Wheel Life
Extreme skaters transform the culture in entertaining 'Lords of Dogtown'

It wasn't enough for skate pro-turned-filmmaker Stacy Peralta to make the exceptional 2002 documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, an insider's look at the emerging skateboard culture of Venice Beach, California, in the mid 1970s. Now Peralta hopes to reach out to a wider mainstream audience by rewriting the same material as a dramatic script for the feature film Lords Of Dogtown—sort of an onscreen novelization. The results are mixed, but the story is such a good one, it bears telling again.

This time, the director is Catherine Hardwicke, who proved she knows her way around teen culture in her last film, Thirteen. Scriptwriter Peralta pares down the broad overview of the documentary to focus on the story of three underclass kids destined to become among the most celebrated extreme skaters. For extra pop marketability, the film offers choice parts with rad hair (it's the '70s, after all) for a handful of promising young actors to watch.

The scene is a rundown neighborhood of Venice, neglected poor relation to glitzier Santa Monica, 1n 1975. In the pre-dawn darkness, three kids sneak out of their respective houses with their surfboards to bike or skate to the beach to the ruin of Pacific Ocean Park, a derelict amusement park built out on a pier and slowly crumbling into the sea. The best waves break under the pier, where an occasional slam into the pilings is just part of the ride. But even at dawn, the boys are too late; the alpha dogs are already in the water. Zephyr surf shop owner Skip Engblom (a riotously woozy performance from Heath Ledger), and his crew are surfing the pier, and the younger kids have to wait their turn.

When the waves aren't breaking, the kids spend their days hanging at the surf shop. Charismatic, showboating Tony Alva (Victor Rasuk, from Raising Victor Vargas), in his bronzed corkscrew curls, is the son of a strict Hispanic father who doesn't want his son to end up "digging ditches." Golden boy Stacy Peralta (played onscreen by angelic John Robinson, last seen in Elephant), in his long blond hair and surf shirts, is razzed by Skip and the others as "not one of us—not a pirate" because he has a part-time job in a burger joint. Jay Adams (Emile Hirsch, also bleached blond), the angry product of a broken home, with a needy, dope-smoking, factory drone mom (Rebecca DeMornay), is a wild boy who'll do anything for a thrill.

The invention of urethane skateboard wheels ("made from oil—they grip!") transforms their world by turning their utilitarian "sidewalk surfboards" into something else again. Sensing a profit to be made, Skip starts manufacturing skateboards and organizes the local kids into a competitive team named after his shop, the Z-Boys. With skills honed riding the torturous surf break under the pier, the Z-Boys' low-slung skating style, and aggressive tactics on and off their boards, send shockwaves throughout the polite skate circuit, where competition is still defined in terms of headstands and wheelies.

Within a year, the Z-Boys radicalize the sport and become celebrities on the circuit. Skip has more orders than he can handle —especially since his crew would rather run off to surf than work. And the kids, in search of ever more reckless thrills, start breaking into the back yards of wealthier neighborhoods to skate empty swimming pools that have been drained during the ongoing drought. Meanwhile, Tony and Stacy are lured away from Skip by slick promoters in shark-white suits to become rivals on the pro circuit. Jay, the youngest (the real Adams was only about 13 at the time depicted in the film) is too cool to sell out; in a wry scene drenched in irony, he turns down an offer to sing the jingle in a Slinky TV ad. (But the script shies away from his real-life slide into drugs and rehab shortly thereafter).

There's plenty of grist for coming-of-age drama here, yet the film remains oddly detached from the emotional lives of its boy heroes. Reasonably enough, young Stacy's viewpoint is the best delineated, as he struggles to prove himself worthy of a place on the Z team, and, later, to prove his loyalty to the others despite their professional rivalries. But Stacy's background is the most sketchy; we're never told anything about his parents or family life. And a subplot about his brief romance with Tony's sexy sister, Kathy, barely registers emotionally, and does little to deepen his character. (In fact, this entire subplot is an invention of Hardwicke's, possibly to create a part for Nikki Reed, co-star of Thirteen, as Kathy.)

Hardwicke is more in her element with the camera speeding along, but her emphasis is on raucous hijinks (skaters surfing through traffic, playing chicken with stoplights, hitching rides on the back of a bus, yelling rude things at pedestrians), and the kids can get pretty obnoxious. And she doesn't make as much as she could of the visionary, post-apocalyptic setting of that crumbling amusement park sliding into the sea. A few more long shots, like a terrific one of Jay skating straight off the end of the pier at sunset, would set a more Orwellian tone.

The skating also seems a little tame compared to the raw verve of the documentary footage. (Although the real Tony Alva spent weeks coaching the actors, who do much of their own skating—and have the bruises to prove it.) Still, Ledger's eccentric performance is a blast (he hasn't had this much fun onscreen since 10 Things I Hate About You). Hirsch, Rasuk, and Robinson bring brash iconography to roles that are often underwritten. And Michael Angarano is notable as wisecracking Sid, whose inner ear problem prevents him from being much of a skater, but around whom the others rally. Peralta's film had sharper insight into the historical moment, but Hardwicke's film makes for entertaining teen pop mythology.

LORDS OF DOGTOWN With Emile Hirsch, Victor Rasuk, John Robinson, and Heath Ledger. Written by Stacy Peralta. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke. (PG-13) 105 minutes. (***)
Review published in Good Times, June 9, 2005