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Product Description: Follows the evolution of modern skateboarding from its beginnings in a California surfing community to its prominence in the sporting arena today.
Genre: Documentary
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 1-NOV-2005
Media Type: DVDAmazon.com: In the early 1970s, a group of young surfers from a tough neighborhood south of Santa Monica took up skateboards and offhandedly changed the world. At least it appears so after watching Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary about how twelve "Z-Boys" (including one girl) resuscitated a dead sport and created a lifestyle that spread infectiously to become a worldwide counterculture phenomenon, namely high-flying "vert" (i.e. vertical) skateboarding and punk rock abandon. Director Stacy Peralta, one of the original Z-Boys, and Craig Steyck, the photographer whose publicity first made them famous, would have you believe that with empty pools as their springboard, the clan single-handedly carved a niche that grew into what is now referred to as "extreme sports" (snowboarding seems particularly implicated). Degrees of accuracy aside, the hoard of original footage Peralta and Steyck have access to makes for an engaging portrait of "accidental revolutionaries" whose mythology as expressed by themselves (all but one of the original crew give extensive interviews) and those they influenced (including Henry Rollins, Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam, and Sean Penn, who narrates) is far more entertaining than any evenhanded version could ever hope to be. --Fionn Meade
Customer Reviews:
- AWESOME Documentary (even for this 40+ year-old!: I'll keep it short: this is an OUTSTANDING documentary on the roots of radical skateboarding. It's an outstanding documentary, period. Well done, very insightful, loads of fun, and it makes me want to get out on the street and start shredding again.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, even if you aren't a skateboarding enthusiast. - Poor side o' town diversion goes international: It's always great to watch something grow and evolve: just as baseball probably got started in backyards and parks many centuries ago, skateboarding has kick-started its' own "learning curve", and it seems to be a much faster pace than America's Favorite Sport.
The kids with a few bucks could buy (I hope) a nice plank of maple or oak...then fashion something funky for cement, asphalt, or what swimming pools are made of.
These young guys found a spot to enjoy themselves, to hone their craft, although I doubt they knew what "hone" meant or that they were initiating a new sport. (Which at its' best involved alot of skill, grace, and...rowdiness).
I can't call them "working class" heroes because in this film it seems that the only poeople with jobs are the surf-shop owners and the police.
There's a very telling image of a skateboarder circling some presumptive *private* swimming pool - there appears to be a combination of standing gray water standing and green slime. The dude falls right in.
Did he say....wow....that's a sign. I'm going for my GED. (Then I'll apply for a job as Swimming Pool Technician.....). Forgive my presumptuousness, but I doubt it.
They spend just a little too much time "sidewalk [and private pool] surfin'" back then - and it's not cool to tear up a tax-payers' private digs and make Police waste time on punks (with hearts of gold - threw that in).
Interviews with those who were there are professionally done; an interview with legendary Jay Adams, now in drug-related custody, is at once riveting and repelling. Interviews with those who got rich and famous are also well-done, particularly with the interviewee who affirmatively asserts that he was *there* when the name "Dogtown" was created.
It appears that one original skateboard icon has actually moved on to environmentally-positive endeavours: the healthiest, happiest appearing exponent of the 'boarding pre-history is a woman - can't say it was a "sport formerly dominated by men", as she had equal status as a founder.
Ex-skateboarder Sean Penn does a nice, mellow narration - an adroit approach considering that the sport basically is a quiet one.
The actual footage appears to be all Super-8, so we have that "home movie" feel which nicely complements the high-tech. quality of the contemporary footage of the stars.
There's extras including an interview with the Producer of "The Lords Of Dogtown", which create interest in seeing that flick. - Fast shipping: I recieved this right away and in new condition, just as promised. Thanks you very much!
- A GREAT DOCUMENTARY EVEN IF YOU LIKE SKATING JUST A LITTLE BIT !!: I rented this movie, thinking it was "Lords of Dogtown". It is a documentary about those very same people, written and directed by Stacy Peralta, who is one of the kids, and narrated by Sean Penn. My older cousin, Jason, was a surfer in the 1970's near those guys, but I didn't know much about it.
If you like underdogs, dark heroes, anti-heroes, rebels, etc., then you will LOVE this movie. I know I did. - awesome movie: This video was everything I had hoped for. I saw the movie and it was so cool the see the actual people in this documentary. It was worth every penny.
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