Peralta wrote the script for Lords of Dogtown, the story of how the Z-Boys rose to fame during the birth of skateboarding in the 1970s. "I've been a professional athlete, I've directed films, I've run a company with 150 employees, and nothing compares to writing a screenplay," Peralta said. "Just the second I think I know what I'm doing, the rug gets pulled out and I have no idea what I'm doing because there are so many problems to solve. Especially in a thing like this where there is an ensemble, every character has to balance off each other, and every time you solve one problem, you knock that squirrel head down, and six more pop up. The documentary is a retelling of what happened back then, but the film is showing a lot of scenes of what really happened."
Earlier conceptions of the film by directors like David Fincher involved teaching professional skateboarders how to act. When Catherine Hardwicke came on board, she decided to teach actors how to skate. This made Peralta and all the real Z-Boys more comfortable.
"It was the right thing to do," said Peralta. "You can teach a kid to skate but I don't know if you can teach him to act."
Tony Alva, an original Z Boy who also advised on the film, replied, "You can't. it just makes the movie suck like all the other ones they've made about skateboarding because they try to take guys who were surfers and skaters and get them to act. It's stupid. The main thing you do right off the bat is to get good actors."
Alva's problems with other skateboarding movies is with the acting, but Peralta feels there is a history of oversimplification that needs to be corrected. "If you go back to the beginning, go back to Gidget," he said. "If you look at Gidget and look at James Darren or one of the guys, they're smoking cigars on a surfboard, and they're talking to one another as they're riding this wave, all relaxed. This is the history that we have to rebel against. We didn't want to fall into that quicksand trap of all that nonsense."
Not all of the Z-Boys come off so well in the film. Tony Alva is portrayed as a co*cky jerk who ditches all his friends. Peralta is portrayed as the innocent pure of heart virgin who respects everything. Peralta assured us that both ideas are dramatic license.
"Jay [Adams] wasn't as angry as he was in the film [either]. Tony wasn't as strident as he was in the film. I wasn't as straight as I was in the film. But this being a film, we kind of had to delineate who these characters were."
That's not to say that the competition that developed wasn't real. "The thing is we were alpha males and we each wanted to be the best, and there only so many opportunities," said Peralta. "So when we all broke up, we were still competing against each other and we saw each other at contests. We put on our game face against each other. I wanted to beat Tony and Tony wanted to beat me and it was a predatory situation."
At the time, none of the Z-Boys ever thought they were starting a phenomenon, let alone laying the foundation for a movie. "We were looked at as vandals too much to ever think that what we were doing was going to turn into something," said Peralta.
Of course, the boys were not vandals. They may have been trespassers invading people's backyards, but they did not damage the property, mostly.
"We used to get really pissed off and like blacklist guys, anybody who came in and really did stuff like that," said Alva. "Except that we spray graffiti. Not on the pools, more on the walls and fences around that area, because that was kind of a cliquey style where you warn other guys this is your territory. That's a different deal. But inside the pools, the property, we never robbed the house or broke the glass in the windows, we just skated the pool."
Now, the Z-Boys have kids of their own. When Peralta's took up skateboarding, he saw history repeat itself. "Last year my kid came into the house and he goes, 'I gotta talk to you about something. We snuck into a backyard a couple of blocks down, there's a pool in the back and we skated it.' He looked at me and said, 'You're not going to be mad at me. You did the same thing.' And I looked at him and all I could say was, 'Did you have a helmet on?' I can't say don't do it."
As children of modern skateboarding see the biopic of its origins, the Z-Boys hope Lords of Dogtown make them appreciate how far the sport has come. "It would be nice if they walk away with a better understanding of where skateboarding came from," said Peralta. "Like Spike Jonze, when he first saw the documentary, he said, 'I had no idea that you guys had to figure out to ride a pool. I just took it for granted that you just did it.' Maybe if people look at it and go, 'Jeez, it had humble beginnings.'"Alva added, "And it shows how it evolved from surfing, especially in L.A. It came from surfing to the streets, to the backyards, people's private property, pools."
Lords of Dogtown opens Friday.
