Bruce Brown, the man who moulded surfing, 80

Bruce Brown, who moulded the modern image of surfing and transformed the sport with his 1966 surfing documentary The Endless Summer, has died aged 80.

Alex Mecl, general manager of Bruce Brown Films, said Brown died of natural causes in Santa Barbara, California.

Along with the music of the Beach Boys, Brown took surfing from a quirky hobby to a fundamental part of American culture.

Surfers had largely been portrayed as beach blanket buffoons in the mindless party movies of the early 1960s.

Then came Brown and The Endless Summer with his beautiful, soulful story of surfers on a quest for fulfilment, an image that became emblazoned on the cultural psyche.

Endless Summer, which was shot on a tiny budget with Brown performing nearly every duty, follows Robert August and Mike Hynson as they hop hemispheres to constantly surf wherever it is summer, from Hawaii to Australia to South Africa to Senegal.

Brown shot the film casually and the style proved infectious when the public saw it.

“I never had formal training in film-making, and that probably worked to my advantage,” Brown said in a 2004 interview.

The trio’s charisma and the film’s natural beauty made it an unlikely hit.

The film inspired many surfers to leave their home beaches, drop out of their sedentary lives and seek isolated places with bigger waves.

Some surfers blame Brown’s film for turning their serene spots into forever crowded hotspots.

“A lot of people try to make me feel guilty about that,” Brown said in 2004: “And while I’m sure Endless Summer hurried it up, the sport was growing by leaps and bounds simply because it’s so much fun.

“No one could have stopped it.”

Brown went on to make many other documentaries, most notably the 1971 film On Any Sunday, which gave the same treatment to motorcycling as Endless Summer did to surfing.

In 1994 he revisited his classic and made The Endless Summer II with his film-maker son Dana Brown.

In 2009 he narrated a surfing-themed episode of SpongeBob SquarePants called SpongeBob versus The Big One.

Brown was born in San Francisco and grew up in Long Beach.

He retired to a ranch near Santa Barbara, putting down the camera to ride motorcycles and surf.

Bruce Brown.