LORDS OF DOGTOWN

Getting On Boards
While Lords of Dogtown immortalizes on film the legends who revolutionized a sport, it also represents a thrilling moment in time for its young cast, all exciting up-and-comers out to make their mark in motion pictures.

“It wasn’t just something like hula hoops or yo-yos. It was part of our lifestyle, and I knew at some point there would be a future in it, but my dad was always telling me there was no future in it.” – Tony Alva

One of the biggest challenges straight out of the gate was finding a Tony Alva, the group’s fastest-rising star and a skater with magnetic presence, the guy Jay Adams once called “the first pool ruler and one of the most stylish skaters of all time.” Associate Producer Beanie Barnes suggested Victor Rasuk. Catherine Hardwicke knew him from the Sundance hit hit Raising Victor Vargas, and she believed he had the right aggressive charm to play Alva. His challenge as a New York-raised actor was to work on losing his East Coast vibe. Says Hardwicke, “I called Victor to tell him about the project, and I told him to get on a plane right now, because he had to convince the studio that he wasn’t so New York. He zoomed out here right away and we found this little apartment in Venice right next to where I live. I took him around with a bunch of Venice guys to get him into the Venice ‘hood / California thing. We got rid of all of his clothes instantly and put him in Vans and beach clothes. We had him skating with Tony on day one. So immediately he just dove into this world, learning how to skate and surf. It was completely foreign to him, but he caught on fast.”

“When I first came out to California and met Tony Alva, I was definitely intimidated,” Rasuk recalls. “I mean, on the plane over I kept saying to myself, ‘Don’t be intimidated because people sense that.’ This guy was such a huge influence on the skating world, and still is, so how could you not be? But Tony made me feel really relaxed right off the bat. He knew I wasn’t a skater and where he needed to start me off from, so he seemed relaxed and patient.”

“I had never stepped on a skateboard before,” Rasuk continues. “Tony and the production took me to Skate Lab in the Valley to teach me how to skate. It had flat surfaces, banks and a few ramps for me to get used to the speed of skating. We did a lot of street skating early in the morning and would carve around trees or just kind of cross streets and do the simple things that really mean a lot. And while he was teaching me how to skate, he was telling me all about his life. He told me anecdotes and stories and personal things that really helped me to develop my character.”

Alva liked what he saw. “Victor is a very intense person and a very intense actor,” says Alva. “That’s the reason he was chosen for this part. But he exudes the attitude I had as a kid and that, coupled with his facial expressions and movements that are also like me, makes for a good me!”

“Comparing our style to the others was like comparing an automobile to a Conestoga wagon.” – Stacy Peralta, 1982

Initially it wasn’t that easy finding the right kid to play the young Stacy Peralta, either. “We were having such a hard time casting Stacy because he’s really strong in a quiet way; sort of like a pillar,” says Hardwicke. “A little bit sensible but still kind of sexy, fun and athletic. And that’s difficult to find.”

But like Rasuk’s casting, Beanie Barnes suggested a movie that cinched it for Catherine. “We saw John (Robinson)’s work in Elephant and I was just praying that he would come down and want to do this part,” she adds. “He’s from Oregon, so the day he flew in for it, I was so excited to see him and he just blew us away. He was so much like the real Stacy.”

Peralta agreed. “You don’t go through life thinking that someone’s going to play your life,” says Peralta. “It never occurs to you, so when all of a sudden your life is being turned into a film, you have to think about who could actually play you. When I met John, there were aspects of him that reminded me so much of myself as a kid, that it was eerie. I was kind of like the more peaceful kid, always having one foot in the door and one foot out the door, always looking at the situation while I lived it. John had that sensitive approach. He was perfect.”

For the native Oregonian, skating was part of his youth, and stepping into the life of Stacy Peralta was easier than he expected. “I had been snowboarding my whole life,” says Robinson. “I went to surf camp in Southern California every year until a few years ago, so I had been surfing for a long time as well. I long-boarded, so I had more of the surfer style of skating which was cool ‘cause it’s kind of what I needed to do in the role.” As a result, John was able to do over half of his own skating stunts.

“Stacy was this really controlled, fluid skater,” says Robinson. “And that really carried into his personality.”

“Most of us just wanted to skate and have fun. Then people started getting paid and egos were starting to grow. All of a sudden it was Dogtown vs. the world.” -Jay Adams, 2001

Who in the world could bring Jay Adams to life? Wilder and harder to rein in than the rest of the gang, Adams represents the sport’s dazzling highs and hardcore lows, but Emile Hirsch wore the role like a glove. “Emile is just a stunning actor with such a huge range, he could go any way you needed him to go,” says Hardwicke. “He looks like Jay, he skates like him and sometimes you could just almost feel that Jay took over his body.”

“[Jay’s] gift and his curse was this crazy kind of spontaneous energy,” says Hirsch. “At the same time, though, it wouldn’t let him be pro. He couldn’t market himself the same way as the other guys. Jay was never really into the business side of it. He was more the skate and destroy kind.”

Hirsch ultimately went to Hawaii to hang out with Adams and get a feel for him. “I watched him and talked to him about his life and really picked up a lot of stories and nuances about the guy.” Hirsch, like his co-stars, had to learn how to skate in the true Z-Boy style. “I hadn’t really surfed before,” he adds. “I boogie-boarded so I was used to being in the water. And I’d skateboarded since I was ten, so I actually had a lot of street skating skills. But I had to adapt to a whole different type of skating which was pool skating, and I had never done pools before, so that was a challenge. Most of my stunts were done by my double Griffin Collins, who really rips the pool. But during the shoot they let me bomb Bicknell Hill, which is this famous hill in Venice. It was a great time!”

Rounding out the four core Z-Boys is Michael Angarano as Sid Gianetti. “He’s the worst skater of the group and the goofiest skater,” says Angarano. “The only reason I’m really on the team is because I’m best friends with Jay.”

A newcomer to the skating world, Angarano needed Tony Alva to get him up to speed with the others. “I had never skated before,” says the young actor. “I could go up and down in a straight line and that was basically it. I started to learn to skate about six weeks before we actually started shooting and I improved a lot. I mean, I had to improve, since I could hardly even push on the board before Tony got a hold of me. But now I’m skating pools and on the tiny little boards basically doing everything and skating in all the places where the original guys actually skated, but just not as well!”

“Skip was the scout leader … he was there to cheer you up or kick you in the ass, depending on what you needed at the time.” – Z-Boy Wentzle Ruml IV, 2000 Of course, without guru-like Skip Engblom – co-proprietor of the Zephyr Shop – this story wouldn’t exist. The eccentric yet paternal Engblom led the Z-Boys to fame, and from the day he heard about the Dogtown movie, Engblom had only one actor in mind to portray him. “I saw this kid in The Patriot,” he recalls, “and when people started asking me who I thought should play me, I said it should be Heath Ledger. Everyone always said it would never happen because he was too big.”

“When Catherine became attached as director, they asked me again, and again I said ‘Heath Ledger.’ Catherine called me a few weeks later and said ‘Guess who’s gonna play you in the movie?’ and I said ‘Whoopi Goldberg?’ And she said ‘No, Heath Ledger.’ I couldn’t believe it.”

“Heath and I met and it was very strange how similar we are. I liked him right away. We’d go to Laker games and hang out a lot. Heath wanted to get to know me and my mannerisms.”

Ledger’s interest in the project was sparked by Peralta’s documentary. In Western Australia, the young actor grew up with a surfboard under his arm. “If you didn’t you were beaten,” he jokes. “My first skateboard was a Powell-Peralta,” Ledger continues. “I left my hometown of Perth when I was sixteen and I stopped surfing then with the exception of two or three times a year. This movie seemed like a wonderful excuse to get back out there. I met Catherine to talk about playing Skip after I watched Thirteen and knew they had landed the perfect director. And knowing that she would be working with the same director of photography, Elliot Davis, who shot Thirteen, really excited me. That movie felt like a story was being captured and moments were being stolen and magic was being discovered, as opposed to [feeling] preconceived and preset and stale. And that is exactly what we needed for this movie.”

“I realized it was going to be an honor to play Skip, particularly after meeting him,” he continues. “He’s such a rich character and a beautiful human being to portray, and that was really the clincher for me taking the role.”

When Ledger tried on Engblom’s clothes from the ‘70’s and they fit him perfectly, it only added to the serendipity. But once filming started, Engblom kept his distance to let the acclaimed actor take what he had absorbed from their time spent together and create a character all his own. “Heath is a brilliant actor,” says Engblom. “He didn’t need me to tell him how to be me. It would be like standing over a great artist and telling him to add more blue in the corner of the painting. I didn’t watch one scene [being filmed] the entire time and can’t wait to see what ends up on the screen.”

To represent the outside forces descending on the Z-boys, Johnny Knoxville was cast as Topper Burkes, a wealthy heir who poaches Tony Alva from the Zephyr team, further splitting up the gang. Says Knoxville, “The guy is a complete character, dressed like Sly Stone, and remade Tony in his style and demeanor. Topper just wants to be a part of something.”

With all the testosterone that would inevitably be shooting off like sparks on screen, Hardwicke knew that they needed some prominent female roles to balance the maledominated story. Nikki Reed was brought on to play Kathy Alva, Tony Alva’s sister and the quintessential “skater chick” who gets caught in a love triangle between soft-spoken Stacy Peralta and wild child Jay Adams. Kathy Alva summed up one of Dogtown’s themes when she described growing up poor, on the wrong side of the tracks: “It was harder for us to dream.”

“Catherine and I have been friends for eleven years now, and I had such a great experience with her on Thirteen,” says Reed. “After I read the script, I knew Catherine would get the job because she has the right energy for it. This movie needs a lot of energy. And I fell in love with the Kathy Alva role so I was hooked. I called Catherine every day and kept asking her ‘how do I get this?’ So I convinced the studio and here I am!”

Rounding out the cast is Rebecca de Mornay as Philaine, Jay Adams’ mother, who was a fascinating character. She is struggling with her own problems, but loves her son fiercely.

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