The Controversy That Led To This Kid Becoming “Malibu’s Most Wanted”

 While on a trip last summer deep in Baja, there was one grom in the lineup who impressed me wave after wave. Strawberry blond hair atop a 5-foot-something frame, perhaps weighing 110 pounds wet. Clearly in his teens, but just barely, with a style and finesse way beyond his years. The overhead waves and rocky shoreline didn’t stop him from surfing leashless and seamlessly switching stance from goofy to regular like he was born doing it.

I only got his first name, Cormac.

Months later, on Instagram, I see a familiar bright mop and lithe frame lightly cross-stepping to the nose of the board, hang ten, and then shimmy back to hammer a turn like a man twice his size and thrice his age. It was him. 

That was a year ago; since then he’s gotten his drivers license, traveled to the North Shore, competed in the Loggerhead, dropped an array of edits and skit-filled episodes with friends like Jake Richards, Nick Terrazas. During a run of summer swells he became infamous and he was threatened to get “kicked out of Malibu” only to have none other than Joel Tudor pledge allegiance and give him full support to, I’m paraphrasing here, ‘not listen to any of those clowns’. More on that later.

Now, he’s the subject of Wanted: A Cormac O’Brien Surf Film, directed by his friend and frequent collaborator, Jake Richard. The two are premiering the project November 1 at Aquatech Glassing Factory in Hermosa Beach (7–9 p.m.), where Tyler Hatzikian will also be slinging some boards for cash deals.

The Making of “Wanted”

Cormac’s been on Hatzikian boards for years — his go-to is a double step-deck 9’3″ that he calls “magic.” He also rides shapes from Matt Grote, the perfect complement to a style inspired by Al Knost (whom he’s parodied to great effect, see below), Tommy Witt, Mike Purpus, and, of course, Joel Tudor.

Born in the Central Coast but primarily raised in the South Bay, he was well stewarded by his father, an excellent surfer himself. When I sat down with him and Jake to talk about Wanted, they were still buzzing from a summer of edits, contests, and near-controversy. Here are some excerpts from our hour-long talk full of laughs, stories, and the kind of youthful mischief that fuels a new generation of loggers.

SURFER:Did you ever have a phase where you were into performance shortboards?
Cormac: “No, that wasn’t even an option. My dad was like, ‘you can’t ride those things 90% of the time around here’. Dad’s wisdom clearly served him well but he now has quite a quiver, including tons of $50 boards purchased online. Many are on display in the film 2007 Explorer, filmed by Jake in the days after Cormac got his license.

SURFER: So how was it when you finally got your license?
Cormac: Oh man, so good…
Jake: “Yeah but It was kinda sketchy too, he almost hit a few cars but luckily it was all good. We ended up making an edit just from those two or three days.”

The pair laugh easily — they’re a creative duo who really click. Whenever one has an idea, the other is down to make it happen. They first met at the Loggerhead after Jake captured a sick tube by Cormac, that was the first connection. Months later they met again at the airport…

Cormac: “We both we’re doing solo trips to the North Shore and we’re just praying that we would know somebody. We popped up at the airport and we’re like, thank God. I was like, I got a surfer and you got a filmer, it works great.”

Banned From Malibu?

SURFER: So tell me about the summer and what happened in Malibu?
Jake: “It was crazy, we got so much good footage in a few days we knew we had to make a film but the real plot twist came when, well, Cormac, do you wanna tell this part?
Cormac: “Yeah, so I had been surfing there a lot in May and June and, you know how it is, it’s Malibu. It’s a zoo, and yeah, I burned a lot of people (laughs). When I was younger, Tommy Witt told me, ‘If you’re surfing Malibu and you don’t have armpit hair, you can drop in on whoever you want’. I don’t know if that’s still true or not but I still don’t have armpit hair (laughs)

Anyways, after the run in May-June, I disappeared down to Mexico and filmed a bunch down there with my friend Stu, who got it all on his Handycam. One day, once I got back, I was surfing Malibu with my dad and we rode a wave together and I was out in front of him. We were playing around, joking and yelling at each other, anyways, my dad fell off and I kept going. Afterwards some guy paddled up to him and said, ‘I can’t believe that fucking kid, he’s been doing that to everybody, he’s ridiculous.’ My dad played along and then the guy said, ‘I’m with the Malibu Surfing Association, we are having a meeting about Cormac this weekend because we’re actually thinking about trying to kick him out of Malibu.’

And then my dad was like, ‘Oh, well yeah man, good on you! He just fucked around with the guy. But fully, they were like so serious. And so it just kind of kept spiraling. I told all my friends because I thought it was hilarious. So one of my friends made a poster that said I got banned from Malibu and I posted it. Then Joel saw that they were trying to kick me outta Malibu and he he didn’t like that…

I got a call from Joel, his son Judah is one of my best friends, he’s the one who called me and said, ‘Yo, my dad wants to talk to you’. And I was just like, oh shit. ‘Hey Joel, like, what’s up?’ And he said, “Hey, I just want you to know. Don’t listen to any of those fucking people. And he went off, literally, pissed off. Like, ‘none of them are from Malibu anyways, they can’t surf for shit. If you have any problems, just let me know…’

Then he started coming up to Malibu a lot, him and Judah, and we’d all surf together. Joel was on it, I think it was because, when he was a kid, he wasn’t welcome at a lot of places too…” 

SURFER: That’s wild, man. Such a good story. So how’d it all tie together after that?
Jake: Well, we knew we wanted to make a film and Cormac wanted to incorporate some of Stu’s footage so I had the idea to stitch it together like he fled Malibu. Which worked really well with the Handycam, you’ll have to check it out…

Love him or hate him, it’s safe to say he’ll continue to make his mark on Malibu for decades to come. “Wanted” will be live next week, we’ll update the story here.

Related: Justin Quintal’s Homegrown Longboard Event Looks Ridiculously Fun