| By Fred Topel
In Theaters June 3
|
Lords of Dogtown is the feature film version of the documentary Dogtown and Z Boys. Basically, the difference is that instead of hearing real skateboarders talk about their past, you see the stories happen as actors portray them. But who are these young guys who took on the task of playing the Z boys?
In only his third film, John Robinson plays Stacy Peralta, the skater who ultimately made the Dogtown documentary. Still in high school, Robinson is a natural athlete.
“I’m a lacrosse player,” he said. “I’m still in high school. I’m graduating high school. I have four weeks of high school left and I’m in the dead heat of my lacrosse season. We’re undefeated right now and we’re going into the playoffs. Tuesday I have my first playoff game, so I’ve been traveling back and forth.”
Having the real Stacy Peralta around put added pressure on Robinson to live up to the real deal. “ “I thought it was harder because if you’re making it up from scratch, it’s whatever you want it to be. It’s your formula. If I’m playing Stacy Peralta, it’s all right there and if I mess up it’s going to be obvious. Especially with Stacy, who doesn’t like talking about himself, I had to kind of like pick his brain and really get into it and really try to understand the world, take him back 25 years. I can’t even go back five years and tell you what that was like and what was going through my head. It was difficult to get there, but with Stacy, just being around him and understanding the way he operates and what he surrounds himself with made it easy.”
Robinson made a connection the moment he met the Peralta. “When I met Stacy, we connected with each other so easily. We immediately felt a connection with how we felt about life and the decisions we made, especially with me, this whole acting thing. I feel like I’m in the same place Stacy was, because he immediately has all this success and had to go, ‘Ok, I’ve got to be really smart about this. I want to make this into something.’ And I feel the same way. I really want to be careful about each decision I make. It’s so easy to get caught up in more money for scripts or whatever the project. There’s so many projects out here and so many different kinds of decisions to make. So I definitely want to be really smart and I feel like with this movie, I was so passionate about it and the story was so perfect. I really lucked out, for sure.”
Victor Rasuk plays Tony Alva, the hotshot Z boy who is first to sign with a corporate sponsor. He had no skateboard experience, but after training for the film asked the director to let him do more of his own stunts.
“The more I learned how to skate, the more I wanted to do my own stunts,” Rasuk said. “John and Emile as well. We found ourselves asking Catherine, ‘Hey, can we do this stunt?’ and she, her would be like ‘No, because if you guys get hurt, you guys can’t be in this movie.’”
A New York native, Rasuk has only moved to Los Angeles in the last year, because of filming Lords of Dogtown. He has only kept up skateboarding minorly.
I still skate, like street skate, but I’m not good at all. What I do more than the skateboarding is surfing. I love to surf more than I love to skate. I never surfed before [either].”
Now Rasuk surfs with some of his other New York friends who got the bug now that they’re out west. “A friend of mine, this actor named Adam Rodriguez, he started surfing and he called me up the other day. He goes, ‘I know you did the movie, so I know you know how to surf, so now I know someone who knows how to surf. So will you surf with me?’ I’m going to start surfing with Adam. He’s such a New Yorker. I would have never thought he would love surfing.”
Emile Hirsch, the acting veteran of the bunch, grew up in Venice, but long after the time of the Z Boys. “They were before my time,” he said. “I knew about Dogtown, but I didn't know the story. I knew of it as like a symbol of Venice, but until I saw the documentary I didn't know.”
His character, Jay Adams, became the most dangerous thug of the Z Boys, shaving his head and covering himself with tattoos. The film’s final message about Adams is that he was released from prison where he served on drug charges, yet Hirsch got to spend time with him and learn about all the body art.
“I know the story behind the tattoo. One of Jay's friends was like, 'Hey. I'll pay for you to get a zipper tattoo on your head if you'll do it.' And he was like, 'Okay.'”
Now Adams has even more tattoos. “He has the Menace to Society. He's got Dogtown right here [above his right eye] that he got when he was drunk. He's got a little crucifix right there [under his left eye]. He's got L.A. He's got menace to society. He's got a whole Adam's apple down his neck and he's got sevens on his ear lobe because he has a son named Seven. He's got Hundred Percent Skateboarder For Life on the back of his neck. He's got Charles Manson on his wrists. He's covered in tattoos.”
Hirsch is used to playing hard roles, from children of dysfunctional families to troubled Catholic schoolboys. “I just think that the heavy-duty parts are the interesting ones. I don't look at them as heavy duty. I just look at them as good characters. And if they happen to be dealing with dark subjects I think that that's just what they happen to be doing. I don't like try and do dark movies. I don't try to do a certain role. I just try to do something that's a good acting challenge. And a lot of times that just what the good roles are. The good roles are a little bit more complicated or whatever.”
Catch the boys in Lords of Dogtown, June 3. |
