Joel Parkinson Free as a dog
He’s got it pretty sweet, Parko, but he isn’t one to shout about it. Despite being one of the world’s most successful surfers, he’ll bashfully tell you that his life isn’t anything special, that he was just lucky. But try as he might, Parko ain’t fooling anybody.
Catch the first few minutes of his new movie, Free As A Dog and you’ll see why. There’s the beautiful home, set back from the silvery surf of Coolangatta, gate-crashing the rich guy party in the suburbs. A monster 4x4 sits in the garage, all sparkling chrome and buffed-up alloys. Around the walls, a stack of surfboards are lined up like an art gallery. Inside, the flat screen TV shows modest highlights of Parko’s rise to all-conquering power while a beautiful blond kid and his beautiful blonde mother kick back and relax. So yeah, whatever Parko mumbles at you, life is most definitely going a-okay.
Not just your average surf flick, Free As A Dog came about after Billabong hooked Parko up with legendary filmmaker Jack McCoy. The two of them were shooting some local spots when Jack noticed Parko’s ever-present boxer, Trey. As Parko recalls, "Jack was filming and he sort of said, ‘Your dog’s a superstar!’ So he came up with this idea about taking him to the beach. Then we got to the end of the filming process and we thought, ‘That’s actually pretty funny!’”
The end result is a movie balanced somewhere between genius and insanity - a road trip narrated in gruff Aussie voiceover by Trey the dog, starring Parko the surfer and a couple of chick-chasing groms as they tear into some killer spots in between bouts of Max Brothers-style comedy mayhem. The whole thing has a goofball charm, partly because, despite the fact it took nearly two years to make and is anchored by one of surfing’s top talents, it feels like it was pasted together by a bunch of mates who got stoned and thought their dog was funny. But in a good way.
That doesn’t mean that making the movie was easy, especially with McCoy behind the camera. "He’s one of the greatest ever surf filmmakers," says Parko, "a real perfectionist. He’ll spend hours and hours on one little piece just trying to get it right."
Besides, when you’re hitting a bunch of secret spots with a camera in one hand, you’re going to have other things to worry about. Says Parko, "We went to one place and we had to pay the locals - we gave them a couple of crates of beer and some jackets and all this stuff - just so we could surf their break." But he’s got some sympathy for their plight: "No one had ever been there. Now the whole world sees it and all of a sudden it’s the new hot spot.”
Still, does that excuse the kind of line-up thuggery often seen in some of the more competitive breaks? “I don’t know. I think a lot of it is about how you treat people. Some guys you surf with might be like, ‘Hey, how you doing?’
then try and steal every wave and you think, ‘What the fuck?’ You learn a lot about guys in the water."
That’s right: some of them are dogs, Parko.
For more info, go to www.jackmccoy.com.
This story originally appeared in Huck #002.
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