Review of Dogtown and Z-Boys (2002) by Michael W — 01 May 2011

A very rich and vibrant document of a zeitgeist of 20th century counter-culture - a flash in history, a spark that started a wildfire.

"Dogtown and Z-Boys" is a story lovingly and nostalgically retold by director and former "Z-Boy" Stacy Peralta with the help of some truly punk rock editing by documentarian Paul Crowder and narration by actor/filmmaker Sean Penn (whose iconic "Jeff Spicolli" character would certainly have found the Dogtown boys to be totally awesome).

The film chronicles not only the path of this young group of kids in the 1970s, but the movement of the surf and skate culture in South Santa Monica's "Dogtown" region as originally documented in Skateboarder Magazine by photojournalist Craig Stecyk (also the film's co-writer). From there, it does follow the kids who would go on to become the revolutionary Zephyr Skating Team, exploring the phenomenon through the views of the members themselves and a few, select contemporaries.

The film's soundtrack is comprised mainly (and almost continuously) by classic 1970s hard rock music from Thin Lizzy, Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, James Gang, Aerosmith, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Blue Oyster Cult and the like, creating a beautiful, non-stop recreation of the mood and energy of the era.

I also found it interesting that the sex and drugs that obviously were a part of the scene were almost entirely ignored, underlining the idea that, to the people involved especially, it was really all about the skating.

It's no wonder that Hollywood jumped on this topic to retell the story in bigger-budget, conventional narrative form ("Lords of Dogtown"), as the story and its characters are the stuff that great movies are made of, even if it wasn't a smash hit of a film. This documentary, however, stands as the ultimate representation of what happened in Santa Monica in the mid 1970s to start the world-wide and ceaseless fascination with the skateboarding culture. There was a definite and singular origin of it all and Dogtown and Z-Boys was the beginning.