A bodyboarding legend from Honolulu
Tom Boyle is from Honolulu, Hawaii, and he is a legend in bodyboarding. He competed as a rider in the Morey Bodyboard Pipeline Championships, shot photos, and was instrumental in starting Bodyboarding magazine. Then he turned to video.
He made the Bodyboarders Video Magazine, twelve editions released from 1988 to 1998 under his Eye Spy Productions banner. On many of them he did nearly everything himself: producing, writing, directing, shooting from the water, editing and narrating.
It started with Tribal Trials in 1988: a Ben Severson profile, Jack Lindholm and Mike Stewart at Pipeline, and a pro contest at Pipe Littles. Winter on the Rock followed in 1989, a portrait of Pipeline's Jack “The Ripper” Lindholm and the North Shore that winter. In 1990, The Indonesian Experience took six Hawaiian riders to Bali and Java.
Through the 1990s the series kept going. Shock Island followed world champion Mike Stewart to Shark Island in Australia. Mutant Slabs & Monster Barrels was a North Shore spoof with Chris Taloa in his first role. Core went to Tavarua, and Girl Jam, the 12th edition, featured the world's best women bodyboarders, among them Neymara Carvalho, Daniela Freitas and Vicki Gleeson.
Tom also turned his camera on stand-up surfing in Style = Shred+Soul (1993), with Kelly Slater, Tom Curren, Gerry Lopez and Rob Machado. In 1998 he made Recon with Chris Taloa and John DeTemple, a bodyboarding film set in the year 2071.
