Bones Brigade (Stacy Peralta,2012:)USA

Reviewed by Jesse Deason at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2012

Holy ….!!!!!  UN….INGBELIEVABLE!!!! Rodney Mullin! Steve Caballero! Mike McGill! Lance Mountain! Tommy Guererro! Everybody but Tony Hawk was there on the silver screen at the Arlington Theatre then in the flesh for a Q&A afterwards! I caught a hat from Rodney Mullin he was tossing into the audience that I’m wearing as we speak! This was my generation of skating icons growing up in Los Angeles in the 80s and 90s. These were my heros growing up and I never got a chance to really know much about them until Stacy Peralta gave us this intimate and personal documentary called Bones Brigade.

I was searching for my notes on this film and they simply do not exist. Not a single word was written down I was so enthralled from the gate. But the film thankfully was burned into my mind permanently enough for me to write this review. Stacy took us into the minds of these talented kids as they grew up becoming gods of skateboarding and the significant drawbacks and hardships that they naturally incurred in doing so. These guys put an all but dead sport not only back on the map but popularized it tenfold by evolving it into something its founding fathers couldn’t have even dreamed. They pushed themselves to be better and better and transcend the sport completely by inventing amazing new tricks through their talent and creativity. Rodney Mullin invented the “ollie”. The first trick I ever learned street skating. The first trick every kid today learns that back then noone had even conceptualized. Rodney Mullin would practice late at night between 2-6am  perfecting his craft alone over and over and over again until he was satisfied and the world who witnessed what he was able to do for the first time ever was universally awed.

How Tony Hawk stopped having fun to the point of walking away from competition for a year in his early prime after winning practically every event he entered. How Lance Mountain felt inferior in so many ways talent wise but yet remained one of the most popular of the entire team in the eyes of millions of kids who could relate best of all to him and his limited skill set. Stacy interviewed each of the team members individually and we were given very personal and touching insights into the lives of these guys I for one had no idea about and I considered myself a real fan. It wasn’t surprising that Rodney Mullin for instance suffered from OCD. Undoubtedly the driving force behind him tirelessly perfecting tricks that really haven’t been equaled to this day. We were given glimpses of how controlling his father was and how that relationship significantly affected him throughout his life.

There simply isn’t enough praise I can give for this amazingly profound film. By far the best documentary I’ve ever seen and a triumph for Stacy Peralta who has progressed in his film making ability a thousand percent from his early stab at “The search for Animal Chin”. I would highly recommend this film to any fan of skateboarding or any fan of excellent documentary films.