RECOMMENDED
“Doc” Paskowitz may be the most memorable of on-screen alterna-dads in years. Now 85, Dr. Dorian Paskowitz traveled the world with his kids, primarily in search of surf (but also women). In Doug Pray’s compelling doc, “Surfwise,” Paskowitz and his brood of nine, all but one sons, captures in new interviews and vintage footage a peripatetic life outside normal cultural bounds, despite the strong grounding in Jewish life provided the children through three different wives. As in his earlier films, such as “Scratch” (2001), about hip-hop scratch practitioners, and “Hype!” (1996), about the 1990s Seattle music scene, Pray shows an eye for artistic fringe-dwellers as good as any out there, hardly romanticizing his figures but always enjoying the élan behind their eccentricities. Both generous and deeply self-involved, Doc still led a remarkable life. Among of the highlights is a recollection of the children being exposed in cramped quarters of a twenty-four-foot camper by night to the sounds of their father’s compulsive and perfervid lovemaking. “Always be grateful when someone will fuck you” is the typical bit of advice. There are other startling moments I’ll leave unspoken that hearken back to his European childhood and to his escape from a career as a GP to surf-riding off Tel Aviv: synopsized, they sound more daffy than in Pray’s deft weave. 93m. (Ray Pride)
