Emmett (left) and Brendan Malloy

You might not know it, but Emmett Malloy does more than just mind-blowing surf movies. Hollywood, MTV, record label boss: this is a man of many talents, as Stranger found out.

Words by Luke Friend

(First published in Stranger 13, February 2007)

You can tell a lot about a person by listening to their answer phone message. The first time I call Emmett Malloy – film director, record company owner and Jack Johnson’s manager – he doesn’t pick up; I get his message. It’s Jeff Bridges. As the voice begins images of White Russians, bowling alleys and soiled rugs float into view. “Hey man, nobody calls me Lebowski. I’m The Dude...”

When I do reach Emmett and we start chatting, I manage to refrain from calling him The Dude – but within seconds it’s clear that’s just what he is. Not a carbon copy of the Cohen Brothers’ stoned creation or in the redundant usage of today’s vernacular, but instead the true embodiment of the word. Talkative yet relaxed. Humble but insightful. A creative man involved in many creative endeavours, all of them noteworthy in their own right. A dude if ever I knew one.

The success story that is Woodshed Films and Brushfire Records is a now well-traced tale. How Jack Johnson, surfer and filmmaker, became Jack Johnson, multi-million selling musician. How the Malloys took surf filmmaking full circle to create work akin to the pioneering movies of John Severson and Bruce Brown, and in doing so offered a much needed alternative to the quick edits and punk soundtracks of their contemporaries. But great stories are always worth recounting.

“I was definitely more of a city kid and didn’t get myself in the ocean as much as my cousins did,” Emmett explains, “but I always used to visit them and got a taste of the good life, you know?” That good life would eventually see his cousins – Chris, Keith and Dan Malloy – become some of the most recognisable and important surfers of the last decade, and form the basis for Emmett’s surf film career.

After graduating from college, he began working for an editing company that made movie trailers. Before long he had a solid grasp of the equipment and was editing trailers, including the Stars Wars re-issues. He and Chris had often talked about making a surf film together but now they were in a position to do so.

Emmett (left) and Brendan (right)

“We wanted to shoot an opening for a film at their ranch in Jalama,” Emmett recalls. “Chris was like, ‘I’ve got a friend who can shoot it. He’s from the North Shore, his name’s Jack and he’s studying film at Santa Barbara.”

And the rest is… it’s a well-worn cliché but speaking with Emmett, you can still sense his appreciation of how things have turned out.   

“A lot of fortunate things have happened,” he says. “Jack’s music career is like lightening in a bottle. A one in a million situation that’s allowed us to remain pure.”

And it’s this purity that shines through in all of Emmett’s projects and backlights the entire Brushfire brand. With a catalogue of films that includes Thicker Than Water, Shelter, A Broke down Melody and Sprout and a stable of recording artists including Jack, Matt Costa, G. Love and Money Mark, it’s become a tour de force in both the surf and music industries. A visual and musical documentation of a lifestyle and a culture that resonates with people because of its honesty and its lack of bells, whistles and pretensions.

Still from A Broke Down Melody

“That’s what I love most about what we do,” Emmett says. “The freedom.” But this freedom doesn’t come without a price. If you want to travel the world making surf films without the restraints of a commercial sponsor calling the shots, you still have to clock in with the rest of the working world.

“I still have to sit and do a tonne of commercials and music videos to afford myself the privilege to keep the Woodshed films real clean and simple,” he explains. “But that gets you through the day, you know?” In doing the day job Emmett Malloy has earned himself a reputation as a music video director of note, making promos for artists including The White Stripes, Metallica, Ben Harper, The Shins, Jurassic 5 and Wolfmother.   

And his time behind the camera doesn’t stop there. Alongside his brother, Brendan, he is currently working on two feature film projects, 8-Track, a coming-of-age story written by Zach Braff of Scrubs and Garden State fame and what Emmett calls “a big-wave comedy movie” with Ben Stiller, who he got to know during the filming of Jack Johnson’s ‘Taylor’ video.

But unlike Brushfire, where he has control of the reins, he is all too aware of the shaky foundations that most Hollywood projects are built on.  

Still from A Broke Down Melody

“We’re done with the scripts and we have a deal with Fox Studios and it’s surely looking like there’s a strong chance of making the movies. But the odds of actually getting out there on your first day of shooting and going ‘We’re off and running’…some days it feels like I may as well go cure cancer you know?”

However, this guy is The Dude – with his track record, his work ethic and his connections it will get made. After all who could resist Owen Wilson playing a Laird Hamilton-inspired big-wave hellman? And Emmett is certainly not resting on his laurels while he waits. He’s recently directed 1st and Hope with his brother, a skateboard documentary that captures an afternoon of street skating in Los Angeles, is currently at work on Woodshed #5 and will be co-producing Thomas Campbell’s follow up to Sprout.

“They are all just a small story or have a small meaning,” he says of the Woodshed films. “But it seems that everybody gets what we are trying to say.” Yes, Emmett. Yes we do.

www.woodshedfilms.com   

www.brushfirerecords.com