Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator
I haven't seen it discussed here, but if you like a good documentary, definitely check this one out. It tells the story of Gator Rogowski, probably the biggest skateboarding star of the eighties. After a meteoric career, he sold-out, burned-out and ended up a depraved murderer thrown in jail for 31 years...in that order. The film stays away from the typical Corey Haim former child star story of Riches-Rags-Redemption. Instead, it becomes a realistic document of a talented but confused and arrogant kid spiraling out of control.
Overall, you could call the film "Dogtown and Z-Boys 2". It has a very similar style and is close to the quality of that great film. It does serve as nostalgia trip with well chosen archival skate footage that truly captures the mid eighties and brought me right back the junior high. However, it's also just a plain ol' good movie. It's well edited and lean. The interviewees are the biggest names in the sport and are surprisingly mature and eloquent about what happened to them between 85 and 91. The film is also helped enormously by a truly fantastic punk/new wave soundtrack obviously put together by someone who really knew what they were doing.
I'd rank "Stoked" a little higher than, say, "Step Into Liquid" (which I found beautiful but a little hollow) but below "Scratch" or "Dogtown and Z-Boys" (all are similar movies about various obsessive subcultures).
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