Watch: “Apotek” Starring Robbie Rickard, Chippa Wilson, And Lee Wilson

Here’s something that’ll leave your mouth agape and dilate your pupils. 

Apotek—a mid-length Shane Fletcher/Brixton flick starring Chippa Wilson, Lee Wilson, and (relatively) unknown rail-hound Robbie Rickard—is a tri-palette of surf and psychoactive experimentation. It goes from cold to hot, grayscale to color, heaven to hell. It’s hyfi shred and transcendental meditation. It’s most things you could want in a surf flick, laced with some pink chemical dust and packed into a bong.

It’s worthy of your undivided attention. 

But prior to watching Apotek, we were curious about what to expect from Fletcher’s abstract offering. So we decided to dial him up for some insider trading.  

Scenes from the screening.

Stab: So, say we haven’t had the chance to see Apotek yet. In fact, say all we know is that it’s Chippa Wilson, Lee Wilson, and some mullet-rail guy called Robbie Rickard. What else should we know about it?

Shane Fletcher: To be honest, this started pretty much just as a love job for Robbie. He’s from a neighboring town to me here on the Gold Coast, and I think he deserves some attention. I was trying to get him a little bit of a platform to build his profile. 

Robbie and I did a trip to the Maldives with Chippa, who used most of his clips in the Octo Number 4 video – the part where he’s doing all that crazy stuff on those lefts. But we also had a couple surfs at this right-hand reef where Robbie was getting these really dreamy tubes. We went home thinking we would make a 2-3 minute clip of Robbie, and Brixton was gonna put a little money towards it to buy a song or something. It was just gonna be a little springboard for Robbie. 

Because if you put anybody next to Chippa… it’s like, so gnarly. Nobody wants to be in a Chippa part. He’s too good. But I felt like what Robbie had was strong enough, and also different enough, to put against Chip. It’s kinda like a yin and yang thing, and when you see the movie you’ll probably understand that more – there’s this black and white sequence that introduces Robbie, Chippa, and Lee’s surfing, then it fades into color and Robbie takes over, then it goes back into black/white with all three of them.

Was Lee on the Maldives trip as well?

Lee wasn’t on the trip, but he’s a good mate of mine and also a key figurehead at Brixton, so it made sense to include him in the film. We didn’t have that long to do a trip or capture new footage, so we used some of the stuff he had from at home in Indo. It’s pretty fast chops through the team section, so I think it works pretty well. 

“Nobody wants to be in a Chippa part.” 

You named the movie Apotek. What the hell does that mean?
In Danish, “apotek” means pharmacy. But to us it just looked really aesthetic, and without endorsing drugs, that footage of Robbie at the right was kinda trippy—in a pharmaceutical way.

We coined the term, “like a numb state of consciousness,” because that’s what it felt like watching Robbie weave through those tubes. So we kinda ran with it.

And you guys had a big Gold Coast premiere. How was that?

Yeah, well, that’s the thing – when Brixton said they wanted to do a film premiere, I knew it couldn’t just be a three-minute film. So I wrangled some clips of Chippa and Lee, swapped some footage with some mates and got enough to make a 10-minute flick.

I was editing until the very last minute. But the showing was massive. Doors opened at six and I arrived at quarter-to-seven with the master hard drive, and nobody had seen it. So good on Brixton for putting that confidence in me.

Everybody was so stoked for Robbie. We kept saying “Robbie’s night!”

Robbie’s night indeed.

And now a note from the movie’s star, Robbie Rickard:

“APOTEK is the lovechild of Shane Fletcher and myself—conceived in the Maldives, over a few too many margaritas.

Shane and I wanted to highlight the contrasting styles of Chippa, Lee, and myself and mirror that throughout the film. We shot in the Maldives, Indonesia and Australia—which is pretty unreal to have the opportunity to travel and surf with guys of that caliber—Chip and Lee are obviously insanely talented, and Shane is incredible at what he does behind the lens.

We wanted APOTEK to be dark and intense with ethereal moments that breathe through the film—I hope that you enjoy it.” -Robbie Rickard