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Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator review
:. Director: Helen Stickler
:. Genre: Documentary
:. Running Time: 1:22
:. Year: 2004
:. Country: USA
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Following the release of Dogtown and Z-Boys and
preceding Thirteen director Catherine Hardwicke's take on the
scene with The Lords of Dogtown, Helen Stickler's
Stoked follows the rise and fall of 80's skateboarding
icon, Mark 'Gator' Rogowski.
When the movie opens, we learn that Gator is serving a
sentence for murder in a California jail and from there the
documentary unfolds his life from childhood to the
gruesome act. I've never been into skateboarding
culture and the idea of me getting on a board is as
ridiculous as Cuba Gooding Jr. owning an Oscar.
Still, I found myself quickly absorbed by a tale
which shows the similarities between pro-circuit skateboarding
and the rock scene while in the background, marketing slowly takes over the sports
world.
Stickler's approach is a bit too academic in an era
where documentaries have become so sophisticated at
the visual and narrative levels, intertwining original
footage and interviews. Stoked focuses on Gator's
phenomenon rather than on his skating abilities—for
this you can check the extras—and the character is
colorful enough, without considering the murder, to
offer a meaty documentary. Just like any story about the
music or film business, we see how money and fame
transformed a regular boy who ended up losing ground,
becoming a caricature of himself, before turning into
some pathetic and psychotic figure disconnected from
the world. Except for superstar and savvy businessman
Tony Hawk, it is also interesting to see what the
former 80's skateboarding stars have become, most of
them looking like 40 year old Huntington Beach surf
bums—I especially enjoyed the Perry Farrell look-alike
tattooed dude sharing his wisdom.
While Stickler's orientation is fair and neutral,
neither ironic nor aficionado, I was still left with
the feeling that some aspects of the party lifestyle
had been left out—particularly the importance of sex
and drugs, somewhat preserving the image of Gator's
former "partners in crime". From the beginning to the
end, the filmmaker envelops her narrative into a
somewhat creepy tonality that will build up to a
terrible conclusion, but the success of her endeavor
mostly lies in the fact that she was able to create a
film that would appeal as much to the skateboarding
crowd as to the neophytes.
Fred Thom
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