Paskowitz Invasion!

0 Comments POSTED: September 2, 2007 12:53 | By: Doug Pray
PASKOWITZfamily.jpgOn the making of Surfwise: Damn! It?s too late to change the title of my film, isn?t it? The masters are done, the graphics are in, the Festival catalog is printed. The date for my first-ever world premiere at Toronto is set and locked. 9/11? But looking over the list of profound and political doc titles that are premiering at TIFF?they all look so incredibly powerful? I kind of feel like a little bag of Cheetos sitting in the organic produce aisle at Whole Foods. Title envy.
 
I shouldn?t feel this way. After all, my movie is about a guy who, just a week ago had feature news stories about him in the New York Times, CBS News, Al Jazeera, Yahoo, and dozens of other international outlets for his symbolic act of bringing surfboards to Gaza. This news event had nothing to do with my film, it was just something my subject, Dorian ?Doc? Paskowitz, did on his own. He?s like that. I can?t control him. 
 
But even if moviegoers have heard of Paskowitz, nobody will know what ?SURFWISE? is about! It?s not even a word. And because I?ve portrayed other youth-oriented subcultures, like my movie ?Scratch,? people will probably figure it?s just a portrait of the surfing scene. They?ll ask me if I interviewed the latest big-wave rider they once met at a party. Or, they?ll lump it in with the dozens of ?Endless Summer? rip-offs where privileged beatniks visit impoverished beach villages, surf their waves, and make feature-length travelogues with hip titles. So I?ll tell them: ?Look, it?s set in the surfing world, but it?s not a surf film. It?s more about diet, sex, home schooling, fatherhood, breastfeeding, the holocaust, wild animals, cults, over-consumption, family? and surfing? you know??  Or, I?ll just say, ?It?s an intimate and emotional portrait of the most amazing American family I?ve ever encountered.?
 
Like the cramped, 24-foot camper that was home for the nine Paskowitz children, the title of my documentary isn?t a big enough vessel to contain all the diverse personalities and themes within it. I have never in my life had such difficulty naming a movie! Over five years, my producers and I came up with hundreds of ideas; literally, I have ten single-spaced pages of failed names. And some were all right:
 
?Fish Out of Water? was dropped because it?s too sit-com cliché, even though it perfectly describes Dorian ?Doc? Paskowitz?s life: a Texas-born Jewish surfer who never fit into normal society and decided to home school and raise his nine kids on the beach. It also conveys how those nine children felt after they grew up and left the camper and tried to fit back into the society their father had shunned.
 
?Blood and Water? was a great title because it sounded biblical and combined the family blood concept with the sea. It also referred to a quote in the movie where the eldest son shows us a smiling family portrait of them all posed in the ocean for an LA Times photo shoot, but then tells us that two of them were bleeding in the water from being coerced out there. But putting the word ?blood? in the title means horror movie to most audiences, so we dropped it.
 
?Half Naked? was a final contender? it was provocative and fits in with how frank and outspoken 86-year old Doc and his wife Juliette are about sex (which they still brag about having at least 4 times a week). It came from a quote by Navah (the only daughter), where she says they were raised ??like little monkeys in a weird little monkey cage, just half-naked all the time.? But the title was dropped because on its own, it could be construed as a cheesy porn-thriller.
 
Other titles dealt with Doc?s life-long pursuit of preventive health such as ?A Supreme State of Well Being? (too cerebral, too long). ?The Dr. Paskowitz Experiment? (without Vincent Price?). ?Barefoot Odyssey? (fun, but nobody can spell the word odyssey, even if they can spell ?Koyaanisqatsi?). And ?Wild Wave?, ?Doc?s Wave?, ?Doc?s Wild Ride? all sounded like rides at a lawsuit-prone amusement park in Indiana. ?Camper Van Paskowitz?? (never mind). My favorite was just simply ?Wild Life?: a film about a guy who insisted that his children have the same diet and lifestyle as animals in the wild. ?But people will think it?s just a wildlife special.? Gone.
 
In the end, our movie is called ?SURFWISE? a catch-all, kind-of-generic concept that I invented back in 2003 to slap onto the ten-minute promo I made to help us raise funds for the film. I don?t hate it, I don?t love it, but I hope it works in a simple sort of way. I?ll try not to lose any more sleep over it.
 
What I AM excited about is the fact that this family is real, their story is incredible, and that, unless Izzy changes his mind at the last minute, all eleven family members are actually coming to Toronto for the world premiere. Alone or in a group, they have such boundless energy, genuine charisma and such a crazy presence (Toronto beware!), that I probably could have named my film ?Film? and it wouldn?t have made one bit of difference. 
 
Can?t wait for 9/11.

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