STACY PERALTA: [Laughs.] That question sucked!

CHRIS NEUMER: There were three of them going, I’m not answering that! And I was like, tone set, I am ready. I have got a smile on my face, I want to know more.

STACY PERALTA: [Laughs.] That’s really cool. I am so stoked. You’re the only person to ever mention that. To me, when we put that in, I thought, if I saw this at the beginning of a film, I’ve got to see that film!

CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah.

STACY PERALTA: Because they’re putting themselves down right at the start.

CHRIS NEUMER: I guess maybe it’s my lack of journalism training. Think outside the box.

STACY PERALTA: Maybe so.

CHRIS NEUMER: You know I was wondering about something. With everyone you tell what is now going on with people. But with Jay [Adams], you say he had problems and he had kind of sunk into this kind of lifestyle but you never really said that he was in jail. And I never realized he was in jail until the very end. So I was wondering, was this a conscious decision not to say, Jay’s in jail?

STACY PERALTA: In the original cuts we didn’t say it at all. Until people said, look, where is he? So we had to put it in the end. The original shooting had it at the end of the ??, and it felt like it was just too much. So we just let it go and we put it at the very end of the film with a “Where Are They Now?”

CHRIS NEUMER: Hmm. So what happened to him? This is just because I am curious to know.

STACY PERALTA: He got strung out on heroine. He did some stupid things. He got involved with a girl who was two timing on him. He broke into the house one day and they had a big fight. Just petty stuff. It was just stupid petty arrests until they all added up to something. They gave him a choice to clean up and go in the drug cleanup program and then you’re free. If you fail the program, you go away for five years. He failed it.

CHRIS NEUMER: That’s too bad.

STACY PERALTA: Maybe it was conscious on his part to think that if I get put away I’ll be forced to be clean. He calls me every couple of weeks, as I said in the thing last night. He’s doing so much better.

CHRIS NEUMER: That’s good. I was equating it with Bruce Brown and Mike ?? You got your own sort of ?? thing going on there too.

STACY PERALTA: Mike ?? did a similar thing too. I think he got really out there.

CHRIS NEUMER: I’m excited because I’ve got a phone interview with Bruce sometime soon.

STACY PERALTA: Really?

CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah. He’s the man who ??

STACY PERALTA: He is. But you know, he has a magic about him and his films, he really does. And when he came back with Endless Summer 2 he still had the magic.

CHRIS NEUMER: Hm-mm. It was a little more polished.

STACY PERALTA: Well, it’s a studio picture now. But nonetheless, he still came into the sport after thirty or forty years and he still showed everybody what it’s about.

CHRIS NEUMER: If you’ve got the passion, you’ve got the passion.

STACY PERALTA: I know but he’s also got the eye to look at things that no one else is looking at and bringing light to it. That’s a real filmmaker.

CHRIS NEUMER: And I think you mentioned twice that Chris Cahill is just gone and out, no one knows what the hell happened to him.

STACY PERALTA: Nope. No one knows. We only know he went to Mexico. He inherited a little bit of money when one of his parents died and he went to Mexico. Could be somewhere now, I don’t know. I’m sure word will get to him once this gets released, that it’s out, and someone will say, Hey, I finally heard from Cahill. But otherwise, no.

CHRIS NEUMER: Another thing that I thought was interesting was that you actually interviewed yourself.

STACY PERALTA: Well, I didn’t interview myself. But I drew up all the questions. And we were pretty much all asked the same question. Well, except that some were more specific. There were a lot of specifics to Tony, a lot of specifics to Jay. That was hard because… [Phone rings, answers it this time, talks on the phone for a minute.] That was my kid.

CHRIS NEUMER: Go ahead. I’ll leave that part out of the transcript.

STACY PERALTA: What was your question?

CHRIS NEUMER: I don’t know…

STACY PERALTA: Oh, no, we had a very low budget on the movie, documentary. On the days that I was interviewed, it was hard because I had to wear so many hats that day. Before my interview I conducted interviews that day and after my interview I conducted other interviews, so my head was in those interviews. I was thinking about other things I needed to get done. So when I sat down for mine I couldn’t just relax and answer the questions.

CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah. But again, that was something I hadn’t seen before, the writer-director of the film gets on screen himself. But, again, it works with the film because you were there and you were what, the number four skateboarder in the world?

STACY PERALTA: Right.

CHRIS NEUMER: Was that kind of weird looking back at some of those pictures. Because I am looking at you now. And this is a weird experience because I’m looking in your eyes. Your eyes have the same look they had back when you were a little kid. Is it weird to look back on all that archival footage and see yourself with that long hair skating the poles?

STACY PERALTA: Um, you what it was. It was before it started, but after that I had my producer hat on and the fear and anxiety kicked in. But before that started I looked at my pictures and said wow, what a great time that was, that innocence, anything could happen next.

CHRIS NEUMER: Well, and when you are that age, you just want the next thing to happen.

STACY PERALTA: That’s right. But I was really nervous about being director and producer. What if I walk away from this and I’m accused of doing this for my own self-aggrandizement. It freaked me out. I was really concerned about that.

CHRIS NEUMER: I don’t think it comes off that way.

STACY PERALTA: No, but I was really concerned about it.

CHRIS NEUMER: Well, sure. I know how that can be.

STACY PERALTA: So there were a lot of things. I wanted to make sure of that, and I wanted to make sure that the film was true, but at the same time I didn’t want it to just be inclusive. I wanted to make sure that people who didn’t know the subject could still sit down and find it interesting and know that it’s a piece of American culture. That was one of the goals, to make it not just for the skate audience.

CHRIS NEUMER: After I first saw the film, I wondered, why didn’t they make any references to current skater culture? But the more I thought about it I liked that they didn’t do that because this was more like a spotlight on back then.

STACY PERALTA: I can’t tell you how many people told us that this film would fail because it didn’t deal with modern skateboarding culture. And I kept telling them that there’s too much of that out there. We can’t compete with all that. They said the whole back ends got to be about where it is today, and I said, it can’t be. That was huge for me. I just hoped I was making the right decision, it tortures you. You don’t want to be finished with a film and wonder what would have happened if you had done something differently because now you’re eating crow.

CHRIS NEUMER: You mentioned several times, people wanted you to do certain things. Was that about dealing with Sony Pictures Classics?

STACY PERALTA: No, Sony bought the film after Sundance. But Vans financed the film. And they didn’t ask anything of us. Amazing people. It was mostly other people on the team. And there’s a whole devoted cult that follows the Dogtown thing. There’s a Z-Boys website. So they would follow around the production.

CHRIS NEUMER: Oh, so these were like friends?

STACY PERALTA: Um, not friends – associates. Devotees. They were interested in giving me photos, but they were also interested in giving me every opinion they had. A lot of them had good opinions, but they also weren’t filmmakers, and sometimes they couldn’t see the bigger picture.

CHRIS NEUMER: Well, and they also weren’t in the scene.

STACY PERALTA: Well, for instance, Glen Friedman. He is one of the interview subjects, he was a photographer back then. He had a good place in the film. He helped us get the Hendrix music, the Aerosmith, he was the conduit for our getting Sean Penn for the narrator. He had a lot of good ideas for the film. But he also had a lot of suggestions that I couldn’t do. So I had a lot of people telling me it should be this or that. I can’t tell you how many people told me to put a camera on a bunch of the guys sitting around reminiscing and let it run. It’s a good idea if you think about it. But that’s actually a disaster.

CHRIS NEUMER: No, actually it doesn’t sound that good.

STACY PERALTA: Well, it would be a complete disaster. As a filmmaker I know that. But I didn’t want to just say no to these guys, I had to give them reasons.

CHRIS NEUMER: What was the budget on this?

STACY PERALTA: 400. And we made it in six months.

CHRIS NEUMER: That’s it? 400. Well, good for you. And you had just talked about getting Sean Penn involved as the narrator. Was that Glen Friedman?

STACY PERALTA: Well, Friedman helped us do that. Penn was our only choice, by the way. If we hadn’t gotten him we wouldn’t have had anyone, just a voice. But Sean grew up twenty minutes north of here in another beach community called Point Dume, really pronounced “Dum-ay,” but [everyone pronounces it] Point “Doom.” He went to Santa Monica High School where Tony Hawk and Jay Adams went. Well, we thought Sean might know something about us, but we didn’t know. Glen Friedman knew a way to get trailer to Sean’s assistant. She watches it and calls us back a few days later. She said, this trailer rocks, Sean loved it, but he wants to meet with you before he says anything. He coincidentally comes to the production office. I never met him so I was nervous as all get out. He was in the middle of working with Hans Zimmer on the music for that movie he did with Jack Nicholson, The Pledge. He said, I only have like ten minutes but show me what you can of the film. Fifty minutes later he’s like, turn it off, I’m going cry, this is great. Then he left, and we were like, was that it? Was that a yes? But we found out a few days later that not only did he want to do it, but he didn’t want any money at all for it. He was terrific. But as he was watching the rough cut of the film, he was going, is that Larry Birdelman, is that Terry Fitzgerald, the surfer from Australia, is that this break? So he knew all the spots. I think it was like a trip down memory lane for him as much as it was for us.

CHRIS NEUMER: Sure. Or research for Spicoli, you never know. It’s funny because, and I’m going to use the word homespun just cuz it started with you, not in reference to the size or quality. But it’s funny how people come together when it’s a personal project that they believe in.

STACY PERALTA: No, you are totally right.

CHRIS NEUMER: It’s funny because I was talking the director Phil Joanou, who directed a film called Entropy that I really like. I don’t think it had I was interviewing him about the film and he told me that U2 gave him all the rights to their music for like a thousand dollars.

STACY PERALTA: On Entropy? Wow.

CHRIS NEUMER: He used like ten U2 songs for like a thousand bucks. Then they actually starred in the movie. Stephen Dorff signed on for scale and some French actors. They all just came together. And the people working on the score came together. They did the whole thing for three million. It’s spectacularly well shot. He was just overwhelmed because he had done studio films his whole life. His first everybody just came together. People wanted to know how they could help. There’s an artistic life outside the studio system.

STACY PERALTA: I’ll tell you the same thing happened with getting all our music. We couldn’t afford to pay them even a fraction of what they were worth. They saw the trailer and I guess just the trailer told them that this was going to be one of those projects. We started out saying maybe we’ll get one Ted Nugent song. It was just amazing how it happened. Gregg Allman even said, I don’t want any money, I just want to show it to my bandmates when we’re on the tour bus. There really was a vibe following us. We got really, really lucky that way.

CHRIS NEUMER: Again, when you have a good product and people see it as a good product, it can work out that way.

STACY PERALTA: Well, I can honestly say that we were not looking at this for monetary gain.

CHRIS NEUMER: That is step number one right there.

STACY PERALTA: And we all had to have second jobs to finance our lives. I think only the editor got paid. Agi and I – Agi Orsi, my producer -- of the six months we worked, we got paid for six weeks.

CHRIS NEUMER: What was the second job you did?

STACY PERALTA: I did two things. One was I directed a series for Bravo that was a companion for Actor’s Studio. It was about famous TV actors today and who from TV history is their inspiration. Like, for Kelsey Grammer, it was Jackie Gleason. Anyway, it was a series. And I don’t remember the other thing I did.

CHRIS NEUMER: And the film was well received at Sundance?

STACY PERALTA: It won two rewards. It won Audience and I won Best Director of a Documentary. We were never even sure we’d even get into Sundance. After we did, people told us, Hey, Sundance is great, but it can be a graveyard for your film if you don’t canvas and let people know about your film so they will see it. So we get there and the lady says, you’re from Dogtown, all six of your screens are sold out. We were like wait a minute! What’s going on here? We didn’t even hit the streets yet. So then we went to Edinburgh and Toronto, and Chicago and Denver. I’ll be honest with you, the best part about all this is sharing the culture. And I don’t mean any mushiness or anything like that. It’s just an honor to do this.

CHRIS NEUMER: I thought there might be more coming about the “mushiness.”

STACY PERALTA: No but it is. I’m so glad. I’m just really glad I did the film.

CHRIS NEUMER: Did you get back what you paid for it?

STACY PERALTA: No, not that much, close but not that much. But of course they have a percentage of that too. Vans is a marketing machine, they have stores all over the world. They were entering a partnership with Sony. So for Sony it’s an opportunity. See, Vans can deliver a group that Sony can’t get to and Sony can, of course, deliver a group that Vans can’t get. Both are excited about this. So far it’s going really well. Vans, not being a production company, they didn’t know how to get in our way. Usually Hollywood says, Here’s your check now turn around so we can handcuff you. But Vans said, we don’t even want to see it first, just make the movie you want to make. We consequently felt so indebted to them for this that we really wanted to deliver for them. So they filled us with -- what’s the word? Anyway...

CHRIS NEUMER: This has gotten me everything that I need. But I also want to talk about the new skater culture. To ask you your opinion. Because you’re an old guard, if you will, in a positive sense. Most of the skaters now, I don’t want to say that they’re hoodlums, but it’s like a counterculture. Death metal and beating each other up and all that.

STACY PERALTA: Well, skateboarding is like any culture. You’ve got the fanatics, the peaceful people, and everything in between. You’ve got the Tony Hawk crowd, which is clean, about skateboarding for the athletic endeavor. The thing that’s promising to me about skateboarding, and it shows how much it’s left the Dogtown roots, is that back then it used to be a beach thing. Kids with blond hair and blue eyes doing it.

CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah, like when you couldn’t go surfing.

STACY PERALTA: But nowadays, when I go into the inner city, it’s the Black kids, the Latino kids, the Vietnamese kids doing it. That just blows me away. Because thirty years ago those kids were not skateboarding.

CHRIS NEUMER: This is true.

STACY PERALTA: And if anyone has access to fewer things, it’s those kids. But what they do have access to is all the hardware of the city. They don’t have the best parks or beaches. But they do have the city. And that’s really exciting for me to see that. It’s really something to celebrate. It really shows how the sport has opened up and transformed.

CHRIS NEUMER: Become mainstream? Almost.

STACY PERALTA: Mainstream, but it also still has that inner-city subversiveness, which is nice. And I don’t think it will ever lose that, and here’s why. It’s because so much of what’s fun about skateboarding is that you’re skateboarding on places that weren’t designed for it. That’s always about staircases and ramps and these places weren’t designed for it. Skateboarders utilize them in beautiful ways but they are not allowed to do it. So the subversiveness feeds off of itself. The more they are kicked out of places, the more they want to be in there. It feeds the rebelliousness of it.

CHRIS NEUMER: It’s a bad downward spiral. Or a good one.

STACY PERALTA: Well, I think it’s good because it keeps a purity element.

CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah, but bad from a politician standpoint. For them it’s a downward spiral, I am sure.

Chris Neumer