San Clemente Times - Bruce in Bronze
On a bitterly cold winter day in Wichita, Kansas, in 1966, Bruce Brown ran a screen test of The Endless Summer. The theater sold out, and the exuberant response blew the minds of executives at Columbia Pictures. Not long thereafter, the film was blown up from its original 16mm format to 35mm and released worldwide. It would go on to earn more than $30 million at the box office.
Not bad, considering that Brown and The Endless Summer crew had been cruising around in a motorhome, playing the film and doing appearances at high school gyms up and down the California coast for 25 cents a ticket. Without a doubt, the surf documentary (if that’s what it can really be called) is the most influential and successful surf movie of all time. Period. End of story.