[TV static drones]
[bright tone]
[skateboard wheels rumbling]
[thumping and sliding]
[bearings whirring softly]
[footsteps]
- [softly] Damn it.
[breathing heavily]
Fuck!
[screams]
[bearings whirring softly]
[meditative ambient music]
♪ ♪
I'm willing to struggle through the learning process,
even change my approach
just to figure out how to do it.
♪ ♪
I never want to back down from a challenge.
♪ ♪
If you're convinced that you're going to fail,
that will come to fruition.
♪ ♪
I was willing to get hurt along the way,
but I didn't visualize myself getting hurt along the way.
♪ ♪
I always approached it like, "This is going to work."
"I'm going to figure this out."
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
My mom used to like to tell the story
that when she would play tennis with me,
I would purposely just try to hit her with the balls.
♪ ♪
She scolded me at one point.
She's like,
"I think you're trying to hit me, Tony.
"I'm not going to play with you
if you're just trying to hurt me."
♪ ♪
I don't know what my disorder was,
but I was definitely difficult.
I was determined to have my way
to the point of being very combative.
My mom would say that I was--
she just said I was very determined.
♪ ♪
I was really young,
but I remember my mom was so frustrated with me
'cause I just wouldn't do what she said.
I wanted to do something, I wanted to do something else,
I--and she finally just said,
"If you don't stop being difficult,
I'm going to flush myself down the toilet."
I didn't believe it, I didn't care, I didn't quit,
and she went in the bathroom and flushed the toilet and hid.
She watched me lean over, the toilet is swirling, going,
"My mommy!"
[chuckles]
- I think she is in the beauty parlor.
- Oh, really?
both: Hi.
- I'm gonna pull her out whenever she's done.
- Okay.
- All right, thank you.
- Thank you. Bye-bye.
- Hi, Mom.
Hi, Mom, it's Tony.
How are you?
How have you been? You look good.
I leave for Montreal next week
for another one of those skate contests.
Keegan is turning 18 in a couple weeks...
Which is a frightening prospect.
And then once Calvin is out, we only have Kady.
It's gonna be crazy.
But I guess by that time,
the older kids will move back in.
[laughs] Isn't that what they do?
Maybe not. Your kids didn't.
'Cause you taught us to be independent.
[gentle piano music]
♪ ♪
It was always a big deal
that my mom was 43 when she had me.
People would say,
"Oh, she's much older," you know?
And, "There are lots of risks involved."
- Tony and I are 20 years apart.
I was a junior in college
when my mom told me she was pregnant.
- I was a senior in high school.
All of Tony's siblings, including me, we're older.
- I'm 12 1/2 years older than Tony,
so when he was young, especially,
our relationship was almost as much...
paternal as fraternal.
- I was basically an only child,
and my parents were old enough to be my grandparents.
- He was stuck at home with my mom and dad
at a time when their marriage wasn't so great.
- My dad wasn't working a lot.
He had been retired from the Navy
and kind of finding his way.
- My brother was a surfer.
He drove him, you know, dawn patrol to get the waves.
My sister was a singer.
He was hauling all their band gear.
He was the coach of our baseball team.
The first time I ever went to bat in Little League,
I was probably about eight or nine.
I knew I was gonna hit it. I was gonna get a home run.
Failure was not an option.
I didn't even consider what would happen if I struck out.
And then I remember striking out
and thinking the world had ended.
I always felt a little misplaced
in all of those sports.
I couldn't do the physical things
that most of my peers could do
because they were bigger and they were stronger,
and so I was always just feeling uncomfortable
and kind of disappointed in myself.
- People would say, "Oh, you have adult children,
and you have-- and you have Tony?"
She goes, "Yeah, he's our little mistake."
- I really do think that that played a role
in his, um...his psyche.
That she would have had an abortion if she could have
in some ways, I think,
maybe made him want to prove himself.
- Bye, Mom. I love you. We'll see you soon, okay?
- [speaking indistinctly]
- Thanks for the visit. Enjoy your lunch.
Do you see me now?
[sighs]
My mom was always careful with her words,
always positive.
And then, I think, one day,
I was just pushing her buttons,
and she's like, "You know, you're just full of it.
You're just full of it, Tony. Full of it."
I'm like, "What?" She goes, "You're full of...
"shit.
You're full of shit."
And I was like...
- Tony was a bit of a dick when he was little.
Stubborn as fuck.
He and my dad would bicker like crazy.
I got along with Tony way better
when it was just the two of us.
So I would often go off-- we'd go off,
go to the beach or go someplace.
- And I remember he and his friend were skating
in the alleyway,
and there was another skateboard,
this older one that was just sitting there,
and I said, "Well, can I try that one?"
I just was going down the alley,
yelling back, "How do I turn? How do I turn?"
And then I eventually ran into the fence.
It wasn't like the skies parted
and there was some great revelation.
It was more like, "Oh, this is hard."
[upbeat surf rock music]
- You know, that skateboard has gone on to be kind of a thing.
It's now--we-- it's in the Smithsonian.
- Freedom.
I'm moving fast, but I'm in control
and I'm flowing.
I could just cruise the landscape.
Going down hills.
Terrible ramps in our driveway.
Everything about it spoke to me.
- He just needed focus,
and so when he started focusing and skateboarding,
he changed.
♪ ♪
- He just calmed down.
He just walked through the world
with a lot more kind of maturity and generosity.
- The main skate park in San Diego was called Oasis.
It was just under a freeway overpass.
And we would see it, and it was like,
"Oh, there's Oasis."
Older kids going way faster
than I had ever seen anyone on a skateboard.
♪ ♪
And it just looked scary as hell.
There were these five craters,
and I was going down the crater and up
and then down the crater and up,
and I thought that was super cool.
And this big kid came flying up,
and he jumped over the middle crater,
and I was like, "How did that just happen?"
I just couldn't believe what I saw,
and I said, "Oh, this is it.
I'm doing this. This is my life."
I quit playing baseball and basketball.
♪ ♪
- I remember once when I was home from college,
my mom asked me to go pick him up
at the Oasis skate park
because dinner was almost ready.
So I was just gonna run down there and grab him,
but he was in the process
of learning frontside rock and rolls.
And he was getting close, and so of course,
you know, the closer you get, the more you slam, and--
but he was young enough
where he was actually crying, I think, over this.
And I'm like, "Tony, come on, we got to go."
And he's like, "I'm gonna make"--
Just, I wasn't even there, you know?
And then finally, he made one clean and rolled away.
And it was like everything kind of lifted.
And he didn't, like, run over and give me a high five.
It was like-- [sighs] "Okay."
And I've seen that in him a bunch
when he's learning something.
He'll get really pissed off,
and then as soon as he makes it,
he's back to being his nice, normal Tony Hawk self.
[Free's "All Right Now"]
♪ ♪
- ♪ Oh, whoa, whoa ♪
♪ ♪
- I knew of Stacy's name because of the Dogtown crew.
And so I knew more of his reputation
than his skating.
- Stacy had been there.
You know, he'd blazed the trail.
He had been a pro.
He knew what that was all about.
- He was just this iconic figure.
He formed the Bones Brigade.
- ♪ Baby, it's all right now ♪
♪ ♪
- He just seemed like this sort of--
I wouldn't say father figure,
but definitely a figurehead of skateboarding.
♪ ♪
- I was a fixture at every one of these contests.
I was at every pro contest.
I was at every amateur contest.
♪ ♪
Tony did not display
any physical talent.
You could watch Tony as a 13-year-old kid
and go, "Dime a dozen,"
because he was so weak and so skinny
that he skated as if he was being operated by a puppeteer.
He was just this kind of, like, guy like this.
But the one thing that he did have is,
you could see in this little weakling of a kid
this intense determination.
You could see in there, there was a mind going,
"Do this! Do this!"
[Echo & the Bunnymen's "Never Stop"]
♪ ♪
- One time, I was at the skate park,
and the Bones Brigade showed up.
And you just knew it immediately.
Like, there was a hush in the skate park.
♪ ♪
Everyone on the team were considered
some of the best skaters.
And Stacy was walking in with these guys,
and they all had these, like, cool-colored helmets
and their Bones Brigade shirts.
And I was just like, "This is the future."
- I remember Stacy was at the park, and I'm like,
"Hey, is there any way I can get on your guys' thing?"
Like, "Hey, man",
"I think you should just stick with G&S.
You'd be better on them, man."
He probably had the vision of the Brigade right then.
And maybe he was like, "It's not gonna work, dog."
- Stacy was gonna get his own little phenoms
and younger guys and build it up.
So I was like, "Wow, I can get on the team."
♪ ♪
- You know, Stacy Peralta
was a cool kind of, like, mentor
for me at 12 years old riding for Bones Brigade.
There came a point where I was like,
"I want to turn pro."
Stacy was like, "No, you're not ready."
- I lost Christian Hosoi.
His dad didn't think I was moving his career along
fast enough, so I had a vacancy.
And I had been watching Tony.
- He kind of summoned me to Marina del Rey.
My brother offered to drive me up there.
We got up there, he handed me this experimental
Steve Caballero model skateboard,
and I just started skating, and I jumped the channel.
And that was no small feat to jump the Marina channel.
That thing was big.
And basically, he said,
"If you want to be on the Bones Brigade,
we'd love to have you."
- He realized this kid's got grit.
He doesn't give up.
He's also really skilled.
He's also gonna get bigger and get stronger.
- ♪ Measure by measure, drop by drop ♪
♪ And pound for pound, we're taking stock ♪
♪ Of all the treasure still unlocked ♪
♪ The love you found must never ♪
♪ Measure by measure ♪
- When I was officially on the team of Powell,
that was way scarier than anything else,
where it was suddenly like I was on this next level
of team, of ability, of belief,
and I had so much more to prove.
- The first time I saw Tony, I was like,
"Look at this little kid."
He was probably, I don't know, 60 pounds wet, maybe.
- We were in a hot tub.
We were hazing him like he's the new guy on the team.
I said, "Hey, dude, if you want to--you know",
"if you want to be part of the crew,
you're gonna have to give me your gum."
And I stuck it in between my toes.
And then I gave it back to him.
I go, "You're gonna have to chew this gum
if you want to be part of the crew."
And he did. [laughs]
- Now with Tony Hawk.
Tony just finished that first round.
Do you think you're gonna make the next cut to eight?
- Uh, I think I have a pretty good chance,
because I stayed on my board,
and that's pretty tough to do in a competition.
- Who do you think your competition's gonna be today?
- Uh, probably-- I'm gonna have a tough time
beating pretty much anyone who entered.
Mainly Lance Mountain, Mike McGill, Stevie Caballero.
[gentle upbeat acoustic music]
♪ ♪
- He was a nightmare. Total nightmare.
[chuckling] Complete, total nightmare.
I remember when I first picked him up on the team,
we were at the Upland skateboard park,
and I said, "Well, I'm gonna take you home."
And he goes, "No, I want to go to Chuck E. Cheese."
And I go, "What's that?"
He goes, "I want to go to Chuck E. Cheese."
And I go, "Yeah, what is it?"
He goes, "It's a pizza place where you can play games."
I go, "I'm not going there."
- [laughing]
It was a Chuck E. Cheese.
I know what he's talking about.
[laughing]
There was a-- I'm a creature of habit,
and so when we would go skate Upland,
there were only a few restaurants
that I would allow myself to go to.
And Lamppost Pizza was one of them.
Like, a mild version of Chuck E. Cheese.
It was lots of games and counter service.
And they weren't known for their cuisine.
- He got me to take him there.
It was the worst nightmare of my life,
but I'm sitting there going,
"This 13-year-old brat just got me to do something
"I was firmly against doing.
He's got some power."
Just the décor and the sounds
and all the awful food.
And I remember just thinking, "I'm never doing this again.
I'm never coming back to this place again."
- Stacy had the worst job.
I mean, he was--
he curated this awesome team,
but we were all kids in our own right,
and we're all with our own issues
and looking for validation, looking for support.
And suddenly, he had to be this surrogate dad.
- I think the first time I saw Tony skate
was at Kona Skatepark.
I had just gotten on the team,
and they all came from out west.
And I remember meeting him,
and I was so-- [laughs]
I tripped out because of how skinny he was.
It was as though he had a hard time
getting up the wall.
But the control he had was insane.
Immediately, you got a sense that he's entirely different.
- Rodney Mullen, like, he and I were on
complete parallel trajectories with our skating.
Rodney was the absolute best freestyler in the world,
a precision level like no other athlete
or performer you've ever seen.
- Because we skated completely different,
that made it easier for me to relate to him, in a sense.
I never had to compete against Tony.
[soft rock music]
♪ ♪
Stacy would ship me down, and I would stay with Tony,
practice for the week at Del Mar.
That's when a real sense of connection, for me,
I had with Tony more than any other skater.
♪ ♪
- No one understood us.
But we understood each other.
♪ ♪
- I think watching Tony learn and fall
is more interesting than watching him land tricks,
because you can see how fast he rifles
to something called the calculus of variations,
of how he corrects himself
and gets to the right spot fast.
That, to this day, is unparalleled.
- Tony was able to figure out how to overcome
all of the things he didn't have
in order to get what he wanted.
For instance,
when skateboarders originally did aerials,
they'd go up the side of the pool,
and they'd pull the board off
and kind of do a leap into the air.
Tony couldn't do that.
He didn't have the strength to leap.
Most guys touch the board, grab it, leap into the air.
Tony figures out, "I'll ollie into my aerials."
He doesn't touch the board until he's in the air.
You never break your speed.
It's one bang.
Well, we discover it's much more efficient
to do it that way.
- When I figured that out,
that changed everything for me.
I started doing varials and finger flips
way up in the air.
- But of course, when he first did it,
people thought he was cheating.
"That's cheating."
It's a technique. How can you be cheating?
"It's cheating." They thought it was cheating.
You know, and at that time, skateboarding was dominated
by balls-out pool riders,
Duane Peters, people like that
that really had power and flair.
And here comes Tony Hawk
with all these weird little flip tricks.
Those guys are looking at him and going, "What is this?"
- A lot of that shit, dude, I mean,
I still can't understand it when I look at it.
It's like fuckin' flippy doo-da-day bullshit.
Go fucking play with your sister's baton, bro.
[indistinct chatter]
- Want me to do it again?
- Yeah, go ahead.
Okay.
What do you think of skateboarding?
- What do I think of it?
Well, I've supported it pretty strong
for a lot of years.
- Confusion. - Confusion?
- My dad wanted to make sure
that there was organization in place,
that if Tony was gonna be this committed to it,
you know, he could actually get some recognition for it.
- My dad helped to form the NSA,
which became the sanctioning body
for all the main events.
- The NSA was the National Skateboard Association.
And people used to say, "No skating allowed."
And especially Mr. Hawk being the guy who was, you know,
yelling at people to get off the ramp.
- Do not come down to the ramp.
Please, get off the ramp.
[cheers and applause]
- He loved yelling at kids.
You know, "Get behind the barrier!"
[laughing] He loved doing that.
- He just--he always had this grimace about him.
Super serious.
Never saw him smile or laugh about anything.
Just always walking around kind of like a--
I don't think he drank, but he seemed like
just a pissed-off alcoholic, basically.
- He was a bull in a china shop.
He had no finesse whatsoever.
But he actually had a really, really good heart.
I mean, he came at a time in skateboarding
where skateboarding really needed a guy
like Frank Hawk to say, "Look at this circus carnival.
We got to focus this a little bit."
- And this is giving in those spots,
and they're riding it and going "uh, uh, uh."
- And he did a remarkable job,
and he didn't get anything for it
except crap from people.
- He carried around, like, a little ledger a lot
and was always looking harsh at people.
- I remember going, "Fuck you," to his old man.
Like, "Get the fuck out of here,
"and take these fucking grubby kids with--
get a fucking job."
I'd go across the fence.
"Get a fucking job." You know.
"Now he wants to bring his Army shit
to the National Skateboarding Associ"--
you know, blah, blah.
- He just came off as gruff and militant,
and they were like, "Fuck that dude.
That's your dad?"
Like, and that would be reflected on me.
[Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the UK"]
♪ ♪
- Right....now.
[laughs]
- One of the first times I ever got to skate with pros,
I remember seeing Steve Olson and Duane Peters,
and, of course, I knew both of them.
They're heroes.
So I went over to kind of skate
near the area they were skating
and kept sort of inching my way closer to them.
- They were in a bowl, and we were riding up.
We'd either chase them out or go to the next one.
- I wanted to be near them.
I wanted to be skating with them.
- "Fuck this."
I mean, these geeky kids.
"Hey, we want to follow you."
- And they were laughing about something,
some inside joke.
And I kind of snickered. "Yeah, yeah," you know?
Like, "Yeah, yeah," like I'm in on the joke.
Duane turned towards me, spit on my grip tape,
and was like, "This is punk rock, kid."
- I don't remember spitting on Hawk, but he does.
I did this shit a lot,
especially to guys that are coming in to--
wanting to be pro.
They're coming in to take our spots.
Fuck you.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- It just reminded me that I don't belong
and this is a mistake
and I can't even fit into the skateboard world.
That was heavy for me.
♪ ♪
- He took a lot of shit.
He got a lot--people fired a lot of arrows at him.
He never really let on how much that hurt, I think,
at the time in the skate world.
And he never showed...
Kind of that resentful side
that I'm sure he must've been feeling.
He just put his head down and said, "Fuck it."
"I'm gonna skate as hard as I can,
"I'm gonna get as good as I can,
"and I'm gonna show these assholes that, you know,
I'm the best skater out there."
♪ ♪
- Leading up to this Whittier contest,
November of 1982,
I had just done really well at the pro versus am event.
All my peers were pro.
And it was like, "You're next."
At the competition,
we're filling out the entry forms.
It says "pro or amateur" box.
Like, that determines which category you're in.
And I remember feeling Stacy looking over my shoulder.
I just checked pro.
Then I looked up at him, and I go, "Is that okay?"
And he's like, "If that's what you want to do."
And then I was pro.
- That was it. - That was it.
[laughs]
There's no-- there's no champagne.
[rock music]
I suddenly felt, "This is super scary."
Duane Peters is skating.
My first thought was, "Don't put me against Duane."
- I went against him on his first contest.
- First head-to-head event as a pro,
I'm going against Duane Peters.
- This is gonna be easy. I'm taking this fucker.
- Duane Peters. These guys go head-on-head.
It's who does better.
[Adolescents' "Kids of the Black Hole"]
♪ ♪
- Go!
♪ ♪
♪ Kids in a fast lane, living for today ♪
♪ No rules to abide by and no one to obey ♪
- I can't see how difficult these tricks are.
They just look fucking lame to me.
- I knew for sure he did not want me to beat him.
My thought was, "Stay on target.
Make your run."
- ♪ House of the filthy, house not a home ♪
♪ House of destruction where the lurkers roamed ♪
♪ House that belonged to all the homeless kids ♪
♪ House of the filthy, house not a home ♪
♪ House of destruction where the lurkers roamed ♪
- Tony's dad's all excited.
They're all by the judging thing.
- ♪ Kids of the black hole ♪
♪ ♪
- Tony Hawk beats out Duane Peters at 86.66.
[cheers and applause]
- I heard the scores,
and it took a second for it to register.
And I was thinking, "I beat Duane?
"I beat Duane.
I beat Duane!"
- I was an old guy on his way out.
New crew coming in.
That hurt, and--'cause I was--
all of a sudden, it mattered to me.
- Was that your last contest? - Yeah.
Pretty much everybody's, yeah.
[tone hums, static crackles]
- Hi, I'm Bob Burbanks,
and welcome to "Weekend Today."
We're gonna take an exciting look at skateboarding.
This is a skateboard. - That's not a skateboard.
- Some neighborhood daredevils...
- We're gonna do a little adjusting here.
- Right here on "Weekend Today."
[glass shatters]
- Now, this is a skateboard.
[The Faction's "Skate & Destroy"]
♪ ♪
- ♪ Forget the light, skate and destroy ♪
- Stacy took a chance putting out money
to make a video of skateboarding.
- We originally made the Bones Brigade videos
thinking that skateboard shops would play them.
And then, we didn't realize,
but the release of the first one
coincided with 70% of Americans buying VCRs.
- I think a lot of people,
that's where they first saw me.
[upbeat rock music]
- And it also coincided
when Tony started to get strong.
- That was when Tony first kind of came in
as this wunderkind.
So when the first Bones Brigade video came out,
which was the first action sports video ever made,
Tony was on the cover.
- It was so fun to see it.
It was so fun to see everyone
separately but together in the same video.
And Lance was the thread that brought it all in.
And when I saw my part, I thought it was super cool.
I just couldn't believe that he had managed
to make it all work together.
And he's putting things in slo-mo.
I mean, it just felt like--
like it was my birthday party.
[laughs]
[indistinct chatter]
- Caballero and Tony were always in the top five,
and I was kind of fading a bit, you know?
And I was just finding it harder and harder
to get up into that top ten.
And I'm like, "Oh, I guess this is it for me."
I need something, you know, that's"--
so I started going to some of these camps,
you know, helping to teach.
And at one Swedish camp, I, you know, made this trick
called the McTwist, which is a 540.
People would ask me, "What is that, Mike?"
- Mike McGill came to a Del Mar contest,
and there was all this buzz that he had a new trick.
And people were purposely not telling me what it was,
because they thought somehow I was gonna learn it.
Mike shows up, and first day of practice,
he does a McTwist.
[tense music]
Full 1 1/2 somersault in the air,
coming down forward, going backside direction,
which means you're totally blind to your landing zone.
And it was just like, "What happened?
Were you training with gymnasts?"
I knew then and there
that I was gonna have to learn it.
- There's a few tricks that have been chased for years.
And it was one that everyone knew could be possible,
but no one knew how to do it
or try it or even have the guts to try it right.
And it took McGill to do it, which was,
you got to do it 6 foot out.
You can't do it low.
Everyone was trying it low to figure it out.
And you had to have the actual wherewithal to, like,
"Oh, I've got to launch into the sky
and see what happens."
- That kind of spiraled me
and put me in the top five every contest.
- You developed the McTwist.
Are you gonna be able to pull that off here in this--
- Uh, hopefully.
- When I did try it,
I realized how much harder it is
than I thought it would be.
I didn't come close.
I couldn't see my landing zone.
I don't even know if I had a good hold on my board.
- I can imagine how hard you slam on that trick,
'cause you're just spinning freely,
and if you overturn, it's done, dude.
♪ ♪
- I was hyper-focused, obsessed with the trick.
I had to figure it out.
I remember being in school
and just knowing the bell's gonna ring
and I'm going straight to the park
and trying McTwists.
That was the only thing I was focused on.
I started getting the spin more consistent.
I started seeing the landing zone,
and then it was pretty obvious, like,
well, there's only one more stage,
and that's just that you got to suck it up and land.
- How hard was that trick to learn?
- Simple.
- Simple? - Mm-hmm.
It's not technique. It's balls.
And I have no problem spinning it,
but do I want to set it down?
That's all just guts.
[The Clash's "Somebody Got Murdered"]
♪ ♪
- The 540 was the trick
that you needed to win competitions,
and once you learned that trick,
you were in top three.
- Did you attempt them?
- I thought about doing them.
And then I did some low stuff like Tony used to do.
And I just started trying to--
and it was just like, "No way."
So I couldn't do it. I just backed out.
I was like, "It's not gonna work."
- Neil Blender, are you gonna make the finals tomorrow?
- No.
They just called them out. Didn't even make it.
Should've seen me, falling all over the bowl.
- There was contests I couldn't skate at all,
and I'd just do, "Oh, I'll do an axis ollie 540."
Made the cut. Whew.
Money, done. Paid.
Buy diapers. Done deal.
- And it just became
this proving ground, where it was just like,
"Are you doing a McTwist or not?"
'Cause this is where we're all going towards.
[Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart"]
♪ ♪
- Okay, next skater up,
Christian Hosoi.
[cheers and applause]
- Christian was a showman.
He could show up with his shirt off,
dangling out of his back pocket,
and the crowd was with him.
It was all style and air with Christian,
and it was all technical and tricks with me,
and people had to choose.
- There was a contest at Del Mar.
The fans were like, you know, "Hosoi, Hosoi, Hosoi!"
- Next up, Tony Hawk,
riding for Powell-Peralta and Tracker Trucks.
Tony, whenever you're ready.
[crowd booing]
- Whenever I would go, they would just be booing.
- You know, at his home park at Del Mar,
I thought, you know, the crowd was pretty rough.
crowd: Christian! Christian! Christian!
Christian! Christian! Christian!
Christian! Christian! Christian! Christian!
- These guys are just getting mad at him,
because they're seeing him do tricks.
Like, they want to see some older shit,
a long lip slide or something, like,
and it's just not gonna happen.
They were pissed, throwing beer cans and whatever else.
- I fell on one of the runs near the end.
And I fell near this beer can.
Like, I almost slid into it.
And I was just like, "Really?"
And so I grabbed it, and I went to throw it
back at them, and I was just like, "Am I--"
"I can't-- I can't play this game.
"I'm gonna lose no matter what.
"I'm never gonna be seen by these guys
"as legitimate or cool.
And I just gotta suck it up and do my own thing."
[crowd booing]
- 96.666.
- I don't think that people understand
that when you're skateboarding,
it becomes an expression of who you are, your identity.
How you are embraced as a person
is who you are.
That stuff is all on the line during those contests.
- All that noise, I was just like,
"All right, I'm just gonna--
head down, I'm gonna do the work."
- And he came in,
and he just took it out on 'em.
He was just focused.
[crowd booing]
[Peter & The Test Tube Babies' "Blown Out Again"]
♪ ♪
[crowd cheering]
♪ ♪
[crowd cheering]
- ♪ I am here, but where is she? ♪
♪ We were supposed to meet at 3:00 ♪
♪ Now I'm soaking wet from this pouring rain ♪
♪ It looks like I've been blown out again ♪
♪ Although I try, it's all in vain ♪
♪ I've been blown out, blown out again ♪
♪ It's not my fault, I'm not to blame ♪
♪ I've been blown out, blown out again ♪
♪ ♪
[crowd cheering]
- 93.000.
Tony Hawk is the winner!
[cheers and applause]
- When I finally started to have some success
in competition,
I was getting blasted in the magazines.
"Thrasher" would write that there was favoritism
in the competitions
'cause my dad was helping running it
and the finals were always at Del Mar
and that's my local park,
and so the whole thing was just made for me.
He's daddy's boy.
- It was very easy for all the skaters to think
that somehow Frank Hawk's pulling the strings.
Really easy to do that. He couldn't.
You know, all he did was organize this thing.
- Even I did it at some point, you know?
I was like, "Wait a minute. Your son's in the last heat.
How come I'm in the first heat?"
- It was just hard. It was hard being an outcast.
It was hard being a skater
whose style no one appreciated.
And then my dad just added to that formula,
and it was just, like-- I was just ostracized.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
I just felt that his presence was too intrusive
and was affecting me and my relationships so much
that there was no escape from it unless he backed off.
Finally I just told him, you know,
"I don't like it when you're at the events.
It's way harder for me."
He didn't take it well.
He wasn't--it wasn't--
there was not gonna be a compromise.
His answer was basically,
"Well, then I just won't-- I won't go.
"I just won't do these events.
You just want me not to be in there at all?"
And I'm like, "Well..."
Things got icy between us, and at the next event,
he purposely tried to keep his distance.
And I guess that's the best I could hope for
without him quitting altogether.
- Now, you're the father of Tony Hawk.
How does it feel when you see your son
go in there and compete?
- Oh, I'm thrilled to death.
I have to kind of force myself to keep subdued
so I don't let people think I'm giving him an advantage
in a contest or something.
So when we get to a contest, we're strangers to each other.
But I'm very proud of him.
♪ ♪
- I think I was 15 or 16.
My mom moved to Arizona
to pursue her doctorate in business education.
And so she was gone.
It definitely changed the dynamic in the household.
One day, he came in and he just said,
"Hey, Tony, I think I'm having chest pains.
"I think--you know, I don't know,
"but it feels like something's wrong.
I think we need to call an ambulance."
And I kind of freaked out, 'cause I thought,
"I'm here alone with my dad."
We never had any conversations
that were deep or loving.
And so I told him, I just--you know,
"I want you to know that I'm thankful
for everything you did for me, and I love you."
And he said, "I know you do."
♪ ♪
The hardest part about that whole scenario
was taking him to the hospital
and then coming home.
And I was truly alone.
And I was-- and my mom was gone.
And then I just didn't really know what to do.
♪ ♪
- What ultimately happened is-- was a bypass.
My dad changed his habits a bit.
You know, he was walking more.
He was--changed his diet a little bit.
But then he just gradually got back
to the same kind of old Frank.
- Did you all try to talk to him
and get him to be healthier and...
- No. I didn't.
No.
- Tony's training ground was the Del Mar skateboard park.
The pool was a vertical pool,
but the left wall wasn't quite so vertical.
It was almost like a beautiful transition,
so it was a perfect place to learn tricks.
And that seemed to be the place
Tony did all of his most difficult tricks.
- That's where I skated my best.
I had it dialed. I had it wired.
And when I would go to other parks,
I was out of place.
I didn't have confidence.
I didn't know how to use the transitions.
[intense rock music]
♪ ♪
- Most of his adversaries skated Upland,
a really, really deep, big, giant pool.
- Upland was considered
the gnarliest pool at the time.
Like, if you did well in an Upland contest,
you got the respect of the skate industry
and the hard-core skaters.
- That's a really challenging pool,
'cause it's a square pool
and a round pool and a radical hip.
It's a really, really tricky place.
♪ ♪
- It's just scary.
♪ ♪
If you're gonna ride Upland, you got to go for it.
You can't just phone it in. You can't cruise it.
You gotta put yourself at risk.
♪ ♪
[skateboard clattering]
- Tony knew this contest was coming up,
and it was a huge contest.
- I made it my mission to get used to the pool,
and I drove up there every weekend.
It was the first time I truly worked
at getting used to different terrain
to prove myself beyond
being this one-trick pony at Del Mar.
♪ ♪
- Tony, you're the big winner from Del Mar.
Do you think you'll be able to do it?
- I don't know.
I'm having a pretty tough time in this pool.
- What makes this one different from Del Mar?
- Well, it's got a lot more vert,
and it's a lot rougher
and big coping, so it's harder to ride.
- Big coping.
Who's your toughest competition?
- Shoot.
I'd stay Stevie, Lance, Christian.
Psh, all those guys. [chuckles]
- Well, good luck on your competition.
- Thanks.
[upbeat rock music]
- Let's hear it for Tony Hawk!
[Devo's "Uncontrollable Urge"]
♪ ♪
- I had a run that was sort of my safety run,
where it was good, but didn't have all the tricks.
- The score is up. 81. 81.00.
- Who's the person to beat this time?
- Uh, A lot of people. Chris Miller.
- Chris Miller was the local favorite,
the best skater in that pool.
♪ ♪
He hung up and knocked himself out.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Got an urge, got a surge, and it's out of control ♪
♪ ♪
- Score is up. 80.00.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Uncontrollable urge ♪
♪ I want to tell you all about it ♪
- 81.0 for Stevie Caballero.
- ♪ Scream and shout ♪
- And we have Lance Mountain on the way.
Score's 83.33.
Let's hear it. Lance Mountain. 83.33.
- ♪ He said, "Yah," and I said, "Yeah ♪
♪ Yeah" ♪
♪ And I said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah" ♪
- On my second run, I landed super low on a McTwist
and then ended up kind of screwing up my speed.
- Score 81.66.
That wraps up the second round.
- Came down to the last runs.
And then on my fourth run,
I did exactly what I came there to do.
- This is Tony Hawk,
going down for round number two.
Let's hear it. Tony Hawk!
- ♪ Every night, I know that she goes to Finos ♪
[Toy Dolls' "She Goes to Finos"]
♪ And every night ♪
♪ I know that she sees him ♪
♪ ♪
- The combinations that he did were amazing.
Amazing.
- ♪ And every night, it's all right ♪
- Skating the hardest parts of the pool,
sliding around the corners.
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
I felt so at ease and confident
that I was singing in my run
the song that was playing over the loudspeaker.
"She Goes to Finos," Toy Dolls.
- ♪ 'Cause she goes, la-la-la, la-la-la-la ♪
♪ To Finos ♪
♪ Yes, she goes, la-la-la, la-la-la-la ♪
♪ With him, oi ♪
♪ Yes, she goes, la-la-la, la-la-la-la ♪
♪ To Finos ♪
♪ Yes, she goes, la-la-la, la-la-la-la ♪
♪ ♪
- It was like Luke Skywalker
going in to take out Darth Vader at the Death Star.
- Incredible.
Score 85.66. 85.66.
[speaking indistinctly]
- He won a contest that nobody in skateboarding
ever expected him to win, ever, under any circumstances.
- And that's when a lot of people shut up
about my style,
about me only being good at Del Mar.
- To me, that's maybe the biggest,
most important win of his life.
Once you can win there, you can win anywhere.
[Stiff Little Fingers' "Gotta Gettaway"]
That was the beginning of his launch
to become Tony Hawk.
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
- He grew taller than all of us.
His tricks got bigger, and his airs got higher.
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
- Do you have a favorite skater?
- Tony Hawk. - Tony Hawk?
- Tony Hawk. - [chuckling] Oh, very good.
- ♪ Oh, too many folk to tell you what to do ♪
- Tony was obviously gonna be a threat.
People saw that.
Even if it took five years to get there.
- ♪ Have me here ♪
♪ Have me and hold me near ♪
♪ Hold me down, fasten ♪
- All of a sudden, he started
just winning all these contests.
Now he's got these tricks. Now he's got this trick.
He has every trick going on and more.
- Hawk! Tony Hawk!
- ♪ Passing me by ♪
♪ ♪
- He was coming up with a fantastic run,
and then all of a sudden, he'd one-up himself.
- ♪ In my head ♪
♪ My father argued and my mother begged ♪
- At every contest, there'd be, like,
three new tricks.
He's spinning, he's varialing, he's doing finger flips.
- ♪ They want to have me here ♪
♪ Have me and hold me near ♪
- Here I am, I'm just trying to go higher, farther, faster,
'cause I have to keep up with Tony.
- ♪ Their words ain't tugging me ♪
♪ Got to stretch them, break them ♪
♪ Get myself free ♪
♪ They want to have me here ♪
♪ Have me and hold me near ♪
- Taking home $2,000 is Tony Hawk!
[cheers and applause]
- ♪ The cars are all flashing me ♪
♪ Bright lights are passing me ♪
♪ I feel life passing me by ♪
♪ ♪
- Tony's the youngest skateboarder
on the Bones Brigade.
So suddenly, he's beating his idols--
Caballero, McGill, Lance.
They used to kill him. Now he's above 'em.
- ♪ Got to, got to, got to, got to, got to, got to ♪
♪ Get away ♪
♪ Got to, got to, got to, got to, got to, got to ♪
♪ Get away ♪
- First place goes to Tony Hawk!
3,000 bucks!
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
- What's it gonna take to win?
You're gonna have to beat Tony Hawk, you know.
He's number one right now.
♪ Got to, got to, got to, got to, got to, got to ♪
♪ Get away ♪
♪ Got to, got to, got to, got to, got to, got to ♪
♪ Get away ♪
[cheers and applause]
- He would go basically win--
I don't know what the record was,
but pretty much everything.
And everybody'd be stoked.
And maybe he would be lit up
for long enough to take the team photos or whatever.
But then you could immediately see the wheels turning of,
"Yeah, but I should have done this."
And he would go right back to it.
- I was singularly focused on skating
and doing well at the events
because that was the only road to success.
It probably affected my emotional connections
because I couldn't think of anything else.
I was obligated to go to all the competitions,
nonstop on the road.
I had a formula where I'd create a routine,
I had these backup tricks that I was gonna do later,
and then I just started doing that,
and it was like I was just a machine.
- You feeling any excess pressure
now that you're in first place,
or do you think that's the better place to be?
- Oh, I don't know.
I mean, I guess I feel really happy that I did that run
and I'm in first with it, but I don't know.
I'm just gonna do my best, and if I do my best
and I don't even win, that's okay with me.
It got to the point where it was somewhat repetitive
and just methodical
and robotic,
where I came in and it was like,
"I'm gonna have to do this.
"I'm gonna have to go this much further,
"because now they're judging me
"on what they saw me do last time.
So I gotta take it one step further."
And I became a machine.
And it really did suck the fun out of it.
Other skaters would tell me, like,
while we're practicing,
"Man, I just want to get second."
And I just took it as I didn't have any peers.
It was just isolating. It was a bummer.
I can't explain it.
You know, the whole thing, it's lonely at the top--it is.
- I think it's a quote from Nietzsche's "Zarathustra."
"You make it up to the top of a mountain,
and what's left for me but lightning?"
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- With all of the things that were coming to him,
his father being at contests
and the commotion that his father causes
with all the other skateboarders,
people blaming Tony for winning
because his father's setting it up,
people calling him a clown skater
because of the tricks he does,
"people saying, "You don't deserve to be doing this.
Christian should be winning,"
and at the same time, achieving his dream.
He achieved his dream.
And he got up there and he realized
how lonely it is.
- I felt like I was losing myself,
losing my passion.
None of the money or fame or success was worth that.
- Skating very well today.
- Um, not as well as I want to.
- The heat bothering you? - Not so much that.
I'm just not really feeling like skating right now.
- He just decided
that he didn't want to compete anymore.
- I told my brother how I was feeling.
He was really the only one
I felt like I could confide in.
He said, "You gotta tell Stacy."
- Tony was seriously in a catatonic state
when he arrived at my house.
He sat there just looking at me like...
- You didn't tell Stacy that you're gonna quit anything.
Who would do that?
- Steve proceeded to tell me
that it had all just become too much for Tony.
He wasn't enjoying being a professional skateboarder.
I think that's as close as he's ever gotten,
that I've seen,
to dealing with the pain that's inside of him.
♪ ♪
- Driving home, there was a sense of hopelessness.
And I didn't really know what was gonna happen next.
Stacy told me that Rodney Mullen
had the same conversation with him
about a year prior to me telling him that.
And Rodney had stopped competing.
I called Rodney,
and Rodney unloaded everything.
He just said, "You know",
"I've come to appreciate the skating more.
"I'm willing to take more chances
and risk not winning, and that has liberated me."
And he said, "Maybe that would help you."
[gentle music]
♪ ♪
When I eventually stopped competing,
I was like, "Oh, I have all this freedom now."
"I'm not beholden to earning points
and staying on all the time."
I had a totally different approach
to what I was doing.
Started getting much more creative.
- [sighs]
Detachment. Freedom.
You can breathe.
We skate with our hearts.
And...it has its own feelings.
♪ ♪
- Both Tony and Rodney
talk about the difficulties of competition.
But both of those guys loved competing.
They were both killers.
Not just competitors, killers.
They're not out to beat you.
They're out to make you afraid to ever come to them
and compete with them again.
♪ ♪
Tony may have had a hard time with it,
but once he walked away from competition,
he couldn't live without it.
He had to get back in.
♪ ♪
- Eventually found my way back to it
with a different attitude, and I could still make it fun,
and I could still do it for a living,
and that was it.
That was the turning point.
♪ ♪
- One time when I lived with Tony,
it was garbage day, and I came up,
and he'd cleaned out the garage.
And he was dragging this trash can
down the driveway,
and there was all these trophies
poking out of the top.
Like, he did not care.
He lost his bag of X Games medals.
I mean, he's never, ever cared.
I've never seen him,
since I've known him for 30 years,
to put any of the trophies up.
Other people will, but he's never had a trophy room.
"That's just a symbol of one point in time.
I can't get attached to that."
[The Replacements' "Can't Hardly Wait"]
♪ ♪
- ♪ I'll write you a letter tomorrow ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Tonight, I can't hold a pen ♪
♪ ♪
- Video was a whole new avenue.
It's not about competition.
That eventually outshined all the contests.
- ♪ I promise not to blow the address again ♪
- Kids are now seeing how to do it.
When they'd look at a magazine,
they'd see a maneuver, but they didn't understand
how a kid got from here to there
or there to here.
But when they saw the video, they saw the whole thing.
So it completely revolutionized
how kids consumed skateboarding.
And it really helped the sport grow.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Jesus rides ♪
- I was 12 years old when I first got
a skateboard and got into skateboarding.
And it was the boom of the Bones Brigade,
and everybody had a skateboard.
And immediately was attracted
to the fun of skateboarding through Lance Mountain
and the tricks in skateboarding through Tony Hawk.
- ♪ Ashtray floors ♪
♪ Dirty clothes and filthy jokes ♪
- Oh, those videos got passed around.
I mean, people tell me that they would rent it
from the shop, give it to their friend.
It would break. They'd tape it back together.
- That was the greatest thing ever.
Like, I just would watch it over and over and over.
"Like, "There's gonna be another one?
What are they gonna do? How funny is Lance gonna be?"
Like, you know, "What are the new tricks like?"
Stacy was onto something, man.
Like, there's still nothing cooler
than Bones Brigade videos.
[droning rock music]
♪ ♪
- Animal Chin. Have you heard of 'em?
- If you look too hard for Animal Chin,
you're never gonna find 'em.
♪ ♪
- Heard about this ramp.
It's in this field between two junkyards.
♪ ♪
- You know, Stacy would have me, Mike,
and Lance do our parts,
and then it was Tony's turn.
♪ ♪
- What the hell was that?
♪ ♪
- Oh! - Insane.
- I'm like, "Man, this guy's got
a bag of tricks that doesn't stop."
♪ ♪
540s were hard enough grabbing,
but to do it without grabbing your board...
- People thought it was an impossible trick to do.
When people saw it, they were like,
"That's not real."
♪ ♪
- Tony's becoming a superstar in skateboarding,
and as a result, we sold more of his board models
pretty much every month
more than anybody else on the team.
We could've sold even probably more than we sold of Tony's.
- You just didn't make enough.
- We couldn't make enough.
- By the time that I was 17,
I was making at least six figures
just from skateboards.
You get very jaded
when that kind of money is coming in.
And also, I'm not trying to be responsible with it.
I'm not saving for the future,
nor am I saving for taxes.
And so my dad was the one
who really guided me through that
and was the one who convinced me to buy a house
when I was still in high school.
[XTC's "Roads Girdle the Globe"]
♪ ♪
- Tony and his dad built all these beautiful ramps.
I mean, they were just unbelievable.
His dad was so dedicated.
- The winningest vertical skateboard rider in history
now making a very comfortable living
as a pro athlete.
- In this house, they live, breathe, sleep, talk,
and eat skateboarding.
And what you're about to see are the rewards for a guy
who's become top of his sport.
[upbeat music]
- On Sunday, I'm signing autographs.
I am flying home with an oversized check,
says $10,000.
I had to put it up in the first-class closet.
And then I go home, and I gotta wake up
at 7:00 a.m. next day and get to school.
[New Order's "Age of Consent"]
♪ ♪
- When we started traveling around the world,
we started noticing there was a lot of people
showing up to our demos,
and we were getting a lot of attention.
- We're on the road, and we're in our teens.
New city every night, trying to meet girls.
- ♪ Won't you please let me go? ♪
♪ These words lie inside ♪
- When it got big, it was rock star time and girl time.
Look at the people who didn't have ponytails.
I didn't have a ponytail. They all did.
That was a pure sign that you're stoked,
that you're a rock star,
and you're gonna get some girls.
♪ ♪
- It seemed like money was just raining down,
and some of the guys got carried away.
They were spending crazy.
At one point, Powell sent us credit cards.
We had no idea how credit cards worked,
so we just thought that we could spend money
and that we wouldn't get the bill.
We were buying cameras, video games.
I think I bought a pinball machine.
I'd be in Japan, I would just buy boom boxes,
headphones, and at one point, I bought a tanning bed.
- ♪ Do you find this happens all the time? ♪
♪ ♪
- From '87 to '89,
it was salad days.
It was the heyday. It was crazy.
1989, I went on tour in the U.S. for a month.
Every demo was thousands of people.
And then we go to Europe for six weeks.
Every crowd was huge.
We did a demo at Tivoli Gardens.
The entire amusement park stopped what they were doing
to watch us skate.
And then we'd go to Australia, in Sydney.
Vert ramp right in the middle of the city.
People were lining the rooftops
because there was no more room to watch us.
[cheers and applause]
- He was really doing well.
And I was really happy for him.
And it gave my parents such bragging rights
that they couldn't--
they would stop total strangers at the airport and say,
"My son is Tony Hawk. That's no lie."
- So life with the alien is good, huh?
- So far. So far, so good.
- Well, we all wish you many luck and happiness, and--
- I was 22. Cindy was 24.
We were living together.
We decided the next stage would be to get married.
Suddenly, I'm married,
I have a kid on the way, I have two mortgages,
and I was just thrust into adulthood.
And little did I know
that that income wasn't gonna last.
- Skateboarding is cyclical. It's a cyclical business.
It was big from '73 to '79.
And then from 1980 to '84, it dipped way down,
almost disappeared.
'85, it starts to climb again,
and it goes all the way up until 1990,
and then it dips again, and it dips radically.
And when it did,
a lot of companies went out of business.
- I remember Stacy telling me, "It's getting really hard
to justify any expenses that we usually put out there."
And I said, "Well, what does that mean?"
And he said, "Well, I think you'll be the last to feel it,
but it's coming."
[somber music]
♪ ♪
Skate magazines were going away.
Skate brands were barely surviving.
♪ ♪
The skate parks closing down
was the last nail in the coffin.
♪ ♪
- The early '90s were the dark years.
It was tough.
Vertical skateboarding was dead.
♪ ♪
- I remember some of the last contests,
and then all of a sudden,
there just was no more contests.
♪ ♪
It was like a rude awakening for all of us.
♪ ♪
- '91 was sort of the end
of the Bones Brigade era as I knew it.
We went to go talk to Stacy,
and he said, "You guys, I already left."
- There was kind of this distance thing
between all of us during those years.
We weren't all together with Stacy,
and we weren't going to contests,
and we weren't-- there was nothing.
"All of us were thinking, you know, "Is this it?
What we love to do is just nothing?"
You know, we just came from touring around the world.
We went to George Harrison's house, for Pete's sake.
That was an intensely tough time
for most of us.
- I started Birdhouse in '92.
I had high hopes that it was going
to at least be profitable within a year or so,
and it just wasn't.
And we were scraping by,
and there was-- there was not a bright future.
Riley, point to Mommy.
- Mommy. - Yeah.
Where's Daddy?
- Cindy was becoming the breadwinner
being a manicurist.
[skateboard wheels rumbling]
Our relationship was rocky at best.
People she works with, it's just like,
"He's still trying to skateboard?
"Are you fucking serious?
Like, grow up. Get a job."
I started taking every odd job I could.
I bought a video editing system on consignment.
I couldn't even afford it.
I borrowed $5,000 from my parents to buy it.
- He's chugging this OJ.
When I moved in with Tony,
we were both super, super broke.
But I think we were like, "We'll just keep, you know,
"adjusting our lifestyle lower and lower
until we get to that crisis point."
- We had a water bill at the time
that I had to go down to the city
and ask to make payments on.
And they allowed me to pay it off over six months.
I would look around and it'd be like...
you know, there's a pool
and there's a propane tank that I got to pay to fill,
and then there's this huge ramp
that was starting to fall apart
that I couldn't afford to fix.
And that's when reality sunk in.
[tense music]
I sold the house.
I had to tear down this monstrous ramp.
Pulling out screws, pulling off plies,
cutting chunks out of it and kicking them over the side.
And to what end?
♪ ♪
You're just dismantling your career until it's gone.
♪ ♪
- How did you handle stress back then?
- I don't even--
how did I handle stress back then?
I think that I would go skate.
I mean, that was it.
That's been my-- [clears throat]
That's been my escape, always.
But it was meager.
And it wasn't what it used to be.
So it was like,
"Why are you spending all your energy?
Why are you killing yourself out there?"
[Pavement's "Here"]
- ♪ I was dressed for success ♪
♪ ♪
♪ But success, it never comes ♪
♪ And I'm the only one who laughs ♪
- I hired him to help me with a little video
for the shop or something that I was trying to do.
He was, you know, scrambling around,
but he still pushed himself skating.
♪ ♪
- ♪ But they're not as bad as this ♪
- I never considered quitting skating as an option.
I was always gonna find time to skate.
- ♪ We'll be waiting, waiting where ♪
- Yeah!
- ♪ Everything's ending here ♪
- [laughs]
I don't think I could estimate how many 540s I've done.
It's just--
- Like, over...
- 10,000. For sure. I--
let's just say, for instance, 300 in a summer.
[laughs]
- 400, 500 a year. Yeah.
I mean, I was--like, thousands, tens of thousands.
When people say you put in your 10,000 hours,
I put in my 10,000 McTwists.
[laughs]
- [laughs]
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
I first thought about the possibility of 900s
after learning 720s in 1985.
♪ ♪
I didn't actually have the nerve to try it
until 1987 at a skate camp in France.
♪ ♪
I ended up trying it a few times.
I didn't understand where I was in the air
and ended up landing on my back twice.
I wasn't ready to commit to that spin.
- We had a lot of other skaters
chasing the 900,
and just because it had been going on for so long,
which no other trick had,
it kind of got some, like, holy grail aspect to it
that I've never seen any other trick
treated like that with the skate community.
♪ ♪
It became a trick that a lot of people are trying.
Everyone kept getting a little close.
Like, they could spin,
but then they'd land and keep whipping out.
There was always-- you would be close enough
to kind of taste it,
but there'd be one-- something missing
that would make it totally almost impossible to land.
♪ ♪
- There were a couple times in my pursuit of doing a 900
that I really was done with it.
The first time I tried to really make one,
I was leaning forward too far, and I broke my rib
when I--like, I just fell into the flat bottom.
[thud echoes]
That was at a time when I wasn't really making
a good living skating.
I'll never forget that day, because I was trying it--
my son Riley, he was in kindergarten.
I was late to pick him up to kindergarten
'cause I was stuck trying this trick on the ramp.
I broke my rib trying it,
but I still had to get there to pick him up.
♪ ♪
It was a moment in life where it was like,
"What am I doing?"
♪ ♪
"I just can't do it."
♪ ♪
- They'd been trying it for so long, right?
I think it was almost 12 years.
- You ever not committed to a landing on a trick
before in your life?
- That's a good question.
I had never gotten so close to a trick and given up on it.
Never.
Someone's got to do this.
Someone's got to break through this boundary.
[Buzzcocks' "Why Can't I Touch It?"]
♪ ♪
- ♪ Well, it seems so real ♪
♪ I can see it ♪
♪ And it seems so real ♪
♪ I can feel it ♪
♪ And it seems so real ♪
♪ I can taste it ♪
♪ And it seems so real ♪
♪ I can hear it ♪
♪ So why ♪
♪ Can't I touch it? ♪
♪ ♪
♪ So why ♪
♪ Can't I touch it? ♪
♪ ♪
- When he's going after a trick,
you can watch him get closer and closer,
'cause he's making little adjustments in his head.
- ♪ Then it looks so real ♪
♪ I can see it ♪
♪ And it feels so real ♪
♪ I can feel it ♪
♪ And it tastes so real ♪
- [yells] [onlookers exclaim]
- When he knows he's getting close,
he does not give up on a trick unless his body breaks.
He'll just throw himself and slam, slam, slam, slam.
- ♪ So why ♪
♪ Can't I touch it? ♪
- The 900 was a little different,
'cause that really trashes your body super quick.
- ♪ So why ♪
♪ Can't I touch it? ♪
♪ ♪
- I still don't get it, man.
I don't know how Tony can keep spinning it and keep his mind.
Like, it's got to make you fuckin' freak out.
Like, a 720. And then the 900? Like, how?
It's too hard. It's just too much spinning.
- He tried to do it in a bullring in Tijuana.
And he had another attempt
where I thought it was gonna kill him.
His pursuit of that was personal,
but it was also at a time when skateboarding
was just kind of coming back up into being popular again.
- Well, the X Games gave him
the biggest platform he's ever had.
- I heard ESPN was gonna do an event
and include skateboarding.
I was like, "Skateboarding is gonna be on ESPN.
That means something."
I was hyped, 'cause I had never quit skating vert.
- The technical difficulty is just immense,
and this guy pulls it off
as if he's going for a walk through the park.
- I was there for the first X Games.
I was there for "The Tony Hawk Show,"
as all the other skaters called it.
He won the vert contest. He won the street contest.
- Tony Hawk.
- After the first X Games,
there was a little bit more interest.
It raised the bar a little bit.
[cheers and applause]
And then when the second X Games came around,
that's when you could tell something was happening.
- Riley Hawk.
His father has locked up the gold medal.
[cheers and applause]
- He is going huge.
[cheers and applause]
Gymnastics has its Nadia, but skateboarding has Hawk.
- Nobody else skates like Tony Hawk.
- He is a hero.
- Tony Hawk, the best skateboarder
the sport has ever seen. - Tony Hawk.
That is the best skateboarder in the world.
[cheers and applause]
- Hi, Dad.
I know that we don't get to talk too much
about what you do around here,
but I just want you to know that I appreciate it,
and...that we just thought that we'd make a video
saying thanks for all the great stuff.
My siblings and my mom and I had steeled ourself,
ready for him to have a heart attack at any minute,
because he just didn't take care of himself.
And it was like, that's what's gonna happen.
And we all almost were all waiting for that to happen.
So we all had prepared ourselves for that,
and then one day,
he finds out he has lung cancer.
He was in his final stages,
super rail thin, stuck in bed.
I went on this tour in Europe,
and I just felt weird about being there,
'cause I knew that he was degrading rapidly,
so I came home early from the tour.
And he said, "You have to do your thing.
You can't just sit here and watch me die."
For the most part, sent me to Woodward.
I heard a call over the intercom.
"Tony Hawk, will you please pick up the phone?"
When my mom called me at Woodward,
she just broke down crying and just said,
"He loved you so much."
And that was the first time
she really got emotional about my dad.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- It's a very unique sport.
It's the only sport in the world I know
where competitors-- I've watched 'em in the middle
of heavy competition encouraging each other.
[skateboard wheels rumbling]
And earnestly encouraging each other.
Not many competitions do that.
- So you think it's a good sport?
- Oh, yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
And I'd like to see it continue as a sport.
- I can guarantee you
that every single one of those skateboarders today
would look back on him fondly.
Guarantee it.
I guarantee it.
- His dad was like a second dad to me.
Like, he was just an amazing person.
- I could only imagine, you know, my family
doing what his family did for him, you know?
Like, I would dream about that.
Like, "Wow, what would that be like?
Nah, my dad would never do that."
♪ ♪
- Tony had me do something right when his dad died,
and I was talking shit at that thing.
I think I said something real stupid in an interview.
"Glad he's gone," or something fucked up.
X Games, he's up there riding.
My son just died ten days ago.
He's got me.
So I get up there and I'm like--
and the first thing I said was,
"Got me now, motherfucker.
What are you gonna say?"
And then he goes, "Duane, I'm super sorry about Chess."
I fucking--I mean...
And he goes, "You got a minute?"
'Cause cameras are on this guy
every-fucking-where he goes.
So it's like, we go down to some, like, area
and fucking away from-- and just total
personal fucking cool-- like, what the fuck?
What a cool--I didn't-- you know,
I didn't expect that.
That was nice.
And I was really blown away.
Like, my kid fucking looked up to him,
and I let him know that.
You know? "He looked up to you, man."
[sniffles]
So I look at things
totally fucking different, you know?
And...
you know...
when his--his dad died
and I said that in the--
'Cause it was just me and him.
And, you know, that's how life works.
It's a fucking weird game.
And all that baton twirling shit,
he fucking stepped it up for all of us.
All that fucking shit--
you know how much time it takes to learn tricks like that?
- Okay, everybody.
We want to hear everybody in the house right now.
Boys, girls,
ladies, and gentlemen,
wrapping up
our Best Tricks contest. But don't forget,
you're gonna pick the winner.
Right now, Tony's got a shot at it.
Can he do it? Let's see it.
[cheers and applause]
- Yeah.
900, try not to--look at him focused out here.
- We love you, crowd! We love you!
- Yeah. Keep it up. Keep it up.
900! 900!
This could be it.
Oh!
- Oh, the closest one!
- There was always one or two really small things
that made the 9 almost impossible to land.
And I think one of those things clicked there,
and he went, "I'm--I actually felt better
"than I've ever felt spinning that 9,
so I'm not gonna stop."
- You guys, you guys want to see one more?
Tony Hawk coming close.
- Here we go, folks.
- History in the making.
Who wouldn't want to be right here?
Making history.
Never, ever been done before on the skateboard.
He's coming close.
Yeah, here we go. 900!
[cheers and applause]
Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!
- Oh, baby!
All right, stomp your feet!
[cheers and applause]
[skateboards banging]
[cheering intensifying]
[crowd exclaiming]
- You saw him going inward more and more and more
each and every time, and you knew--or I knew,
watching, like, he really isn't gonna stop.
And I had been there when he'd only stopped before
'cause he broke a rib.
"- He just said, "I'm either gonna make this trick,
"or someone's gonna take me off in a stretcher.
That's how it's gonna go."
[cheers, whistles]
all: Tony! Tony! Tony!
[crowd exclaiming]
all: Tony! Tony! Tony! Tony!
[crowd exclaiming]
- It was almost as if his mind was going...
[imitating squishing]
You know, squishing down further and further.
And you can just see...
how much intensity it took from him.
[cheers and applause]
- 9! 9! 9! 9!
9! 9!
There it is!
[cheers, whistles]
[announcers speaking indistinctly]
- This is important to this guy.
He's focused. He is prepped.
This is history in the making.
[speaking indistinctly]
[cheers, whistles]
9! 9! Tony Hawk!
Tony! Tony! Tony!
900!
Oh! So close.
The closest I've ever seen anyone before.
Ooh, what is going on in 1999 in vertical skateboard history?
- We got Andy.
- All this energy. These guys are going on.
[speaking indistinctly]
[cheers and applause]
Everybody picture it. Here we go.
[cheers and applause]
- Yeah! - Oh!
Are you kidding me?
Yeah! Look at this!
Tony Hawk, everybody!
Yeah! Look at this!
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- I've never seen Tony
explosively emotional like that.
Says a lot about that sense
of what he found out about himself
by making himself do that trick.
- It had nothing to do with the physical motions
of that trick.
It was all here.
♪ ♪
- It's just a trick.
But to me, the ones that make the most difference
in who I am as a man,
as a person...
is when you've redlined it so much
that you did something that you didn't know
if you had it in you to do it.
That's a different kind of proving ground.
That shifts something within you.
♪ ♪
- I could feel the thrill that I got
from anything I've done through him.
It was huge.
Like, I was so excited to see him do that.
So excited and happy for him.
You know, I just knew what was going on.
Like, I've never reached that,
because I'll never do a 900.
But I've reached it in other things.
And just the feel of that and the win of that
and the--it's just rad.
It's huge.
It's so--it's killer. It's so good.
- Sean Mortimer called me up, like, two minutes
after he landed it from the ramp and said,
"Your brother just landed a 9!
It's like a war ended!" [laughs]
♪ ♪
The thing I love about the 900
that doesn't get talked about much was that...
that moment is kind of in sports history,
which really was a moment in sports history,
could only have happened in skateboarding,
because any other sport,
the clock ran out.
It was done.
Like, that wouldn't have happened
if they'd had skateboarding in the Olympics,
'cause you know, once the clock ran out,
they would have run up and chained up the ramp
and said, "Okay, we're done." But the--
- The irony is, if your dad was running the--
- Oh, my God.
You know, that just occurred to me.
If my dad had been running the show,
it wouldn't have happened.
Fuck. That just occurred to me.
- I wish my dad had been able to see the recognition
and the appreciation that skateboarding got
after '99, 2000.
Even in his wildest dreams,
he thought that skateboard contests would be bigger,
but he would have never imagined
that it blew up the way it did.
[explosion booms]
- Las Vegas, put your hands together
for the Boom Boom HuckJam!
[cheers and applause]
[Social Distortion's "Story of My Life"]
♪ ♪
- Whoo-hoo!
♪ ♪
- Suddenly, we were rock stars again,
but on a completely different level.
[fireworks boom]
Performing in arenas, selling out night after night.
We had a setup that filled an arena floor.
We were way bigger than a rock tour.
We filled the entire arena floor
with ramps and lights, pyrotechnics.
- ♪ Like such a blur ♪
- It was high-pressure skateboarding.
It was like, you have to make this trick,
or a motorcycle could land on you.
- ♪ In class, I dreamed all day ♪
- I can remember watching the Boom Boom HuckJam,
and other ladies my age were-- just couldn't watch.
Their hands were over their face,
and they were just terrified.
- ♪ So close, yet so far, you know ♪
♪ She never seemed to notice ♪
- Every night was a new city.
They would put a piece of tape on the deck of the ramp.
When they handed you the microphone,
you could glance down at that tape
so you didn't go...
"Thank you, Philadelphia," and you're really in Chicago.
♪ ♪
- Living in the lap of luxury.
Like, people were providing for us at every turn.
Flying in and out of the tour on Tony's private jet,
staying in these great hotels.
♪ ♪
- It's all younger dudes, mostly single.
And it was just like, the world is yours.
You guys are, you know, Led Zeppelin tonight.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Story of my life ♪
- "Come on, Tony, let's go! We got this club downtown."
Like, the tour manager would call ahead and be like,
"Hey, we got Tony Hawk coming. Make sure the door's open."
- ♪ The faces have all changed ♪
♪ There's no one there left to talk to ♪
♪ And the pool hall that I loved as a kid ♪
- There's a part of that where it's like,
"Okay, so now what? So now you're a rock star?
So now you have all this excess?"
- ♪ To look for a job ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I had no training ♪
- You know, Activision came to him to do the video game,
and it was the best company,
and they had the best developer,
and, you know, he was hands-on.
- ♪ Oh ♪
♪ ♪
- They developed this game that he never thought
was gonna be particularly popular amongst everybody.
He thought skaters would like it.
- When the fourth game was released,
the first three were still in the top ten of sales.
And Activision called a meeting with me.
I went and met one of the guys I worked with.
I met him for lunch, and he said--
he explained to me what was happening.
He's like, "Well, this is in the top sales,
and now it's a best hit."
I go, "What does that mean?"
He goes, "This is what it means,"
and he hands me a check for $4.5 million.
And I was like, "Oh, my God."
And then two years later,
they gave me an advance of $20 million.
- Tony was getting recognized everywhere.
He was the face of skateboarding.
- I never got into skateboarding to be famous.
I never thought I'd be famous.
And then I was famous, and I was like,
"Well, I'm famous now.
I guess I'm supposed to do all this stuff."
But it's the worst drug.
It's the worst drug.
- You got to let him go.
Come on, let him go through.
- And it's so easy to fall into.
It's crazy.
There was infidelity,
lying to myself about justification,
you know, not being honest with others,
not being honest with myself.
A lot of other things
that should have taken priority in my life,
especially my kids, fell by the wayside.
I had issues with intimacy already,
and then I'm in this crazy scenario.
I didn't like myself.
I didn't like the choices I was making.
And that started to spiral worse and worse.
I'm gonna distract over here.
I'm gonna anesthetize with this.
And it was just like, "What's wrong with you?
Why can't you just be content?"
[somber music]
People aren't even happy at home to see me.
Everyone's happy to see me out on the road.
They welcome me.
"New York Times" wants to talk to me.
I gotta go do that.
I gotta fly here for this charity event,
'cause they invited me.
There's a movie premiere. They want me.
I gotta be on the red carpet.
Well, of course I gotta go to--
I gotta go to Monaco for the "Sports Awards"...
that I'm not even nominated for.
And then I'd be there and at some point back alone
and just thinking, "Why aren't you just home?"
♪ ♪
[groans softly]
- The whole concept of, like, yeah, people asking me, like,
"What's it like to have your dad be Tony Hawk?"
It's like, it's the only thing I know,
so I don't know what it's not like.
- Riley was with me through all of my relationships
and challenges and turmoil.
Riley had a rough upbringing
with a lot of different co-parents
and half siblings.
And he just went along with it,
'cause he didn't--obviously, he didn't have a choice.
- It definitely was tricky being the oldest
of two families
and two separate sets of siblings,
because you're just kind of, like--
I was the only one doing this.
- We were on tour once,
and I should have really just enjoyed that aspect.
Like, "Oh, Riley's here on tour."
And I remember him looking at me like,
"Are you gonna go out again tonight?"
And I was thinking, like, "Aw, well,
you're just gonna fall asleep. It's okay."
Like, "Someone will be in the room with you.
It'll be all right."
And, like, I think back to those times, like,
"You should have taken that as a sign."
My other kids, they only saw one relationship
or two relationships.
And they're like, "Oh, this is your pattern.
This is what you do."
I didn't know how to live in my own skin.
I didn't know how to-- how to like myself.
And I didn't know how to...
be a husband or a father
that I would be proud of.
♪ ♪
Chef has arrived.
So scary that you cut towards your fingers.
- No.
- It's scary to me as the adult figure
and the one that's supposed to be responsible
for your safety.
That frightens me. - This frightens you?
- Yes.
- No, but come down here.
- Are you guys pretending like you guys cook?
- Oh! - He took the trash out, too.
And he went to the grocery store.
- I am a hunter and gatherer.
I hunt and gather income by riding a skateboard.
[laughs]
- When I met Tony,
there was just something very comfortable
about being around him.
Like, kind of like when you meet somebody
that you feel like you've known kind of feeling.
You're just the worst. He's the worst.
- Oh, my God, he just-- - He's the worst.
- [laughing] - He's the worst.
- When Cathy and I found
that there could be this chance of romance,
I knew deep down I had not figured out my life.
Like, I had not figured out how to function
in a committed relationship,
and I carried all this baggage.
And I didn't think she knew the depths of it.
- He didn't know how to...
Express his real, true feelings.
There's just some holes there that he filled
with skateboarding.
And skateboarding fed so much
of what he was lacking
that I don't know if he developed
how to get those things other ways.
Even the relationship with his parents was around skating.
Everything was around skating.
- I had to go make a change. Like, I just knew it.
I knew I wasn't capable of doing it myself.
♪ ♪
Checked into a place.
And...it was hard.
It was super hard.
And where do you even start?
There's a skate park downtown.
I was at that skate park at 7:00 a.m. every single day.
I made a special request to be able to do that.
There was ice on the ground.
There was snow covering the coping sometimes.
I would go out there in snow gloves
and session for at least an hour by myself.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
What I realized is that I've had
the most intense discipline in my life with skating.
If I can--if I can focus that discipline on my life...
I must have it in there. I must be able to do that.
- He said, "I know I can do this,
"because these are the qualities I have.
"I am determined, I'm disciplined,
and I know I can make all these changes in myself."
Because he has the example of doing it in skating.
- I knew that
I was going to do everything necessary
and stick with it and lean into it
and wrote this ugly list of things I wasn't proud of,
and...
that probably was the moment
where I was most in shock and just was like,
"This is the end of that."
I released this baggage,
and I felt like I finally have a foundation
to fill up with a positive way of living.
Me coming to terms with it was balling up this list
and throwing it in the fire.
- Do you need any help? - [chuckles] Yes.
Can you help me get youth?
- No. - Why not?
You have so much of it.
- He's probably at the point in his life
where he's probably happiest with himself
and happiest in his relationship.
And I think, ultimately, that has the biggest effect
on your relationship to your children.
And so I'm happy that he was able to get to that point.
And now he has Kady that he can,
you know, be that parent to.
And I think he's the best form of himself now.
- Can you stand up?
- Oh, my God.
- Oh, you did it!
That's the first time I've seen you do it.
- Rodney Mullen goes to his warehouse
and skates every night.
Lance is still waking up every day and skating.
Steve Caballero's still considering himself
a pro skater.
Mike McGill still skates, and obviously,
Tony is skating all the time at the highest level.
- There's a difference, though, in some of those guys.
Rodney Mullen...
Skateboarding for him, I think,
is really an art form that he just has to practice
like a Buddhist monk meditates.
Caballero has his artwork.
Mike McGill-- I think that Mike has a real
healthy relationship with his skateboarding.
I think he realizes his better days are behind him.
He's fine with that.
I think Lance still feels
he's got to prove himself in backyard pools.
So Lance and Tony-- [clears throat]
They're in a different place.
- We're gonna go over to Bob Burnquist's house,
compound, ramp.
I'd like to do a 360 over the gap.
And then if I make that,
I gotta do something on the quarter pipe.
But I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
Here we are at Bob's.
- This looks a little crazy. - There it is.
- It's a little crazy-looking.
[wind whooshing]
- Whoo!
[energetic rock music]
- I've seen him get way more hurt
and try way more gnarly things now
than he ever did back when he was a kid.
[The Replacements' "Take Me Down to the Hospital"]
- Yeah!
- Tony!
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
- ♪ Well, I can't breathe ♪
♪ I can't swallow ♪
♪ Here today ♪
♪ Going back tomorrow ♪
- I was there when he tried the loop for the first time.
♪ ♪
And I actually, at one point, said,
"Can you just, like, make him stop, please?
Can we stop this?" But he didn't.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Red light running ♪
♪ Drag me in ♪
♪ Move the seat back ♪
♪ It's Saturday night ♪
♪ Take me down ♪
♪ To the hospital ♪
♪ Take me down ♪
- Yeah!
- ♪ To the hospital ♪
- One of the reasons he's accomplished so much
is, he doesn't think about the bad things.
He doesn't let that get to him.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Prop me up ♪
- Yeah! - Yeah!
[person whistles]
- Tony is competing against Tony.
He's always been competing against Tony.
- Three, two, one, go!
- ♪ Get out of them slacks ♪
♪ Out of them slacks ♪
- Tony does not tire of getting hurt,
he does not tire of repetition,
and he does not tire of just doing the same thing
and attempting it over and over.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Oh ♪
- You know, one thing for sure about Tony
is that he can take a slam.
It's rare to find people who
like to get back up and try it again.
♪ ♪
- ♪ I don't wanna ♪
♪ Ride no car ♪
[cheers and applause]
- The reason he's been hurt more than most people
is because he's attempting
so many more things that they would never attempt.
- ♪ Take me to ♪ - ♪ Hospital ♪
- ♪ Take me down ♪ - ♪ Hospital ♪
- Holy shit.
- He's going to take some hits.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Hospital ♪
♪ Hospital ♪
[body thuds]
- One time, I saw Tony fall at Del Mar,
and I guess his knee was locking up and getting stuck.
I'm looking at it,
and he's like, "Yeah, my knee's stuck."
And he's like, "Pull it! Pull it! Pull it!"
I think it was his dad or something like that
pulling on it.
And boom! And then he's like, "Oh, all right."
[laughing] He gets back up and goes to skate again.
I'm like, "If my knee got stuck, I'd be like,
'I need to go to a doctor.'"
And he's like, "No, I'm good."
- Broke my elbow.
Knocked my teeth out at least five times.
Didn't dislocate my shoulder, but it went out and in.
Rolled my ankles so far that they should have broken,
and maybe I would have benefited more if they had,
'cause now they're just kind of loose.
I've had dozens of concussions
but only a few that were really bad,
where I woke up somewhere else.
- His body's pretty messed up.
You know, if you watch him turn and stuff like that,
he's got a lot of stiffness.
- I know what he has, which a lot of us get,
is, we get whiplash from taking slams.
And he has it really bad.
- I'm that guy that people ask, like,
"Something wrong with your neck?"
I'm like, "Yes. 40 years of whiplash."
- Whoa! - Shit!
That's not good.
- Medic! - Hey, medic! Quick!
- Medic! Medic!
- Can you hear me, Tony?
Can you hear me?
You all right?
- It hurts, man. - I know, man.
You okay? - Yeah.
- All right. I don't want-- - Cut the pads off.
- Minimal movement, okay? - What is this?
- Minimal movement. - Okay.
- Hold that on your head right there.
- Fractured my skull, broke my thumb,
broke my pelvis.
I sat in bed for about six weeks.
And I thought, "Maybe this is it."
Everyone kept asking me, "How long can you skate?"
Maybe this is the answer. This is how long I can skate.
I can skate till I'm 35, when I break my pelvis.
- When I got knocked out in Australia about five years ago
or something, I was asking everybody, like,
"How long does this fuzziness last, you know?"
I'm like, "Tony, you've been knocked out a bunch of times."
How long does it"--
He's like, "I don't know, Mike."
I'm like, "How many times you been knocked out?"
You know, he couldn't even recall
how many times he's been knocked out.
- Can you imagine watching your dad
tumble down a ramp at 56?
- [laughs] No.
- Like, we're grandparents.
We're grandparents falling out of the sky.
- Why still push yourself
when there's no reward of board sales
or contest winnings or anything like that?
- That is the question.
That is the question, why we do that.
I don't know. It's just in us.
- Why do you think Tony does it?
Why do you think he pushes himself so hard?
- I think it's to impress all of us, you know?
I think it's--I honestly do,
because, you know, most of the world
that's gonna see this film doesn't know a Madonna
from a McTwist from a Caballerial.
But his peers do.
[chuckling] And we are blown away
every time we see something like this.
And it inspires us to go on and do something different,
because that's what skateboarding is all about.
[X's "Blue Spark"]
♪ ♪
- We had the 30-year reunion of the "Animal Chin" video.
To commemorate that, Tony had a replica
of the infamous Chin ramp built.
Caballero, McGill, Lance, Tony, myself,
Tommy Guerrero, Rodney Mullen,
and a whole bunch of other people
were there to celebrate.
So we got to watch them skate it again.
And they reproduced all the famous tricks
that they did at the time.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Exchange ♪
- 30 years later, these guys are doing their famous,
you know, four-invert shot.
- Can we just try? - Eee!
♪ ♪
- This is it!
- One. Two. Three.
- ♪ Downtown ♪
♪ Blue spark ♪
- Yoo-hoo!
- Lock it up. - Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!
- That's amazing. That's totally amazing.
- ♪ Just to give hi-i-i-i-im ♪
♪ Blue shock ♪
- Yeah, Steve! Nice!
- Whenever Caballero or McGill did something
that was a little bit too edgy,
you could see them stop midair and,
"That's it. Stop."
Every time they'd do something
and it was a touch off of what they were out,
they'd throw the board and slide--knee slide.
You could tell there was no messing around.
These guys aren't getting hurt.
- ♪ Blue spark ♪
- As the temperature started increasing
and these guys started pushing each other,
Tony, like always, he started going harder and harder.
- Yeah! - Oh!
- Just chill out. Just chill.
Just chill. Just chill. Just chill out.
- Tony, just chill. Tony, just chill.
Just chill. Lay there. Stay there.
- Just kick back. Kick back. Kick back.
Here. - Hey.
- There you go.
- What is your name?
Wait, wait, wait. What's your name?
- Tony Hawk.
- All of us just gasped. It's like, "Oh, my God."
He's down there, laying there, dead still.
He got himself up off the ramp after about five minutes,
and then he went and sat down at the bottom of the ramp,
and he just sat there.
- There's some water right here.
- His hair was, like, Einstein-y, pitch-white skin,
and he looked 70 years old.
It was shocking. It was really scary.
And I sat there going, "Man, you can't do this at this age.
You can't put yourself in that kind of danger at this age,"
especially with the career he's had.
And it really, really troubled me.
And I went and had a really long conversation
with Sean Mortimer afterwards,
saying, "Look, somebody's gotta talk to Tony.
He can't let this happen."
I talked to Steve Hawk.
I called Steve Hawk on the phone.
And I'm going, "Steve, Tony's gotta be told
he can't do this."
But I couldn't get any takers.
I couldn't get anybody to, like--
guys, you've got to--
there's got to be an intervention here.
I mean, come on!
That's not a bad concussion.
That's a disaster, you know?
- I don't know what I think about it.
I think it's no one's place to say that to him.
- Okay. So what do you mean?
- I don't know.
He doesn't unders--
He doesn't even understand
that we're gonna probably die skateboarding
and kill ourselves.
It's something you can't change.
I can't sleep.
I can't sleep on my shoulders. It's terrible.
It's horrible.
You're actually destroying yourself on what you love.
But it's not--it's too late, first of all,
to be concerned about, like,
"Oh, it's time for us to slow down."
Like, I don't know. I don't know to--
I don't know how to react to that.
He's right, but I don't know how to react to it.
- I worry a lot that he's--
that he will really hurt himself.
Some of the stuff he's done,
if something went wrong, he could have died for sure.
And that scares the fuck out of me.
- The abuse their bodies are taking is pretty absurd.
Like, Tony is just--
Tony and Lance might be the most battered dudes,
like, of all of them.
Tony especially, man, he's--
you've seen his fingers.
They're all fucking out of socket.
And just-- his shins are all fucked up.
He tried the full pipe,
and--but he gets so fucking slammed.
But he continues.
- Yeah, it's foolish.
It's foolish what we've done to ourselves.
Tony--a lot of us. It's foolish.
We're gonna live in absolute pain.
I've had so many concussions. I know I have.
You know.
I know I have what those football players have,
and I'm probably gonna have a brain tumor like my dad.
I'm sure of it.
And it's because...
We were stupid skateboarding and we got injured.
It is what it is. [laughs]
He is going to probably get another gnarly concussion.
He's probably gonna break another bone.
He's probably gonna get to the point
where his body will not let him do it.
And that's the way we're gonna go.
Stupid? Yes.
- Maybe it's, like, not smart. I don't know.
But we forget about, you know, the pain and the suffering
that we go through to get to that next level.
And I think it's those people that are afraid
to go through that,
you know, that pain and suffering,
that never amount to anything
than just a normal, safe life, you know?
We don't live in those parameters, you know.
- There's consequences to everything we do.
But when you tap--tiptoe around the consequences...
Tony was having consequen--
he would never have reached what he did
if he listened to those consequences things back then.
"You're too small. You can't get to the top.
"You do it weird. We don't like you.
Here's a beer can in the"-- what?
We all would have stopped
if we'd listened to anybody telling us, like,
"You know, there's gonna be a cost to this."
And some are gonna pay more.
- This is the luxury of having spent my life
doing what I love.
The cost of that...
It sucks.
I'm not blind.
I'm not numb to the pain.
I would argue I'm more conscious of it
than anybody else.
But I'm also more conscious of what that gives me.
[somber music]
And when I'm done with this...
♪ ♪
That will be what it is, and I'll find a way.
But there's something inside of me propelling
that I'm not going to give up until the wheels fall off.
That's what I'm made of.
And I wish--I see all the arguments against it.
But I wish I could relate the intangibles to you.
My guess is that we're all built the same.
None of us are completely stupid.
A little deranged, I think a strong argument.
I do.
But ultimately,
we also know what we have.
And to go and lay down in that sense of it...
♪ ♪
That's like embracing what we've done with our lives.
You know?
♪ ♪
- I found this thing that I've loved
more than anything else that I've tried
or done in my life.
♪ ♪
I found my purpose and my salvation.
And in some ways, I found my emotional highs.
I'm still trying to push my limits.
I don't know how long this will last.
But I'm not gonna quit.
♪ ♪
[Oingo Boingo's "Only a Lad"]
♪ ♪
- ♪ Johnny was bad ♪
♪ Even as a child, everybody could tell ♪
♪ Everyone said, "If you don't get straight ♪
♪ You'll surely go to hell" ♪
♪ ♪
♪ But Johnny didn't care ♪
♪ He was an outlaw by the time that he was ten years old ♪
♪ He didn't want to do what he was told ♪
♪ Just a prankster ♪
♪ A juvenile gangster ♪
♪ His teachers didn't understand ♪
♪ They kicked him out of school ♪
♪ At a tender early age just because ♪
♪ He didn't want to learn things ♪
♪ Had other interests ♪
♪ ♪
♪ He liked to burn things ♪
♪ ♪
♪ The lady down the block, she had a radio ♪
♪ That Johnny wanted, oh, so bad ♪
♪ So he took it the first chance he had ♪
♪ And then he shot her in the leg ♪
♪ ♪
♪ But this is what she said ♪
- ♪ He's only a lad ♪
- ♪ You really can't blame him ♪
- ♪ Only a lad ♪
- ♪ Society made him ♪
- ♪ Only a lad ♪
- ♪ He's our responsibility ♪
♪ Oh, oh, whoa, whoa ♪
- ♪ Only a lad ♪
- ♪ He really couldn't help it ♪
- ♪ Only a lad ♪
- ♪ He didn't want to do it ♪
- ♪ Only a lad ♪
- ♪ He's underprivileged and abused ♪
♪ Perhaps a little bit confused ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh ♪
♪ Whoa, whoa, whoa ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa ♪
♪ ♪
♪ His parents gave up ♪
♪ They couldn't influence his attitude ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Nobody could help ♪
♪ The little man had no gratitude ♪
♪ ♪
♪ And when he stole the car ♪
♪ Nobody dreamed that he would try to take it so far ♪
♪ He didn't mean to hit the poor man ♪
♪ Who had to go and die ♪
♪ It made the judge cry ♪
- ♪ Only a lad ♪
- ♪ He really couldn't help it ♪
[bright tone]