Helen Hunt’s humiliating first surfing lesson inspired new movie Ride

Actress HELEN HUNT credits a disastrous first surfing lesson with inspiring her to turn the experience into a plotline for her new movie RIDE.
The movie veteran writes, directs and stars in the comedy/drama, about a New York City magazine editor who follows her college drop-out son to California as he pursues his surfing dreams.
Hunt’s character decides to learn how to ride the waves herself so she can repair her fractured relationship with her son, played by The Giver’s Brenton Thwaites, and she reveals scenes of her first lesson in the film are reminiscent of her own real-life struggles as she made her surfing debut years ago.
She tells U.S. breakfast show Good Morning America, “I had a surf lesson… but he (instructor) yelled at me for an hour… I got out of the water and I was not humbled, I was humiliated and had tears in my throat, ‘Never again, I will never again (surf).’
“And I thought, anything that has me this upset, I should do it again, and write about it, and that’s how this movie (came about).”
Hunt, 51, performed many of the surfing stunts herself and she admits, “It wasn’t pretty, but it’s not hard to fall off a surfboard! The surfing is me and most of the wiping out is me, but there’s a couple of spectacular wipe outs that I had some help with too.”
She adds, “It was fun. Really, I’ve never had as much fun making a movie as I did making this movie. We were working hard but playing like kids in the ocean.”
And Hunt hopes the film will inspire other parents her age to tackle new challenges, just as she did when she took up surfing.
She continues, “The bulk of the story is this very unlikely woman doing a thing she’s not so comfortable doing…
“I see all these soccer mums and hockey mums and surf mums in L.A. and all their kids are out there playing. (This movie) is about flipping that around and getting in the water or on the trampoline or getting out the finger paints and have fun ourselves.”