How Did I Get Here

by Tony Hawk

  The content of this DVD is rated PG : Parental Guidance Suggested.

  Given the amount of edits can you please advise when you think we can see another set of DVDs for final review?

  By chance, I was in the first action-sports video ever made: The Bones Brigade Video Show. It was released by my first big sponsor, Powell Peralta, in 1984. Stacy Peralta, who co-owned the company, was the director. Up to that point, people had made dozens of films about the various action sports, mostly surfing and skiing, but you had to go to a theater to see them. The Bones Brigade movie, released at the same time that videocassette recorders (VCRs) were spreading across the American landscape, was the first produced exclusively for the home video market.

  The cover of Powell Peralta’s The Bones Brigade Video Show, arguably the most influential “action sports” video.

  Courtesy of © Powell Peralta 1984

  The movie’s premiere was held in my family’s living room, after a contest at the Del Mar Skate Ranch near our home. Pretty much every big pro at the time showed up: Lance Mountain, Stevie Caballero, Mike McGill, Christian Hosoi, Chris Miller, Rodney Mullen, and more. None of us really knew what to expect. We just knew that Stacy was excited to show us something.

  A few dozen smelly skaters crowded into the cramped living room of my parents’ townhouse while my dad set up a TV at one end. People were sitting on the stairs, the floor, each other’s laps. Stacy inserted a tape into the clunky VCR and hit “play.” From the opening action, when Lance climbs out a chimney with a skateboard and rides off the roof of a house, we were all screaming.

  The Bones Brigade video was a stroke of marketing genius, and the beginning of a trend that lives on to this day. Stacy and his partner, George Powell, had originally planned to write off the video as a marketing expense, figuring it was a good way to promote their skateboards and team riders. But the video itself became one of the company’s best-selling products of that year, and it changed the way skateboarding was marketed to its core audience. I recently sent Stacy an e-mail to get his take on the historical significance of that movie, and this is what he wrote back:

  You’re right: The Bones Brigade Video Show was the very first action-sports video ever made. My intention was to make skate films based on the surf-film model, but to shoot them on video rather than film, and to show them in living rooms rather than theaters or auditoriums. They were designed for random-access use inside the home.

  What was also unique is that I was a former professional skater who co-founded his own skate company, and I made the films myself in-house as opposed to hiring a filmmaker. This was a brand new concept at the time, and within 10 years almost every significant action-sports company had an in-house production facility to produce their own videos featuring their own riders. It became a form of advertising and a necessary component in the PR tool kit.

  Also, it was the BBVS that really helped launch your rise. Before that first video, Thrasher magazine had tried to ignore you, deeming you a circus skater. But we showed you doing moves no one had ever seen before and proved to the world that you were a skater to be reckoned with. It was our greatest tool in overcoming the magazine’s bias, because we could take our case directly to skaters across the globe.

  What we were not prepared for was the success of that first video—not necessarily monetary success, but success via “access.” Distributors worldwide begged us to make another one as soon as possible. They said it was lifting the tide for everyone in the sport, and estimated that for every kid who bought the video, 30 to 50 ended up viewing it. From that moment forward I began making an hour-long film once a year for a spring premier.

  Thanks to Stacy, I got used to having cameras follow me around—they’ve been a part of my life for about 25 years now—and I developed a genuine interest in film production. I also grew to have an abiding belief in the power of video and the importance of producing footage that appeals to hard-core skaters. I shot most of Birdhouse’s first videos (Feasters, Ravers, and Untitled) and did almost all of the editing. In fact, during one of the skate industry’s scariest downturns, in the early 1990s, I even considered shifting toward a career as a film editor.

  Today, a pro skater’s video segments have tremendous influence over his popularity among serious fans—more important than magazine coverage or competitive success. One good video part (just a few minutes of footage, shot over several months) can launch a career.

  In the late 1990s, after I’d stopped competing, I began looking into creating my own production company, mainly to help provide content for mainstream networks, which seemed to be developing an insatiable appetite for our footage.

  ESPN was especially interested in airing action-sports programming beyond its X Games. Their producers approached me about signing a deal in which I’d commentate at the X Games and also host an episodic series on ESPN2. That’s when we came up with idea of creating our own production company and making a show called Tony Hawk’s Gigantic Skatepark Tour. The plan was to take a bunch of the world’s best skaters around the country, show up at various skateparks, and film whatever happened. I wanted to show that skating was more about community than contests. Also, some of the funniest people I know are skaters, so we invited a cast of characters who were bound to pull some entertaining crap on the road.

  When I went looking for production partners, the first call I made was to my longtime friend Matt Goodman, whom I’d been skating with since high school. Matt was (still is) one of the best snowboarding and skateboarding cinematographers around—a natural athlete who can ride alongside some of the world’s best skaters and boarders while looking backward, camera in hand. We teamed up with another old friend, Morgan Stone, who was working for ESPN as a segment director at the X Games. I trusted Matt and Morgan to create shows that were true to the sport. They knew the difference between a crooked grind and a salad grind, how to shoot it from the best angle, and how to edit it all together to satisfy skaters and nonskaters alike.

  We named our new company 900 Films. I supplied the seed money and the kick-start production deal with ESPN for the Gigantic Skatepark Tour series. Matt and Morgan brought their editing equipment and cameras, and we rented a space next door to the THI offices, in a former bakery. The editing bays smelled like burnt bread.

  It quickly became apparent that we needed to upgrade our gear if we wanted to deliver quality shows. So we took out a loan for a very expensive Avid editing system—the technology of choice at that time among most film and television editors.

  Blackjack, Brawls, and the Pensacola Nine

  We did three seasons of the Gigantic Skatepark Tour. It was crazy, both on the road and back at the 900 Films headquarters. Skate tours are always pretty rowdy, but this one was over the top. We had a well-equipped bus and a collection of big, uncontained personalities, like Bam Margera (future MTV star), Sal Masekela (future X Games commentator and E! TV announcer), Jason Ellis (future trash-talking radio host on Sirius), Mike Vallely (future star of the TV show Drive), and Rob Wells (aka Robert Earl, whose life back then was an ongoing piece of performance art).

  The skating and BMX riding was also sick, with an amazing array of athletes: Shaun White, Mat Hoffman, Danny Way, Bucky Lasek, Bob Burnquist, Andy Macdonald, Eric Koston, Brian Sumner, Andrew Reynolds, Kris Markovich, and Steve Berra.

  On the bus, we played a lot of blackjack, and pulled a lot of pranks. We made a rule that every time someone got dealt a legitimate blackjack, they’d get a scratch-off lotto ticket. One night, after Sal had lost $3,500 to our cameraman Trent Kamerman (his real name, I swear), we gave Sal one of those fake $10,000 lotto tickets. He got flat-out punked, and we all had a good laugh. It’s on film here: facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1194898751291.

  Another time Shaun White secretly poured a weird potion into Sal’s cocktail. It was supposed to turn liquid to Jell-O but didn’t quite work. Sal took a sip and decided that Kris had spit in his drink, so he spewed it down Kris’s back. That triggered a full-on br
awl.

  One of my favorite memories came during a demo in Pensacola, Florida, where there were a bunch of hecklers in the crowd. After a few failed attempts, I pulled a 720 on the vert ramp—a maneuver I’ve made hundreds of times—and Sal convinced the crowd that I’d just made a rare 900. They went wild. From then on, anytime I made a 720, we called it a Pensacola Nine.

  Meanwhile, back at the 900 Films headquarters, the editors and loggers were working 24-hour shifts to meet ESPN’s delivery deadlines. People slept on couches, under desks, in their chairs, and the trashcans overflowed with fast-food remnants and Red Bull cans.

  That TV series turned out to be a terrific start-up experience for an action sports production company. Fortunately, the show was something of a success, and everyone learned how to create quality episodes on deadline. It also enabled the people with real talent to rise to the top. One of our interns, Matt Haring, was a shy 16-year-old when he started at 900 Films doing odd jobs and logging footage after school. He’d taken video production in high school and was a skater, but had no work experience whatsoever. Ten years later, he’s our top editor.

  Dear Tony,

  I’m really in a hole. I’m the only skater in my school, and I don’t get any appreciation for the two tricks I can do: an ollie and a shove-it. I try my balls off to learn new tricks, but I can’t get my ollies high enough. Can you send me some tips? I’m tired of being an outcast with no talents.

  “Can You Teach Me How to Ollie?”

  Our second big project at 900 Films was the creation of Tony Hawk’s Trick Tips. A lot of very young kids were starting to skate, and kids from around the world were sending me mail asking how to do basic tricks. So I recruited a couple of my favorite street skaters, Kris Markovich and Brian Sumner, to help me make a movie to teach the basics. We opened as if talking to someone who’d never stepped on a board, showing how to balance, push, and turn. Then we moved on to more advanced tricks like ollies, kickflips, shove-its, and heelflips.

  Turns out the vacuum in that particular market was bigger than we’d realized, and our timing was good. We initially sold straight to skate shops and small sporting goods stores through Blitz Distribution, the parent company of Birdhouse. We eventually cut a deal with the head of entertainment at Best Buy and gave the electronics chain exclusive distribution rights for the first year. That turned out to be a good move.

  Trick Tips climbed to Number 1 on the Billboard Sports charts and stayed there for over a year. It remains 900 Films’ best-selling product ever—the gift that keeps on giving. We recently edited it into bite-size, two-minute interstitials that we licensed to Fuel TV. We’ve used different iterations as a gift-with-purchase for other products, and even refilmed the basics to create a separate iPhone app that was Apple’s bestselling sports app for several weeks. It may be the most evergreen product of my entire career; there’s always a fresh generation of kids who want to learn how to skate.

  The cover of the hugely successful Tony Hawk’s Trick Tips Volume 1. The success of this video led to two more videos in the series, and were later turned into television interstitials, an iPhone app, product giveaways, and more.

  The success of Trick Tips taught me two lessons: to stick with what I know, and to pay close attention to the letters and e-mails and everyday comments I get from fans. Sure, some of the letters I get are moronic, self-serving, angry, greedy, or all of the above. Every celebrity has to deal with that. But if someone is willing to pay money for a product that has my name on it, and then takes the time to communicate with me about it, I’d be an idiot not to listen. It’s invaluable market research, and it’s free.

  Dear Tony Hawk,

  I’m in sixth grade. Seeing you on TV made me want to become a skateboarder. I can do a few tricks like an ollie, kickflip and shove-it. Me and my friends never say never. Do you have any special tips to give me? Do you get paid for being a pro? If so, what is your salary per year?

  My Dad’s Home-Movie Hobby Pays Off

  We used the profits from those first few productions to buy better equipment and take on other production jobs. In the first five years, we provided content for Activision’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater video games, a Bagel Bites commercial, the feature film xXx (starring Vin Diesel), a Powerpuff Girls commercial, a Fender Guitar spot, and one of the worst skate movies of all time, Grind.

  In 2004, productions slowed down and we started pitching ideas around Hollywood, none of which flew. We were passionate about creating a 3-D movie, and also came up with a few ideas for American Idol–type shows for action sports that we pitched to MTV, Spike TV, Fox Sports, and ESPN. We self-financed a pilot for a show we wanted to call Fan Mail, in which I’d show up to surprise someone who’d written to me. In the pilot, I arrived unannounced at some poor kid’s high school, during an assembly that the principal had agreed to set up without telling anyone why. It actually went off pretty well, so even though the show never went anywhere, we repurposed the footage into a segment for the Secret Skatepark Tour DVD.

  We also got hired to produce a one-off show for OP clothing called “King of Skate,” in which various skaters, including me, competed to see who could do the craziest stunt. It aired on iN DEMAND, DirecTV, and TVN. I skated through fire on a grind rail, but I was a wimp compared to Bob Burnquist, who won the thing (and $25,000) by riding a full loop with the top cut out, while riding switch-stance. In other words, he jumped a gap at the top of a full loop while riding backward. Truly gnarly.

  By 2004, 900 Films was in pretty big debt from these speculative productions. To keep it afloat, I assumed the loans, bought out my partners, and took the company in-house. Jared Prindle, THI’s first full-time employee, loved to shoot and edit film, and had evolved into a great videographer and director. Matt Haring, the ex–high school intern, had transformed himself into a skilled editor with a wonderful creative gift. We paid for him to go to school to learn the finer points of the Avid system, and he really blossomed. Shortly after graduating from high school, he became 900 Film’s full-time editor. Irene Navarro stayed on as line producer, and I became executive producer on almost all projects. My sister Pat began to approach our corporate partners to seek work for 900 Films. Before long, the business was thriving again.

  At the same time, I was in the process of building a facility in the city of Vista, in northern San Diego County. The idea was to create a place where I could to set up the HuckJam ramp for practice, house the THI operations, build a sound-proof studio for my new Sirius Radio show, and provide offices for the folks at the Tony Hawk Foundation. Now that I was sole owner of 900 Films, we decided to go all-in and build two editing studios and a film library as well.

  We soon set out to digitize and archive all the footage that I’d accumulated through the years, including old Super 8 and low-res video my father had taken of me skating when I was a kid. We’ve ended up dipping into that archive often. My dad’s stuff has been used by ESPN, several awards ceremonies, talk shows, and 60 Minutes. It’s been in a McDonald’s TV commercial, and runs on a loop on my roller coaster ride at Six Flags amusement parks. The best part is that a lot of little kids have e-mailed me to say they’ve been inspired by the old footage of me as a scrawny skater in goofy shorts.

  Dust Devils and Big Gaps

  Every so often I wake up with an idea for a skateboard trick. When I was a kid, it was usually some kind of combination of maneuvers that had never before been melded, like a kickflip McTwist. As I got older, I’d envision bigger tricks. Some of them were more properly called stunts, like the Hot Wheels–style full loop. Or the time I used a launch ramp to jump between the roofs of two six-story buildings. And if I was going to risk getting maimed, I made sure it got documented. I mean, I like a good thrill as much as the next fool, but I’m not an idiot.

  In 2000, I got the idea to build a big contraption in the desert that would enable me to clear a gap between two side-by-side quarterpipes. The key was to make one of the quarterpipes portable, so we could adjust the si
ze of the gap. We got a builder and rented some land and we headed out with a film crew. Adio, my shoe sponsor at the time, and Birdhouse helped cover part of the cost, but I went out of pocket on most of it. My idea, my money. The ramp took a few days to build, and we were able to widen the gap by removing pieces of the ramp. The first day it was 12 feet wide, with a piece of coping spanning the void so I could grind across it. The next day it expanded to 18 feet and I pulled some scary tricks (like a 540) before we removed the last section to create a 24-foot gap. I attempted it a few times, made it once, and called it a day. This footage has been used over and over, and I feel lucky that I could afford to build the thing, pull off the stunt, get it all on film—and not get hurt. You can see it here: youtube.com/watch?v=C2VG8ZtC8KU.

  I’ve wanted to film a 3-D movie for a long time, and over the years we pitched the concept to several studios. In 2006, I came up with the idea of going back to the desert, this time with the main part of the HuckJam ramp, including the long jump and a pair of massive quarterpipes, also set side by side with a scary gap between them. We found a studio that wanted to partner up with us, so we moved ahead, building a monolithic setup in the middle of nowhere. We had cameras on cranes, and made plans to rent a helicopter to shoot from above. Shaun White and I would be the skaters. Just as we got the set rigged, our deal with the studio fell apart. But by that time it was too late, so we tossed out the 3-D idea and used high-def cameras instead.

  We set up our entire ramp system in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and the resulting photos and video were spectacular.

  It turned out to be one of my favorite shoots ever, complete with dust devils and some nice doubles routines with Shaun. We used it in the Birdhouse video The Beginning. To see a clip from that day, go here: shredordie.com/video/tony-hawk-new-birdhouse-video.