Laurie Towner isn’t a man who wants to talk about himself. He’s a quiet guy who doesn’t appear to know how interesting he is. That hesitancy, of course, only serves to make him more interesting, but Towner doesn’t pay much attention to what the public wants. He just wants to surf good waves and spend his life doing the things he wants to do. He has a new film out, made by needessentials and the inimitable filmmaker Ishka Folkwell, called Equilibrium. It is one of the best surf films I’ve seen in years. I called up Towner to chat about it, and because he is a very interesting man, we wound up talking about a lot more than just the film.
“I’m a pretty reserved, cruisy, quiet sort of person,” Towner said. “When you’re throwing yourself out there in the lead up to the release, I get kind of rattled. I’m kind of an underground person, and I’m throwing myself out there again and again, you know what I mean? I’m not one of those people who’s chasing exposure or anything, and it plays on me a little. I just really hope people actually do like it.”
The film follows Towner as he travels to Morocco after a decade of focusing on his family on Australia’s East Coast. Like many of the films Folkwell and needessentials create, it’s more than just surf porn. It’s a story about travel. About searching. About what you can find within yourself when you’re far from home. It stuck an especially strong chord with me, because I just had my first child in May. In the beginning of Equilibrium, Towner wrestles with the fact that the six-week trip would be the longest stint away from his kids he’d ever done.
“When you have kids and you love them to death, they’re just your little friends, you know what I mean?” he told me from his home in Australia. “They’re like your best little friends, but they’re your kids. When I go away, I’ll be worried about how they’re going to be in the ocean on their own, without me there looking out for them. It’s the little things, too. Just playing with them — tossing the ball around or whatever. It’s all these little things that you really cherish. The longer you’re away and you miss all those those little things… it’s a full challenge.”
But when the opportunity arose to head to Morocco to make Equilibrium, it was something he couldn’t pass up. But not without qualms.
“You really want to go and do it, but it almost holds you back because you love them so much,” he explained. “You don’t want to miss out on them and what they’re doing as they’re growing up, because it’s such a special time.”
Towner had been to Morocco before, but not for two decades. It was a very different place then, and Towner was a different person.
“It was actually 20 years ago to the year,” Towner remembered. “Taylor Steele was filming. I forget what it was for, but I think Rasta was there. It was back in the Billabong days and I got thrown on it last minute. We went there for two weeks, but we didn’t really get any good waves.”
Although he might not have scored the best waves Morocco has to offer on that first trip, this time around, he got more than he ever could have asked for. When I told Laurie that his surfing in Equilibrium stood up to that of the best surfers in the world, Towner just laughed, as though I said something absurd. I also brought up the fact that many of the waves surfed in the film appear to be empty, and Morocco is beginning to have a reputation as a very crowded place to surf.
“I mean, I got pretty lucky because Morocco is pretty crowded,” he said. “A few things aligned with one of the swells I got. There was a bodyboard contest down the coast. All the local bodyboarders — well, the majority of them — weren’t there. They’re really talented guys, but the swell wasn’t one of the ones where all the Europeans fly in to get a taste. People probably didn’t chase it because the tides weren’t crazy low. The whole coast was was lighting up, so the best surf I got was quite uncrowded for that place.”
When it comes to surf travel, especially to places of the farther flung variety, things can be difficult. But Towner has a mindset that makes those unexpected difficulties a little easier.
“When you get to a new country, I think it’s important not expect everything to run smoothly and perfectly,” he said. “You can’t just expect to rock up and have it all fall in your lap. You can’t expect that you’ve got it all figured out. It takes time to learn new places.”
Towner’s trajectory to who he has become in the surf world is not a straight line. Although he was — and still is, I’m sure — your favorite big wave surfer’s favorite big wave surfer, the industry downturn in 2014 landed him on Billabong’s chopping block. His life changed drastically in the blink of an eye. Suddenly, one of the best surfers in the world found himself without a main sponsor at a time in his life where having a main sponsor was very, very important.
“Financially, it was hectic,” Towner remembered. “It was the scariest time of my life. That was a big eye opener at a young age. What I’d achieved before that all happened… it all just fell through. But it also couldn’t have happened at a better time because it happened the year my daughter was born. It also gave me the opportunity to be like, ‘Okay, well, I get to hang and raise a beautiful family.'”
Towner rolled with the punches, found himself a job, put his head down, and did what he had to do. He kept surfing, of course, but not in the same way he had been in previous years. Looking back all these years later, Towner is happy about the way everything worked out. Now, he’s working with the small team at needessentials, designing and testing products, making films, and even doing some website work when the need arises. The team at needessentials is a small but dedicated one, and it’s a perfect place for someone like Laurie.
I’m pretty lucky that it’s just all fallen in the way it has,” he said. “It’s a really small crew. There aren’t a lot of people involved, which is awesome. It’s not a big company throwing around all these different crazy ideas. Everyone knows each other really well and they’re a really good crew. I’m very fortunate to be working for them and doing the odd surf trip for them.”
Equilibrium is a wonderful example of what the team at needessentials brings to the table. Interesting people doing interesting things in interesting places. The waves will always be the backbone of what they do, but it’s all the things we do while we’re looking for them that’s really interesting. And people like Laurie Towner and Torren Martyn, another needessentials guy, are the perfect people to show it. Without sounding too corny, Towner and Martyn are certain types of surfers: soulful, quiet, and humble. And they absolutely rip… but they would never tell you that.
“It’s just a reflection of the personalities in the company,” Towner explained when I asked him whether the needessentials team chose like-minded people to represent the brand. “They’re all down to Earth, and they’re not people who need everything and anything. You know, the main owner of the company doesn’t own anything fancy. He doesn’t have all the toys or the top shelf gear. We’re all pretty like-minded in that sense.”
Needessentials, with the help of people like Ishka Folkwell, Torren Martyn, and Laurie Towner, consistently makes some of the best surf films. That’s interesting, because the brand didn’t start out as a film making endeavour. As it evolved, however, needessentials decided to forgo many of the traditional marketing avenues in favor of making amazing films about interesting people doing amazing and interesting things.
“The whole marketing strategy is to go try and make cool films to help sell a few suits here and there,” Towner laughed. “We’re the ones who get to test and go to do the fun trips, which is pretty awesome.”
Surf travel, especially to places like Morocco, is often a difficult endeavor. Expecting things to go smoothly is a sure-fire way to be disappointed, so Towner approaches surf trips in a specific way.
“Getting out of your comfort zone is a positive experience,” he says in Equilibrium. “There’s a massive world out there with different experiences and different feelings. People walking different walks of life. It opens your mind to how special the world is and how special lots of different people and different cultures are… you don’t hold onto a lot of silly, negative things. It’s such a special thing that we can experience different cultures and experiences.”
The trip, which took six weeks, covered a massive stretch of coastline. They started in Casablanca and went as far south as Dakhla, which is in the Western Saraha. It’s a brutal, beautiful place, unlike anywhere else Towner had seen.
‘It was really different,” he remembered. ‘There’s nothing there, you know? It just must be so harsh down there at times. It definitely keeps you humble. I’m fortunate enough to come from a beautiful place, and to wake up every day and feel pretty happy. It makes you realize, when you see people in those situations, what you actually do need and what you don’t need in this world. We’ve all got so much. We’re all rich in some way. I’m just so appreciative of it all.”
By the end of his Moroccan sojourn, Towner had a realization about what he what he deems most important in life. Looking back on the long adventure of his life, his goals for the future are simple.
“It’s been a wild run for me,” he said. “Looking back, it’s been amazing. My goal is to be the best father I can in any way possible. Just to help guide them the way I’ve been guided. The ways people have taught me and the things that I struggle with. For me, that’s the way I want to walk through this life: I want to continue to learn and to experience different things.”
