Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001)

User Rating:

7.5/10   

Director:

Stacy Peralta

Writers:

Stacy Peralta (written by) &
Craig Stecyk (written by)

Release Date:

3 January 2002 (Australia)

Genre:

Documentary | Sport

Tagline:

A Film About The Birth Of The Now

Plot:

Documentary about the pioneering 1970s Zephyr skating team.

Plot Keywords:

California | Swimming Pool | 1970s | Skateboard | Surfing

Awards:

6 wins & 5 nominations

Cast

Sean Penn	...	Narrator (voice)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Jay Adams	...	Himself (Zephyr skate team)
Tony Alva	...	Himself (Zephyr skate team)
Jeff Ament	...	Himself
Bob Biniak	...	Himself (Zephyr skate team)
Steve Caballero	...	Himself (skateboard champion)
Paul Constantineau	...	Himself (Zephyr skate team)
'Baby' Paul Cullen	...	Himself (Zephyr skate team)
Skip Engblom	...	Himself (Zephyr co-founder)
Steve Freidman	...	Surfer (archive footage)
Tony Friedkin	...	Himself
Glen E. Friedman	...	Himself
Marty Grimes	...	Himself (Dogtown skater)
David Hackett	...	Himself (70's skateboard champion)
Tony Hawk	...	Himself
Allan Jeff Ho	...	Himself
Jeff Ho	...	Himself (Zephyr co-founder)
Wes Humpston	...	Himself (Dogtown skater / artist)
Shogo Kubo	...	Himself (Zephyr skate team)
Joe Leahy	...	50s Voice Announcer (voice)
Ronnie Jay Leipold	...	Himself (Zephyr surf team) (as Ronnie Jay)
Ian MacKaye	...	Himself
Jim Muir	...	Himself (Zephyr skate team)
Peggy Oki	...	Herself (Zephyr skate team)
Steve Olson	...	Himself
Stacy Peralta	...	Himself (Zephyr skate team)
Jake Phelps	...	Himself (editor, Thrasher magazine)
Nathan Pratt	...	Himself (Zephyr skate team)
Mark Reiter	...	Himself (70's New York skater)
Fran Richards	...	Himself (Transworld skateboarding magazine)
Henry Rollins	...	Himself
Wentzle Ruml	...	Himself (Zephyr skate team)
Allen Sarlo	...	Himself (Zephyr skate team)
Tom Sims	...	Himself (70's skateboard champion)
Craig Stecyk	...	Himself (Zephyr co-founder; writer / photographer)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for language and some drug references.

Runtime:

91 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White | Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Finland:S | Iceland:L | Australia:M | Brazil:Livre | Germany:o.Al. | Netherlands:AL | UK:15 | USA:PG-13

Filming Locations:

Santa Monica, California, USA

Company:

Agi Orsi Productions

Trivia:

One of 'Sean Penn''s reasons for signing on as Narrator was that he himself had lived and surfed in and near the Dogtown area.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: A brief shot of a news article/photo of the Z-Boys is flopped (so that the text is backwards).

Quotes:

Stacy Peralta: Jay should've had it all, and it makes me so sad that he didn't.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Gilmore Girls: Application Anxiety (#3.3)" (2002)

Soundtrack:

Bold As Love

The birth of "extreme sports"

My skateboarding career ended in 1974 when my two-by-four skateboard with steel roller-skate wheels hit a rock and I tumbled, for days it seemed, down the sidewalk outside my parent's house in Boston. By the time the cast came off my arm, summer was gone.

But I have always admired the X-games types and surfers especially. I think I spent the first month after I moved to Southern California on the beaches and piers watching the surfers, bemoaning that fact that I had missed my calling. It's the sort of thing you should learn young, before the horrible senses of self-preservation and self-awareness burrow in. Or else at best, you'll be so worried about not getting hurt or laughed at, you'll wind up looking like a trained bear.

I always admired how a good surfer seems to not care about anything but that moment, that wave, that experience. At one with the forces of nature. A good surfer makes it look like there is nothing else but that wave right there, and the way you interact with it. There's a lot of Zen in it to me.

This documentary outlines how a few young folks took the surfing concepts and extended them to skateboarding. Ramps, downgrades, low sweeping curves while interacting with the cement waves beneath their feet. In their day and time, this was all new. radical. Prior to the Zephyr Skate team the idea apparently was to go as fast as you could in a straight line on a skateboard, hence my long "Evel Knievel at Caesers Palace" like tumble down the front walk.

This film is a look back through time, to an America before EVERYTHING was labeled, tagged, marketed, and jam-forced down our throats as "Extreme". (Seriously, what's so "extreme" about an "Extreme value meal" at Taco Bell? Other than the fact that it is an extreme hazard to your colon...)

Watch this film and watch the birth of 'extreme sports'. Before there was an X-games, before Boom-boom Huck-Jam, before Crusty Demons, before the ASA...there were these young street urchins who created 'extreme sports' without really trying. They were just doing it for the purity, the pure pleasure, of skateboarding in the sun with friends.

I hope they get a cut of the 'extreme' money out there. Goodness knows they don't get the credit they deserve. Maybe this film can correct that.

Excellent film with a great soundtrack, a portrait of a Southern California, indeed an America, that no longer exists.

I don't care for Sean Penn but he does a decent job narrating.