A Revolution in Sport, Not in Film

What do you get when you cross juvenile delinquent wannabe surfers with a city full of concrete? According to "Dogtown and Z-Boys," the new documentary by former skater Stacy Peralta, you get a revolution. And then some. Unfortunately for Mr. Peralta and for skating enthusiasts in general, the film doesn't deliver. Instead of an insider's view of skateboarding as a sport, "Dogtown and Z-Boys" offers repetitive interviews, coy delivery and unanswered questions.

To be on the scene at the advent of a new invention or innovation must truly be glorious. Imagine witnessing Calder as he worked on an early mobile or listening to jazz great Charlie Christian on his first Gibson electric guitar. It's a rare and miraculous occasion when circumstances make opportunity. So it was in the early 1970s with the Z-Boys in the section of Santa Monica and Venice known as Dogtown. This urban wasteland, "where the debris meets the sea," became the playground for street-smart kids who traded in their surfboards for homemade skateboards. Centered around the Jeff Ho & Zephyr Production Surf Shop, the Z-Boys (including one girl) invented modern skateboarding and inspired an entire pop culture phenomenon. All of which is made to seem much less exciting by this film.

For the Z-Boys, style was everything. The same can be said of "Dogtown and Z-Boys." The mixture of vintage surfing and skating footage with interviews of the key players and additional post-production editing mirrors the rogue, outlaw style of the skating. This could be owing to the film's greatest asset--also its greatest fault--that it was made by one of the members of the Z-Boys. The insider's take on the events is fascinating, but is also too careful when it comes to the interviews. Instead of delving into Jeff Ho's feelings of abandonment by the skaters he helped develop or asking Peggy Oki what it was like to be the one girl on the Z-Boys team, Peralta allows his subjects to be vague and repetitive. It's as if Peralta is afraid of being a killjoy.

The vintage footage itself makes the film worth watching. Luckily, artist Craig Stecyk and photographer Glen E. Friedman had the presence of mind to record history in the making. The images of longhaired blonde boys spinning on skateboards are full of pathos. The shots of the illegal pool rides, especially the innovation of the vertical style of skateboarding, are integral to understanding the evolution of the sport. That journalists and artists knew at that time that there was more to the moment than just sport could be the subject of a film all on its own. And it would probably be a better one than this.