Back to the story behind my 1990, self-produced BMX freestyle video, The Ultimate Weekend. The part of the video I'm writing about today is the flatland segment from 4:37 to 9:53 in the video above.
While Windy was changing film, and talking to Henry, the other skater rolled over, Henry said, "This is Don Brown he's a lot better than me, he's the guy you should really be shooting." So Windy finished shooting Henry, then asked Don if he wanted to shoot some photos. She was shooting for FREESTYLIN' magazine that day, a BMX freestyle magazine. But Oz the publisher (and Windy's dad), had decided that including skateboarding in the magazine would help it grow, bring in more income, and hopefully spread the word of BMX freestyle, which had only been an actual sport for two years at the time.
Don was really cool and funny, and Windy shot a few photos below the pier on the wide part of the bike path, by the arcade. Looking for a different background, she asked Don to head up the stairs, onto the pier itself, next to Maxwell's restaurant. As she was shooting, some local kids were hanging out, and having them in the background, watching Don skate, made for a cool backdrop. Out of that shoot, came the great photo of Don's 540 (720/?) shove-it, above, which ran as a full page photo in the December 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN', which you can check out here. Don's on page 56, Henry on 51 and 52. On the page after Don you can see the mini-interview I did with a skater who practiced at The Spot in Redondo, where we rode our bikes every night. That kid is named Rodney Mullen.
When this photo came back from the developer (remember developing photos people?), Windy freaked because that girl walking by on the far left, which Windy didn't notice while she was laying on the ground shooting, focusing on framing the shot well, that girl turned and looked at Don, and that just added that magical touch to this photo. Windy loved that, and ran down to show her dad, Oz, right away. She got so stoked when really great photos turned up.
So what does any of this have to do with my 1990 BMX freestyle video? As it turned out, those kids in the background of this photo, who were maybe 12 or 13 at the time, they kept riding. I remember seeing them at a GT show a year or so later at Bolsa Chica Bikes. After the show, SoCal flatland icon Mike Sarrail and I taught them some tricks, like old school tailwhips, squeakers, and stuff. Those kids practiced in that parking lot for an hour or more. And they kept riding.
Another year or so later, early high school age for them, I moved to an apartment near that area. I ran into them right away, because they practiced every night in the Taco Bell parking lot, at Bolsa Chica and Heil in Huntington Beach, a couple blocks from my place. By that time, they could do most of what I could do, and they were moving on past my flatland level with the Kevin Jones/Plywood Hoods inspired forward rolling tricks. And they kept riding. None of them ever went pro, as far as I know, but they became really solid amateurs on the SoCal contest scene.
The kid in the blue shirt, sitting on his bike, in the Don Brown photo above, is Andy Mulcahy, who you first see at 5:38 in the video. Ahhhh... the mullet era. Anyhow, by 1990, this crew usually practiced in a parking lot of a big shopping center on Beach Boulevard, near Stark and across from the Burger King, not too far from the 405. The opening part of this section was shot behind that shopping center. The first flatlander is Joe Goodfellow, known as Red then. He's not to be confused with "Crazy Red" Mike Carlson, who's in the video later. Red might be the guy blocked by Don's knee in the the photo above, I'm not sure.
A lot of The Ultimate Weekend was pretty new stuff happening in BMX at the time, like th estreet and mini ramp riding. While Andy, Red, and the guys were really good, they weren't quite the cutting edge of flatland, dominated by the Plywood Hoods, Chase Guoin, and a couple others at the time. But their long, smooth lines let me progress in a different way in my video. Those opening shots of Red, where I'm rolling along beside and moving around him, were shot with by skateboarding along side him with the camera. These days, you all probably know that. But in 1990, that was something that wasn't done much. Ski filmmaker Bruce Benedict, the first to shoot serious footage of Action Jackson and the early Rollerblade team, started using blades to shoot cool tracking shots with a camera. I know this because he also shot most of our Sims snowboard footage, and we talked about it a couple of times when I worked at Vision and he showed us he Rollerblade footage.
But when I took this section of the video up to my first real "Hollywood" TV job in early 1991, and showed them this flatland footage, they freaked. The experienced cameramen and editors I worked with on Supercross and Monster Truck TV shows, they could not figure out how I shot that footage. It seriously baffled them. The only way Hollywood people knew how to get a tracking shot (rolling beside or behind something) was with a big camera dollie, like this:
It was hilarious. Huge devices like those above are all they thought of when trying to get the camera rolling, and there's no way a big camera dollie could do those shots I took. I was a lowly P.A. (production assistant) around guys who'd worked in the real TV industry for 10-15 years. And those first camera shots rolling along and around Red and Andy had them completely confused. They just kept re-watching them, and couldn't figure out how I shot them. I finally said, "I did it with a skateboard." It blew their fucking minds. They first thought I sat on a skateboard, held the camera, and had someone push me. I said, "No, I just skated along side of them, and around them, holding the camera (a full size S-VHS) in one hand.
One thing about the early, rider-made, BMX, skateboard, and snowboard videos that never gets discussed is that we changed the way the entire video world shot video. Using a skateboard to get tracking shots is just one example. But, accidentally, we changed the video world by making the videos we, as riders, skaters, and boarders, wanted to see. We came up with new ways of shooting and editing that changed Hollywood. We also pretty much invented the "reality TV" idea, too, by shooting candid footage of ourselves and random people, but that's a whole different issue.
The contest at the Rose Bowl was one I gave those guys a ride to, and shot some footage while I was there. The minute+ long hitchhiker was just a shot I caught randomly. I'd never seen anyone do a hitchhiker more than maybe 100 feet or so, and that was amazing to me. But that guy, and I don't even know who he was, just kept going, and going, and going.It was insane to see at that time.
The nighttime footage was another session I shot later in 1990, late summer or early fall maybe, to get the most up to date stuff they were doing before I edited the video. The black guy riding is Sean Johnson, who just moved to Huntington Beach and started riding with those guys a month or so before that. The trick where he's doing what looks like a "lawnmower" rolling in a circle is something I'd never seen before I shot it.
So while Andy, Red, and the H.B. flatlanders weren't quite up with the Plywood Hoods at the time, they were solid riders, and a part of our H.B. scene that needed to be in The Ultimate Weekend. In addition, I met Don Brown. A few months after that photo shoot, I got the boot from Wizard Publications, landed a job as the AFA newsletter editor in H.B., and became a local at the pier. Don Brown, Pierre Andre', and Mike Sarrail became lifelong friends.
I'm going to be sharing most of my old school BMX stories on the new Block Bikes Blog from now on, check it out...
Wow !
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