Dogtown and Z-Boys

"Number one, we didn't want this to feel like a traditional documentary," Stacy Peralta explains about his new film "Dogtown and Z-Boys." Dogtown was a slum, now gentrified, that sat next to Venice Beach; the "Z-Boys" are the Zephyr Skate Team that ushered in skateboarding's first great reign of popularity and revolution of style during the 1970s; and Peralta, besides being the director, is also one of the subjects. Despite the anonymity of the hotel conference room in which he is holding court with three collegiate film critics, Peralta radiates energy and sincerity, with a bear-like physique, sandy blond hair, relaxed posture and an extremely hearty handshake.

"We didn't want it to be slow-moving and methodical," Peralta continues. "We wanted it to move really quickly. Skakeboarding is an imperfect activity, it's quite subversive, and we wanted the film to look and feel that way. We wanted to entertain ourselves as filmmakers. Let's do something we enjoy. And if people don't get it, it's okay that they don't get it. And if they do, great."

As it happens, Peralta makes moves on film with as much assurance and style as he executed tricks in days of yore. "Dogtown and Z-Boys" presents a nuanced, rich, visually striking tale of the genesis of a sport whose hold on the American consciousness is only increasing. Even people who are generally uninterested in skateboarding (like your reviewer) will enjoy this tale of a bunch of generally poor young people who, using a surplus of style, determination and attitude, almost single-handedly restored skateboarding to the American consciousness as a cool thing to do.

"Dogtown and Z-Boys" is the definitive version of this story. All of the original Z-Boys (except one whose present location is unknown) gave interviews for the film, and they make up for occasional inarticulateness with unsparing honesty. Peralta unearthed a bunch of fascinating archival footage and pan-and-scanned Craig Stecyk's famous photos of the Z-Boys like Ken Burns on meth. The images are laced with the hardest of 70s rock, the original soundtrack of these events, the rights to which were miraculously obtained on a shoestring budget. And the film has passed muster with "an audience of some of the most hard-core people in Dogtown" and the people whose lives are celebrated in the film.

In fact, Peralta decided to make the film as a pre-emptive strike against something more corporate and less real that loomed on the horizon. "In 1999 Spin magazine did a seven-page story on the whole Dogtown experience, and there was a cover story, 'Dogtown: In Search of Skateboarding's Founding Fathers,'" Peralta explains. "Hollywood bit on the idea of doing a fictional Dogtown movie, and I felt that before any fictional movie is done on our lives, [given] the chances of them getting it right, we should be able to do a documentary. So we were able to use Hollywood's cachet and their interest in developing a movie to get financing to do the documentary." Now producer Art Linson and his partner, the director David Fincher, have come to the Boys for advice, thus averting Peralta's nightmare of a Hollywood-released "Porky's meets Dogtown."

The film embraces much besides the skateboarders themselves, such as the development of skateboard technology, the way in which the Z-Boys' moves derived from surfing, and the sociology of the area. The extent to which surfing and skating dominated Dogtown will surprise outsiders.

Peralta recalls one illustrative incident: "We snuck in there one time when we were 14 years old to see the surf, and the surf was so beautiful, it was like Shangri-La perfect. We're standing there for about fifteen minutes, and all of a sudden this big, deep, dark voice comes from behind us. And we look around - there's this surfer that we knew of, who was famous for being the heavy local of that place. And he threatened to kill us if he ever caught us there again. He threatened to kill us and bury us in the sand. So we left skid marks.

"We used to go to the beach at 4:30 in the morning to get the best waves - we'd ride our bicycles to the beach with our surfboards - and you couldn't go down certain blocks or avenues because if you did you wouldn't come out, you know, whole. It was a forgotten place. But as a result of that, there was perhaps a little more freedom. You didn't have cops down your back all the time. So," Peralta concludes somewhat wistfully, "it was a good place."

"Dogtown and Z-Boys" also shows the perils of fame without lapsing into cliché, mainly by allowing the principals to tell of their own trials. Peralta says for himself, "When I was a kid and all this stuff came to me and I started making all this money, it didn't seem real. And I always knew at any moment, this is not gonna last. A lot of the guys were going, 'Well, I'm getting paid a lot of money, I got access to the best girls, I can do anything I want, I can sleep until 11 every day, I don't have to answer to anybody.' And I think some of them thought that this was how life was gonna be. And I never bought into that. I never thought my life would stay that way. [Making the film] made me realize, I'm the same now as I was then, and a lot of the guys are the same now as they were then."

If the film seems unexpectedly rich, it may be because it was not concieved as a propaganda piece - the film actually doesn't have enough information about Stacy Peralta, which is ample testament to his filmmaking selflessness - but as a document of a cherished past. "This was probably one of the most precious experiences any of us have ever had in our lives," Peralta says. "We weren't teenagers and we weren't yet men, and we were doing something that had been years and years in the making, chasing our dream, and it finally happened. So I wanted to protect that experience."

On the evidence of "Dogtown and Z-Boys," it was a fascinating experience indeed, and the document of it is well worth both Peralta's and your time.

Fact Home

Movie Reviews Home

Spam-O-Matic Home