One-Time ‘World’s Most Decadent Surfer’ Gets Documentary Treatment
The term larger than life may have been made for Bunker Spreckles. If it wasn’t, he made it larger. Bunker sounds at first like one of those characters—that if he came out of a writer’s room, the audience would protest that he was too much to be true. Heir to a sugar fortune, stepson of Clark Gable, Bunker burned brightly in the 1970s as a kung-fu fighting surfer-pimp.
He called himself the Player. Back in the day, there was no Instagram, so Bunker had a film crew. They shot hours of footage that’s rarely been seen—until now.
In Bunker77, director Takuji Masuda blends incredible archival footage and new interviews with the likes of Tony Alva (whom Bunker mentored), Johnny Knoxville (who played a Bunker-inspired character in Lords of Dogtown) and Laird Hamilton (who is Laird Hamillton), and others to craft a documentary about Bunker’s life that searches for meaning in all its chaos.
And lucky you, because you live in New York, you have the chance to see it on the big screen in a limited engagement this week at Cinema Village.
You talkin’ to me?
Starts Friday, Oct. 27 at Cinema Village in NYC and screens through Thursday, Nov. 2.
