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Friday, June 3, 2005
Birth of modern skateboarding is a fascinating tale
Modern skateboard pioneer-turned-filmmaker Stacy Peralta traced the 1970s skateboard revolution back to a fascinating subculture that sprouted from the surf and on the streets of Venice Beach in "Dogtown and Z-Boys," an excellent documentary equal parts extreme sports and social anthropology.
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View all photosWith "The Lords of Dogtown," Peralta turns screenwriter and distills history into a fictionalized drama (the opening credit curiously reads "Inspired by a true story," not "Based on") about his own youth as one of the most influential of the Zephyr Skate Team (aka the Z-Boys).
Like the documentary, "Lords" follows the Z-Boys triptych -- aggressively competitive Tony Alva (Victor Rasuk, of "Raising Victor Varga"), California kid Peralta (John Robinson) and punk rebel Jay Adams (Emile Hirsch, who delivers the most intense and complex performance of the trio) -- as they pop the new urethane wheels on their beater boards and surf the rolling asphalt of their slum town playgrounds. Their style shakes up the staid sport at the 1975 Skateboard National Championships and within a year the skate pirates redefine the sport and become its superstars.
When the corporate world swoops down on the hip new stars of the suddenly re-energized sport, Zephyr team sponsor and zoned-out father figure Skip Engblom (Heath Ledger, slurring and weaving like a punch-drunk hippie under surfer locks) is abandoned in their wake. It's a story of success coming too fast and the greed, excess and perceived betrayal it fosters: the American Dream in all its glory.
Catherine Hardwicke ("Thirteen") directs with an always-in-motion handheld camera, giving the skate scenes the feel of dynamic videos that popularized the style and the drama a scrappy, naturalistic immediacy. But she also gives into the allure of their outlaw rebelliousness and celebrates their vandalism, petty theft and social contempt as some kind of slum heroism.
Peralta pours the vivid history into the mold of a conventional dramatic structure, taming the idiosyncrasies of real-life events and characters. Hardwicke makes the friction of the ensemble real and her restless style roughs up the neatness of the screenplay with hotdogging. She takes his story back to the street.
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