Moriarty

Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...

Here’s a film that I went into with diminished expectations, to say the least.

I know... that’s not fair. I walked into the film with a chip on my shoulder because of how much I love the documentary that Stacy Peralta premiered at Sundance in 2001. I think it’s a beautiful film, an amazing record of a very specific time and place when Jay Adams, Stacy Peralta, Tony Alva, and the rest of the Zephyr Skateboarding Team were blowing up, golden gods of the California scene, rising stars all around. It was romanticized, sure... Peralta lived the story, after all, and even when the film showed some of the twists and turns of everyone’s lives, it was sympathetic, affectionate. The thing that made the film great is how you could tell exactly how much Stacy loved these other guys, and loved those memories, and how much it all meant to him not as a celebrity, but as a friend. A lot of time and turmoil had passed between all the guys, but Peralta’s film really emphasized how special the moment was before things went sour... when it was just about the thrill, the joy, the sheer kick of being able to do something.

I was frankly afraid of this film when Fred Durst was supposed to direct it. I was interested but still skeptical when David Fincher was going to do it. And I was curious but hardly enthusiastic about the announcement that Catherine Hardwicke was going to be directing. And, like I said, I went to the press screening this week simply out of a sort of idle curiosity. I wasn’t expecting anything in particular.

I certainly wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did.

Hardwicke somehow managed to pull off what I thought was pointless, taking the basic spine of Peralta’s documentary and fleshing it out with character beats that simply couldn’t happen in a documentary. The result is a film that manages to perfectly express the joy that made the documentary so emotionally powerful.

A lot of credit has to go to Stacy Peralta for his screenplay, which avoids a lot of the problems one would expect from someone fictionalizing his own life. It’s not maudlin. It doesn’t paint people in black and white. And, like the documentary, there is an affection for all the characters here that packs surprising punch. In fact, if I could sum up what made me like LORDS OF DOGTOWN so much, it was the surprise of it. I was surprised I enjoyed it. I was surprised by the three young actors who play the leads... Victor Rasuk as Tony Alva, Emile Hirsch as Jay Adams, and John Robinson as Peralta. I was doubly surprised by Heath Ledger as Skip Engblom, the guy who sponsored the team in the first place, and a surfing/skateboarding icon in his own right. I was surprised by how Hardwicke managed to recreate the energy of Peralta’s documentary, and by how engrossing the skateboarding footage in the film is. I was surprised by how deft a touch the film has with the period detail. It’s my favorite recreation of Southern California since Oliver Stone’s THE DOORS, which isn’t to say it’s that same kind of hyperstylized period detail. Hardwicke makes it all feel off the cuff, spontaneous. She’s got a real gift for working with younger actors, and this ensemble clicks. Rasuk looks a hell of a lot like the real Alva, he’s got the check-me-out arrogance down cold, and he manages to keep reminding you of how frail that arrogance can be. It’s affecting work, and a definite fulfillment of the promise he showed in RAISING VICTOR VARGAS. John Robinson was sort of a blank in Gus Van Sant’s ELEPHANT, but so was everyone. That was the point, seemed like. Here, Robinson’s the most “normal” of these kids at the start of the film, and his Peralta makes me think of Wiley Wiggins in DAZED & CONFUSED. Peralta wants to be part of a team with Alva and Adams because he can see how charismatic and charming they are, and because he’s genuinely a great skater. Hirsch does his best work so far in any film here as Jay Adams, the “seed the sport sprouted from,” the original skateboarder, the most naturally gifted of the group, but the one least equipped to actually make something of his gifts. He’s heartbreaking, and his transformation over the course of the film is the most profound of any of them. Again... a surprise. It helps that Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta were both involved with the film, spending time with the young men playing them, making sure they got it right.

Heath Ledger turns in one of those love-it-or-hate-it performances, like Nicolas Cage used to when he was young, or which guys like Val Kilmer and Sean Penn have turned in, nervy work based on some extreme choices that might or might not pay off. I think his Skip Engblom is great, and the way he dissolves as he watches his dream of a Zephyr Team manages to avoid being maudlin. He rages, but you get the sense that most of it is directed inward at himself as he realizes all the opportunities he passed up, all the mistakes he made, and how impossible they are to fix. He slurs and mumbles and slouches and stumbles his way through the film, but it never felt like a shtick to me. I thought he did a great job of making Engblom sympathetic and understandable, but not overly sentimental.

As with the documentary, Peralta’s romanticized things a bit, made more of a movie of the story, with each character getting plenty of key moments to flesh out their respective arcs. It’s impressive how well he juggles the demands of telling the story from each different perspective, and how well he writes Alva and Adams. If you’re familiar with the documentary, you’ll recognize a lot of the key moments here, and if you aren’t, it’s okay, because Hardwicke pretty much recreates some of the key events from that film shot for shot. She obviously relied heavily on the work of Craig Stecyk, the photographer whose work defined the Z-Boys and made them icons to kids all over the world, and she’s aided greatly by her director of photography, Elliot Davis, who also shot I AM SAM, THIRTEEN, and OUT OF SIGHT. He and Hardwicke work well together, and he’s got a knack for making things feel natural, captured on the fly. Hardwicke also leans on a soundtrack that is packed with great period tunes, wielded with precision so that they mean something to the film, and I’m impressed by how she got Sony to dig deep to put together what must have been an expensive track list. When “Iron Man” comes on, it’s so absolutely perfect, so funny and cool and dangerous all at once. It’s details like that which really drew me into the film. There are a ton of cameos from the people who this film is about, including Jim Red Dog Muir, Jay Adams, Tony Alva, Engblom, Peralta, and (in one of the film’s funniest moments) Tony Hawk, who grew up in the shadow of these guys, learning from them, inspired by them. Because of the way they’ve blurred the lines between “real” and “movie,” I almost don’t know what to call this. A docu-bio-drama?

Whatever it is, it works. The film builds emotionally by showing how the pressures of instant celebrity change each of the boys, and they all respond in different ways. Here’s where Peralta could easily settles some scores with Alva, Adams, and Engblom if he wanted, but we’re made to feel for each of them. Alva’s relationship with his father, while not terribly subtle, goes a long way towards excusing Tony any of his excesses or competitive fervor. Jay Adams goes off the rails pretty spectacularly, never quite getting the hang of how to market himself. He desperately wants to take care of his space case hippie mother, played by an almost unrecognizable Rebecca De Mornay. His biggest problem is that he’s got no tolerance for bullshit. Hirsch’s best moments are the small humiliations that stack up, crushing him little by little, and he plays Adams with a bruised dignity that is heartbreaking. Check him out in the moment where a guy tries to sign him to do a Slinky commercial, talking Adams into an impromptu audition that consists of singing the Slinky theme song. Hirsch does it, and he dies a little as he does it, and he makes it real, close to the surface, uncomfortable.

The movie’s secret weapon is Michael Angarano as Sid, the one Z-boy who can’t really skate at all. He’s a rich kid, but he works in Engblom’s shop just to be around the scene, and he’s got some inner-ear thing that keeps him off-balance at all times, which is played for comedy for much of the film. Gradually, though, that inner-ear inbalance turns into something else, and Sid becomes the one thing that can draw the fractured group of friends back together again. If you’ve seen the documentary, then you know about the Dog Bowl. You know it was true. But if you haven’t, then it almost seems like a Hollywood ending, too good to be true, a sort of punk rock tearjerker. There are other noteworthy performances, including the dirty, dirty, dirty Nikki Reed as Kathy, Tony Alva’s dirty, dirty, dirty sister, the fulcrum of a minor-key romantic triangle between Peralta and Adams, as well as Johnny Knoxville as the pimped out promoter who steals Alva from the Zepyr team. All of this adds up to probably my favorite film about troubled youth since THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, and a real gem that shouldn’t get totally lost in the summer blockbuster crush.

So, having said that, I apologize. There are articles due and things to post, and I’ve been having a bitch of a time with my Earthlink DSL account. Tuesday may be the day I’m back online at the Labs. Until then, I’m posting this story from Henchman Mongo’s nearby lair, and before I leave, I think I’ll also post my review of DC’s first serious response to Marvel’s success, the amazing BATMAN BEGINS. Until then...