Blue Horizon


            Bruce Irons, Andy's younger brother, sits in front of a black backdrop to delivery Andy Iron's eulogy and says he never thought he'd have to tell this story. But the more he recounts, the more inevitable the outcome seems.
Andy and Bruce Irons grew up on Kauai, the towheaded sons of a dad who surfed before it was trendy and a mother whose relatives were all skiers. They got their own surfboards for Christmas around first grade; before high school, sponsors came calling. Kelly Slater's Black and White video inspired Andy. While the boys were still in high school, they were getting sponsorships and dad would fly them to Oahu for the big competitions for the weekend and they come back to school on Monday. By 17, Andy was making $120,000 from just one brand, and was traveling the world for competitions.
Both handsome and physically gifted, the boys competed fiercely and sometimes beat up on each other. Bruce calls it an "interesting relationship". It's not certain at what point it became clear that Andy's success would overshadow that of his brother. A rowdy social environment that engulfed both young men: Part of a huge crew of Hawaiian surf bros was known as the Wolfpak. Andy brought buddies on tour with them and often partied all night. Some more well-behaved surfers marvel, in retrospect, that Andy was able to surf in the mornings after drinking and doing drugs until dawn.
Foreign substances weren't the only thing keeping Andy unstable. He'd had learning disabilities since childhood that made him feel stupid; he was impossible to control in class and was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder. By the time he was on the ASL World Tour, those around him knew that, as one puts it, he could be "chill and cool" one minute and "gnarly and high-strung" the next. Some poignant interview footage finds Andy in troughs of depression, trying to cope with the stresses of this intense time.
Waves were an almost guaranteed, albeit temporary, cure for Irons' mood swings. From the time of his parents' divorce through the intensity of fame, surfing was a refuge where all he thought about was the next wave. Watching as he glides effortlessly through one barrel after another, it's easy to believe that was true.
Andy Irons got on the world tour with the top 32 surfers in the world. His first season he partied all night felt in the 30th ranking. At his first pro tour event in Australia, he loses, dyes his hair, pulls down all the shades in his hotel thinking people are out there to get him. What's discovered is that he had bipolar disorder major swings from depression to mania. His family had to pull him off the tour and take him home.
In 1999 on his 21st birthday he was drinking Jack Daniels in Indonesia and snorted a line of morphine. He ended up in an ambulance having flat lined for 8 minutes, near death, and waking up in the ICU. His brother gives credit to the ocean for helping balance out his chemical imbalance. Then for a while, everything came together in his brain like a Rubik's cube, and he went from being a total idiot to winning everything.
One year away from being near death, he the world title in 2002. That is kind of extremes Andy would experience throughout his life. He was "the people's champion" willing to share to success with the Wolfpak and the island of Kauai. During this time, he met Lyndie Dupuis who became his companion on the tour. Andy Irons fell in love with her almost immediately.
Andy's main rival on the tour was with Kelly Slater. Slater was the prototypical nice guy while Andy was a loose cannon without a consistent personality. The tour championship in 2003 came down to the final event at Pipeline after Slater and Irons took turns winning all season. When irons won his second consecutive title, Kelly Slater was visibly rattled and began to rethink his approach to surfing.
Andy Irons won the world tour championship again in 2004, his third consecutive title. The 2005 world title came down to a contest at Jeffreys Bay in South Africa. In the final wave of the day, Kelly Slater got a score he may not have deserved after falling in the 5th turn he performed on the ride in, but the title was Slaters. Andy lost respect for the scoring process that day. His wife said that contest started his downfall. From that point, Andy didn't care so much anymore and started partying, not surfing, and going into vacation mode.
Bi polar disorder is mostly depression and those victim to it will do all kinds of things to relieve the anxiety. Andy Irons progressed from weed to drinking to cocaine to a variety of pills ultimately getting hooked on opioids. Everything in his life got scheduled around the need for that pill. His brother claims that at the Rip Curl Pro Search surfing contest in Chile in 2007, Andy won while being high on coke and pills the entire time. After that contest, Bruce and Andy were alone drinking and doing substances. It was then Andy told his brother that there's no fear in dying. He said when he was dead on the table in Indonesia he could see himself above the bed and that he didn't really want to go back to his body. After this, Billabong sent him to rehab three times. He was good for eight or nine months putting most of his energy into his relationship with Lyndie.
It was then Andy married Lyndie, but wanted the party to continue. He disappeared for 2 days after his wedding. Andy began to doubt himself and spent two months straight in his condo before he disappeared. He was found on a bare mattress barely alive.In 2009 Andy and Lyndie went to Australia to regroup. Lyndie got pregnant and Andy became the old Andy putting in the work, training and surfing. Andy had a goal to get one more win in a competition before he quit. In 2010, in Tahiti, that goal became a reality. Andy won the surfing tournament there and was on top of the world as his wife was expecting their first child.On the trip to Mexico the dark side took over again. Andy said he had chest pains before his trip to Puerto Rico. Andy was a reluctant traveler and never made it to the surfing contest as he was going through drug withdrawals.On October 31, 2010, Andy spent a six hour layover in Miami on his way home from Puerto Rico partying with friends. In the morning hours of November 1st, he flew from Miami to Dallas on his way home to Hawaii but said he was quite ill. He did not board the connecting flight to Hawaii and checked into a hotel in Dallas. He went to sleep and never woke up in the Texas hotel. The coroner said he died of a heart attack associated with drug use. On November 14, 2010, at Hanalei Bay in Kauai the area surfers had a traditional paddle out to say good bye. Shortly after his death his wife gave birth to their son Axel.
    

Andy Irons: Kissed by God


            
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This Time Tomorrow

Undeniable with Joe Buck

And Two If by Sea: The Hobgood Brothers

On the wave

Surfing Morning of the Sun

Proximity

Highwater

The Ultimate Wave Tahiti


            WAVERIDERS is the critically-acclaimed story of Irelands roots in modern day surfing and its most surprising legacy the emergence of big wave surfing along its forbidding coastline. Paying homage to George Freeth, the father of modern surfing, the story follows the wave of surfing culture from west coast America to Irelands unforgiving waters. With stunning coastline, thumped year round by unmatched North Atlantic swells, Ireland is the pre-eminent destination for big-wave surfers. Featuring pro surfers Kelly Slater, Gabe Davies and the Malloy brothers, and narrated by actor Cillian Murphy, Waveriders culminates in aweinspiring and nail-biting footage of surfers conquering the largest waves ever surfed around Ireland.
    

Waveriders

Shorebreak: The Clark Little Story

80 Waves

24/7: Kelly Slater


            Bra Boys, the documentary, is a film about the cultural evolution of the inner-Sydney beachside suburb of Maroubra and the social struggle of its youth the tattooed and much maligned surf community known as the Bra Boys. The story is narrated by Australian actor Russell Crowe and is told through the eyes of members of the Bra Boys.It shows how the evolution of Maroubra, coupled with the historical stigma associated with Australias rebellious surf community, has contributed to their social displacement. It is a surf documentary, yet one that looks beyond the clichéd artistic beauty of the sport to expose the sometimes-troubled tale of its participants.It is the first full-length film project being undertaken by, and officially sanctioned by, the Bra Boys. It is their story. It shows their success in professional big wave surfing, it explores their international reputation for hard partying and rough justice, it touches on their running battle with authorities and it shows their absolute reliance on one another to fit into a society in which they are displaced and, at times, disinterested.Central to the story is the true-life struggle of the Abberton brothers Sunny, Koby, Jai and Dakota one charged with murdering a Sydney standover man, another pursuing a professional surf career but charged as an accessory in his brothers legal fight, another trying to hold the family together and a young brother whose inheritance is his siblings notoriety.Bra Boys, the documentary, uses archival footage shot by the Bra Boys and blends it with current surf vision and interviews to create a story that is compassionate and confronting. It is a story of contrast involving against-the-odds success and predictable failures and, ultimately, a story exploring the legacy and hopes of the next generation of Bra Boys members. SUNNY ABBERTONSunny Abberton is a 34-year-old first-time writer, director and producer. Sunny was born in Sydney, Australia, as the oldest of four brothers, and spent his formative years between Maroubras housing estates, New Zealand and a hippy commune in Nimbin. Sunny, and brothers Jai and Koby, were taught to surf by their grandfather and would find the beach their only escape from a troubled and destitute home life. Sunny showed talent as a young surfer and left school at age 15 to pursue a career in the sport. Sunny competed on the competitive ASP Pro Tour in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in which he gained a reputation as one of the best junior surfers in the world. Fortuitously, this early career path took him to countries such as Brazil and South Africa where he was introduced to class injustices and economic oppression for the first time on a global scale. While he was in Brazil, he discovered a childrens reading book written to teach the poorest Brazilian children about the Landless Movement, which was a turning point for Sunny. Through this piece of literature, he first gained an insight into the power of the arts to have the potential to enlighten and inform - particularly the young and the oppressed. Sensing parallels between the injustices experienced by the lower echelons of these societies, and the poverty he had witnessed in the housing commission estates of his native Maroubra, Sunny set out to create a voice which could inspire the youth of his own backyard. Thus the idea for BRA BOYS was born.Meanwhile, back in Maroubra, an escalation in tensions among various Sydney communities was beginning to manifest in violence on Sydneys eastern beaches. Gangs would regularly travel to the beaches and it sparked a series of bloody confrontations. The youth at Maroubra banded together to defend their beach and create a brotherhood to protect one another. Sunny was part of the resistance and, together with a small group of mates, formed a group they termed the Bra Boys.From his days on the Pro Surf tours, Sunny had a wealth of experience in front of the camera, and he used this exposure to learn the tricks of the trade, through a mixture of osmosis and curiosity. Years of filming surf travelogues on home video cameras also helped to equip him for his first feature documentary shoot.It was about six months into the filming of the documentary that his brother Jai was charged with murdering a Sydney standover man, a blow later amplified when his brother Koby was charged as an accessory after the fact. Together with a local production company Sunny spent an additional three years filming the central figures within the Bra Boys community, including the legal struggle of his two brothers.He collected hundreds of hours of film out of which the Bra Boys documentary was compiled. Sunny was the writer, producer and director of the film.As the informally appointed patriarch of both the Abberton family and then the larger group known as the Bra Boys, Sunny had always felt a deep responsibility for both the internal and external perception of the group. Through this documentary, Sunny hopes to give inspiration and a voice to the youth of Maroubra, and others in Australia who have grown up in similar circumstances, as well as provide an arena to share their experiences in a public forum.Sunny currently lives at Maroubra Beach in Sydney, Australia. BRA BOYS is his first feature film and he currently has another two projects in development, one of which is a feature adaptation of the BRA BOYS documentary.
KOBY ABBERTONKoby Abberton is a 27-year-old professional surfer who has built a career as a specialist big wave charger. He is one of just a handful of surfers paid to find and surf the worlds biggest waves.He was born in Sydney, Australia, and grew up the third eldest of four brothers. He was raised in the government housing estates of Maroubra Beach, save for two years of his early childhood spent between temporary homes in New Zealand and, subsequently, a commune in Nimbin in northern New South Wales.His early years in Maroubra were spent living in the garage of his grandparents home, only moving out when his mother was issued with a small apartment in a nearby government housing estate.Koby, like his elder brothers, was taught to surf by his grandfather and found the beach the only escape from a troubled family life. He was educated at Maroubra Bay public school but, after failing to adjust to the regimented school life, he left when aged just 14. Shortly thereafter he left home after being struck with a baseball bat by his mothers heroin addicted partner. He moved from house to house, staying for extended periods with the families of his mates from the beach, before moving in with older brother Sunny. He would also go on to become a founding member of the Bra Boys surf group, a fearsome brotherhood founded at Maroubra Beach to protect the local youth from frequent incursions by various Sydney gangs seeking to attack surfers. He wears the Bra Boys tattoo proudly, along with a range of others including a large necklace tattoo with the signature words My Brothers Keeper.Koby showed early potential as a surfer, picking up a range of sponsorships before travelling internationally to compete on the World Qualifying Series (WQS) in the hope of gaining entry onto the premier World Championship Tour. However, with the WQS events generally staged in small wave locations he was finding it difficult to register strong results. That all changed when the tour headed to a new destination the little known Teahupoo reef in Tahiti for the 1999 Gotcha Pro. The waves were treacherous, with many of the more seasoned competitors fearful of the consequences of the shallow-breaking barrels. The 20-year-old Koby reveled in the conditions and went on to win the contest and cement his place as a big wave specialist.He was later sponsored by international eyewear company Oakley to continue his big wave surfing career. However, he regularly courted controversy with his fearsome reputation both in and out of the water resulting in running battles with the law. This was amplified in 2004 when he was charged with accessory after the fact in the murder of a Sydney standover man. His brother Jai had earlier been charged with murder.The fallout from the incident, coupled with a range of other controversies, saw the collapse of his sponsorship and the onset of severe financial hardship. However, he toughed it out and was found not guilty on the accessory charge but guilty on the backup charge of perverting the course of justice. He was spared a jail term and vowed to intensify his assault on the worlds biggest waves.Kobys exploits in the surf have reportedly earned him more Australian surf magazine covers than any other surfer. He has also picked up a series of new sponsors, including Analog clothing, Globe International Ltd for shoes and Sabre Vision eyewear, to join his long-time surfboard sponsor Warner. He also has his own apparel label called My Brothers Keeper.
    

Kelly Slater

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