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Brian Keaulana : The Life of Brian
Brian Keaulana’s cell phone rings every three or four minutes, so one of the few times you can talk to him without interruption is while sitting in his surfing canoe in the back, at Makaha.
Recently, I found myself in the number three seat, chatting with Brian, catching up on his latest adventures as a water safety professional, stunt coordinator, and Hollywood stuntman. He had a few free days between jobs, and was keen on fine-tuning the rig of his new surfing canoe, before his father Buffalo’s famous surf meet, ‘Buffalo’s Big Board Surfing Classic’, to be held the this month at Makaha.
There were long lulls in the waning north swell, and it was cool and quiet sitting in the canoe beyond the boils marking the six-foot line-up. Joking about the peace created by the absence of his perpetually chirruping Nextel, I asked if it really rang all day, as according to local legend.
“Oh, all day and night,” he laughed. “If it rings at eleven at night, I know it’s Japan; when it rings at two in the morning, I know it’s Europe.”
The calls come from all over the world, from TV producers, movie directors, and surf contest promoters, all clamoring for Keaulana’s unique abilities in his self-created field of Water Safety Risk Management. His company, Hawaiian Water Patrol, Inc., which he runs with Terry Ahue and Craig Davidson, is still thriving after more than a decade of providing top-flight rescue teams for ocean sports events. Yet, Brian is moving into more and more film work. Last year he was voted into ‘Stunts Unlimited,’ an ultra-exclusive fraternity of stuntmen comprised of just 44 members worldwide. In addition, he was recently inducted into the equally-exclusive Directors’ Guild, thus allowing him to take on work as a director and stunt coordinator. However, while he is enthralled with the excitement of thrashing a stunt car down a city street, or diving aflame from the deck of a battleship, what drives him into these new, wave-less arenas is the opportunity they give him to be a leader.
“It gives me the chance to set the pace,” he says, “ to make things right, and to share by hiring friends and family.” And he likes the logic of compartmentalizing his work and play time.
“Doing things like joining the Directors’ Guild gives me more time to play – and less time sitting on the beach as a lifeguard. This way, I work smarter, not harder.”
Working, both smarter and harder, has brought Brian Keaulana a long way from his 1979 beginnings as a part-time Honolulu City and County lifeguard. Even then, a rookie fresh out of high school, he was guided by his own code of professionalism. When good role models were available, he followed their lead, though often he learned just as much from poor leadership; when confronted by negative examples, he thought, “that’s exactly how I don’t want to lead.”
Brian’s talent as a leader was soon apparent. He seemed a born diplomat, calm and levelheaded under duress; and most importantly, he was amazingly gifted at making connections no one else saw.
The fateful day for Keaulana, and for every lifeguard and surfer on the planet, came during the first Eddie Aikau Memorial event at Waimea in 1986. As a contestant in his first heat, Brian surfaced after a bad wipeout, he was “choking in the soup and foam, struggling to get my bearings, and there was ‘Squiddy’ (Sanchez) right there next to me on one of those old stand-up jet skis, the ones with the raised handlebars. He yelled to see if I was okay, and right then, all dizzy in the soup, I had a revelation, like ‘this is something I’ve gotta check out.’”
Back in Makaha, Brian enlisted the help of fellow guards Mel Pu’u, Dennis Gouveia, and Terry Ahue; they began experimenting with jet skis, working to modify the craft for use as an impact-zone rescue vehicle. It took years for Brian and his crew to perfect the equipment and techniques, now copied by every serious water safety professional and big-wave tow-in surfer, but, it was instantly obvious they were on to something. The group formed Hawaiian Water Patrol, Inc., and offered their services to the series of big-wave surf tournaments held each winter on O`ahu’s north shore. They established a gold standard of professionalism and bankable safety that until that time had been impossible to achieve with Duck Feet and rescue boards.
Just how powerful a rescue force with the combination of ski, sled, and skilled operator had become was demonstrated in 1993, when Keaulana and partner Earl Bungo pulled a tourist from certain death from the notorious ‘Moi Hole’ near Kaena Point. Giant waves knocked the luckless man from the overhanging lava cliffs and swept him deep into the jagged cave beneath. To horrified bystanders, listening to the victim scream for help, it seemed hopeless, as if the man were being sucked into an enormous garbage disposal. Keaulana and Bungo arrived on their jet ski and, after carefully assessing the situation, Brian waited for a lull and reversed the ski into the mouth of the cave. Bungo leapt from the sled with flotation tube strapped to his chest and swam into the seething lava tube; one ear listening for the victim’s cries, and the other cocked for Brian’s warning of an approaching set. Then, deep in the innards of the cave, he found the man clinging to the rocks, flayed with lacerations – but miraculously still alive. Bungo secured him to the float and towed him seaward, scrambling through walls of tossing whitewater that threatened to suck them both back into the maw. Then, when the rescue attempt seemed practically hopeless for a lone lifeguard with only a pair of Duck Feet as a power plant, Keaulana deftly reversed the rescue sled directly into the outstretched arms of the two men and hauled them both onto it. They hadn’t a moment to spare. Another huge set rounded Kaena, blotting out the horizon, but Brian twisted the throttle and, within seconds, they were scooted out of the danger zone.
After that sensational rescue, it became clear that the jet ski had replaced swim fins, flotation tubes, and paddleboards as the first-line rescue tool for hairy situations. Soon afterward, Keaulana was promoted to Captain of the leeward district, yet, he had already set his sights set on the next summit. His groundbreaking work with jet skis brought him to the attention of the producers of “Waterworld,” a big-budget, A-list epic preparing to shoot entirely on the water along the shores of the Big Island. He took a leave of absence from his captain’s post and spent most of the following year on the set providing water safety, and edging into the fascinating new world of stunt work.
Brian’s experience on “Waterworld” was a turning point in his life. He had found his calling! He embraced it all – the long hours of preparation, spiced with seconds of intense action, the camaraderie amongst the other stuntmen; the problem solving and improvisation.
“My greatest strength was knowing my weaknesses,” he says now, looking back on it all.
“When I started working on movies I always thought of myself as the lowest rookie. So I always wanted to be open to learn everything I could and soak it all up.”
After Waterworld, Keaulana set out to learn as much as he could about stunt work – and especially the risk management skills that are its foundation. Realizing that the two disciplines were inseparable, he decided to apply them to his field of expertise, water safety. He took psychology classes, pored over books and instruction manuals, searched other fields for analogies – anything he felt might apply to the type of professionalism he sought in water safety. One day, at the lifeguard headquarters in Honolulu, he spied a circular in the wastebasket. It announced a military-grade seminar on ‘risk management.’ Intrigued, he signed up and convinced a few of his fellow lifeguards to attend. Once at the seminar, however, it seemed that they were in over their heads. “Let’s go, Brian,” one said. “These guys are talking about handling bombs and gnarly military stuff.” But Brian was already making connections, already re-interpreting the curriculum. “Look,” he explained, “just change ‘bombs’ to ‘big sets.’” He walked out of the seminar with a new outlook on ocean safety management. “That was my stepping stone to the present,” he claims. “I learned how important it was to be scientific and precise in my approach.”
It dawned on him that it was time to recast the old model of the bronzed and brawny lifeguard. “Everybody taps into his body, you know, and how strong it can be. Bu, I realized that really, it’s all about how strong your mind is.” He cites his chief influences – his father, Buffalo Keaulana, and George Downing, Buzzy Trent, Uncle Greg Noll – as examples: “All of those guys were so different from the surfers today. They were true warriors. No leashes, ripped to shreds, they could swim for hours – but it was their mental toughness that made them great!”
Growing up on the beach at Makaha surrounded by such mavericks, Brian feels he gained from his childhood a “stronger foundation than most people.” Yet, regardless of his success, he has never turned his back on the beach. Indeed, though he enjoys a growing reputation as a gifted leader, a phenomenal waterman, and a media artisan with a natural filmic sense, he continues to carefully tend his Makaha roots. Away from the movie sets he remains untainted by the cheap gilding of Hollywood, preferring on his days off to head out with a few childhood friends to the outer reefs near his Makaha home, perhaps tow-in surfing on his hydrofoil board, or perfecting his stand-up ‘beachboy-style’ surfing, using a seven-foot canoe paddle and a tandem board.
“I tell everyone I work with, that if you want to see what ‘us guys’ are all about, you’ve got to come down and see my father’s meet (Buffalo’s Big Board Surfing Classic). In just a couple of days, you see our whole lifetime – canoe surfing, bodysurfing, paipo boards, team surfing – you name it.”
As for the future? The next phone call maY send him to Japan for a cultural exchange; to the Pacific Northwest as a big-wave safety instructor; northern Baja as a stuntman, or perhaps to Maui to dive with tiger sharks for a documentary. Or it may just be a friend calling from the Makaha Drive-In asking if he wants mac salad on his plate lunch.
Always with a weather eye on future possibilities, but always ready to fuse tradition to them as they arise, Brian states that one of his main goals is “to recruit local kids and teach ocean skills to them … And someday, I want to make a short film and enter it into the Hawaii Film Festival.”
“What kind of film are you thinking about making,” I asked.
He thought for a moment, then his eyes narrowed at an approaching set. We had a long lull in “ to talk story”, but now waves were lifting out beyond the Bowl. It was time to get moving.
“I don’t know yet,” he finally replied, shifting his steering blade to the other gunwale, turning the canoe shoreward and scattering the surfing crowd as they cleared a path for us. “But I know one thing –it’ll have plenty of action.”
