Pipe Dreams: Stacy Peralta's New Documentary

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Outside Magazine May 2004

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Pipe Dreams (cont.)


	"Dogtown" : Jay Adams riding the concrete surf. (Sam Jones)

PERALTA WENT TO THE MOUNTAIN—literally. At the top of Zuma Ridge Trail, 1,400 feet above Malibu, he looked down at the ocean and made a decision: Let them make their phony feature. He'd make his own documentary, and get it right.

Peralta's films get alpha males to reveal their fragile inner rippers: Wet stuff gathers in Greg "Da Bull" Noll's eyes; stoic Laird Hamilton recalls getting picked on as a kid.

Peralta started making calls to skate buddies he hadn't talked to for years, and was astonished at how happy people were to help him: Jay Wilson, the head of marketing for the skate-shoe company Vans, staked $400,000 on him and, later, $200,000 more. Peralta began rummaging through attics in search of forgotten Dogtown footage, and hired private detectives to track down alumni. As audiences discovered, he possessed a sly genius for getting boarding's toughest alpha males to reveal their fragile inner rippers. In Dogtown, for example, Jay Adams, the baddest of the legendarily bad Z-Boys, regretfully reflects on the way his life veered into a succession of legal problems and jail time.

The combination of stunts, attitude, and emotional truths struck a chord. Jimmy Page, the former lead guitarist for Led Zeppelin, saw Peralta's seven-minute trailer and agreed to license "Hots on for Nowhere" and "Achilles' Last Stand" at bargain-basement prices. Jimi Hendrix's estate followed suit. Sean Penn, who invented the onscreen surf dude in his role as Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, narrated for free. Peralta was aiming for cable release, but a camerawoman convinced him to submit Dogtown to Sundance.

With Riding Giants, Peralta proves that Dogtown was not just a fluke. Once again, the poetry of the board-riding rush is intercut with deeper flashes. Greg Noll tenderly anthropomorphizes Waimea Bay as a lover who's thrown him over for younger guys, then expresses astonishment at the wet stuff in his eyes. Even the stoic Laird Hamilton talks about being picked on as a haole kid in his Hawaiian grade school.

"I've interviewed Laird dozens of times," says Sam George, editor of Surfer and Peralta's co-writer on Riding Giants. "I have to admit, what Stacy was able to pull out of him really surprised me."

The same thing impressed Hollywood. Producers called again, and this time they weren't in search of schlock. At press time, in mid-March, Lords of Dogtown was set to start production in early April, with Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) directing and Heath Ledger as one of the lead actors. The screenplay is Peralta's.

"The thing about Stacy," says the film's executive producer, John Linson, "is that he does the work—the work that everybody else doesn't do."

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