Dogtown And Z-Boys

Stacy Peralta, USa, 2001, 91 minutes

Have you ever wanted to be really, really cool? To be the kind of person that all the kids in the street look toward and think: I want to be you? To have risen from nothing, a slum kid, into one of the best known faces of your era? To have your own line of personally designed footwear? In 1970s Santa Monica, a new kind of sport and a new age of counter-culture was conceived.

Dogtown and Z-boys is a story of necessity and of people without anything carving out a niche into which they fit; essentially designing a lifestyle that let them do what they wanted, how they wanted. It focuses on the heart of the Dogtown (a deprived downtown district of Santa Monica) - a small surf shack out of which the Zephyr skateboarding team emerged. It follows the team, who rose from kids emulating their surf idols on bits of wood with roller-skates nailed to them to the point where they were the coolest kids in America. You get to follow their highs and lows as the team are torn apart by stardom, drug abuse and simply by being the best. A canned history of the skateboarding phenomenon showing everything from its surf roots and 1950s birth to mainstream acceptance.

The action is directed by one of the Z-boys, Stacy Peralta, aided by Craig Stecyk, one of the journalists writing for Skateboarder magazine at the time. When they heard that a Hollywood dramatisation of the story of Zephyr was to be made, they decided to get down their version first; their take on the action. The film is made up of pieces of vintage footage, cut together MTV-style with present day interviews from the team, letting you see just where their lives have taken them. It's a well rounded account, both glorious and tragic and even those who have no interest in skateboarding can watch it, just to see modern history in progress.

Review by George Williamson
Written for EUFS Programme Autumn 2003