Customer Reviews

Dogtown & Z-Boys [VHS]

5 star:		(86)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

When I first heard about this movie, back when it was debuting at Sundance, I couldn't wait to see it. When it did finally come to my town, I dragged my husband to it; it certainly confused him, seeing his 39 year old computer nerd wife turn into a teen age skate rat overnight!

In my mispent youth, I lived about 20 miles south of Dogtown & idolized Tony Alva. I had his magazine shots covering my walls; I memorized every issue of Skateboarder when it arrived in my mailbox. I also spent every available moment gonzoing the local hilly streets with my friends. As soon as I was old enough to get my own place, where did I move to? You guessed it, Dogtown. I don't talk much about those days now, or at least I didn't until DOGTOWN & Z-BOYS came out.

This movie is wonderful. It really captures what that time felt like, when skateboarding was still closely allied to surfing & just finding it's own identity. The archival footage is amazing, especially the P.O.P. sequence, & the early shots of the Z-Boys at Paul Revere & Bellagio. The editing is brilliant, & the music rocks! What is truly remarkable is that it manages to make skateboarding accessible & enjoyable to those who never participated, such as my husband. He's just as blown away at some of the footage as I was.

The DVD transfer is great. It's nice to be able to slow down some of the sections, or freeze a frame to get a better look, or just repeat your fave sections over & over again. The voice-over commentary by Peralta on the bonus track adds many anecdotes that had to be left out of the film, as well as giving credit to many of the people who contributed footage the documentary relies heavily on. There's also an additional, uncut film of today's Tony A during a pool session, which is nice to see.

The only reason this film doesn't get 5 stars is because of some of the people it left out. Where's Tom Inouye, of the notorious Inouye's Pool Service? When it came to outlaw pool-finding, Tom was the man! Laura Thornhill was probably the only other hard-core girl who got attention at the time; she's completely unmentioned. Although Stacy Peralta gets his props for modesty, he sometimes errs on the side of being TOO modest; there was a spectacular Arizona Pipe session I recall that goes unmentioned, one that Stacy made history at. It would have been nice to see some of that footage too.

All in all, Dogtown & Z-Boys can't be beat if you remember those days. If you're at the age where all this is new to you, it's a great way to learn where all those moves you're busting came from.

Now to dig out some OP's & Vans, & I'll be stylin' again...

Although it's been out for a number of months, it took me way too long to get to a theater to see it. I can't tell you how important this film is. As this ground breaking documentary starts to unfold, Stacy and Craig give you a bird's eye view of their 70's concrete playground, complete with historical reasoning for why Dogtown ever existed (and where, exactly, it existed). The editing style is incredible. At one point, Sean Penn makes a verbal mistake yet keeps on going through his description. Any other editor would have cut it and retaped the audio but keeping it in made the whole thing way more real, like Sean was talking to YOU. In addition some of the skaters, in their interviews are "Fast Forwaded" on screen. Very slick way of clipping the bull and getting to the meat.

This movie is a cultural document that should be played in schools, design studios, city halls and to every youngster who ever thought he knew everything about skating, the X games, Bob Burnquist and Tony hawk. Thank God someone caught as much 70s "film" as they did and thank God these guys got this important era of our American culture on DVD. Buy it. Show it to your kids. Make them watch it. Then... take them out, loosen their trucks and make them do berts until they get it down.

Almost 30 years before the world had heard of Tony Hawk, three-sixties, or even Jackass, there was a place called Dogtown, a singed wasteland of ruin in Venice, California where a then overlooked group of rebellious youthful outsiders shared one passion...Skateboarding.

Spearheaded by the unbelievable skating prowess of Tony Alva, Jay Adams, and Stacy Peralta (who also serves as director here), the Zephyr Team would go on to revolutionize the world of skateboarding in only a few short years, and bring what was once a passing trend into a national, and inevitably commercialized obsession.

"Dogtown and Z-Boys" passionately chronicles the skyrocket rise and subsequent fame of the Zephyr Team, particularly Alva and Adams with remarkable freshness and purpose. Rare and raw footage and pictures of the infamous Z-Boys blazing the asphalt and riding the dry-bone swimming pools of the early 70's is art in itself creating gripping visual moments set against a
soundtrack courtesey of Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Blue Oyster Cult, and Led Zeppelin, just to name a few. In any case, it's hardcore...a hardcore documentary experience that effortlessly recaptures a fleeting moment in history that will never be repeated, when a group of no-account skateboard outlaws rewrote the rules of the game and changed the way the skateboard was ridden forever.

Clever, engaging, and purposeful in its storytelling, "Dogtown and Z-Boys" is a fascinating documentary, and certainly worth checking out.

I'm not a skateboarder--I never have been. So my review of this film is from a truly "outsider" position. I'll skip making comments about the wonderful aspects of this film as a documentary about skateboarding, because to me what makes this a truly remarkable work of art has to do with being a documentary about life and truth and beauty and all that.

This movie is about hope. It paints a picture of young kids growing up in an incredibly harsh environment (the film goes out of its way to portray Venice of the early '70's in practically post-apocalyptic images) who see in the concrete wasteland nothing but ocean waves of endless promise. They craft, as artists, a new ballet amidst the rubble. They are obsessed with skating the perfect run, not necessarily to be better than their friends, but just for the sake of perfection. In this pursuit of perfection, I see hope. I see a vision of a recreated world where there are no barriers based on class or empty swimming pools surrounded by fences and patrolled by police. But there's also an irony in the hope, in that the Zephyr boys have an exclusivity about them--they are fiercely elite in their rejection of conventionality.

The story of one of the top two skateboarders, Jay Adams, provides the heart to this film. His story provides a balance to the narrative of corporate greed, which ultimately destroyed the Zephyr team (but which also made the film possible and the story relevent). He is shown as a very young and, though violent and utterly contemptous, innocent boy oozing with natural talent. He's interviewed several times as an adult who, we find out, is doing time for heroin-related charges in Hawaii. Next to the brilliance of the Jay Adams the boy, in Jay Adams the man we see a dark shell of regret and pain. His fellow riders lament the fact that Jay's life is so tragic and unfair--there's a sense of complete injustice "he should have had it all" "Jay's had the hardest life of anyone I know who's still alive" "you only get one shot at this...once it's gone it's gone." So within this movie about beauty and hope, we meet Jay Adams and see tragedy and injustice. There's an absolutely beautiful and haunting scene at the end of the Jay Adams excurses in which the beautiful young Jay, maybe 12 years old, with long sun-bleached hair, is skating in an empty pool and falls on his way down one side. His board continues through the bottom of the pool, up the other side, and straight up into the air about 10 or 15 feet. The scene is in slow motion and freezes the board mid-air. Then, there's a fade to a still of Jay at about 25 years old holding a picture of himself as a cute, innocent boy of about 7. Then another fade to Jay as a hard, broken man in his 30's, with a crew but, what seems to be a black eye and bruised nose, and tattoos running up his throat. Eyes like empty holes. This is the filmmaker's art at its finest. A scene like this says so much more than words ever could.

Some of the reviews on this film have complained that the film was too short--that it left too many questions unanswered. I couldn't disagree more. This film is all about the questions, not the answers. As a Christian, I see this film as a commentary on humanity and our longing for beauty--our hope for a future that includes a recreated world where architecture is no longer purely utilitarian, where there are no longer divisions between north Malibu and the southern beaches. Where everyone has access to a perfect wave. A future in which greed no longer robs us of our innocence, and Jay Adams is once again that strikingly charismatic and beautiful blond-headed boy writing profound poetry with his skateboard, poetry that destroys the walls of violence and drugs and elitism, that opens his soul to ours and ours to him. In the words of U2, a future "where the streets have no name." Our souls groan for a better place, and this film captures that emotion as well as any I've ever seen. This is an amazing film!

This movie is a love letter to a sport that to those of us who've never skated, helped us understand the passion these people feel for it. With it's absolutely breath-taking visuals, very artistic still photography, and killer sound track, who could resist but be a bit envious of these sunshine golden-boys and their awesome talent? Learning the history behind each person's humble beginnings, and how their passion for a fading trend, helped launch a counter-culture extreme sport is exhilirating to watch. I have a lot of skater friends, and none of them are getting any younger, knees have been ravaged and bones are weary. This film allows those folks, who grew up in this era, and equally loved to skate, relive the reasons that drew them to skating in the first place. To see someone's eyes light up, and catch a glimpse of the sparkle in them, that this awesome sport incites is really beautiful to behold. And the movie definately shows we "non-skaters" why these guys have so much love for their boards! The movie truly is a work of art, beautifully filmed, with actual footage from the era, still photograghy that any world-reknowned photgragher would envy....watching it will make you want to go and grab a board and at least TRY and feel the love!! I just had tickets to Tony Hawk's Boom-Boom Huck Jam exhibition, and seeing this film, showed me he may be the Michael Jordan of the skate world, but he is simply carrying the torch, in a sport where it's founding fathers were all plain old kids from middle-class neighborhoods, who loved something enough, to help turn the sport into what it is today!!!! A MUST see movie!!!!!!!

If you don't know about the Legendary Dogtown and Zephyr teams you don't even know yourself. I'm currently 26 years old and started skating back in 1987 at the age of 11. Watching the Z-Boys from my era (the 80's -90's) the Bones Brigade sparked my curiosity in discovering who influenced them. I've heard so many stories now over the years from the older skaters about how the Dogtown skate team changed our world. I read articles and saw photos. But never was able to witness first-hand what was taking place at that time. This documentary is one of the rawest compilations of footage that I've ever seen. Sure, It may be self-congratulatory. But I don't think anyone else besides the actual Dogtown team could actually convey the story more effectively. Words can't explain how beautiful this documentary is. It covers the foundation of modern-day skateboarding beginning with the aggressive so-cal 70's Zephyr surf team weaving in and out of Piers and metal wreckage. To the birth of modern day vertical skateboarding and early street skating, which clearly mimicked the popular 70's surfers individual styles. This movie displays how a once decayed sport such as skateboarding was rejuvenated in the 70's by a group of young teens. But most importantly this is an outstanding educational tool intended for those who skate and those who don't skate. From a skateboarding standpoint this documentary will show you that the trick necessarily doesn't make the man, but style will ultimately separate you from the rest. Style and individualism is something that is almost extinct today amongst skaters. Hopefully a film of this magnitude can save the actual soul of skateboarding. Kids with Eric Koston, Jaime Thomas, and Stevie Williams posters on their wall need to actually view the talent that emerged from this tough neighborhood and gave birth to not only a sport, but a world wide sub-culture and phenomenon that transcends age, race, and gender. This film will make you grab your board and hit the streets or the local park no matter who you are. Thank you Stacey Peralta for enlightening the world and educating the masses about yourself, Jay Adams, and Tony Alva.
Skateboarding is an art. Skateboarding is not a crime.

I've watched this DVD over and over again, I'm in my mid-30's, a female and my experience with a skateboard was some narrow, plastic thingy I wiped out on in 1977. So why do I like this documentary so much? It's charged, nostalgic, a slice of life from a time I grew up where kids could roam, not wear helmuts, and perhaps get away with a lot more-just be kids. The music was so good and a lot of seaside towns were still funky and not gentrified to the generic death they are today. This film encapsulates all that and makes the subject of the Z-Boys it's heroes (or anti-heroes) of skateboarding in the '70's.

This film is well put together without seeming so. I'm amazed at some of the footage recovered like the surfing at the graveyard of the POP pier-yikes! I've never seen that in all the surfing documentaries. They do a nice job too of spending just the right amount of time presenting a bit of history of Venice, Dogtown, the Zephyr shop and skateboarding without ever losing the tempo of the film. The interviews interspersed throughout are great and feel casual and if you think they are "chest-beating" over their part in skateboard history remember that they DID win contests, they WERE in the mags and they DID crash pools, which I think is so funny. Maybe they too are nostalgic for those days and like anybody who recalls their wild teenage years things always look a bit larger than life. Wentzle Ruml's interviews are priceless.

And the music. The director's commentary will help you appreciate how hard it is to get music you listened to and paid for years ago for your film. They were so lucky-the bios on Peralta, Adams and Alva are so much fun to watch and driven by Hendrix, Allman Brothers and Zeppelin in a way perfectly timed and suited to each Z-Boy. This, I think, is the reason it's so easy to watch over and over again. Even Tony Alva was quoted in Stecyk's book as saying, "When I skate it's toward the Nugent, Hendrix, Zeppelin style." You gotta love it-everyone wanted to be a rock star.

Peralta and his friends have much to be proud of here. If this is perceived as a paean to his group of radical little rats then so be it. Of course extreme sports today make these guys back then look like amateurs but I doubt many others could glean so many photographs and home footage of themselves just fooling around-and doing it with style. And whether some of them are has-beens or not really doesn't matter...most of us are and don't even have anything to show for it. They all seem to still have the spirit within them and credit is due.

The visuals in this movie grabbed me and never let go. The shots of people surfing through the piers and skating all over the town make you giddy. The Z-Boys' moves were dangerous, beautiful, and thrilling to watch. It's great stuff.

The local cultural history was more interesting than I thought it would be. The information about Dogtown, surfboard design, and the source of the graphics used on surfboards and skateboard was fun to learn. I loved the way they looked at skateboarding as an art, a sport, pop culture, and the larger culture.

I am a 40-something woman, and I never skateboarded. I DO ski, and I like watching "extreme" sports like skateboarding, snowboarding, freestyle skiing, (and gymnastics). But it's hard for me to imagine how anyone (other than, okay, maybe a 12-yeary-old) could be bored.

The first time I saw this amazing documentary was when the punky types on the night shift at my local video hut were watching a bootleg VHS copy a few months before the video actually came out. Nearly every customer in the store craned their necks up towards the screen, and sat transfixed, watching the history of modern skateboarding unfold onscreen. [Note to self: if it was that absorbing in the video store, be sure to get it when it comes out!]

"Dogtown And Z-Boys" is a thoroughly engaging, well-produced film which recalls the dim, pre-punk origins of the skateboarding scene that came out of LA in the 1970s and has grabbed hold of antisocial daredevil types across the world ever since. I was transfixed by this film, from beginning to end, and found there wasn't a dull moment or false note in the entire production. I should hasten to add that I have never been much of a skateboarding fan; when I moved to Berkeley in the mid-1980s, skateboarding was already firmly identified with punk rock rebelliousness, with swarms of leather- and denim-clad losers barrelling down the sidewalks at top speed, tediously intent on messing with the minds of all the uptight squares who dared to be less cool than they were. As a punk rock fan who prefers walking to knocking others off the sidewalk, I intensely dislike the culture of show-offy, in-your-face self-centeredness and machismo that skateboarders have adopted; in the 1990s, when the scene went mainstream and became commercialized as an "extreme" sport, it became even that much more tedious and trivial. But this film shows where it all started, with a motley bunch of scruffy teenage Santa Monica beach bums who took the elegance and attitude of the world's best surfers and adapted it to the humble (and then quite primitive) skateboard. The documentary appealed to me both aesthetically and personally -- the Dog Town skateboarders were all undeniably hella cool, and their story is pretty amazing. Also, I remember having the same sort of restlessness and rebelliousness during the post-hippie, pre-punk years of my adolescence, and watching the old footage of the Dog Town crew, I was powerfully reminded of my own proud years as a 1970s juvenile delinquent. The film's tone rang true, which isn't surprising since it was produced by guys who were part of the original Z-Boys clique. It's a captivating, funny, stylish and very creative film, which exhalts a sexy urban subculture without exploiting its subjects or leaving out any members of the audience who might not skate themselves. Great soundtrack, too. A+ all the way around.

Was this movie the best skate flix ever? No but then I haven't seen that one yet. Was it cool, make a statement? Yes, here's my take.

If you pre-date `Dogtown Z-boy' period and were involved in lets say conventional sports. Then you might just pick up on Peralta's central theme in the movie, that `We set the stage for the future of extreme sports'. Although never a skater, I tend to agree and here's why.

Check out the scenes of the revived Delmar event. Notice the competition, they were athletes 1st, and skaters second, e.g., handstands, gymnastic moves etc. Were they good, talented? Sure but they were acrobatic and there is nothing new about acrobatics other than the equipment used.

Then along comes the Z-boys with a unique, spontaneous (out of the box) style. Were Z-boys the best? Maybe not but they put something on the map that was not there before and has since changed the face of sports. I keep this in mind when enjoying the modern X-Games, surfing etc. the EXTREME stuff. And ponder, how did they get there?