Mikey DeTemple has always blazed his own path in surfing. While the rest of his Long Island, NY, peers were schralping on 5’11” shortboards, Mikey was hung up on his dad’s 9’0”. While his Indialantic, FL, friends were amping on Loose Change, Mikey was studying The Endless Summer. And while everyone and their brother was grinding to 2Pac, Mikey was jamming to The Doors. 

But after dominating the East Coast longboard circuit for the better part of this decade, DeTemple grew disillusioned with the scene’s convoluted judging system and lack of financial backing, and began embracing a multitude of surfcraft — longboards, fishes, quads, eggs, planks of wood. After absorbing the beauty of wavescapes the world over, Mikey started formulating his own vision of how surfing should be portrayed on film. Four years of planning, execution, and post-production later, DeTemple bequeathed his debut film, Picaresque, on the 30-second-video-clip-obsessed world. Featuring a diverse cast of characters and equipment, a hip, modern soundtrack, and enough 16mm aquatic beauty to please even the shortest of attention spans, Picaresque is one of the most creative moving pictures to emerge from today’s hotbed of East Coast cinematic talent. ESM sat down with DeTemple and St. Augustine, FL, cinematographer Dustin Miller to get the whole story.

ESM: Where did the idea for Picaresque come from?
Mikey DeTemple: After years of going on surf trips and seeing them only documented by photographers, I thought, “These trips would make an amazing film.” I’ve always had a vision of what I’d like to see. Ever since I was young, I’d take a bunch of my favorite surf films and splice ‘em all together to get psyched up. Lately I’ve been uninspired by a lot of films out there, so I decided to make something else.

ESM: In your ESM interview back in August 2007 (Vol.16, #122), you expressed concern for the state of professional longboarding. Was Picaresque your way of bridging the gap between the competitive and artistic sides of the sport? 
MD: I remember talking about how I wasn’t really into the contest scene, and how I thought longboarding should be visually portrayed. It’s also a way to do something productive, and not just sit back wondering why this is all going to crap so fast. Because I don’t see [longboarding] in a cool state right now. I also don’t see [what I do] as pro longboarding any more; I see it as surfing. This film caters to most people. It’s not just longboarding. It’s fishes, eggs, logs, alaias…  I think all these alternatives fit into this thing we call “surfing.”

ESM: Why the title, “picaresque”, a literary term meaning, “the episodic recounting of adventures from the road”? 
MD: We didn’t want to break it down by location. There are a couple different Australia sections, Mexico, Costa Rica, one New York part, Orlando… But the way it’s put together, the timeline is a little different. 

ESM: Your debut film hits the streets around the same time as Thomas Campbell’s newest flick, The Present, which has received heaps of press in the surf media. What sets Picaresque apart? 
MD: I’m a huge fan of everything Thomas Campbell does, which is beautiful and shot the right way. But most longboard films aren’t something that I want to sit and watch all the way through. Picaresque is not your normal surf film; it’s un-narrated, it has tighter edits, it has up-tempo music… it’s just completely different.

ESM: Tell us about the cast and the surfboards.
MD: Everyone in Picaresque is talented on so many different levels. Harrison Roach from Australia, for example — a 19-year-old kid who can ride an alaia better than anybody out there, then do 360 airs on a standard shortboard. Or you throw him on a 9’4” log and he can hang ten through any section with his eyes closed. I think that’s what this new generation of surfers coming up is all about. The versatile quiver’s making a huge comeback, and everyone in the film has those kinds of capabilities. I remember when I first started traveling, I’d pack a bag full of four longboards and they’d all be the same. Each year I’d order four or five of the exact same boards, find three that I liked, and stick with those. That would be my year in surfing, riding the exact same thing. I can’t believe I used to do that.

ESM: What spurred you on to experiment with more designs?
MD: About four or five years ago, I did a lot of traveling with Dane Peterson and his wife Belinda in Australia, and Dane had this Skip Frye twin-fin, long before the whole twin-fin fad came back. I rode that board and was like, “Holy crap, how fun is this?” But then I went back to the same old thing. It didn’t really hit me until a few years later that there’s so much more fun to be had than riding a 9’0” with three fins. Picaresque isn’t like other films that say, “Ride what suits the conditions,” because obviously there’s no wave you’re meant to ride a piece of wood on [laughs]. We’re riding twin-fins in solid surf, and more pulled-in logs in barrels. It’s more, “Ride whatever the heck you want, whenever you want, in whatever kinds of conditions you want.”

ESM: What sort of East Coast footage does Picaresque feature?
MD: The footage we shot in Montauk was some of the most important to me. We worked really hard to get that part locked down. It’s so difficult to get good surf up there — I had to cancel everybody’s flight, change ‘em, and rebook ‘em. It was a major rat race, going from Montauk to Long Beach and back and forth. But we finally got New York about as good as it gets. Other than that, there’s not much Florida in the film, except for Typhoon Lagoon, but there’s a good handful of East Coast surfers in it: Justin Quintal, Chad Doyle, this guy Rob Kulisek from New Jersey who lives in Long Beach now. Rob’s an absolutely amazing surfer, artist, and photographer.

ESM: Did you attract any outside backers to finance the film?
MD: I met some people in Montauk last summer who ended up helping me back it — Sean O’Rourke, Jay Alaimo, Chris Davis, and Paul Daley. They’re all highly connected in the industry; Jay’s done a few major motion pictures with guys like David Arquette, and Paul was the Director of Photography for God Grew Tired Of Us, a documentary about Sudan that was executive produced by Brad Pitt and won several awards at Sundance in 2006. 

ESM: Speaking of contributors, how did you get involved with the project, Dustin?
Dustin Miller: When Mikey came to me, I didn’t know him from Adam. He said, “I want to make a good longboard film — I don’t have any money, and I’ve never done this before.” I was like, “Cool!” I had never longboarded or made anything to do with longboarding, so we went to Montauk and made one video that wasn’t that great, but we got the ball rolling. Two years later, here we are. I wanted to shoot the whole thing on film, but Mikey was like, “I don’t know, it’s expensive.” And I said, “You need to see it. Let’s shoot just a little bit.” We got it back from the lab, and Mikey was like, “OK, I’m glad you convinced me to shoot film.”
MD: Five months into the project we didn’t have any funding, so meeting those guys in New York was the only way to get Picaresque done properly on Super 16mm. We shot 80% of it on that.

ESM: You also had St. Augustine photographer Keith Novosel along on several trips. What did he add to the equation?
DM: It’s funny, because Keith was e-mailing me looking for work in the surf world. He had only shot local guys, but I could tell by looking at his work that he was good. So I was like, “Let me talk to Mikey,” because I know Keith’s a longboarder; he went to school at Pepperdine and surfed Malibu every day. I work for
WorldProSurfers.com documenting the ASP guys, and Keith came along with me to France. I gave him a ride from the airport and showed him around, and then he got to hook up with Mikey. 
MD: He’s come on every trip since France, so he’s been a huge asset to us. He’s gotten ads, and a shot in The Surfer’s Journal of Rob Kulisek. 

ESM: Was this more artistic project a good break for you, Dustin, coming off your work on the ASP World Tour?
DM: I don’t shoot the actual contests; instead I do lifestyles, peripherals, that kind of stuff. I probably wouldn’t do it if I had to shoot contests [laughs]. I just love telling stories, and we wanted to make a visually fun surf film. One of the highest compliments anybody paid me is, “It just makes me want to surf.” A surf film shouldn’t make you want to go paint a picture — it should make you want to go surf. And you want to leave people wanting more and not walk away going, “Wow, that was really long.” That’s why we made it 41 minutes exactly. 

ESM: Let’s talk music, Mikey: Picaresque features a wide variety of genres, and most of the songs are pretty current.
MD: Since there’s no narration or story to Picaresque, what holds everything together is the soundtrack. I’ve always followed the indie music scene, from working at The Groove Tube five years ago, to going to tons of concerts. Basically, I picked my favorite songs that I’m listening to right now, stuff I thought would flow together in a surf film. It’s like my perfect mix CD. 

ESM: How did you go about matching specific songs to sections?
MD: We had different songs laid out on the timeline, and we’d watch it 75 times and then switch to something else. I wanted everything to fit. The Black Angels are a little darker and harder, so I thought it fit Rockaway Beach and some bigger surf really well. And then The Dodos lead into the Australia section.

ESM: Did you have a tough time getting the song rights?
MD: I thought getting the surfers together from Australia and California to shoot would be hard, but that was the easiest thing. Getting the music cleared has been the most painstaking thing I’ve ever done in my life. You wouldn’t believe the stack of paperwork for one song clearance. The music industry’s the most pretentious industry in the entire world. The people don’t even want to look at you in the eye, and they don’t care about what you’re doing. You’re offering a couple thousand dollars for one song, and they don’t even have to do anything for it. You just sign a couple papers, but it’s so difficult. When we were having a hard time clearing the last song [by French band M83], Dustin got the idea to send them the section their song would play to, so they might be psyched on it. He sent it over, they liked it, and that’s the only reason we got it signed off. I’m definitely going to do another project like this, but I won’t touch the music. I’m getting a Music Supervisor.

ESM: You’ve toured Picaresque non-stop throughout Florida in May, and you’ve got upcoming stops in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Michigan, and Illinois. Was a big tour like this always part of the plan?
MD: Yeah, I sold my car and bought a van, loaded it up, and we’ve got over 25 East Coast stops planned through July. Right in the middle of that, we’re going to Japan for 12 days for the Greenroom Festival and a big stop at this crazy venue in Tokyo… then seven stops from San Diego to San Francisco on the west coast, and also a United Kingdom tour. I want as many people as possible to see this. We’ve had the opportunity to charge at some of these venues, but I want to show it for free. Plus, BLORR [Floridian rock band] is with us for the entire tour. The first three premieres were crazy. We did Automatic Slim’s in Ft. Lauderdale, and that was a 5:00 a.m. night [laughs]. It’s a whole new thing when you have a band traveling with you — especially a really good band, not just some jazz ensemble.

ESM: Will people be able to purchase the Picaresque DVD if they can’t make it to one of the showings?
MD: You’ll be able to get everything directly from High Seas Films. I’ve got distributors lined up, but I want to take a stab at doing it myself at first. I’ve got a lot of money tied up in this thing, and everybody worked this hard already, so why not work a little harder and see how many I can sell on my own? 

ESM: Do you plan to continue in the filmmaking direction?
MD: Definitely. I’ve still got a couple ideas up in the air. I want to do something different, though; I don’t want to emulate anything else, including my own work. But I’ve had a lot of fun doing it. So far the stress hasn’t outweighed the fun.

Check tour dates and purchase the DVD at www.HighSeasFilm.com

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