I have chosen to present a movie that really got my attention the first time I saw it. It is called Lords of Dogtown, and it is a mixture of drama, sport, action and biography. It reaches out to many people, considering it consist of so many different genres.
It is based on a true story about the Z-boys. And who were they then? They were three teenagers from Venice Beach, California during the 1970s, who loved to skateboard. Actually it’s these guys who took skateboarding to a whole new level. Their names are Tony Alva, Stacy Peralta and Jay Adams. You get to follow them from the beginning of their skateboarding and all the way towards their success.
They all grew up in messy families, their parents were either alcoholics, drug users or unemployed. None of them had a lot of money, but it really didn’t bother them because all they wanted to do was to skate. And they were able to do that with some help from a guy called Skip. He runs a surf shop but he is also very interested in skateboarding. He decides to help them to join competitions and other events, and he starts a skate team called the Zephyr team. He says “there are more concrete in the world than there are good waves”. Alva, Peralta and Adams outshine the others at the competitions and sponsorships are thrown at them. And before they know it they are world famous, and they all becomes rivals. But there is one of them who doesn’t let the success go to his head, Jay Adams. While the other two are travelling the globe to promote themselves, he still hang around in Dogtown. He doesn’t really bother because he sees what fame has done to his former best friends. He thinks that they have lost the meaning with skateboarding, and they just do it for the money. Jay refuses to give up the one thing he really loved for some papers with numbers on them!
The first time I saw it, I was hooked. I was sitting at home and had nothing to do so I rented this movie, mostly because I had heard that is was good. So I gave it a shot. Anyway I was completely amazed by it. I don’t know much about how to make a movie but even I can tell that the camera-work is awesome. They have really captured all the brilliant moments in it. I think that they have thought about everything to make it interesting for the watcher. Even the colours are changed to look like you are in the 1970s. And they have chosen the music that was popular back in those days and you recognize at least some of it. In one scene when Tony Alva is falling at a very high speed in a downhill you can really feel the pain.
It brings up what it is like to be a teenager in a world full of uncaring adults. I think everyone has felt left out sometimes in their lives. I know I have, more than once. You feel like you are misunderstood and just small. You will always be a child among older people. Everywhere around you there are people without caring parents with alcohol –or drug problems. You think that everything is good and great one moment and the next everything just falls to pieces. I think that it is really important that you have an interest so you don’t have to be in and around the problems all the time. That would just break you down even more.
I think that the skateboarding helped them to get through. They wanted to prove to their parents that they could manage to do it, and it is also a way to break free I guess. The true reason why they got as good as they got I think is because they were so determined to make it, to be able to show to their parents that they didn’t need them anymore.
This movie is also about relationships between brothers and sisters, children and parents. All of these three guys had either lost a mother or a father, none of them had both of their parents around. They counted on their siblings. If I can’t talk to one of my parents about something I always talk to my brother. Since there is only one year between us I feel that he can relate more to some things than my parents can.
Now I’ve seen the movie so many times that I can’t even remember how many, and I’m not burned out on it yet. Perhaps I will later but as it feels now I don’t think so, because every time I watch it I find something new that I hadn’t noticed before. And that’s how a real good movie should be like. No matter how many times you’ve seen it you will always find something new!
Cecilia Friis smsp06
