“As Greg said, we started out trying to win a world title and we accidentally made a documentary.”
Scott Smith stood before a packed house at the Surf City Fire House on Long Beach Island on Wednesday night. He was referring to his longtime friend, Momentum Generation surfer and bud to the entire surf world, Greg Browning. It was the world premiere of the Taitana Weston-Webb biopic, “A Marble in the Jar,” a film for which he served as filmmaker/producer/cinematographer and Editor with Browning.
Smith and filmmaker John DeTemple were with Weston-Webb at the premier, the electrifying surfer who finished last year at the No. 3 spot on the WCT and collected a silver medal at the Olympics last summer at Chopes. They were partaking in a Q&A after the screening at the Lighthouse International Film Fest.
The film plays Friday, June 6 at the Hermosa Beach Community Center where Browning grew up and La Paloma Theatre in Encinitas on Saturday, June 7. It will also screen at Solento Surf Festival on June 12 on the Gold Coast and the Last Ones Out Surf Film & Music Fest in Pacific Beach on June 21.
“Tati,” who surfs under the Brazilian flag for her family background, was born in Hawaii to an English-born surfer father and professional Brazilian bodyboarder mother. She was raised in Kauai, won the ISA World Junior Championships in 2013 and 2014, then qualified for the WCT in 2014. When the women took the water for the first time in the 2020 Summer Olympics, she was there. In 2021, she lost a heartbreaker a the WCT Finals to Carissa Moore and has notched four CT wins in addition to her Olympic silver medal. Weston-Webb has changed the face of the Womens tour. Though she has surfed in arguably the most competitive age of female surfing ever and has yet to win a title, her heavy surfing and influence over the tour has been impactful.
Through Body Glove, Weston-Webb worked with Browning. The former pro surfer became a talented cinematographer and famously released the “Dive Thru” series. Browning had coached Weston-Webb’s while shooting her surfing.
Body Glove
“We are working on a documentary about Greg as well,” said DeTemple on Wednesday night, “He was so well known and loved around the world. You turn a corner in Bali and someone knows him. You’re in Western Australia and he’s got a best friend there. He was able to introduce me to a lot of different people in his life. Once we got to a certain point though, we hit pause. We wanted to finish ‘A Marble in the Jar,’ which was his real passion. He got to see 30 minutes of the Greg documentary though. We’ll be back in a year with that film.”
Browning was diagnosed with ALS in 2023 and his life was well-celebrated throughout the surf world when he passed in April.
“Greg traveled with Tatiana for three years as a coach and filmer. He and I had done things together through her sponsor, Body Glove, where he worked for 12 years,” said Smith.
Smith had been working in-house for PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) and was let go unexpectedly. While it seemed like a career setback, at the same time, Browing tapped him to edit the film. It was good timing to start digging into the 12 terabytes of footage.
Slater, Carissa Moore, Ross Williams, Joe Turpel, Weston-Webbs’s husband, pro surfer Jesse Mendes and others are featured in the film talking about her career. The cinematography is next level. “A Marble in the Jar,” is a recurring theme through the movie, the acknowledgment of life’s little positive moments that eventually fill a jar, a metaphor for a life well lived.
Weston-Webb will be at the upcoming California screenings. She will not be competing at Trestles next week after announcing in March that she needed a mental health reset, which seems to be very much tied to the passing of Browing. She had started the season with a pair of 9th place finishes and then a 17th at the MEO Rip Curl Pro Portugal. She has been listed as injured by the WSL since.
On Thursday night, Weston-Webb shared an emotional story with the premier attendees about Browning on tour with her after his diagnosis.
“He decided to swim and shoot one last time. He told me, ‘I’m going to do it just to be with you.’ For me, that was a testament to the type of person Greg was. He always wanted to give 110%, even when he didn’t have it to give. Little memories like that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Just knowing how hard it is to shoot in the water at any time, and then Greg doing that for me was amazing,” she recalled.