A Pinoy Blog About Nothing

I never learned to skateboard. I was never a jock. Good or bad, my fascination with computers started early. Yet despite not being so much into sports while growing up, the skateboard movie Lords of Dogtown and documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys resonated with me.

The movie Lords of Dogtown is based on the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys. Stacy Peralta, a member of the Z-Boys himself, co-wrote and directed the documentary. He also wrote the screenplay for the movie. To put it simply, he made a documentary about his friends and then adapted it for a big Hollywood movie. Even if you’re not a skateboarding enthusiast, you’d appreciate it more once you see both films and learn that he also went on to form Powell-Peralta a skateboarding company which pulls in $30 million a year. Powell-Peralta of course backed the team which included among its members perhaps the most recognizable skateboarder today, Tony Hawk. How’s that for overachievement? However, the story isn’t just about Peralta. The rest of the Z-Boys led different, interesting lives as well and each were acknowledged for their contributions to the sport.

What was amazing with Dogtown and Z-Boys was the amount of archival footage they had. Sure the events depicted in the docu happened in the 1970s, not exactly the technological blackhole of our age, but it gives us the viewers a chance to almost be there as it were. The story follows how a group of young men and women growing up in a section of Venice, California called Dogtown moved from surfing to skateboarding. Backed by a local surf shop called Zephyr (hence the Z in Z-boys), these young people went on to turn skateboarding on its head and made it into one of the more exciting sport events today.

It is quite providential that we have these archival photos and videos to see these people in action. Intercut with recent interviews of the Z-Boys, the experience became richer. With Peralta of course, it gives the viewer unprecedented access which would otherwise be lost if say an outsider came in to shoot the docu. The tone becomes that of old friends and comrades talking about the good old days. Like I’ve said, I may not be a jock but I sure do know how it felt to be a kid running around with friends and just goofing off with them. These are a few friends who goofed off and did what they liked but didn’t realize they were giving birth to one of the modern days popular subculture. With Sean Penn narrating, himself a surfer near the Dogtown area - which probably explains the Jeff Spicoli character, the docu gives us a fascinating look at the humble beginnings of a now multi-billion industry.

Lords of Dogtown is an adaptation of the docu by director Catherine Hardwicke. Of course the movie takes several liberties, dramatizing events and amalgating some characters for the sake of clarity. That’s understandable. Heath Ledger gives a funny perfomance, a side which was definitely not shown on screen before. In it, he’s not the young punk but the older Zephyr shop owner who collars these wild kids and enforces his own brand of familial loyalty.

The young actors commit themselves well to their roles, the casting dead-on. Some of the original Z-Boys themselves did some of the skate work and had cameos in the movie. Hardwicke also uses some of the images from the docu footage as a basis for some of her scenes, sometimes comes close to eerily recreating the archival footage.

The movie ends in an upbeat note. The docu painted a more realistic picture. As the real Skip Engblom said in the docu that the Z-Boys weren’t the Lost Boys of Peter Pan, they were the pirates who killed the Lost Boys. Both the movie and the docu enriches the experience of the viewer: one gives a first hand account, the other tries to fill in the blanks the first one missed. However if you’re going to choose which one to watch, you’re better off with the docu to hear the stories from the Z-Boys themselves.