There we were, gathered in the Plaza du Zuloaga in front of the Cinema Principe, in the shadow of the 16th century Basilica San Vicente church an hour after nightfall. A smattering of surf luminaries and storied folk assembled. Among them, your regular coterie of Basque Country pros and cohorts… but also rarer fruits like surf photo/journo demigods Art Brewer and Craig Stecyk III. Well, not like them… but actual them.

Yikes!

Also, Japanese women in traditional dress (with the little backpack thingy), American film festival-y type people, couple surf industry bods, etc. And me. And, apparently, two of the founding members of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the 60′-70’s Laguna Beach-based LSD manufacturers who tried to start a psychedelic revolution, stopping all wars by making millions of dollars of acid and giving it away for free.

A tall man, long, bony face, wearing a grey beard and grey ponytail, large belt buckle, was chatting with a small group juste à côté . He offers up the end of what I assume was just a reefer, although really, who knows?

‘Anyone?’ he said in deep voice, thrusting it towards… me.

Unthinking, since my tooting days are behind me, I politely waved him away. And just like that, I robbed future generations of Evanses the chance to say, “(great) Grandad got high with Michael Randall and Carol Griggs from The Brotherhood of Eternal Love!”

We went inside in the cinema. As yet, no sign of Oli stone, Ewan McG, Sigourney, much less lefty iconoclast Ken Loach. Some say Loach hasn’t made a decent film since Kes in 1969.

Some say surfing hasn’t either.

Alas, Bunker 77, the film we were there to see, did precious little towards breaking that duck.

The film was pretty well made, I guess. If attending film fests is your thing you might, in effort not to sound like an impossible-to-please grump, rummage around for platitudes like, ‘The post production was really well done’. (The post-prod was pretty good). But my principal gripes are:

• Bunker is not his real name. Bit of a let down… it’s Adolph (!) Bernard.
• He was the step son of Clark Gable, and heir to a sugar empire. The thing is, he just didn’t seem very… interesting. I mean, the most interesting thing about him was perhaps the Clark Gable step-son thing.. but even that… Is Clark Gable interesting? Dude from 1950’s Hollywood when the male leads looked like the female leads’ dads? Kinda semi notable-ish that he married this guy’s mum… or…?
• Bunker inherited loads of money. Did drugs, shagged a lot, went surfing… Well it was the 1970’s was it not? Stan-dard!
• My main gripe, despite him being described ‘the most radical surfer on the North Shore’, a Backdoor pioneer etc, and the fact that scored some epic J-Bay, he appeared to not actually at any point get barrelled. At all.
• Then he died of an overdose.

How did Bunker 77 stack up, compared with other films in the Savage Cinema division of the 64th International San Sebastian Film Festival?

“It wasn’t that good, but it was better than Orange Sunshine’ said Billy Wilson (former SE.com scribe and current San Sebastian Film Festival pamphlet translator), begrudgingly.

Orange Sunshine is the film about the folk I didn’t get high with. Other surf fareon show include ‘Let’s Be Frank’, a kinda funny, kinda enjoyable although trifle annoying and semi pointless showreel-resembling indulgence about South African charger Frank Solomon. Watch it here.

Have you ever just said no to the Brotherhood?

Have you you ever been chased around a stately home by vixens? More like this in Let’s Be Frank.