SWELL TIME IF 'BLUE CRUSH' CATCHES ON, HOLLYWOOD MAY PADDLE BACK TO SURF MOVIES.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Staff Writer

The man behind the definitive surfing movie has a message to all those filmmakers with wave-related projects in the pipeline. Keep your fingers crossed this weekend.

``I remember about 40 years ago, Hollywood was ready to make all these surfing films and then 'Mutiny on the Bounty' came out with Marlon Brando in it,'' says Bruce Brown, who directed ``The Endless Summer.'' ``It was a bomb, and the studios decided that the public hated the ocean. None of those movies ever happened.''

If studio executives made would-be filmmakers walk the plank over a movie that had nothing to do with surfing, what will happen this weekend if Universal's ``Blue Crush'' fails to bring waves of young people to the theaters? There are no fewer than four other surfer-chicks flicks in development - not to mention several traditional surfer-dudes movies - all of them waiting to see how the bikini-clad babes in ``Blue Crush'' fare before going forward.

The good news for those projects, and for ``Blue Crush'' itself, is that they seem to have a bit of pop-culture synchronicity on their side. Interest in surfing and, more significantly, the surf lifestyle, is currently cresting, after being largely ignored for the past several years.

Brown says he knows the cycle well.

``About every 10 years, I get a call from Time magazine, going, 'What do you attribute the current popularity of surfing to?' '' the 64-year-old Brown says from his home in Santa Barbara. ``I tell them, 'I haven't the foggiest, but call me back in 10 years and maybe I'll have the answer by then.' ''

Right now, everyone seems to be going on a surfing safari. ``Lilo & Stitch,'' Disney's hit summer animated movie, featured Hawaiian surfing sisters and a wave-riding alien. Sheryl Crow surfed in Hawaii for the music video to her latest single, ``Soak Up the Sun,'' and the boys from Incubus followed suit in their latest MTV spot. Turner Classic Movies is spotlighting Brown's work in a surf film festival. The surf wear industry is booming with sales of $2.4 billion a year, and advertisers are using surf images to sell everything from cars to kitchen appliances.

``I may be having a harder time catching waves after this movie opens - I hope not,'' says ``Blue Crush'' director John Stockwell, an avid surfer who calls the sport his ``obsession and passion.''

``Blue Crush'' isn't the first mainstream movie to feature surfer girls, but Stockwell's film is unique in its singular focus on young women. The movie's idea originated with Imagine Entertainment producer Brian Grazer, another Hollywood surfer. He bought the rights to Susan Orlean's Outside magazine article, ``The Surf Girls of Maui,'' hoping he could capture the island's North Shore subculture from a woman's perspective.

The filmmakers are quick to distinguish Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth), the heroine of ``Blue Crush,'' from her forebear, ``Gidget,'' the 1959 surfer girl played by Sandra Dee (and later on TV by Sally Field) who was long on charm but a bit short on surfing ability and street smarts. Anne Marie, by contrast, is the latest in a line of ``Charlie's Angels''-style movie heroines whose strength comes through loudest in her impressive physicality. To use (dated) surf lingo: She shreds.

She also looks good in a bikini, a fact that studio marketers are using to draw young men to the movie. To his credit, Stockwell hasn't made a T&A film. He was interested in capturing the power of the ocean as much as showing the power (sexual, physical and otherwise) of young women.

``I like those old surf movies, but the one thing they never show you is what it's like to be held under the ocean after you wipe out,'' Stockwell, 42, says. ``Those movies were always about the dream wave and the perfect wave, when, let's face it, for most people it's hard enough to get into a wave in the first place.''

Stockwell attributes surfing's current cachet to the freedom inherent in the sport, along with its beauty and purity. ``Lilo & Stitch'' co-director Chris Sanders agrees, saying the public's fascination with surfing and, to a lesser degree, Hawaiiana like hula dancing and torch juggling, comes from the inherent difficulty.

``Surfing's hard, and that's one of the things that makes it cool,'' Sanders says. ``Not everyone can do it.''

For that, Stockwell - like most surfers - is glad.

``I don't expect 'Blue Crush' to put more people in the water,'' Stockwell says. ``It's like watching 'Top Gun.' People weren't leaving the theaters wanting to fly F-14s. Here, we just wanted to give people the visceral experience without them having to get their feet wet.''

Big waves, big screen

Gidget, 1959. ``Probably it was the 'Gidget' movies, books and magazines that did as much as anything to bring surfing culture to the masses,'' says Nat Young, author of ``Nomads of the Wind.''

Gidget, played by Sandra Dee in the movie and Sally Field in the television series, was an actual Malibu surfer, although not a very good one. Legendary Malibu surfer Terry ``Tubesteak'' Tracey (the Cliff Robertson Kahuna figure in the movies) christened the 5-foot-tall Kathy Kohner as ``Gidget'' - an amalgam of ``girl'' and ``midget.'' Inspired two sequels, not to mention a bunch of kooks taking to the waves.

The Endless Summer, 1966. Filmmaker Bruce Brown makes the definitive surf movie and a pretty darn good travelogue, taking surfers Mike Hynson and Robert August around the world looking for the ultimate wave. Brown couldn't find a distributor for the film, so he spent his life savings and booked a theater in Manhattan, where the movie played for a year. The rest is history.

Big Wednesday, 1978. Three Malibu surfers ride the waves and party their way through the '60s, get separated by the Vietnam War and return home to pick up the pieces. All seems lost until a huge south swell arrives and the boys head out into the monster waves to confront their demons and the ravages of time.

Apocalypse Now, 1979. Talk about territorialism. Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall) wants to surf, but there's one problem. The Viet Cong holds the beach with the best waves. Kilgore orchestrates an air strike set to Wagner's ``Ride of the Valkyries,'' which the good colonel justifies on the grounds that ``Charlie don't surf.''

Unfortunately the napalm attack affects the area's wind patterns, which kill the hoped-for 6-foot swells. (Note: It's no coincidence that John Milius, who wrote and directed ``Big Wednesday,'' co-wrote ``Apocalypse Now'' with Francis Ford Coppola.)

Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 1982. No surfing, just Jeff Spicoli, filmdom's most famous surfer. When Spicoli says, ``All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and I'm fine,'' he could have been speaking for a generation of aimless beach stoners.

Not that Spicoli was totally clueless. Check out the precision in his gnarly summation of the Declaration of Independence: ``So what Jefferson was saying was 'Hey! You know, we left this England place because it was bogus. So if we don't get some cool rules ourselves, pronto, we'll just be bogus too.' ''

Point Break, 1991. Keanu Reeves in a role he was born to play: dopey surfer dude. Kathryn Bigelow's movie follows Reeves' FBI agent as he infiltrates a band of thrill-seeking thieves who rob banks wearing masks of former U.S. presidents. As one character puts it: ``The ex-presidents rip off banks to finance the endless summer!'' Cowabunga!

- Glenn Whipp

CAPTION(S):

5 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Get on board

Women of `Blue Crush' could revive surf movie genre

(2) The women in ``Blue Crush'' - including Kate Bosworth - are serious surfers.

(3 -- 4) Keanu Reeves, left, learns about surf culture from Patrick Swayze, right, in ``Point Break.''

(5) Surfer Sanoe Lake plays Lena in ``Blue Crush.''

Box:

big waves, BIG SCREEN (see text)