Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001)

Director:

Stacy Peralta

Writers:

Stacy Peralta (written by) &
Craig Stecyk (written by)

Release Date:

3 January 2002 (Australia)

Genre:

Documentary | Sport

Tagline:

A Film About The Birth Of The Now

Plot:

Documentary about the pioneering 1970s Zephyr skating team.

Plot Keywords:

Dog | California | Skateboarding | Surfer | Skateboard

Awards:

7 wins & 5 nominations

Cast

Sean Penn	...	Narrator (voice)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Jay Adams	...	Himself - Zephyr Skate Team
Tony Alva	...	Himself - Zephyr Skate Team
Jeff Ament	...	Himself
Bob Biniak	...	Himself - Zephyr Skate Team
Steve Caballero	...	Himself - Skateboard Champion
Paul Constantineau	...	Himself - Zephyr Skate Team
'Baby' Paul Cullen	...	Himself - Zephyr Skate Team
Skip Engblom	...	Himself - Zephyr Co-Founder
Steve Freidman	...	Surfer (archive footage)
Tony Friedkin	...	Himself
Glen E. Friedman	...	Himself
Marty Grimes	...	Himself - Dogtown Skater
David Hackett	...	Himself - 70s Skateboard Champion
Tony Hawk	...	Himself
Allan Jeff Ho	...	Himself
Jeff Ho	...	Himself - Zephyr Co-Founder
Wes Humpston	...	Himself - Dogtown Skater and Artist
Shogo Kubo	...	Himself - Zephyr Skate Team
Joe Leahy	...	50s Voice Announcer (voice)
Ronnie Jay Leipold	...	Himself - Zephyr Surf Team (as Ronnie Jay)
Ian MacKaye	...	Himself
Jim Muir	...	Himself - Zephyr Skate Team
Peggy Oki	...	Herself - Zephyr Skate Team
Steve Olson	...	Himself
Stacy Peralta	...	Himself - Zephyr Skate Team
Jake Phelps	...	Himself - Editor, Thrasher Magazine
Nathan Pratt	...	Himself - Zephyr Skate Team
Mark Reiter	...	Himself - 70s New York Skater
Fran Richards	...	Himself - Transworld Skateboarding Magazine
Henry Rollins	...	Himself
Wentzle Ruml	...	Himself - Zephyr Skate Team
Allen Sarlo	...	Himself - Zephyr Skate Team
Tom Sims	...	Himself - 70s Skateboard Champion
Craig Stecyk	...	Himself - Zephyr Co-Founder

Directed by
Stacy Peralta

Writing credits
Stacy Peralta		(written by) &
Craig Stecyk		(written by)

Produced by
Glen E. Friedman	....	co-producer
Debra MacCulloch	....	associate producer
Stephen Nemeth	....	co-producer
Agi Orsi	....	producer
Daniel Ostroff	....	co-producer
Christine Triano	....	associate producer
Jay Wilson	....	executive producer

Original Music by
Paul Crowder
Terry Wilson

Cinematography by
Sebastian Jungwirth
Peter Pilafian

Film Editing by
Paul Crowder

Production Design by
Craig Stecyk

Production Management
Agi Orsi	....	unit production manager

Sound Department
Alan Barker	....	sound recordist
Dane A. Davis	....	supervising sound editor
John Fennell	....	digital sound transferer
Michael Gatt	....	sound recordist
Paul Hackner	....	sound re-recording engineer
Eddie Kim	....	supervising sound editor
David McRell	....	sound re-recording mixer
Joe Milner	....	sound re-recording mixer
Lynette Villalobos	....	assistant sound editor

Visual Effects by
J.W. Kompare	....	visual effects editor
Robert Davis Oh	....	film recording technician

Camera and Electrical Department
Andrew Bikichky	....	assistant camera
Pat Darrin	....	archival photography
Matthew McNeil	....	motion-control camera
Modi	....	additional photographer
David Sammons	....	assistant camera

Editorial Department
Michael Hatzer	....	color timer
Scott Juergens	....	additional editor
Scott Juergens	....	assistant editor: avid
Andy Lichtstein	....	colorist
Gisela Weibel	....	assistant editor (as Gizi Weibel)
Royce Smith	....	co-color timer (uncredited)

Music Department
Paul Crowder	....	music selection supervisor
Debra MacCulloch	....	music supervisor
Howard Paar	....	executive soundtrack producer
Stacy Peralta	....	music selection supervisor
Marc Reiter	....	music supervisor
Terry Wilson	....	music editor

Other crew
Don Behrns	....	archive film footage
Glen E. Friedman	....	creative consultant
Hal Jepsen	....	archive film footage
John Malvino	....	archive film footage
Jeff Roe	....	symphony artist: chainsaw
Chris Rohloff	....	archive film footage
Grant Rohloff	....	archive film footage
Marie Whitaker	....	assistant: Daniel Ostroff

Thanks
Trudi Green	....	thanks
Richard Greenberg	....	special thanks
Takuji Masuda	....	thanks
Sato Masuzawa	....	thanks
Sharon Osbourne	....	thanks
Jimmy Page	....	thanks
Peter Paterno	....	thanks
Sean Penn	....	thanks
Robert Plant	....	thanks
Rick Rubin	....	thanks
Steve Shank	....	thanks
Alan Somers	....	thanks: end titles
Robin Wright	....	thanks (as Robin Wright Penn)
Neil Young	....	thanks

Production Companies

• Agi Orsi Productions
• Vans Off the Wall

Distributors

• Cinema Mondo (2001) (Finland) (theatrical)
• Cinemien (2002) (Netherlands) (theatrical)
• Fandango (2005) (Italy) (theatrical)
• Sony Pictures Classics (2002) (Canada) (theatrical)
• Sony Pictures Classics (2002) (USA) (theatrical)
• Tohokushinsha Film (2002) (Japan) (theatrical)
• ottfilm GmbH (2002) (Germany) (theatrical)
• Homescreen (2002) (Netherlands) (DVD) (VHS)
• Mongrel Media (200?) (Canada) (DVD)
• Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (2010) (USA) (DVD) (Blu-ray)

Other Companies

• Danetracks  sound post-production

Also Known As:

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for language and some drug references

Runtime:

91 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White | Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Australia:M | Brazil:Livre | Germany:o.Al. | Netherlands:AL | UK:15 | USA:PG-13 | Finland:S | Iceland:L

Filming Locations:

Santa Monica, California, USA

Company:

Agi Orsi Productions

Trivia:

One of 'Sean Penn''s reasons for signing on as Narrator was that he himself had lived and surfed in and near the Dogtown area.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: A brief shot of a news article/photo of the Z-Boys is flopped (so that the text is backwards).

Quotes:

Jay Adams:I missed a lot of good times, doing things that I shouldn't have been doing. There are certain mistakes I'd like to change, but I'm not going to trip on it to hard.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "50 Documentaries to See Before You Die: The Boy Who Loves Jesus Grows Up (#1.2)" (2011)

Soundtrack:

I'll Give You Money

The birth of "extreme sports"

My skateboarding career ended in 1974 when my two-by-four skateboard with steel roller-skate wheels hit a rock and I tumbled, for days it seemed, down the sidewalk outside my parent's house in Boston. By the time the cast came off my arm, summer was gone.

But I have always admired the X-games types and surfers especially. I think I spent the first month after I moved to Southern California on the beaches and piers watching the surfers, bemoaning that fact that I had missed my calling. It's the sort of thing you should learn young, before the horrible senses of self-preservation and self-awareness burrow in. Or else at best, you'll be so worried about not getting hurt or laughed at, you'll wind up looking like a trained bear.

I always admired how a good surfer seems to not care about anything but that moment, that wave, that experience. At one with the forces of nature. A good surfer makes it look like there is nothing else but that wave right there, and the way you interact with it. There's a lot of Zen in it to me.

This documentary outlines how a few young folks took the surfing concepts and extended them to skateboarding. Ramps, downgrades, low sweeping curves while interacting with the cement waves beneath their feet. In their day and time, this was all new. radical. Prior to the Zephyr Skate team the idea apparently was to go as fast as you could in a straight line on a skateboard, hence my long "Evel Knievel at Caesers Palace" like tumble down the front walk.

This film is a look back through time, to an America before EVERYTHING was labeled, tagged, marketed, and jam-forced down our throats as "Extreme". (Seriously, what's so "extreme" about an "Extreme value meal" at Taco Bell? Other than the fact that it is an extreme hazard to your colon...)

Watch this film and watch the birth of 'extreme sports'. Before there was an X-games, before Boom-boom Huck-Jam, before Crusty Demons, before the ASA...there were these young street urchins who created 'extreme sports' without really trying. They were just doing it for the purity, the pure pleasure, of skateboarding in the sun with friends.

I hope they get a cut of the 'extreme' money out there. Goodness knows they don't get the credit they deserve. Maybe this film can correct that.

Excellent film with a great soundtrack, a portrait of a Southern California, indeed an America, that no longer exists.

I don't care for Sean Penn but he does a decent job narrating.