Spoons: A Santa Barbara Story (Wyatt Daily, 2019): USA

Reviewed by Shayne Casso-Cloonan at the 2019 Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Selected as the closing night film for the 2019 Santa Barbara International Film Festival,
Spoons: A Santa Barbara Story is an unquestionable hit, emphasizing the incredible impact that people from Santa Barbara, California, and Santa Barbara itself, has had on the worldwide surfing community. Featuring unseen footage from as far back as the 1940s, this collaboration of both old and current video pieces together the moments that made surfing what it is today.

Starting in a small room full of archival film tape, we see an anonymous older man unwinding a roll of film and placing it into a small viewing machine called the Zeiss Ikon Moviscop. The man turns the machine on, and in an instant the audience gets a look at some of the most incredible old footage of a young man surfing the waters of the ever-changing California coast. Gently transitioning from a focus on the Moviscop screen to the clear-cut footage itself, music starts to play, bringing emotions to a level of great excitement.

Along with highlighting the unique aspects of the popular surf spot Rincon Point, located at the borders between Santa Barbara and Ventura county, director Wyatt Daily self-describes his project as “a film that goes beyond the time spent in the ocean to define how one spends a lifetime.” Rightly so, this film follows the incredible innovators of the modern-day surfboard, including Reynolds Yater of Yater Surfboards, Al Merrick of Channel Islands Surfboards, and George Greenough, known for the creation of the modern surfboard fin and the act of turning into a wave’s barrel, all having either been born in Santa Barbara or are currently based there. Although there are hundreds of thousands of different kinds of surfboards, the film pulls the audience’s attention towards both the Greenough Spoon, designed to be flexible in its maneuverability, and the Yater Spoon, rigid for stability and control when nose riding. All board designs are made to point out a certain way of riding a wave, but this is just an expectation. A surfer isn’t confined to only one way of surfing. As said in the film, “the only wrong way to surf is if you think you’re surfing the wrong way.”

Exquisitely crafted with underwater shots and interviews just as meaningful as the surfboard itself, Spoons is a film for anyone and everyone that is in the process of discovering and shaping their personal goals into something that they will keep with them for the rest of their lives.