Classiq - An online journal that celebrates cinema, culture, style and storytelling.

8 October 2024

“I Like My Use of Colour in It”: Nicholas Ray on the Costumes of Johnny Guitar

”Johnny Guitar”, 1954, directed by Nicholas Ray | Republic Pictures

There is a sequence in Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar where the townspeople all wear black. These are supposedly “respectable citizens” who try to defend their land from the arrival of the Eastern people and the railroad. They are all men, all except one, Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge). She is their ringleader. She wears a dress, but it’s black, too, and sober, and she has a pistol under her belt. Joan Crawford represents the threat. She is Vienna, a self-made woman, the owner of a saloon in the outskirts of the small Old West town, waiting to cash in because the railroad will pass right through her property. In this particular scene, Vienna is wearing a white gown and she is playing the piano set against a burnt orange stone wall in the background. The visual composition of this scene, alternating between Crawford all dressed in pure white and that assembly of human hypocrisy in head-to-toe black, is astonishing and even more striking than the vivid, painterly colours (the reds and yellows and blues) used by Nicholas Ray throughout the entire movie. “I like my use of colour in it”, the director revealed. “I thought that ideas such as using the black and white costumes of the posse, and so on, were… all right. All the more credit to us in that the colour process at our disposal wasn’t up to much: for example, not cover its defects, we filmed a lot of dissolves directly in camera, when the technical means at your disposal are inadequate, you always go back to the early methods of filming.”

Joan Crawford in ”Johnny Guitar”, 1954, directed by Nicholas Ray | Republic Pictures

Johnny Guitar – at its 70th anniversary this year – is a colour Western Noir, and this is just one of the elements that contribute to its uniqueness, and also why that black and white costumes sequence is so haunting. Nicholas Ray, one of the pioneer independent American filmmakers, broke down the rigid barriers of the Western genre – “I had decided to violate all the rules of the Western” – not just in the extreme stylisation of the film, but also in reversing the colour coding and especially genre archetypes, one of the very first films to do so (and to a greater extent than Fritz Lang’s Rancho Notorious, 1954, with Marlene Dietrich, or Samuel Fuller’s Forty Guns, 1957, with Barbara Stanwyck). In Johnny Guitar, women – Vienna and Emma – assume roles previously exclusively reserved to men, while men are a little more than mere objects of desire for the two.

“I’m Clark Gable, it’s Vienna that’s gotta be the leading part,” was Joan Crawford’s demand to Nicholas Ray for making the film. He thought it was a crazy idea at first, but scriptwriter Philip Yordan, trying to keep troubles with the producers at bay, convinced Ray to accept the challenge: “She was Clark Gable, that’s all. Every time, you thought of her as a man; you don’t think of her as Joan Crawford. And that’s the way Nick directed her, very masculine.” In the book Nicholas Ray: An American Journey, Bernard Eisenschitz writes how Johnny Guitar borrows both from Casablanca and To Have and Have Not, with Curtiz’s film playing “a not inconsiderable role in the masculinization of Crawford: the action centering on a song that is taboo, the devotion of the employees in the threatened saloon, and the nocturnal meetings in the deserted establishment, make Bogart rather than Gable the model for Vienna’s character.”

We first see Vienna atop a staircase, dressed in a black buttoned-up shirt, black trousers and black leather boots (while two main male characters wear green and pink). She soon points the gun to the same group that would later return wearing black (the men of the town and Emma, or better said Emma and her posse of cowboys and lackeys whom she easily dominates). They burst into Vienna’s saloon and home, trying to put the blame of a stagecoach robbery on her. Vienna is prepared to defend herself and her property at all costs. Crawford’s bigger than life star persona and her steely look suited this raw, man’s-world role, and her red lipstick seems to be the only thread of femininity left – “I never met a woman who was more a man. She thinks like one, acts like one, and sometimes makes me fell like I’m not,” observes her croupier, Sam (Robert Osterloh) talking to her former lover, Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden). It is not however, because the delicate white dress worn later in the film in that visually staggering sequence shows she still holds on to her feminine sensitivity. She may be materialistic and mannish, but her femininity will be revealed by love.

Joan Crawford in ”Johnny Guitar”, 1954, directed by Nicholas Ray | Republic Pictures

Crawford is magnificent in her role. Strong, mannish, gun-slinging, shrewd and unapologetic about her choices and her past, she builds her character from the ground up and yet she doesn’t let you all in. She is void of sentimentality and feminine stereotypes. It’s more than a defensive mechanism, one that is closely linked to a past love and which re-enters her life, Johnny Guitar. It’s living life by her own rules. She likes being herself. “A man can lie, steal, and even kill, but as long as he hangs onto his pride, he’s still a man,” she tells Sterling Hayden’s Johnny, piercing him with her stark black eyes. “All a woman has to do is slip once and she’s a tramp.” The reason why Emma hates Vienna so much is in fact fear of what she doesn’t understand.

Vienna has another male suitor, Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady), who is also the object of interest for the other female protagonist, Emma. “He makes her feel like a woman and that scares her,” Vienna says about Emma and Dancin’ Kid. In her longest scene on screen, her speech outside, up against the tree, Mercedes McCambridge was reportedly directed by Ray to “play this all the way through – unremittingly – as the sulphuric acid that cuts through Crawford’s sweetness and light. Without any let-up.”

Nicholas Ray’s film is so twisted, and unconventional, and operatic, and political and ahead of its time, and cinematic, and theatrical, and mythical, all in one, that it’s no wonder it was met with negative opinions in America. Europe however thought differently of it and François Truffaut dedicated an ode to it: “It is dreamed, a fairy tale, a hallucinatory Western”, “the Beauty and the Beast of Westerns, a Western dream”. He concluded: “Anyone who rejects Johnny Guitar should never go to the movies again, never see any more films. Such people will never recognize inspiration, poetic intuition, or a framed picture, a shot, an idea, a good film, or even cinema itself.”

Reversing colour coding in ”Johnny Guitar”, 1954, directed by Nicholas Ray | Republic Pictures

Note: This article was originally published in 2019 and has now been revised on the occasion of the film’s 70th anniversary this year.

MORE STORIES

A new kind of rebel: Nicholas Ray’s “They Live by Night”

The Lost Daughter: In conversation with costume designer Edward K. Gibbon

Making a fictional world feel real: Interview with graphic designer Erica Dorn

Posted by classiq in Film, Film costume | | Comments Off

1 October 2024

Back to the Future: The New Visual Inspiration

I have always liked large scale magazine pages: the impact of that visual storytelling is unequalled. But just as the screens have gotten smaller and smaller and films can now be watched on one’s phone instead of the big screen (how, I myself don’t quite fathom), so is a magazine editorial more likely to be flashed into your eyes from behind a digital screen than envelope you with the restlessness of a new adventure when you unfold the pages of a magazine.

But alas, there are wonderful people out there who aren’t afraid of going against the grain and who know how to best tell visual stories: through the old, tangible beauty of the raw paper. Printed on large format matte paper, with immersing photography spreads interspersed with just as inspiring big types that are bound to live room for the imagination, this is the kind of imagery and storytelling you get lost in and go back to again and again, letting yourself get carried away wherever the story takes you and beyond. To learn, discover, stay curious and creative.

When I asked artist Heather Chontos about her earliest visual inspiration, the first thing she mentioned was Peter Lindbergh’s photography for Harper’s Bazaar, a magazine which, with its larger than the usual fashion magazin format, provided the photographer with more space and freedom for his visual storytelling. “Thus was the time of photographer Peter Lindbergh who I worshiped. My walls were plastered with images from these magazines and I would add drawings and paintings to them. I loved Nadja Auermann’s face and would add to her images quite often. I was probably 10 or 11 at the time. […] It is, for example, when film went to digital and the time and quality was not used in the same way to get the final image. No more Polaroids warming under our armpits, instead, a band of pointed fingers around a screen at one of a hundred frames collected through a cable attached to the camera were analysed by teams of people saying “move this to the right”, “move this to the left” and then back again with the options of perfecting everything frame by digital frame. It lost the magic of chance of something happening that was un-expected, un-planned, that was so boring to me and so now some of that quality of content is forgotten and/or unknown by these new generations. I really sound like an old lady when I say this, but, for me, all of the magic was in the suspense and the imperfection of a captured moment and that feels a bit lost now, it feels like we concoct our content to ridiculous and unnatural standards.”

So here are my favourite three magazines that inspire me visually more than any other print media at the moment. Classic, untamed and endlessly adventurous.

Légende.
Each issue of Légende magazine focuses on an iconic figure, personalities who defined or define the times they lived or live in. Each story is told by historians, journalists, illustrators and photographers. Past issues have been dedicated to Brigitte Bardot, Rafael Nadal, Zinédine Zidane, Nelson Mandela, Queen Elizabeth II. In the digital era of fragmented information and content and abbreviated everything, Légende puts everything in perspective and presents an actor, or a sportsman, or a musician, or a queen with dignity, elegance and untarnished value. “It is conceived as a collector’s item. Only on paper can we produce this effect,” says editor-in-chief François Vey.

SIRENE.
A community of free spirits. It’s about wilderness in all its majesty and about the human side of the ocean. A bridge between people and the sea. Large recycled paper pages (made from algae, to make use of excess algal blooms from lagoons at risk), rough and porous as only salt water stains can be, large white spaces, pure as a sea horizon, and page-turner stories that will put you on the same wave-length with a surging community looking at the oceans as the intersection of the planet’s destinies.

Waves & Woods.
“An earth and ocean publication conscious of lives lived in these surroundings and the positive impact they are making in their environments.” – Matthew Wigglesworth, the in-house artist for issue 32. It’s not just about their stories, but it somehow manages to channel your own creativity, your own sense of freedom that drives you to create new paths.

MORE STORIES

Costuming film: Catherine Deneuve in “Le sauvage”

”This is truly who I am”: In conversation with artist Heather Chontos

The searing style of Jacques Deray’s “La piscine”

Posted by classiq in Culture, Photography | | Comments Off

23 September 2024

September Newsletter: Opening Night, Bemelmans and Acoustic Ashcroft

Photos: Classiq Journal

”I discipline my illustrations as is,
but they must be absolutely clear for children.
A flower must be a flower, the sun must be the sun.
It can be stylised, it can be the image of a thing,
but it must be clear, simple, and at once understood.”

Ludwig Bemelmans

Viewing

Opening Night, 1977
John Cassavetes

It is one of the best films about an actor’s life and work. There have been other great movies about the world of theater or film – All about Eve (1950), A Star Is Born (1954), Birdman (2014) – but John Cassavetes’ Opening Night lays bare the drama of an actor and the all-consuming act of acting like no other.

Myrtle Gordon (superbly played by Gena Rowlands) is a star actress in the prime of life, performing in out-of-town previews of a new play in which, for the first time, she will play an older woman. Ben Gazzara plays the director, Joan Blondell is the playwright, and Cassavetes himself plays the leading man. Myrtle wreaks psychodramatic improvisations upon the text, she gets drunk, chain-smokes, sows chaos among her colleagues because nobody knows why she acts this way. We do not easily identify with Myrtle either and that’s exactly what Cassavetes wanted to prevent. Cassavetes’ films are about life, emotions, feelings. But life is not simple. This is a harrowing and profound film that makes you think. “You have to fight knowing, because once you know something, it’s hard to be open and creative; it’s a form of passivity – something to guard against,” the director said.

The entire film has a loose, fluid shooting style, it’s like you can not really tell whether what you see is Cassavetes and the actors backstage rehearsing and improvising or the actual movie – this was a director who always took the risk of being an original. But in the last scene, when Myrtle comes in late, drunk, for the opening night of the play, Cassavetes and all his players appear to have genuinely improvised it (something the filmmaker often did), in front of a theatre full of extras playing the audience. It is a brilliant all-the-world’s-a-stage effect.

Myrtle is alone, she’s on her own, she has no family, no responsibility than her own, and is in desperate fear of losing the vulnerability she feels she needs as an actress. That’s her whole life, being an actress. “I have no family, no kids. This is my life. This is it for me,” she says desperately at one point. And she goes to extreme lengths to keep that vulnerability. And she hangs on to it, she hangs onto her ideas. She knows that the only measure of her success, and of her life, is what she can create and express on stage. And that if she can not do that, she’s lost. She’s very honest to herself, she doesn’t go along with the crowd, she doesn’t want to accept someone else’s point of view, she wants to find her own answers. And she goes after them unapologetically. That she succeeds in the end, that she redeems her role, is very moving and hopeful. “An actor is a very loyal person to life, a person who fights against all odds to make something work and doesn’t want to be fed a lot of lies,” said John Cassavetes. I think every person should apply this to their own life. The only measure of someone’s success is being authentic and true to oneself.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, 1973
Sam Peckinpah

There is something about summer and the beginning of autumn that makes me listen to Bob Dylan, almost exclusively, including his soundtrack for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Sam Peckinpah’s western (and by that I mean the 1988 Turner Preview Edition) marked Dylan’s first dramatic role, playing frontier drifter Alias, an associate of the gunfighter Billy the Kid (a role written specially for him after he persuaded Rudy Wurlitzer, the scriptwriter, to include him in the film because of his fascination with the myth of the “Kid”), and his first soundtrack album, a score that perfectly reflects the film’s melancholic infusion. The times were indeed “a changin’”, as Dylan sings, and so are Kris Kristofferson and James Coburn as the film progresses. But the most heart-wrenching scene is when Slim Pickens as Sheriff Baker, having been shot by the Kid, finds enough strength to walk by the river where he sits down on a rock, quietly, wordless, his hand over his wound and waiting to die, as his wife watches helplessly – Dylan’s Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door is the only narrative needed. When the music so perfectly matches the scene, the emotions flooding you cross the boundaries of film in unknown ways.

La lumière d’en face (The Light Across the Street), 1955
Georges Lacombe

A film noir in the tradition of Le dernier tournant, 1939, Pierre Chenal’s version of The Postman Always Rings Twice, fueled by the sensuality of Brigitte Bardot, one year before she would star in Roger Vadim’s Et Dieu créa la Femme, when she would take her place in the sun.

Tchao Pantin (So Long, Stooge), 1983
Claude Berri

Claude Berri’s career is, to say the least, not very open to the policier. Tchao Pantin was a departure from his ouvre. He went dark, beyond conventions. It was filmed almost entirely at night, in neighborhoods that were very popular at the time, the 11th and 18th arrondisments, and Belleville, with a gas station acting as one of the characters, its neon lighting reinforcing the dark atmosphere of the film. Lambert (Coluche), who works there nights, befriends a young small-time pusher (Richard Anconina), their friendship changing track abruptly when the latter is caught up by his actions, which will trigger Lambert’s own dark past. With the risk of sounding like a broken record, it’s hard to come across this kind of sincere, raw, decent films anymore.

Reading

I could look and look and look at a Ludwig Bemelmans illustration, especially the many small, drawn moments coming together to create a narrative. Like a child who sits still and observes, takes it all in and creates his own universe; it’s wonderful to watch a kid, unrushed, attentive at the world, curious. Bemelmans’ drawing skills were vast, he experimented with different formats and techniques, created the widely acclaimed children’s books Madeleine, illustrated for The New Yorker, Town and Country, and Holiday magazine, painted the mural on the walls of the bar at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City, one of my favourite of his works. But one of his greatest gifts was that he was a raconteur, a storyteller who recorded life as it went on all around him. The book Ludwig Bemelmans, is part of the fantastic series The Illustrators, having none other than Quentin Blake as consultant.

A cover that makes you buy the book, and with good reason: Dorothea Lange: Seeing People. In the 1930s, the portrait photographer took to the streets of San Francisco to show in her pictures the desolation developing in the city during the Depression. “It was a way of her to see the world.” The cover of the book shows a weathered hand holding a weathered cowboy hat. “A hat is more than a covering against sun and wind,” Lange said. “It is a badge of service.” The working man’s hat, or the cowboy’s hat, has held a fascination for other photographers as well, as photographer Laura Wilson writes in her book (for a more in-depth conversation about Laura’s work, here is my interview with the photographer).

Selvedge programme manager Catherine Harris talks about her lifelong companions, clothes, weaving through her memories like vibrant threads. In my conversation with Polly Leonard, the founder of Selvedge magazine, she also shared a few great reading recommendations worth having a look at.

Listening

The soundtrack: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

The album: Acoustic Hymns Vol. 1, Richard Ashcroft

The podcast: The Caro Podcast, with Natalie Jones. The episode featuring Caroline Strecker, a personal favourite and an extraordinary maker – she is the founder of repurposed leatherwork brand Rag of Colts, is incredibly inspiring and up-lifting.

Making

Matthew Wigglesworth is a British artist living on the Sunshine Coast in Australia. His art was what first made me buy the magazine Waves & Woods – he was the guest-artist for that issue, which holds beautiful memories of a summer well lived – which has since become one of my favourite print publications. Matthew’s illustrations are like a celebration of the sea, nature and the beauty of each day.

Ludwig Bemelmans mural on the wall of the bar of the Carlyle Hotel, New York City | Collage of illustrated letters on hotel writing paper written by Ludwig Bemelmans to his young daughter, Barbara, c.1940s (from the book “The illustrators: Ludwig Bemelmans”

Exploring

The city of Los Angeles through film. I am honord to be a contributing writer to this wonderful book: World Film Locations: Los Angeles, Vol.2 Movie scenes, essays and location maps exploring the city through film. The book pairs incisive synopses of carefully chosen film scenes – both famous and lesser-known – with an accompanying array of evocative full-colour film stills, demonstrating how motion pictures have contributed to the multifarious role of the city in our collective consciousness, as well as how key cinematic moments reveal aspects of its life and culture that are otherwise largely hidden from view.

The book, edited by Gabriel Solomons, Jared Cowan and Fabrice Ziolkowski, and published by Intellect Books and Chicago University Press, will be available this November in Europe and in December in the US. More details here. As always, I am incredibly grateful to Gabriel Solomons, my editor at The Big Picture magazine and Beneficial Shock, for the opportunity to write about cinema from a new perspective.

The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Craig Mod’s newsletters: Roden and Ridgeline. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. Racquet’s Rennae Stubbs tennis podcast. Gone to Timbuktu with Sophy Roberts. Wachstumsversuche, with Sarah Schill. Sirene Journal, Racquet, and Waves & Woods in print.

”World Film Locations: Los Angeles, Vol. 2” will be released in November 2024 (more details here)

Posted by classiq in Books, Culture, Film, Newsletter | Comments Off

31 August 2024

Read Instead…in Print

“The immediate subject will consistently be the visible image.”

Read instead…in print No.34

Shiguéhiko Hasumi’s book, Directed by Yasujirō Ozuhas finally been translated into English. Why does a book about film matter? I believe that the first quality that a book about film must meet is its ability to make you want to watch the films. Directed by Yasujirō Ozu does that. “This book is concerned specifically with what we can see on screen and how it stimulates our cinematic sensitivity,” reveals the author. “In other words, I would like to attempt to discuss the films only in their capacity to live as real film experience. The immediate subject will consistently be the visible image.” Entire scenes from Ozu’s films are projected through Shuguéhiko Hasumi’s words. Even those you haven’t seen, such as That Night’s Wife was in my case, where the writer effortlessly makes you see and live the scene marked by a sartorial story that happens to be one of the most beautifully written film costume analysis, centered around one of the character’s fedora hat.

“The dream of Directed by Yasujirō Ozu is that hopefully
many readers will be filled with desire to see the films
and rush to the theater before they finish reading.”

Read instead… in print is about a good book about cinema or filmmakers. No discursive, pretentious analyses, no verbose scrutiny. Because the idea is to invite you to read the book, not read about it here. But instead of using social media, I use my journal. Back to basics. Take it as a wish to break free of over-reliance on social media (even if it’s just for posting a photo of a good book) for presenting my work, cultural finds and interests. These are things to be enjoyed as stand-alone pieces in a more substantial and meaningful way than showing them in the black hole of Instagram thronged with an audience with a short attention span. This is also a look through my voluminous collection of books about film that I use as research in my adamant decision to rely less and less on the online and more on more on print materials.

MORE STORIES

Read instead…in print No.29: Cary Grant’s Suit

Stéphane Audran, Vermeer and Lagerfeld: The Visual Richness of Babette’s Feast

Read instead…in print No.9:
Tavernier’s “Amis américains Sous-titre Entretiens avec les grands auteurs d’Hollywood”

Posted by classiq in Books, Film, Read instead...in print | | Comments Off

22 August 2024

This Summer We’re Channelling: Lords of Dogtown

This is the ‘70s skateboard counterculture of the mean streets of west Los Angeles, Dogtown, Venice, brought to life by director Catherine Hardwicke with raw energy, youthful grit and incredible visual intuition. You are living it, riding it, immersed in an endless California vibe. It is the true story of the legendary Zephir skateboarders (Z-Boys) who redefined skate culture in the 1970s. Stacy (John Robinson), Jay (Emile Hirsche) and Tony (Victor Rasuk), under the guidance of their team leader, Skip Engblom (Heath Ledger) – Zephir comes from the surf shop Skip owns, a turning point in skateboard history and in the film. These wonderfully cast actors are the rebels who defined an era. “This was a magical time in the ’70s when this burst of creativity came from these kids who were from the wrong side of the tracks,” Catherine Hardwicke recounted in Director’s Guild of America. “They had shitty, unstable home lives. They weren’t good in school and couldn’t afford an expensive sport. But anyone could buy a skateboard super cheap. And with Skip Engblom as their father figure, it felt like the family they didn’t have.”

They were surfers who took the fearless surfing style they perfected in the water to the street and invented the extreme skateboarding style they became famous for. The director wanted the actors to learn to skate. And they did. For months, their training session began with surfing in the morning and then five or six hours of skateboarding in the afternoon. The real life skateboarders were present on the set and offered their assistance, keeping it authentic, true to each of their individual skating style, and even stepping in to do their own stunts because they did it better than the doubles.

The film feels real and the characters do, too. These boys didn’t have much to hang onto, but riding their skateboards was theirs, their own creative outlet, the only way to express themselves and they dedicated themselves to it with fearless abandon. Lords of Dogtown is also one of the most beautifully shot films in Los Angeles, back-lit by the sun and defined by a rock attitude that I feel every generation should experience. “Their music was integrated into the style of skating because, for these rebellious, frustrated kids, the pounding of that music helped them,” said the director.

The visual inspiration came from books, particularly Dogtown: The Legend of the Z-Boys, where C. R. Stecyk III and Glen E. Friedman capture the original skateboarding universe. In an interview with Emanuel Levy, production designer Chris Gorak recalled that they had to recreate the grit of 1970s Venice, long gone now. Every little thing had to be authentic. They rebuilt the Zephyr shop from photographs and the surfboards there were made by the real Skip Engblom and his crew. Heath also spent a day with him, learning how to shape boards.

It’s the atmosphere, the energy, the creativity, the look of a counterculture and a sport. But the clothes weren’t the sport’s focus. They aren’t in the film either. That’s the beauty of it. Those boys back in the day wore these clothes before the world knew they were cool, before they were a trend, they wore them as a way of bowing out of the pressure to conform. And when we see them on screen we like them instantly because they look authentic, because the characters on screen feel authentic (they did living-wardrobe and hair/makeup tests on location) where the clothes and music are part of the storytelling. And just like that, you are drawn into the story, back in time, getting to see that cool skateboarding culture, with the 1970s colour palette, long hair, jeans and sneakers and every imaginable t-shirt. The boys are never still (and you realise the camera is never still either), their clothes are never clean because they are always outside, skating, falling, riding empty pools during the drought and empty streets at dawn, wheels gripping the pavement. Each character is finding his freedom and powers, each one different and bringing his own contribution to a sport that was being invented or reinvented right then and there. An incredibly telling scene is when a guy walks in Skip’s shop “with a brown paper bag that we think is drugs, but it’s actually urethane skateboard wheels. Their eyes are popping, in awe of what these wheels could let them do.”

And then there is Heath Ledger as Skip. His dedication to a role was hypnotic and all-absorbing, and it was maybe his greatest gift and greatest misfortune. Heath grew up skating and surfing and went to Costa Rica to get back into the surf vibe for the role. He also hung out with skip and in the film he wore Skip’s clothes, a wig, false teeth and beads with open-buttoned Hawaiian style shirt. He stepped into his clothes and skin, sliding into the character naturally. He owns a surf shop and has a sudden yet short-lived success when he is marketing the three west coast teenage skaters. But too sudden and too fast he is starting to turn the boys into something he resents – merchandising and branding. Towards the end of the film, we see Skip in the shop he previously owned, working as a shaper in the back, a striking contrast between the neat and customer-friendly front of the shop and the cold, blue neon-lit workshop that matches Skip’s t-shirt. He’s back at what he loves, surfing and shaping boards. It’s not about failing or not being able to handle success, it’s about defining success in your own way, or maybe it’s about taking the idea of success out of your life for good and living just the life you want.