Hacker Cinema
Dogtown and Z-Boys
2002 · Film · documentary · 90 min
Directed by Stacy Peralta
This award-winning, thrilling story is about a group of discarded kids who revolutionized skateboarding and shaped the attitude and culture of modern day extreme sports. Featuring old skool skating footage, exclusive interviews and a blistering rock soundtrack, DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS captures the rise of the Zephyr skateboarding team from Venice's Dogtown, a tough "locals only" beach with a legacy of outlaw surfing.
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6 comments on Hacker News
Steve Albini captured this perfectly in an essay to The Baffler called "Commodify your Dissent". I highly recommend it, as it described the commodification of subculture that started in the 80's and really swallowed everything in the 1990's (in the USA at least);
Here's the book:
https://store.thebaffler.com/products/commodify-your-dissent
One of his examples is that music and clothing companies realized there was a market for things like T-Shirts with Anarchy symbols on them. This stuff didn't exist at scale in the 1970's, you needed to know someone with a silk screen, or live in a city like Chicago or San Fran that had the first wave of non-conformists. But 30 years later you could walk into a mall and come out looking like you had a personality even though you just bought it.
What's really funny, watch "Dogtown and Z-boys", a movie about the rise of skateboarding with lots of footage from the 1970's. The first "tricks" they do will make you say, "What? Where's the trick? He just bounced on his board", and then compare it with today's batshit insane achievements. Skateboarding was peak commodified in the late 1980's (Thrasher magazine helped) early 1990's, but in the 1960's it was ... a simpler time and the outcasts looked like normal kids having fun compared to today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtown_and_Z-Boys
You can see how something goes from a "weird kid activity" to "every kid does it".
Like green mohawks on toddlers in the early 2000's. Edgy in 1970's, preschool in 2010.
Man, I'm showing my age. :|
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Perhaps I skimmed too fast, but the key "event" it doesn't mention is that much of the first wave of gear was not intended to for "dance music." It was intended for rock & roll. But that market shunned it.
It wasn't until some "crazy kids" said "What's this stuff? What can we do with it?" that modern "dance music" was born.
I suppose you can liken it to the invention of the urethane wheels for skateboarding. You want inspiration for innovation? What the "Dogtown and Z-Boys" documentary.
Lots of good suggestions here already, so a few lesser-known ones I've enjoyed:
Typeface - follows the volunteers at the Hamilton Wood Type museum. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1207998/?ref_=nv_sr_1 / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typeface_(film)
Dogtown and the Z Boys. On the birth of professional skateboarding. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275309/?ref_=nv_sr_2 / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtown_and_Z-Boys
Riding Giants. From the director of Dogtown. This one focuses on the development of big wave surfing. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389326/?ref_=nv_sr_1 / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riding_Giants
Pumping Iron. Follows Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno as they attempt to win the 1975 Mr Olympia competition. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076578/?ref_=nv_sr_1 / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumping_Iron
Lords of Dogtown was the Hollywood fictionalized version. You probably are thinking of the documentary "Dogtown and Z-Boys".
The drought plays a major role in the skateboard culture movie Dogtown and Z-Boys. The drought of the 70s caused people around Venice to leave their swimming pools empty, and these pools turned out to be a great practice area.