Product Description

The Dogtown and Z-Boys skateboarding video chronicles the overnight impact of the Zephyr team on skateboarding in the early 1970's and the eventual collapse of the team later in the same decade. This video is directed and co-written by skateboard legend-turned-filmmaker Stacy Peralta and narrated by actor Sean Penn. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5941 in DVD
• Brand: Team Marketing
• Released on: 2005-05-03
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 91 minutes

Amazon.com
In the early 1970s, a group of young surfers from a tough neighborhood south of Santa Monica took up skateboards and offhandedly changed the world. At least it appears so after watching Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary about how twelve "Z-Boys" (including one girl) resuscitated a dead sport and created a lifestyle that spread infectiously to become a worldwide counterculture phenomenon, namely high-flying "vert" (i.e. vertical) skateboarding and punk rock abandon. Director Stacy Peralta, one of the original Z-Boys, and Craig Steyck, the photographer whose publicity first made them famous, would have you believe that with empty pools as their springboard, the clan single-handedly carved a niche that grew into what is now referred to as "extreme sports" (snowboarding seems particularly implicated). Degrees of accuracy aside, the hoard of original footage Peralta and Steyck have access to makes for an engaging portrait of "accidental revolutionaries" whose mythology as expressed by themselves (all but one of the original crew give extensive interviews) and those they influenced (including Henry Rollins, Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam, and Sean Penn, who narrates) is far more entertaining than any evenhanded version could ever hope to be. --Fionn Meade

From The New Yorker
An exuberant documentary account of the rebirth of skateboarding in the early seventies. It seems that a fortuitous combination of newly invented polyurethane wheels and a drought in Southern California-all those drained swimming pools with their curved bottoms and vertical sides-led a bunch of surfer rats in Santa Monica to adapt their crouching, wave-touching moves to the skateboard. As a culture, skateboarding took off from there, and almost thirty years later, the little group of punky pioneers is still proud of what they did. Skate legend Stacy Peralta directed, and the documentary has lots of home movies, stills, and current interviews with the grownup Z-boys, including such former teen masters as Jay Adams and Tony Alva. The movie is too long for what it has to say, but it has a likably rough surface and an appreciation of odd talents and quirks. Sean Penn is the narrator. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

40 Going On 14...
When I first heard about this movie, back when it was debuting at Sundance, I couldn't wait to see it. When it did finally come to my town, I dragged my husband to it; it certainly confused him, seeing his 39 year old computer nerd wife turn into a teen age skate rat overnight!

In my mispent youth, I lived about 20 miles south of Dogtown & idolized Tony Alva. I had his magazine shots covering my walls; I memorized every issue of Skateboarder when it arrived in my mailbox. I also spent every available moment gonzoing the local hilly streets with my friends. As soon as I was old enough to get my own place, where did I move to? You guessed it, Dogtown. I don't talk much about those days now, or at least I didn't until DOGTOWN & Z-BOYS came out.

This movie is wonderful. It really captures what that time felt like, when skateboarding was still closely allied to surfing & just finding it's own identity. The archival footage is amazing, especially the P.O.P. sequence, & the early shots of the Z-Boys at Paul Revere & Bellagio. The editing is brilliant, & the music rocks! What is truly remarkable is that it manages to make skateboarding accessible & enjoyable to those who never participated, such as my husband. He's just as blown away at some of the footage as I was.

The DVD transfer is great. It's nice to be able to slow down some of the sections, or freeze a frame to get a better look, or just repeat your fave sections over & over again. The voice-over commentary by Peralta on the bonus track adds many anecdotes that had to be left out of the film, as well as giving credit to many of the people who contributed footage the documentary relies heavily on. There's also an additional, uncut film of today's Tony A during a pool session, which is nice to see.

The only reason this film doesn't get 5 stars is because of some of the people it left out. Where's Tom Inouye, of the notorious Inouye's Pool Service? When it came to outlaw pool-finding, Tom was the man! Laura Thornhill was probably the only other hard-core girl who got attention at the time; she's completely unmentioned. Although Stacy Peralta gets his props for modesty, he sometimes errs on the side of being TOO modest; there was a spectacular Arizona Pipe session I recall that goes unmentioned, one that Stacy made history at. It would have been nice to see some of that footage too.

All in all, Dogtown & Z-Boys can't be beat if you remember those days. If you're at the age where all this is new to you, it's a great way to learn where all those moves you're busting came from.

Now to dig out some OP's & Vans, & I'll be stylin' again...

Henry Hester
Although it's been out for a number of months, it took me way too long to get to a theater to see it. I can't tell you how important this film is. As this ground breaking documentary starts to unfold, Stacy and Craig give you a bird's eye view of their 70's concrete playground, complete with historical reasoning for why Dogtown ever existed (and where, exactly, it existed). The editing style is incredible. At one point, Sean Penn makes a verbal mistake yet keeps on going through his description. Any other editor would have cut it and retaped the audio but keeping it in made the whole thing way more real, like Sean was talking to YOU. In addition some of the skaters, in their interviews are "Fast Forwaded" on screen. Very slick way of clipping the bull and getting to the meat.

This movie is a cultural document that should be played in schools, design studios, city halls and to every youngster who ever thought he knew everything about skating, the X games, Bob Burnquist and Tony hawk. Thank God someone caught as much 70s "film" as they did and thank God these guys got this important era of our American culture on DVD. Buy it. Show it to your kids. Make them watch it. Then... take them out, loosen their trucks and make them do berts until they get it down.

"Dogtown and Z-Boys" fresh, unique, and infectious
Almost 30 years before the world had heard of Tony Hawk, three-sixties, or even Jackass, there was a place called Dogtown, a singed wasteland of ruin in Venice, California where a then overlooked group of rebellious youthful outsiders shared one passion...Skateboarding.

Spearheaded by the unbelievable skating prowess of Tony Alva, Jay Adams, and Stacy Peralta (who also serves as director here), the Zephyr Team would go on to revolutionize the world of skateboarding in only a few short years, and bring what was once a passing trend into a national, and inevitably commercialized obsession.

"Dogtown and Z-Boys" passionately chronicles the skyrocket rise and subsequent fame of the Zephyr Team, particularly Alva and Adams with remarkable freshness and purpose. Rare and raw footage and pictures of the infamous Z-Boys blazing the asphalt and riding the dry-bone swimming pools of the early 70's is art in itself creating gripping visual moments set against a
soundtrack courtesey of Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Blue Oyster Cult, and Led Zeppelin, just to name a few. In any case, it's hardcore...a hardcore documentary experience that effortlessly recaptures a fleeting moment in history that will never be repeated, when a group of no-account skateboard outlaws rewrote the rules of the game and changed the way the skateboard was ridden forever.

Clever, engaging, and purposeful in its storytelling, "Dogtown and Z-Boys" is a fascinating documentary, and certainly worth checking out.