A huge hole was torn through the heart of the Santa Barbara community and the world’s ocean filmmaking family when Mike DeGruy died at age 60 in a helicopter accident in February 2012. The Santa Barbara International Film Festival — for which DeGruy played curator, educator, and inspiration — went from full swing to state of shock at the news of his crash in Australia, where he was working for director James Cameron on yet another deep-sea dive.
A few months later, his widow and longtime filmmaking partner, Mimi DeGruy, went back into their editing studio and started watching her late husband’s footage, believing that something cathartic and perhaps even cinematic would emerge. Almost seven years later, the result is Diving Deep: The Life and Times of Mike DeGruy, which fittingly will kick off the 2019 edition of SBIFF on Wednesday, January 30, at The Arlington Theatre.
The film features plenty of Mike’s smiling, ever-excited face; a steady stream of mind-blowing, rarely witnessed undersea phenomena that he filmed; a retelling of the shark attack that changed his life; and insight from those who respected his impact — from his wife, kids, mom, and siblings to legendary nature filmmaker David Attenborough, ocean champion Sylvia Earle, and Cameron, who had Mike’s help in filming Titanic. But Diving Deep also reveals a side of DeGruy that had not yet surfaced: His rage over the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster on the Gulf Coast, near where he grew up in Mobile, Alabama, and a concern that things were only going to get worse unless we all connected more with the ocean and nature at large. Altogether, it’s a complex portrait of a vivid, influential life cut short, and one that will engage all ages into caring more about both the ocean and those who are close to us, as life remains fleeting and, frequently, all too short.