Sk8er Cinema
Lords of Dogtown
Skate Kitchen
Sup, brah? I hope you’re having a sick Summer. I, personally, am counting down the seven weeks we have until the Autumnal equinox, but I’m still soaking up the sun in my own way. One sunny activity that I appreciate, though I have no experience with or direct connection to it, is the art and the sport of skateboarding. Coming of age in such a sports-centric community, I was surrounded by different flavors of athleticism to partake in and (mostly) observe. But I never much cared for watching football or baseball or basketball, if I was going to brave the Texas heat and the rowdiness of men, I’d always prefer to watch skateboarders. I had no personal desire to skate, but boy, did I love watching boys on their skateboards. The physical, technical, borderline scientific feat of riding the wind on a piece of wood less than 10 inches wide, testing the limits of concrete and of gravity itself—it’s all a stunning thing to behold. Whether it was Marty McFly or Bart Simpson or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or An Extremely Goofy Movie or Jackass or Avril Lavigne, the cultural impact of skateboarding during my childhood, at least, felt profound. The origins of skateboarding are often debated—to quote RedBull.com, “Hermetically sealed from the rest of the world, skateboarding’s history is naturally esoteric with several topics up for debate”—but most skateboarding scholars agree that it was conceived from the minds of bored California surfers in the 1940s and 50s, who needed something to do when the waves were flat. “Sidewalk surfing”, as it was then referred to, steadily became a popular pastime, leading LA surf shop owner Bill Richards to make a deal with the Chicago Roller Skate Company to produce sets of skate wheels so he could craft and sell these contraptions around town. By the 1960s, surf shops like Jack’s, Kips’, Hobie, Bing’s, and Makaha began manufacturing skateboards that looked like mini surf boards, and began assembling teams of skaters to promote their products. One of the earliest skateboard exhibitions took place in 1963 at the Pier Avenue Junior High School in Hermosa Beach, California, with some skaters being featured on the 1964 TV show Surf’s Up, but the first broadcast of an actual skateboarding competition was the 1965 National Skateboarding Championships, airing on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Skateboarding began to appear in cartoons and late night TV, Skateboarder Magazine was created, but reports of the potential dangers of this activity led to a dip in sales and popularity just as this hot new thing was taking off. The gloriously grimy 1970s ushered in a new cultural attitude, though, where beatniks and hippies turned into punks, and with Frank Nasworthy’s invention of polyurethane wheels—which allowed for greater traction, endurance, and performance—skateboarding was back on the upward ramp. Precursors to modern skateparks began popping up in cities and towns all over America, which appeared in the form of repurposed urban hydro and storm water infrastructure, such as the Escondido reservoir in San Diego, California. The Del Mar National Championships in 1975 reportedly had over 500 competitors, proving that there was so stopping this free-wheeling, free-styling phenomenon. 1980s skate culture was fueled by the kids who had made the sport famous, who were now the owners of their own brands and companies. By 2001, it was reported that more American people under the age of 18 rode skateboards (10.6 million) than played baseball (8.2 million), and new, non-traditional PE skateboarding programs like “Skatepass” and “Skateistan” were created to encourage youth to have better attendance, self-discipline, and confidence. Today, especially, skateboarding is diverse, expansive, and cannot only be defined by its bad boy origins. So let’s explore two films (both directed by women thank you very fucking much) that showcase the chaotic past and the thrilling present of skateboarding—where the only prerequisite seems to be fearlessness and long hair.
The first major film to center upon the art of skateboarding was David Winters’ 1986 cult classic Thrashin’, starring Josh Brolin and several actual skaters like Tony Alva, Tony Hawk, Christian Hosoi, and Steve Caballero. The production designer on this film, Catherine Hardwicke, would go on to direct several films like Twilight and Thirteen, as well as tonight’s first film: her seminal 2005 skateboarding classic Lords of Dogtown. Both David Fincher and Fred Durst were slated to direct the film, but Hardwicke eventually landed the job (Fincher stayed on as executive producer), and proved to be the best woman for the job, partially due to her previous connection to the subjects of this exact, true story. Written by skateboarding pioneer Stacy Peralta, Lords of Dogtown transports us to Venice Beach, California in 1975, when this gorgeous yet gritty “ghetto by the sea” became riddled with more than just surfers, but skaters, too. A group of young skaters named Tony Alva (Victor Rasuk), Stacy Peralta (John Robinson), and Jay Adams (Emile Hirsch) are eager to surf the dark, rocky coves of Venice Beach, but the older class of surfers—mostly Skip Engblom (Heath Ledger)—tell the boys they gotta earn their way in first. But where these lower classman can be of assistance is in kicking out the non-locals who dare encroach upon their corner of the ocean. After getting in a shipment of the brand new polyurethane wheels that just hit the scene, Skip rallies up the bros and tells him he’s putting together a skate team, and only the best of the best will make it. For some reason, Stacy isn’t picked to join the skate squad, but he finds his way into the first round of competition anyway, causing Skip to reluctantly let him join their group: the Zephyrs. Outside of their gravity-defying, traffic-hopping, empty-pool-skating, weed-smoking, establishment-hating lives, all three boys face a myriad of problems—from absent parents to health issues to economic strife. And on top of all this, the success of the Zephyrs is consistently threatened by their tendency to not follow the rules of each skate competition and their proclivity toward getting in ramp-side brawls with their competitors and judges. But no one, not even the rule-makers and referees, can deny the talent these boys have, and eventually, they all start to go pro in their own ways. Through the increasingly successful lives of these boys, we witness the very laid-back, edgy art of skating turn into a structured, brand-sponsored spectacle, where their friendships and physical limits are tested. There are so many more intricate, interesting details to this film, that I do not have time to go into, but it was all shot and put together so well that Lords of Dogtown, at times, felt like a documentary. All of the racist, sexist, homophobic bits of dialogue were unpleasant, but likely very accurate to that era of toxic masculinity, and no matter how rambunctious these boys got, I felt solace in the fact that Catherine Hardwicke was the only woman who could wrangle them all. The cast of this film is overwhelmingly stacked, as it features lead performances from Nikki Reed, Michael Angarano, Rebecca De Mornay, and significant appearances from Vincent Laresca, Brian Zarate, Pablo Schreiber, Elden Henson, William Mapother, Julio Oscar Mechoso, Mitch Hedberg, Melonie Diaz, Laura Ramsey, America Ferrera, Sofia Vergara, Johnny Knoxville, Charles Napier, Joel McHale, Bai Ling, Alexis Arquette, Jeremy Renner, Shea Whigham, and a very fun cameo from Tony Hawk. The stakes remained high, the music was consistently fun, and real Stacy Peralta not only wrote this movie, but at 48 years old, he did some of the skateboard stunts for the 18 year old who played him. Though the film began to drift toward bummer territory toward the end, I really enjoyed Lords of Dogtown, and regret not seeing it sooner. Teenage me would’ve been feral for this… too bad I was eight years old when this came out and I talked my family out of seeing it, even though my sister was dying to. Lanie if you’re reading this, I’m sorry, and if you don’t remember this then never mind… We can all grow and change and evolve but I’ll always be a sucker for a long-haired Heath Ledger—that will never change.
I bravely came out as being not a big fan of Jonah Hill’s 2018 skater film Mid90s—a title with a self-fulfilling prophecy of “mid”—so if only I’d known that this same year, a way better, way more intriguing skate film would come out, this is Crystal Moselle’s film Skate Kitchen. Based on her short film That One Day, Skate Kitchen isn’t a documentary, but it does follow a real-life group of female skaters who chose their name “Skate Kitchen” after reading comments left on their YouTube videos suggesting that women, “should be in the kitchen” rather than skateboarding. Skate Kitchen introduces us to 18 year old skater Camille (Rachel Vinberg), who, after contracting a gnarly injury on her groin, is forced to take a little break from skating. She promises her mom (Elizabeth Rodriguez) that she won’t skate anymore, but as soon as she recovers, Camille sneaks out with her board and leaves Long Island for New York City, in search of the cool girl gang of skaters she discovered on Instagram. She traverses the concrete jungle to find a concrete paradise—the LES Skatepark on the Lower East Side—which is full of talented, talkative people that fly two inches away from one another on boards. Before she can approach her parasocial friends, Camille is approached by the unofficial ringleader, Kurt (Nina Moran), who is already impressed by what Camille can do—Kurt even says, “That shit was validdd” when Camille lands a trick. Without question, or much introduction, Camille is welcomed into the Skate Kitchen, and all of them are just as rambunctious (but far less obnoxious) than the Zephyr boys of Lords of Dogtown. And just like that, Camille has a built in group of cool ass friends, whom she sees every day while her mom’s at work and none the wiser. They skate all over the Lower East Side and Queens, dodging cars and people left and right. One dude sitting on a stoop asks Kurt if she can do an ollie, to which she says, “No bro, I’m a poser. That’s why I have this (board)”, with one of the other gals chiming in to say, “I thought it was just an accessory; that’s your purse!” laughing as they roll away. This girl gang is just what Camille needed, and she learns about more than just skating in the city. The gals discuss topics as frivolous as boys, girls, and tampons, to more serious topics like their respective experiences with predatory men. The dialogue amongst this friend group felt incredibly authentic, to the point where it verged on mundane, but it was never at all boring. They’re all stronger together and never have a dull day on their boards, but when Camille moves in with one of the girls then subsequently develops a crush on her ex-fling, Devon (Jaden Smith) things become complicated—in an unnecessarily contrived way. There is so much genuine girl power and big-city stakes and emotional weight to this film, so its forced romantic dramatic subplot felt a bit out of place. And furthermore, when said forced romantic dramatic subplot is resolved, it all felt a bit too easy and disinterested in itself. I mostly enjoyed Skate Kitchen, but the addition of this storyline, and of Jaden Smith in general, felt like one, big, loud studio note. Moselle decided to craft a film around this group of female skaters after she met Moran and Vinberg on the subway in Brooklyn, and the best parts of this film felt like a magical slice-of-life reflection of this chance encounter. This film is gorgeously shot, and makes New York City and even Long Island feel like a whimsical, magical place. I can forgive a little clunky subplot because there just aren’t enough movies like this—where young women are definitively at the center, telling their own stories, unabashedly taking up space in an arena historically occupied by men and boys. A spin-off TV series called Betty was released on HBO in 2020, which includes most of the original cast, and I’ve read that it’s even better than the film. I feel like I learned a lot this week, about a topic that I was genuinely curious about, and that’s just the magic of movies, bro. Thanks for riding along with me this week, and rolling deep into another niche genre of film. Later brah, I’ll catch you on the flip side.
