Dogtown and Z-Boys (Deluxe Edition)
by Stacy Peralta
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DVD details
Actor: Bob Biniak, Jay Adams, Jeff Ament, Sean Penn, Tony AlvaDirector: Stacy Peralta
Brand: Dogtown
Writer: Stacy Peralta
Writer: Craig Stecyk
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.0; French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.0
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 91 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-05-03
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
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DVD Reviews of Dogtown and Z-Boys (Deluxe Edition)
DVD Review: Stacy Peralta's documentary about the Z-Boys of skateboarding
Summary: 4 Stars
For the record, I have been on a skateboard. I have not done anything that would remotely be considered riding a skateboard, but at some point in the past I have stood on one and tried to maintain my balance. So when even when they talk about the first generation of skateboarders who simply navigated slalom courses such things are way beyond me and when we get to what the Z-Boys are doing in Dogtown we are no longer talking people who live on the same planet as I do. Even if the Z-Boys are tooting their own horns, it seems pretty clear that everybody else in their world thinks they have plenty to be arrogant about, both then and now.
"Dogtown and Z-Boys" is a 2001 documentary directed by Stacy Peralta, who is not only one of the original Z-Boys but also the writer of the screenplay for "Lords of Dogtown" (Peralta co-writes this documentary with photo-journalist Craig Stecyk, whose Dogtown articles in "Skateboarding" magazine were seminal in creating the Z-Boy legend). In point of fact, I checked out this documentary because I am tired of just watching trailers for that film and if it came here I must have blinked and missed it. That movie comes out on DVD in October, so I checked out this documentary instead. Basically what we have here is not only the stories of these legendary skateboarders and the fame and fortune that they found, to varying degrees, but the history of how skateboarding became the cutting edge of the extreme sports movement that now sees X-Games and X-sports at the Olympics.
One of the strengths of this documentary is that you understand exactly the four things that came together to make skateboarding what is was because of these kids in the beachfront slum located between Santa Monica and Venice in California. First, these kids were surfers, but the reality is that you cannot surf all day, so you have to find something else to do, which is what gets you to skateboards as basically little surf boards on wheels. Second, you have the invention of urethane wheels for skateboards, replacing the clay ones appropriated from regular skates, which makes a complete difference in terms of being able to ride your board. Third, you have the element of thrill seeking that comes not from surfing in general but surfing in that particular neighborhood, where surfers do in and around the burned out piers. If you risk banging your head and drowning to get your kicks, then skating on concrete does not exactly pale in comparison. Finally, the California drought of the late 1970s stopped the people of Los Angeles from drinking water in restaurants, watering their lawns, and keeping their pools full. These empty L.A. pools are where skateboarding really takes off because this is what introduces the vertical into the equation. At first the goal is simply to ride your skateboard above the light in the pool, then to side up so only one wheel is on the rim, and then we get eventually and logically to a complete takeoff.
For me the history of the sport and how the Z-boys (named for the Zephyr surfer shop run by Skip Engblom and Jeff Ho) ended up on the cutting edge is more interesting than the individual stories. First Tony Alva is the greatest skateboarder in the world and then maybe it is Stacy Peralta because of his self-promotion, but probably Jay Adams was the best of them all. The problem is that they all look pretty good to me, and Peralta's documentary works mainly because in addition to the talking heads of the 40-year-old Z-Boys today he has home movies of these skaters in their glory days. I understand that demigods like Tony Hawk consider the Z-Boys to be the Olympians or yore, but I really do not have any appreciation for why Alva and Adams are way better than Zephyr teammates Bob Biniak or Paul Constantineau any more than I understand why 70's skateboard champion David Hackett is on a lower rung in the pantheon. I wonder if "Lords of Dogtown" will manage to make such distinctions clearer to me when this documentary could not, but I know already that the film will not give me the understanding of the history of the sport that I get from "Dogtown and Z-Boys."
Description of Dogtown and Z-Boys (Deluxe Edition)
The Dogtown and Z-Boys skateboarding video chronicles the overnight impact of the Zephyr team on skateboarding in the early 1970's and the eventual collapse of the team later in the same decade. This video is directed and co-written by skateboard legend-turned-filmmaker Stacy Peralta and narrated by actor Sean Penn. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.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
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