Dogtown and Z-Boys (review)
2004; University of Minnesota Press; Volume: 4; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/mov.2004.0035
ISSN1542-4235
Autores Tópico(s)Digital Games and Media
ResumoDogtown and Z-Boys is a love letter dressed in documentary attire. It is a letter addressed to skateboarding, the 1970s, youth, and rebellion. The film is a fast-paced ride through the collective memory of skateboarding and the legend of a group of teenagers from Dogtown, a formerly dilapidated oceanfront community in southern California comprised of South Santa Monica, Venice Beach, and Ocean Park. Known as the Z-Boys because they all began as part of the Zephyr Skateboard Team, the group of eleven males and one female helped construct an attitude and lifestyle that continue to resonate in streets and backyards all over the world. This exciting and well-crafted movie can only extend their legend. The film's director, Stacy Peralta, is a former Z-Boy, professional skateboarder, and skateboard company owner. He starred in two skateboarding films, Freewheelin' (1977) and Skateboard Madness (1980), which exposed him to the craft of filmmaking. After ending his professional skateboarding career in his twenties, Peralta cultivated one of the most influential skateboard teams of the 1980s, the Bones Brigade. During this period Peralta cut his directing teeth on videos made for his Powell Peralta Skateboards company. In classic videos, such as 1984's Bones Brigade Video Show (starring a young Tony Hawk, the sport's first superstar), the director and Craig R. Stecyk, his longtime collaborator and production designer for Dogtown and Z-Boys, crafted mini-movies full of absurdity and innovative skateboarding footage set to music. These videos helped shape a genre that continues to this day, a genre where cinematic rules hold little sway and experimentation is the norm. These early videos influenced a whole generation of artists and filmmakers and created an aesthetic that is seeping into the mainstream via the work of film directors such as Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation), himself a skateboard video maker in the 1990s. Peralta's inside knowledge of his subject matter affords him a unique directorial perspective. Having been a part of the scene, Peralta fully understands the significance of the innovations in the Z-Boys' style and thus is able to visually convey the subtleties in the evolution of skateboarding to even the most novice viewer. He also has access to a goldmine of archival materials, much of it shot by C. R. Stecyk. Stecyk was a partner in the Zephyr Surf Shop with Jeff Ho, an innovative surfboard shaper, and Skip Engblom. The Zephyr Surf Shop was ground zero in the formation of the Z-Boys. It provided a gathering place for the rebellious youths and mentors to foster their burgeoning talents. Although Stecyk was several years older than the [End Page 124] Dogtown crew, he understood the importance of documenting the scene with photographs. These documents form the backbone of Dogtown and Z-Boys when placed alongside two crucial pieces of amateur Super 8 footage. A parent of two Zephyr team members had recorded scenes showing Pacific Ocean Pier, where '60s surfers met '70s skateboarders. And Jeff Ho discovered a twenty-five-year-old roll of undeveloped Super 8 film in his mother's garage. The rapid-cut editing of Paul Crowder serves to further accentuate the breakneck physicality of the riders. Crowder deftly combines multiple archival film sources, both amateur and professional, with a vast number of still photographs and a series of new interviews with the Z-Boys. Peralta's choice to film his contemporary interview subjects in black-and-white has the effect of giving the colors of the archival footage a new vibrancy, breaking down the hierarchies between old and new, amateur and professional. This breakdown is aided by the environments chosen for the interviews: Jim Muir is filmed leaning over the fence in his front yard, Stecyk in a junkyard, Tony Alva in the shallow end of an empty swimming pool as he participates in a skate session. Crowder speeds up the film to zoom past unneeded material from the interviews instead of relying on...
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