Best Sections of All-Time: John John Florence in Done

You’re going to be tempted to watch this entire film (and I hope you do) but for our purposes today, let’s talk about the section that begins at 16:33 and stars John John Florence with Matt Meola and Albee Layer all hitting some of the finest air ramps of all-time in Western Australia.

It was an interesting and damn fine time in surfing. There were several exciting things going on at once. There was Kai Neville’s Dear Suburbia era thing happening. Jordy Smith was untouchable in his own way. The comps were mechanical, but thoroughly entertaining. Marine Layer was going off. You had Dion’s blog, Joe G and the Globe films were always elevating the game, and a variety of other creative outlets were in an arms race of creativity and fun.

We’d also just discovered a host of new grab variations in surfing and it was in this part that John John and filmmaker Blake Kueny’s prolific partnership and collaboration came to an official crescendo.

Set to 2011 band Gauntlet Hair’s “Keep Time” — a band we thought were on their way to Animal Collective level heights, but stopped with this album — this part featured three surfers at the peak of their adolescent angst and at the height of their game were gifted some of the wildest ramps imaginable and in what felt like one session captalulped aerial surfing into a new realm. The photos from these session were trickling around my desk thank to Nate Lawrence a few months before the video came out and I couldn’t even fathom some of the stuff we were seeing. And seeing was believing when Done came out.

There isn’t a variation left unchecked in this and the pop John John is getting is psycho. Watch it once through and just focus on that alone. Do a watch just for grabs too. Matt Meola’s obsession with the flats is horrifying — that air he has at the beginning is way under appreciated and always has been (the front angle of it is insanity) and Albee Layer corkscrewed his way onto the main stage after far too long in the shadows.

Scrub your way to 16:30, hit play and feel the game change.—Travis