Damo Opens Up About The Hobgood Doco, “And Two If By Sea”

A documentary is not a surf movie. As Damien Hobgood has learned, a surf movie requires some sick clips and a good soundtrack, but a documentary, it takes a hell of a lot of work. The Hobgoods first endeavored to make their doco “And Two If By Sea,” five years ago. And while the movie’s been out for awhile, and is now available right here right now at Stab, the work continues.

“It’s been pretty eyeopening, trying to make a real documentary movie,” told Damien Hobgood when Stab caught up with him this week while he sat in line at the U.S./Mexico border after a quick strike with Josh Kerr. “It’s taken us five years to get to where we are right now. We had trouble getting the money together and just kind of lept over the finish line with that. And we were like, ‘Sick, we’re done!’ Then somebody told us that was just the beginning.”

With the funds to produce the film in hand, the hard work was really only just beginning…unbeknownst to Damo and Ceej. 

“After we finally finished shooting and editing, then it went into 2.0 mode, where we started doing film festivals, premieres, that whole tour,” Damo explains. “We did that for six months. When it was over I was like, okay, cool, we’re done. But nope, there was another phase. You have to sell the video to a distributor. And once you do that you have to do 3.0, which is like basically marketing again to get people to buy it. So, I don’t know, this 3.0 process, I didn’t really realize all the ins and outs. In the end it was a really good learning experience.”

The Hobgoods are no stranger to making surf movie, they’ve done plenty in their 20-plus years as pro surfers, but to open up and share the personal bits, that proved to be more of a challenge.

“People really connected on the sibling aspect of it, where they could see themselves with their brother or sister going through similar things. Even though ours was focused around surfing, they had the same things going on, even though they played baseball or something,” Damo says.

“Not only do I hope this film stokes a lot of people out, but it really helped me out a lot too,” he adds. “It helped me talk through a lot of different aspects of my life and think about where I was at, what I wanted to do. It really helped me fall back in love with surfing again. It helped me realize that it’s something that I like to do, but it’s not who I am. With that, I enjoy surfing a lot more than ever did, but I get to do it when I want to do it. I don’t feel like there’s any pressure. To me, surfing is just an enjoyable pastime. I want to be a huge part of my kids’ lives and be with them and try to provide for my family. That’s probably pretty boring and mundane.

“I feel like I was pretty selfish for a lot of the years, now I’m just trying to be here for my kids and stoke people out. Sometimes I get more enjoyment out of watching somebody else get a good wave, especially my daughter. She loves to surf. She’s the one who’s always making me go out. She has surf practice and I help coach her school’s surf practices. My son likes to dive and if the conditions are good we’ll go do that together.”

The film involved a lot of risk by the Hobgoods and their team of directors and producers, but anything worth doing takes some risk. And when the finished product finally hit the silver screen, Damo admits that it was a challenge but all worth it in the end.

“We were doing it all ourselves, going out on limbs, renting theaters and didn’t totally know that this was going to work, but it felt like all of the theaters we played in were packed and the response was good,” Damo says. “That was probably the most rewarding, to see people stoked and see themselves in the film. A lot of time that helps you understand yourself a little bit more and the journey you’re going through. So, it’s really cool to see people actually getting something out of it. It’s good to break down those walls, you know.”

The film is now available on iTunes, you can watch it here.