So you want to be a documentary filmmaker? Then heed the advice of David L. Brown '69, as he tells his students at San Francisco City College: Get used to hats. You'll be wearing a lot of them. "It's definitely a Renaissance gig," says Brown, gearing up for the national PBS broadcast of his latest feature documentary, Surfing for Life. Narrated by longtime wave-rider Beau Bridges, it's an inspirational portrait of surfers still hanging 10 into their 70s, 80s, and 90s.

In short, being a documentarian often means being your own investigative journalist, researcher, producer, director, writer, and publicist. Brown handled those gigs with panache while traveling Hawaii's islands to shoot 50 hours of digital footage for his 68-minute film, a composite of archival footage and personal stories. It followed a rigorous pre-production period in which Brown thinned out scores of candidates. The ones who produced great photographs and film footage from their heydays were put at the top of the list.

As a documentarian, Brown is familiar with risk, and with staying passionate about his craft even when—scraping the barrel of financial resources—you come up dry as the desert salt flats. He also knows the value of flexing collegiate networking muscles when you get into a cash crunch.

Case in point: It took Brown six years to complete Surfing for Life. Potential investors either didn't take it seriously, didn't like the subject matter, or the fact that it was a documentary—disparagingly referred to among distributors as the "D-word." Eventually the brother of another CMCer put up seed money for the film.

Surfing for Life promised a welcome respite from the anti-nuclear and environmental documentaries to which Brown had devoted most of his career. (The star of his cache included Bound by the Wind, an award-winning project on the global human impact of nuclear testing, used by grassroots activists against testing.) After 15 years of nuclear issues, Brown was ready for lighter fare.

Little did he know that shooting a flick about silver-haired surf pioneers would escalate into a financial battle waged on the waterfront. Says Brown, "The idea was to use surfing as a metaphor for the possibilities of aging, for all of us. We're not saying you need to surf to be healthy. The point is, you need to do what you love, be active and engaged."

Intentionally, its stars are not the traditional media stereotype of seniors: blue-haired ladies and bald, bent-over men hobbling into drugstores. Surfing for Life's legends (including 88-year-old Woody Brown, 79-year-old Rabbit Kekai, and 74-year-old Eve Fletcher) are still catching waves in their golden years. Most sport tanned, muscled bodies and a "you're never too old to be stoked" attitude. But that didn't sit well with the surfing industry.

David L. Brown '69 on location