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Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001)

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82 comments in total

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25 out of 26 people found the following comment useful :-
When skateboarding became more than nose wheelies and handstands., 9 April 2004

Author: Pepper Anne from Orlando, Florida

Anyone looking to learn more about the development of skateboarding should find Dogtown and Z-Boys adequate research material. This is not to be confused with Lords of Dogtown, that sorry Hollywood attempt to cash in on the success of the original Dogtown revival.

Directed by Stacey Peralta, a former Z-Boys himself as well as pro skater and mastermind behind the 80s Bones Brigade, and co-written with skateboarding photojournalist Craig Stecyk, this documentary traces how a group of surfing kids from Southern California's mean streets (known as Dogtown) who formed the Z-Boys skateboard team (actually there was one girl--Peggy Oki) revolutionized skateboarding. The film contains interviews from nearly all of the Z-Boys (Chris Cahill's whereabouts are unknown) with the most noteable being bad ass Tony Alva and the youngest, Jay Adams, who's talents (along with Perlata) seemed to transcend the rest of the teams. There are interviews of the team's (and the Dogtown shop) founders, surfboard designer Jeff Ho, Skip Engbloom, and Craig Stecyk. There are also interviews of folks like Tony Hawk (obviously), Ian McKaye (Fugazi), and Henry Rollins, who were young kids in the 70s when Dogtown was making it's influence on skateboarding (skateboarding was a whole other context in previous years as the documentary explains).

It really shows you not only who the Dogtown team was and how they formed, but why their style changed not only skateboarding tricks (pool skating became immensley popular, and thus gave way to vert skating), but also facilitated the sport (though not into the extreme commercialism it is today) as more than just the fleeting fad it had been earlier as these surfing kids who's waves ran out in the early morning needed ways to spend their time and eventually got into skateboarding. The days of Russ Howell and Alan Gelfand were long over as the Dogtown, at least through the publicity of their skate team, paved the way for the new generation of skaters. Because Dogtown got all the attention, they were able to push skating to the next step.

It's a great documentary in the way that it is put together, though Stacey Peralta always knew how to do this even when producing the Bones Brigade mini movies/skate demos like "Ban This" and "Search for Animal Chin." Narrated by Sean Penn, the film is accompanied by a fantastic soundtrack, contains lots of terrific archive footage, and lots of interview to give you a genuine feel of who the Z-Boys were and how they made their mark on skateboarding.

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16 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
Great Movie, Interesting Story & History, 3 July 2004
Author: mind_riot_69

First off, the movie was great. It did what it was supposed to do.. and that was to tell the story of a certain time, place and people. Maybe the Z-Boys weren't choir boys (and one girl) but they were real people (kids) and they took the whole idea of skateboarding to new levels... I absolutely enjoyed this movie.. not only because I am from Dogtown (Venice/ Mar Vista/ S.M (south of Wilshire)), used to skateboard (I sucked) and that I dealt with the Z-Boys a few times when they were using my aunt's pool and were scaring my grandma.. but because this movie was about them (the Z-Boys) and the time and the place. Sure there was a semi skateboard culture in the 60's that died out pretty quickly... but the Z-Boys restarted the whole skateboard thing again.. and not only did they restart it; they resurrected and recreated it. Nowadays it is almost a regular thing to see some guy flying out of a pool or a half pipe getting air, etc.. But back then it was something new. They revolutionized the whole thing. There were electric guitars and guitar players before Hendrix but he took it to a whole different level and what he left in his wake is the same thing the Z-Boys left in their's.

To the people who seem to want to criticize the movie or the Z-Boys for talking about themselves.. well the movie was about them.. Remember what it is like to be young and invincible.. and to revolutionize something that they loved by just doing what they loved.. sure it is easy to get an ego.. just ask a kid who learns how to finally play a Hendrix song on a guitar... it is the same thing except the Z-Boys defined the revolution that was to come. They were young, brash and from a place that was a slum by the shore. Sure it was wrong to trash and terrorize people who came to their beach or whatever.. but by the same token.. people from this side of the hill would get a lot of abuse when they went to the Valley or other areas. That doesn't make it right but it does make it what it was. There was a sectional divide in the greater L.A. area. The Z-Boys just happened to be at the forefront of the beach wars.

The Z-Boys rocked and they weren't perfect angels but they were real.. look what happened to Jay Adams.. They were part of the times and places that was the L.A. beach scene.

Finally, I think the style of this movie fit the subject very well. Stacy Peralta was part of the Z-Boys and he did this film as a tribute to what they were all about. It was a rebellion not for the sake of ego but for the sake of something they all enjoyed doing. The camera work, the (killer) soundtrack and the memories were great. The best part, though, might have been the fact that they themselves seemed to document their own history with still pictures and film.

To quote the Surf Punks, "My beach, my waves, my chicks, go home".

Rock on!!!!

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14 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
Hits on multiple levels, 14 July 2004

Author: Big Daddy Audio from Valley of the Sun, AZ

Being in the suburbs of New York when the Z-Boys were creating history in Dogtown, I was only exposed to a glimpse of what was going on. I had a P-O-S Black Knight skateboard with clay wheels. It is long gone, and on the ash heap of my personal life. But I never forgot. It's like watching long-lost brothers and friends, and it hits me right where I live. I cannot watch this film enough. Every time I view it, some other aspect rises to the top, some other viewpoint come into sharp focus. The vintage footage, the incredible stills, the current personalities intermeshed with the vivid shadows of the brightly lit past, the heartfelt and not over-done narrative, all beautifully edited together in such a way as to make a landmark documentary of a genuine slice of American history. In the words of Glen Friedman - "It was F-ing unbelievable."

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13 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
The birth of "extreme sports", 4 June 2005

Author: (chucksnow5@hotmail.com) from Southern California

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.

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9 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Thanks to IFC I finally caught this amazing film-well worth the wait!, 30 January 2005

Author: Bobbi Crow (BobbiCrow@aol.com) from Pacific Northwest

Back in the day, I was one of the RN's in the Emergency Rooms, these skaters would occasionally land in. They were not treated well, and some of it was brought on by their asocial personalities- but we all knew they were a talented bunch of "wonderkids" even then. They deserved better care than they received, I'm afraid. They had "attitude" in spades.

I'm so glad I caught this documentary on IFC tonight- it will be on again at 1 am and I'll be watching again!

Little attention was given to them until the rich dying kid was able to talk his parents into draining the pool- and the film really highlights that as the taking off point....it was an amazing time, and deserved to be recorded. Stacy Peralta is due all the praise heaped on him, and long may those Z-Boys enjoy their memories and contribution to the real sport of skateboarding. As for the few "sour grape" reviews contained herein, there always were and there always will be "wannabees" and hangers-on who never do more than dream...the Z-boys lived it, breathed it, were it.

Nice to see the vintage films and even the lone girl, "Peggy" who was so talked about as being the only female to win their respect.

Thanks to IFC I get to really take the occasional drug-free head trip of my youth and relive the heart pounding excitement again.

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11 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Consummate Style, Invented Being, 22 August 2003
Author: tedg (tedg@FilmsFolded.com) from Virginia Beach

Spoilers herein.

I usually have a hard time with documentaries. Film for me is a matter of conversations between different parts of myself and various personalities (and virtual personalities as elements) within the project. This requires a certain synthesis of the reality in and of the film. Most documentaries, the journalistic ones, cannot acknowledge the synthetic nature of what they show.

No so here. The topic is one that interests: kids making up something that has no purpose other than being a vehicle for style - and it carrying that meme of style to millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of kids. A question of expression completely in line with what happened to our music and dress for a long while before the counterforces of hiphop and country developed.

Cool. And as with so many such successful, youth-driven revolutions, this one was invented by savvy journalism. These same journalists now do a metajob on reporting both the phenomenon and how they created it. Along the way, they have copious interviews with the players.

The same style is used in the film as in the skating, which is a practiced but of course not entirely committed ragginess. There is no mention of the sex and little note of drugs except that the star skater (perhaps the only one that was truly committed) is now incarcerated. He is a completely dulled individual now, the walking dead.

So we have double folding: journalism about journalism about self-journalism. The style of style.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

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6 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Buy it, rent it, just watch it!, 8 August 2004

Author: mattaumann

If you have ever been, has a friend, or a kid that is or was into skating at one time, then watch this flick!. I have seen it several times and I get something new out of it every time that I see it. It reminded me of why I got into skating in the first place (a long time ago) . It reminded me of what skating brings to a person and I have found will also help a person who doesn't understand why skaters, well, skate. Sure there is a very dark side to the whole seen, which the movie does touch on slightly. But it tends to focus more on what is at the core of skating. Just a person on a board, doing it because they love to do it. This movie was so inspirational to me that I'm now skating once again (I'm 32) and I haven't been this happy with my self in years….. Give this one a go, you will not be disappointed.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Edgy documentary on skateboarding..., 5 July 2003
Author: mrchaos33 from Toronto, Ontario

A close-up look at the birth of skate board culture in Southern California, Dogtown and Z-Boys has attitude to burn, just like the sport it documents. Directed by Stacy Peralta, one of the legends of the sport, it captures the punk rock spirit of skate boarding, and perfectly places it into context within the boundaries of time (the 1970s) and location (a neighbourhood between Santa Monica and Venice, California). Even if you are not a fan you'll be fascinated by the story, which is told using a combination of narration, stills, great vintage 1970s skate boarding footage and new interviews with all the key players. Sean Penn provides the narration, and adds a flair all of his own. The opposite of stodgy, Penn speaks to the audience not at them, sounding like someone sitting at a bar telling the tale. At one point in mid-sentence he coughs, pauses for a moment and then continues. It's this kind of approach that gives this movie its edge.

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10 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Melancholia, 9 June 2004
Author: sllovejoy from California USA

This documentary struck a great emotional chord with me. Just reminded me of what it felt like to be a kid in the 70s trying to figure out who you were. Yeah, the men/women talk about their teenage selves like they were superheroes - but that's exactly how I like to remember those years in my life, too. ;) And I didn't do anything quite as cool as those kids did.

I love this movie because it shows the people and the developing sport of skateboarding as being truly products of their environment. Where you grow up, what you see, and who you hang with - these things create you. It was great to see people looking back on that, acknowledging it, accepting it, and taking pride in it. Yeah, maybe a little too much pride in some cases...

Interesting to see where everyone ended up at the end.

Oh, and a good soundtrack.

I bought the movie and will watch it many times over the years, I'm sure.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Fascinating Even for an Outsider, 26 December 2003
Author: Gloucester Man from Pennsylvania

I never surfed or skateboarded but I still found this documentary fascinating. I accidentally stumbled on it while channel surfing (not sidewalk surfing) and watched it a second time later in the day. The Z-Boys made me think of the early days of rock and roll when young kids with no formal musical training basically "invented" rock and roll as they went along.. It seems the Z-Boys did the same with skateboarding.

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