Kelly Slater Opens Up About Surfing Legacy Ahead of HBO's Momentum Generation

If you grew up in the ‘90s you knew one thing to be true: Kelly Slater was the man. He is the proud owner of 11 World Surf League Champion titles, five of which he won consecutively from 1994 to 1998. Though he’s unquestionably the winningest and most well-known surfer in the world, he didn’t get there alone. And now, a new documentary film is showing everyone just how he and his friends changed the sport forever.

Momentum Generation, a documentary set to air on HBO on December 11, is the ultimate sports retrospective on how surfing went mainstream thanks to Kelly and his friends, including Rob Machado, Taylor Knox, Ross Williams, Shane Dorian, Kalani Robb, and Pat O’Connell. Like most sports movies, it’s got a few epic action scenes. But the film also cuts to the core, exploring life, love, friendship, and loss in a way you’d never see coming from a few teenage boys just looking to paddle out.

“I didn't want to do it, to be honest,” Slater told ROAM on a patio in Santa Monica, California, soaking up the last rays of sunshine of the day. “I was probably the most vocally opposed to it. I just felt like maybe it hadn't been enough time, and I didn't know if there's enough meat on the bone for the story.

There's certainly enough. Over the course of two years, filmmaking brothers Jeff and Michael Zimbalist compiled a literal lifetime of footage, sourcing from more than 138 different people around the globe to piece together the story of how these young men came to be a force in sports, pop culture, and one another’s lives over the last three decades.

“You are the company you keep in life, and I've got a really great group of friends,” Slater said, scrolling through the text thread the guys still maintain every day. “Nobody's perfect, but I think as a unit, as a whole, our group is pretty special.”

But don’t get it twisted: The film isn’t one kumbaya moment after another. Without giving away too many spoilers, Momentum Generation chronicles the lives of a group of boys who mostly came from rough beginnings. For Slater, that meant diving deep into his relationship with his father, an alcoholic who often cheated on his wife before the two divorced. Others in the film dealt with broken families, abuse, drugs, and the death of one of their closest friends. Watching the film, you can’t help but think it’s a miracle these kids became superstars, let alone made it out alive.