Josh Martin’s newest short film opens with the beep-beep of hospital monitors and a point of view out of an opening and closing eyelid. Soon Martin, a real-life ICU nurse by profession, can be seen in scrubs shining a light in the opening-and-closing lid.
“Barny, stay with me buddy. You’re in the ICU. My name is Josh. I’m going to be your nurse today,” Martin says. “You got into an accident, dude. You were paddleboarding and your paddle got stuck in your ass. I always said those things are dangerous. A lot of kooks paddleboard, vanlifers. One in the same if you ask me. Kind of ironic you got me as a nurse. I wrote and directed a short film called Salty about an old surfer named Dave. He hates paddleboarders, foilers, vanlifers. It’s killing it on the festival circuit right now. Have you heard of it?”
Short films, tall talent
The Stay Salty Surf and Skate Short Film Festival screens in Morro Bay’s Bay Theatre on Monday, Nov. 2. Doors open at 4:30 p.m., films start at 5:30. The program is all-ages and costs $10 at the door, with proceeds benefiting the Morro Bay High School Surf Team.
A link to the Salty crowdfunding site is at saltythemovie.com.
The hilarious short film is designed to get the word out about Martin’s crowdfunding campaign to turn his 15-minute narrative short comedy into a feature film. Salty and the fundraising reel will be screened at the Stay Salty Short Film Fest at Bay Theatre on Monday, Nov. 2.
In the short, aging surfer Dave (Paul Zeis) has become disgruntled with changes to the surf scene due to hydrofoil riders and stand-up paddleboarders, and especially vanlifers—people living out of $100,000 Sprinter vans who think they have the right to park anywhere and do anything—who have ruined the beach vibe. In the film, Dave acts out against a vanlifer and is forced into anger management counseling.
It was a little more than a year ago that Martin unveiled Salty at its debut screening at Bay Theatre. People loved it! During the intervening year, Martin has been busy entering the film in festivals, where it’s garnered a bunch of awards including Best Comedy at Hollywood’s Rock the Shorts Film Festival, Judges Favorite Comedy at Balboa Delmar Film Fest, Best Editing in a Short Film at Carmel International Film Festival, and more.
“The Short Film Festival is to promote the kickoff of our crowdfund campaign,” Martin explained. “They’re all short films under 15 minutes, and we’ve got some cool submissions. Local filmmaker Ben Bryan entered a 10-minute short made for Burton [Snowboards].”
The events sponsors—Azhiaziam, Forever Stoked, Cayucos Collective, Shane Stoneman Surfboards, Wavelengths, The Craft Surf Supply, and CCS—will be judging the submissions and awarding prizes for best surf film, best skate film, best trick, best cinematography, judges’ favorite, and an audience “Core Lord” award.
Brayden Chalfant, who works at Wavelengths, submitted an epic short of his trip to Chile with incredible barreling lefts.
“He did a great job,” Martin said. “He’s a young guy, too. Awesome. Big barrels. And then a kid named Mikko [Dunis Coyes] from Morro High sent a two-minute compilation of skate videos.”
There’s also a mountain bike short filmed in Cambria that Martin describes as “unreal.”
Mike Jones from Azhiaziam submitted footage he shot in Tahiti. Skateboard pioneer Jack Smith submitted sandboarding footage.
This should be an amazing event for this community. The event will have beer, wine, and cider, plus merch booths.
Of course, the real focus of the event is getting people excited about helping the feature-length Salty get made. It’s an ultra-low-budget endeavor, but Martin still needs backers.
“It’ll be a six-month process,” Martin explained. “I don’t expect to get a lot of money at this event. There’s going to be a lot of parents and kids from the surf team. Primarily, I just want to bring awareness to what we’re doing.”
Martin has already secured $70K and estimates he’ll need $180K to $200K more, or a total of around $250K. Martin hopes to get enough buzz for his crowdfunding for it to take off.
He also hopes his crowdfund video featuring Barny with a paddle up his ass will appeal to the nursing and healthcare side of his network.
“Here’s this filmmaker, he’s a nurse—that’s how I wrote it,” Martin explained. “People aren’t going to want to follow and donate to just another filmmaker that made a funny movie.”
That’s why Martin is trying to get the genesis story of Salty out to the masses. The feature length will expand on the story as Dave recruits young locals to join his plight. Martin calls it a “comedy full of surf and social media humor.”
It’s also based on his own life.
“I’ve been in acute care since 2009, been at French [Hospital] since 2013,” Martin explained. “Primarily ICU, six years in the ER. I went to the ER a month before COVID started, so I was there for the entirety of COVID. And it sucked. Post COVID, I went back to the ICU, and I’ve been there ever since.
“When COVID happened and beaches in Southern California shut down, all these vanlifers in Sprinter vans we’re coming up here,” Martin continued. “They were camping in the lots, and local surfers were pissed. I was getting irritated as well. It was COVID and I was in the ER, so I wasn’t happy to begin with. Things were kind of shitty at that point.”
A vanlifer set up camp in front of his house, but after Martin gave him a good glare, the vanlifer left only to return two weeks later to wipe dog shit on Martin’s $400 wetsuit hanging over his fence at the front of his house. The whole thing was captured on his Ring camera.
Martin started an anti-vanlife page, and people would send photos and videos of vanlifers being assholes and he’d post them. For fun, he’d make up fictional backstories about the photos and videos. He had no formal writing or filmmaking experience prior to Salty.
“We filed a police report, and through this series of events, I was just sitting there thinking, ‘This would make a killer story.’ So that’s how I wrote the first draft,” Martin explained.
So, who out there wants an executive producer credit?
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
