The Wright Side Of Wrong

Warwick Wright is a charismatic man and a talented surfer but his alter ego, Wok, is a flurry of South-African raw and bold questions. It’s for this reason that South-African-living-in-London Peter Hamblin decided to make a film about him. “He’s different and has personality,” Peter says. “He pushes boundaries and thats what I liked about him, I wanted to make something different, so that worked well.” As Peter tells it, the film is a profile piece made up of 20 percent travel, 20 percent waves, 20 percent stupid shit and 40 percent Wok in undies, pouting. Which is just great, because that’s Wok’s life. It’s called The Wright Side Of Wrong.

Peter’s from Umdloti Beach in Durban, and now owns and runs Hamblin Imagery in London. He got his start when he had some stills published of Kelly being thrown from the Mundaka harbour wall after winning world title number eight. And, film was a natural progression. Fast-forward down the track and, while looking for a new project, Peter stumbled on something that got him thinking. “I came across Wok’s blog where he was interviewing a blow up doll and ripping into pro surfers,” Peter says. “It was killer and had that point of difference that I was looking for. I called him up and two weeks later we were en route to Portugal to shoot the short. Wok used to be a pro surfer and is friends with all the boys on the CT, so he’s able to ask the questions that nobody else does and push the boundaries.”

Some of Peter’s future projects include a Gumball 3000 doco called Wood For The Trees, and another surf film project called Lets Be Frank, starring big wave dude Frank Solomon. But Stab was intrigued by Peter’s latest film because storytelling in this style is rare in surf-related films now and because, well, it’s pretty goddamn visually-engaging. There’s cameos from Jordy Smith, Taj Burrow, Tiago Pires and more, and despite being made on no budget and shot in a week, it still incorporates a lot of Peter’s visual influences like Taylor Steele (“I grew up with Taylor Steele and the Good Times soundtrack, like we all did, he’s a legend and he’s still pushing the envelope today, he constantly changes the game,”) and Ryan Gibb (“He’s an amazing filmmaker and his movie Life Cycles made me want to be better at what I do.”)

Surf porn this ain’t. Welcome to the entertainingly twisted world of Wok.