Alumnus Doug Pray's rave reviews for "mesmerizingly ambivalent" "Surfwise"

“At least half the battle in the documentary is finding a worthy subject,” writes New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis in her rave review of Surfwise, the ninth feature documentary directed by alumnus Doug Pray MFA ’91, which opened nationwide May 9. Pray found such a subject in the man he describes as “85-year old surfer, health advocate and sex guru, Dr. Dorian ‘Doc’ Paskowitz,” who abandoned a successful medical practice in the 1950s to pursue a utopian quest for self-fulfillment as a nomadic surfer. But unlike such iconic American seekers as Thoreau and Kerouac, Paskowitz took his wife and nine children along for the ride, all eleven packed into a tiny 24-foot camper, with often explosive results.

Press coverage of the film, dubbed “mesmerizingly ambivalent” by Ella Taylor of The Village Voice, has been little short of rapturous. According to Dargis in the Time’s, “Mr. Pray, a filmmaker with a thing for youth subcultures (his earlier films include “Hype!,” about the Seattle music scene), has an easygoing, accessible, silky-smooth style. Working with a tight team Ö he makes documentary filmmaking of this sort look deceptively easy. It isn’t, though you wouldn’t know it from how seamlessly he and his team integrate the talking-head interviews (the speakers helpfully identified); the locations (California, Hawaii, Israel); home movies; and news clips.”

“I think Surfwise stands a good chance of being nominated for an Academy Award,” says Professor Emeritus Howard Suber. “Rotten Tomatoes web site shows that critical reviews are 100% favorable, which I’ve never seen in my life. The coverage on NPR and in many other places is the kind every filmmaker lusts for. Congratulations to Doug Pray, who joins that growing list of UCLA alumni who prove that, yes, indeed, there is life after film school!”

UCLA Producers Program alumnus Jonathan Pine MFA ’02 produced the film with Pray, Graydon Carter, Mark Cuban and others.

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"doug pray" "surfwise" 

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