Watch: Noah Hill Taking Wonderful Care Of Himself

“This clip is from an old hard drive my mom found under her couch.”

I’m going to call bullshit on this version of “dog ate my homework,” because absolutely no one sits on footage like this unknowingly, not even mothers who don’t surf.

And if you surf like Noah Hill, you know your surfing is worth something. Which might be why, in the text introducing the video you’re about to watch, he takes a swing at the “lack of community and support within the industry.”

Titling it Taking Wonderful Care of Yourself is a touch ironic. Noah admits he’d been neglecting his health to spend more time in the water — he’d been diagnosed with skin cancer recently.

“Thankfully I am healthy now and have figured out how to spend lots of time in the water while protecting myself from the sun.”

Filmed and edited in a modest home-video style, you’ll burn a minute and fifty-nine seconds for the first wave, but it’s worth the wait. The absence of color footage takes away a bit of the eye candy pervasive across most clips, edits, and films, but it serves as a good excuse to focus on shapes, forms, performance, and flow.

The film is released through Brad Gerlach’s Wave Ki, where Noah has recently come on board to contribute some creative work. In the YouTube description, Noah critiques the surf community, pointing out its flaws, but argues that smaller companies like Wave Ki represent the future. His manifesto might have a point. Surfing’s always been individualistic, a little selfish — waves are scarce, surfers are still mostly terrible, skaters are cooler, etc., etc.

But for what it’s worth, here’s a little support, Noah.