Sharing Secrets

IMAX filmmaker, activist and local Greg MacGillivray talks about his upcoming projects, the ocean and his optimism for the future.

An ocean breeze gently blows through the window. Filmmaking memorabilia hang on the wall. A grandchild plays on the floor and a smile grows wide on filmmaker Greg MacGillivray’s face as he reflects on film, family, and nearby surf from his big corner office. 

The guy who started out making surf films and ended up becoming probably the definitive IMAX filmmaker is rolling through another busy day in Laguna Beach. He recently co-produced the new family-friendly IMAX 3D film “Secrets of the Sea,” and his upcoming memoir “Five Hundred Summer Stories” is about his experiences making and touring one of the most successful surfing films in the genre’s history, 1972’s “Five Summer Stories.” 

Slowing down for the 78-year-old is … relative.

“I don’t pop up on my board quite as fast,” MacGillivray chuckles, acknowledging the effects of time on his surfing. “But everything else is OK.” His talent and enthusiasm haven’t dimmed. Neither has his love for the ocean and the natural world. 

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The film explores the strangest and most unique ocean creatures, with new underwater IMAX tech. But the book has allowed MacGillivray to look back in ways he hasn’t before, on a pivotal point in his life and how that has since guided him as a filmmaker, parent and activist. 

MacGillivray has consistently spent decades examining how we can deal with change, whether the subject is whales and dolphins, the Bayou country, Arabia or the top of Mount Everest. He’s become something of a rare species himself: a critically and financially successful documentarian. The giant IMAX screen has also allowed him to become as much educator as filmmaker.  

“As a filmmaker, I can show them what’s happened,” he says. “I can show them a picture of what a reef used to look like and what it looks like now. I can use graphics to show how many sharks used to be in the ocean and how many we have left. In ‘Humpback Whales,’ we pointed out very clearly how whaling took the humpback numbers down to very few. In certain places like Fiji, the whole population died away and never returned. But in places like Tonga, they came back and are almost more abundant than before whaling began. If you point this out to people watching in IMAX, they remember it. It hits them in a way watching on a television set won’t. And then, perhaps they’ll change their vote, or raise money for groups. And it started with surfing. With beaches being closed off. We wanted to make sure everyone noticed that shift.”

The classic “Five Summer Stories” showed a changing surf world and also pointed a new direction for MacGillivray and his filmmaking partner Jim Freeman, who would tragically die in a helicopter crash a few years later. But the mission had already been defined. 

“Because it was our last surfing film, Jim and I felt a special obligation to double down on our criticism of what was happening, whether about conservation and saving of surf spots, or the unfairness surfers were dealing with from contest organizers and other exploiters of surfing for commercial gain.” 

The original film shows the loss of local surf spot Killer Dana for the creation of Dana Point Harbor, but the 50th anniversary edition of the film includes new footage of Maalaea on the coast of Maui, being saved from the same fate. 

And it’s that sense of optimism that is always part of the story. He refuses to let viewers leave the theater hanging their heads. 

“It’s not all doom and gloom,” he says. “With careful understanding and an appreciation of what we have, we can save it before it disappears. I’m always an optimist because I think people can always solve problems. We will get there, we just can’t ignore it as a problem.

“Growing up in California grows optimists. It’s hard to starve here. It’s hard to freeze to death here. And you have this natural environment that is unmatched anywhere else. What could be better?” 

By Shawn Price