Attention spans what they are these days, filmmakers of all stripes are often forced to clip objectively great scenes from projects that are either redundant or fail to hurry the story along swiftly to its conclusion. For the surf filmmaker, especially, it would be a shame if those bits of film that landed on the cutting room floor were simply to sit gathering dust never to be seen by the general public.
Now, since it first began touring in theaters, we’ve heaped quite a bit of praise on the recent Bethany Hamilton biopic Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable. It’s deserving of all of it. But, when director Aaron Lieber slid the above bonus scene across our desks we couldn’t believe it didn’t make the cut – no disrespect to the filmmaking chops of Mr. Lieber.
In Unstoppable, Bethany’s desire to huck herself over the ledge at waves of consequence sends her to Teahupo’o and Jaws. But this scene at Pascuales, another mainland-Mexican beast, where she steps off a jet ski and finds herself slotted in a massive cavern only to get swept up over the falls. Well, it further underscores Bethany’s commitment to defy the odds and to push herself galaxies beyond what people believe she’s capable of.
Immediately after her wipeout, Bethany is understandably rattled. But in an interview after the fact, she’s no less determined.
“It’s part of surfing,” she says behind a beaming smile. “You’ve gotta get pounded. You’ve gotta get… drilled sometimes.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story identified this wave as Puerto Escondido. It is, in fact, Pascuales. Unstoppable is now available on iTunes and other video-on-demand platforms and if you haven’t seen it yet, we highly recommend that you do.
