Stacy Peralta was one of the leading lights behind the birth of skateboarding on America's West Coast in the 70s. Now he's made a documentary chronicling the sport's roots...
The documentary says you guys were treated like rock stars...
When the money came into it, and we were flying all over the world, it did feel like we were rock stars. When I went to England for the first time, and I got off a plane, there were paparazzi everywhere. I was 17, going, "What in the hell is going on?" Once I got through that crush of people, I get outside and there's this big van with my name on it. I was just a fresh kid from high school. I'd go places and kids are falling over me for autographs. In Australia, I got mobbed so many times it would go pitch black. I would be sitting on the ground, with kids all over me.
How did you get Sean Penn interested in doing the narration for the documentary?
For Sean, it was a trip down memory lane. He went to Santa Monica High School, which is where Jay Adams and Tony Alva went to school. He skateboarded the same areas, surfed the same breaks, he grew up 20 minutes north of us. He had gone into the Zephyr shop. He's been very supportive of the film.
You're preparing a fictional version of the Z-Boys' story, which Fred Durst will direct. Why is skateboarding so popular in Hollywood?
It's a weird thing: it attracts kids interested in music and art. There's a whole story of how skateboarding is influencing Hollywood. Spike Jonze, who directed "Being John Malkovich", is a skateboarder; the actor Jason Lee was a skateboarding professional. And there's a whole number of people in various positions throughout Hollywood who are skateboarding people. You don't see that in surfing or snow-boarding - that infiltration. There's a magazine in LA now that is the "magazine of music, art, and skateboarding". You'd never see a heading that says "the magazine of music, art, and bicycle motorcross"! It just doesn't work. Skateboarding is a very strange culture; it's very urban and there's a lot of colour to it.
