>> In the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, director Stacy Peralta shows how a gang of hooligan skateboarders helped change American culture and create a billion-dollar industry

by JOHNSON CUMMINS

In the opening scene of the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, the Zephyr skateboard team is introduced doing what they do best: ripping up some serious concrete. The soundtrack blasts Jimi Hendrix’s “Ezy Rider,” which is a fitting choice. If Hendrix was no mop-top six-string-slinger sleepwalking through tired Ventures riffs, the Z-Boys were not a typical team of skaters content with the safety of kick turns, wheelies and handstands.

Formed in the mid-’70s and based near a rancid Santa Monica beach community nicknamed Dogtown, the Z-Boys brought a renegade surfer mentality to the staid, dying sport of skateboarding. Like one of the heroes of the day, Iggy Pop, they threw caution to the wind and screamed “Gimme Danger” before plunging from the lip of the deepest empty pool. In the process, they revolutionized skateboarding and set into motion the wheels of what would become a billion-dollar industry.
Dogtown’s Z-Boys were rock ’n’ roll, the real deal. In one of my favourite scenes of the movie, which was directed by former Z-Boy Stacy Peralta, the Dogtown team enter the Del Mar Nationals skating competition in 1975. The regular skaters gracefully perform safe and orderly freestyle moves to the delight of the Biff and Mandy automatons in the crowd. Then the Dogtown crew show up, quickly annihilating and obliterating the previous competition with their aggressive style and unorthodox, surfer-inspired moves. Though many in the crowd were aghast, the judges approved, and a new skating day had dawned.
It was the unruly Dogtown style that would inspire people like Tony Hawk and Steve Caballero to jump on a board and help create what we now call skateboarding. Hopped up on Black Sabbath and Mexican dirt pot, Dogtown skaters like Peralta, Tony Alva and Jay Adams pushed the limits of the sport into the air and beyond.

Peralta’s film, a double award-winner at the Sundance Film Festival, is much more than your standard skateboard flick full of “rad tricks” tailored for ESPN. Combining present-day interviews with early film footage and photos from on-the-spot guys like Glen E. Friedman and Craig Stecyk, as well as a barrage of ’70s rock songs, it captures the intensity and spirit of the era. And despite a certain amount of self-mythologizing (the director, after all, is one of the star subjects) Dogtown and Z-Boys shows how, against all odds, a team of hooligan kids would change the face of American culture from their little corner of California where “the debris meets the sea.” The Mirror talked to Peralta from his home in L.A.

Mirror: What gave you the idea to do the film almost 30 years after the Dogtown team broke up?
Stacy Peralta: In 1999 Spin magazine did an article on the whole Dogtown experience and Hollywood got a hold of it. They wanted to make a fictional film and buy all of our life rights up. We thought that before they do that film, it was just a good idea to discuss the past from our point of view. What’s funny, though, is that after they saw Dogtown and Z-Boys, they said “You’re the guy to write the feature film.” They’re really happy with the script and are promising to be really protective now so it doesn’t turn into a stupid popcorn movie.

M: How did Sean Penn come aboard as the narrator of Dogtown and Z-Boys?
SP: Sean saw an early rough cut of the film and was really taken by it. He was a surfer and skateboarder who lived a half hour north of us and went to Santa Monica High. I think when he saw the film for the first time he was looking at his own life as well as ours.

M: With the fast-forward editing and narration flubs gracing the final cut, it seems like you were trying to mirror the intensity of skating. Was this conscious?
SP: We didn’t set out to do that, but as we were moving through the process we thought that was exactly they way things should be. Every film has a mind of its own and if the filmmaker is attuned to listening then at some point he will hear what that film wants to be. Skateboarding is already an imperfect, subversive activity-it’s kinetic and you fall a lot. It was always really important that the film reflect the texture of the activity we were talking about.

M: The soundtrack-Black Sabbath, the Stooges, James Gang, Alice Cooper etc.-is amazing. Was that an accurate backdrop to your skating at the time? S
SP: That was all that we listened to. It was in our cars, at the surf shop we hung out at and at home. I don’t want to brag, but I think it’s probably one of the best soundtracks ever to be collected for a film. At that time that was the most subversive music, until punk followed it.

M: You have Henry Rollins and Ian Mackaye (Fugazi) testifying about how Dogtown was such an influence on them. Were you surprised to see punk rock and skateboarding merge in the ’80s or did you think it was just an obvious coupling?
SP: Initially I was surprised, but after punk rock really infiltrated skating it seemed like a good fit. It was an interesting time for skateboarding because it was really finding its voice back then. We weren’t following anything in the ’70s other than our instincts. A lot of the manufacturers at the time really tried to make skateboarding this safe, Little League kind of thing with all of these skateboard parks and it didn’t work. When skateboarding started to cycle back up and was married to punk rock I thought it found the voice it wanted to have. It wants to be subversive and counter culture.

M: But now it is hardly counter culture-it’s more mainstream than it’s ever been. Did you ever think it would’ve become this popular?
SP: No, never. I certainly never thought that there would be a television channel dedicated to just skateboarding. I was a pretty forward thinking guy at the time but I never thought it would get this big.

Sponsors step in

M: Right after the initial success of the Z-Boys the Dogteam team splintered and started skating for different sponsored skateboard teams. Did you find this to be a necessary sacrifice for the sport to blow up?
SP: At the time I took it as a colossal disappointment. We were now real competitors and consequently wouldn’t hang out with each other at contests. But looking back now, I think it had to happen.

M: When you see something like the Vans Warped tour or X games do you ever see a glimpse of the Dogtown crew?
SP: I see less of myself in those events. But when I see a group of kids huddled around skateboarding, that’s when I see a bit of myself.

M: It seems that despite being so big, skateboarding has never had an accurate portrayal of its history.
SP: Skateboarding is a piece of American culture, but at the time it was a culture that came out of the West Coast. And the West Coast was looked upon as a cultural wasteland. But now it’s gone all over the world.

M: In the ’70s, Venice and Santa Monica were already feeling the tremors of the oncoming recession. Was this a contributing factor in the aggressive style of skating in the Dogtown team?

SP: The economy of ’70s was in the toilet. We were coming out of Viet Nam, the OPEC crisis and Nixon was resigning. There was definitely a lot of angst in the air. We were hungry teenagers looking for a way to express ourselves and it came out aggressively and that’s what felt good.

M: It seems that the Dogtown team had a real us-against-them kind of attitude.
SP: The only place we got support was from our team. All of us wanted to be really good because this was all we had. We were constantly pushing each other and trying to outdo each other, but we knew that the rest of the guys were making you better than you would be on your own. There was a real brotherhood there, kind of like a really close-knit tribe.

First air

M: Do you remember the first time that Tony Alva caught air in a pool?
SP: Oh yeah, it was amazing. It was amazing in a lot of ways, but especially that he was doing it in that specific pool, because it was really deep and really vertical. For him to get that high out of the pool was just crazy.

M: You’re now a father and still pick up the deck. Have you given any lessons to your 11-year-old son?
SP: He always asks me to teach him stuff. The interesting thing about him is that he has a really old-school style. In fact, there is an empty pool about two blocks away from our house and he snuck in and checked it out. Afterwards, he said, “Well, you can’t be mad at me because you did the same thing when you were a kid.” I was completely busted.

M: Were you ever concerned about the current generation finding the skating in the film to be outdated or a little too old-school?
SP: I can’t tell you how many people told us that we needed current skateboarding to finish the film. But we just can’t compete with ESPN and the skateboarding videos that these kids see. We can’t show them stuff that they see everyday. We had to stay true to the story. I wasn’t making it specifically for them, I was making it because it was a cause.

M: Do you think it is important for skateboarders to know their roots?
SP: I think it is important to know the roots of anything you love and you will appreciate it that much more. If you’re doing something that is really close to your heart and you find out where it came from, it will put you even that much more in touch with it and you’ll identify with it that much more.

M: Are there elements of current skate culture that turn your head?
SP: There’s one thing that I find really fascinating. Skateboarding in the ’70s was predominantly a white sport-you only saw blond, blue-eyed boys, for the most part. Nowadays it has become really urban. You’ll get black skaters and Mexican skaters and different people in different urban centres. To me that’s one of the most positive things about skateboarding today. They’re skateboarding for the same reason we were and that’s because they feel disenfranchised. They don’t have what a lot of affluent kids have in other neighbourhoods, but they do have access to tons and tons of concrete.

M: You had to hire a detective to find a handful of the Dogtown team and some members you hadn’t seen in years. Was impressing them with the final product ever a goal of the film?
SP: I wouldn’t say I was worried about impressing them so much as not upsetting them. These aren’t necessarily your most diplomatic people. I still keep in touch with most of the guys and talk quite a bit with them. It’s really nice because I like to have these guys in my life. Even though we may not be skating together anymore, the spirit never diminishes.

M: Are you surprised with the success of the film?
SP: I always thought of the film as a celebration of a culture and a thrill ride through a time period in the ’70s. I didn’t know whether or not people would get it. The big surprise to me is how many non-skaters like the film.

M: Do you think that skating taught you things you applied in other areas of your life?
SP: Success in any field is always the same. Most of those skills require overcoming your own mind and inhibitions. I pull from that period of my life all the time because we were able to accomplish what we accomplished against all odds-because, in the beginning, no one ever liked what we were doing. One thing skating taught me was how to go in through the back door-because I was never allowed in the front door.

M: Are you still skating?
SP: Yeah but my new thing now is snowboarding. I absolutely love it, it’s pure Zen.

M: So you’re still jumping over the fence to skate but now it’s in the empty pool of the film industry?
SP: Exactly. If you don’t let me in this way then I’ll go in another way. But I will skate that pool. :

Dogtown’s Z-Boys >> Where are they now?

Dogtown and Z-Boys opens July 26 and runs until Aug. 2 at Cinéma du Parc

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