. The ending is awesome, too, culturally speaking, where he gives kudos to today’s real sailors, but I won’t give it away.
Wait’ll you get to the Davit Story! It’s so nuanced it’ll blow you away. And it’s hilarious, too…and it doesn’t quit…when it’s over another equally preposterous event unfolds.
The only slight downside to the story is the lack of financial/class transparency — if just being low-rent bums wasn’t transparent enough. Did they save up from their waitressing jobs to take to the ocean? Or were they slackers from wealthy families. Given the low level of most slacking, it’s no biggie. They had gumption, no matter their background. And, no matter who you are, it takes opportunity and coincidence to find friends who actually pull thru on a stunt like this. It’s irrelevant to the merit of the tale to say “Yeah, well, not everyone can just up and run away and fix up boats.” Still, it’s always helpful to get a social-backgrounding if possible.
What’s hilarious, of course, is that this is today’s version of the kind of fun and storytelling that’s been going down forever. My pals and I even did our part in the 80’s when we rescued an old wood sailboat and lived on it in LA Harbor, off and on, for a couple years. We didn’t actually have as many big sail adventures, but we sure had adventure! That experience inspired me to start OYB! Of course we didn’t have waterproof digicams back then, or Vimeo. But we did what we could. Here’s a link to the report with pics that I have here, in case you haven’t seen it already: www.outyourbackdoor.com/article.php?id=1082
I recently saw another adventure flick, “North Face,” on the big screen. Let’s compare the two flicks… There were good things about “NF”: the 1930’s period accuracy for outdoor sports equipment, but mostly it was the young woman — with her plain beauty and simple charm that lifted the movie past anything Hollywood can imagine — take that, you phony celebrities. But! “NF” used standard Hollywood “low blows” that wreck it in my view: showing people up close as they die. Pure pandering, not part of art or storytelling, in fact. Shock isn’t part of art. Shocking ideas, sure, but not mere ambulance footage. Anyway, “Hold Fast” is a far superior adventure movie, even in terms of production values, because “HF’s” quality is JUST RIGHT for its situation.
Check it out!
Hold Fast from Moxie Marlinspike on Vimeo.
