Twenty to Life Sentence of Hardcore Skating
By Michael Cornelius
Doug, Steve and I had taken the Ferry over to Bainbridge Island from Seattle to skate the park there. We struck up a conversation with another guy who was skating there and it just happened to be filmmaker Brain Lilla. Brian was also in town for the EMP Hey Punk III weekend and his short movie "Twenty to Life" was going to be featured that night prior to the Dogtown and Z-Boys movie at EMP.
The 25 minute movie was well received by the packed house that night.
People are going to compare his film to Fruit of the Vine both being Super 8 movies about pool skaters but that is not a bad thing. Obviously creative skaters are bored with the sterile fisheye video shots and are looking for something more organic. The movie has a killer sound track mixing rock, punk and blues and features some downhill sliding segments that are worth the price of admission alone. It's a well made and well edited film that makes a solid artistic statement in a short 25 minutes.
I took the opportunity of our chance meeting prior to seeing the film to ask him a few questions.
So you are here to show your film Twenty to Life tonight at EMP?
Yeah.
Tell me about the movie.
It's just about guys that have been skating for twenty years or more and for some reason or other they just haven't stopped yet. It's not the type of skating that you see in the magazines or the people you see in the magazines. They are just underground; a lot of pool skaters. There is some downhilling in there with a 52 year old, Cliff Coleman, who still goes over 50 mph standup on hills he was riding when he was 6 years old. It's awesome.
What locations did you get?
I shot mostly Northern Californis, Northern California pools. There is some Burnside footage in there and there is some vert footage from Florida. It's pretty crazy, these guys have a 40 foot wide 12 foot high steel halfpipe in the middle of the swamplands. They have their own world out there.
It's gotta be steel in Florida.
And it is hot! You can literally fry an egg on it, it's that hot.
In the swamps wood wouldn't last a day.
All the people there are skating because they love it; there is no other reason.
You shot it on 8MM?
Super-8, the whole thing.
Did it kind of fall together because you were doing it anyway or did you set out from the beginning to document it?
I borrowed my friends super-8 camera this one time because we were going to the Glory Hole. (The pipe pictured on the cover, ed.) We shot it and when we got the film back it was like, wow, that looks great. Then over about a four and a half year period I started taking my camera everywhere, I got a camera at a flea market, and I started taking it to all the pool sessions. It was really fun because we would go to the session, film, and then two weeks later we would get the film processed and I would have everyone over to the house. We would watch it through this old projector like you used to have in eigth grade. You know, it was cool, we would just sit around and watch it then after about 2 years people were saying "Oh, you should put something together" and then I started realizing that all the footage I had was about people who were over 30. Most of the people in this are like 30, 40 years old. So that is how the project came together.
Me? I'm 34.
In the last two years it seems that there has been an explosive old school skate scene. What do you think brought that about?
I think a lot of what brought that about is that the industry all the sudden blew up. The industry became as big as it has ever been. Professional skateboarders are making more money than they ever have. You take people in the industry like Peralta, who is a marketing genius, and on the flip side of that, you take people like Duane (Peters) that are just, he's Duane. He just skates out of control and he hasn't stopped. So it's like the industry caught a hold of that, and I don't want to say they are explioting it but they are definetly not holding back in term of using it as an excuse to sell more stuff. I think it is good though for a lot of people like Alva and Adams and all those guys that deserve their props. They haven't stopped.
Sometimes I think it's that the skaters that age have gotten into positions of influence themselves. They are at a point in their lives where they can spend some money and do some projects, build a bowl that they like. So it has kind of turned around.
Those are the people who are influencing how parks are being built now. Like this park right here. (Bainbridge) This is like something that would have been built in the 70's. And that is a great thing because we need deeper bowls. We need pool coping. So that is probably the greatest thing that has come out of it is the amount of parks that are being built.
What is the scene like in Oakland CA?
Oakland is pretty low profile. A lot of pool skating. The Oakland Hills fires influenced a lot of people to get into pools. There are not many good parks there now. We have one coming in Berkley, it's a kidney, and it looks alright. It isn't done yet but it looks fun.
Do you know who is building it?
No, I don't. All the parks up in Oregon and Washington are, hands down, the best parks I've ridden in my life. I just did a tour of all the Dreamland parks. I think it's good because it's going to influence a lot of younger skaters to skate bigger and deeper stuff and have fun.
So, what is the next step for your video after this? How can people find it?
They can just order it though me at
super8skateflic@yahoo.com I'm not putting it out there that hard to be honest with you. I'd rather put a limited number of copies out and let it be a good thing than to flood the market. It's fun. I'm definitely not making money on it but that is not what it's about. It's just to make a documentary about my friends, to give it to them so they have a piece of history that they can look at and say "Yeah, that was a part of my life". It's fun because I like giving it to people. Super 8 is raw and scratchy and fucked up but that is how skating is too. It's not pretty, that is for sure.
How old are you?