Rodney Mullen: Pop an ollie and innovate! (TED Talk)

you you so that's what I've done with my life as a kid I grew up on a farm in Florida and I did what most little kids do I played a little baseball did a few other things like that but I always have a sense of being an outsider and it wasn't till I saw pictures in the magazines and a couple of the guys skate I thought wow that's for me you know because there was no coach standing directly over you and these guys they were just being themselves there's no opponent directly across from you and I love that sense so I started skating when I was about 10 years old in 1977 and when I did I picked up pretty quickly in fact here's some footage from about 1984 it wasn't until 79 I won my first Amateur Championship and then by 81 I was 14 and I won my first World Championship which was amazing to me in a very real sense that was the first real victory I had watches this is a Casper slide where the board's upside down mental note on that one in this one here and Ollie so it she mentioned that is overstated for sure but that's why they called me the Godfather of modern Street skating here are some images of that now I was about halfway through my pro career and I would say what mid-80s freestyle itself we developed all these flat ground tricks as you saw but there there was evolving a new kind of skateboarding where guys were taking it too the streets and they were using that Ollie like I showed you they were using it to get up on the stuff like bleachers and handrails and over stairwells and all kinds of cool stuff so it was evolving upwards in fact when someone tells you they're a skater today they pretty much mean a street skater because freestyle took about five years for it to die and that stays I've been a champion champion for eleven years which and suddenly it was over for me that's it it was gone they took my pro model off the shelf which was essentially pronouncing you dead publicly that's how you make your money you know you have a signature board and wheels and shoes and clothes I had all that stuff and it's gone the crazy thing was there was a really liberating sense about it because I no longer had to protect my record as a champion champion again Teddy it sound so goofy but it's what it was right and I got to what drew me to skateboarding the freedom was now restored where I could just create things because that's where the joy was for me always was creating new stuff the other thing that I had was a deep well of tricks to draw from that were rooted in these flat ground tricks stuff the normal guys were doing was very much different so as humbling and rotten as it was and believe me it was rotten I would go to skate spots and I was already like famous guy right and they everyone thought I was good but in this new terrain I was horrible so people go oh he's all what happened to Mullen so homely as it was I began again here are some tricks that I started to bring to that new terrain and again this is undergirding layer of influence of freestyle it made me fall that one that's like the hardest thing ever done okay look at that it's a dark slide see how it's sliding on the backside those are super fun and actually not that hard you know what the very root of that see Kass first faith right simple is that right no biggie and your front foot the way I grabs it is I had seen someone flying on the back of the board like that I was like how can I get it over because that had not yet been done and then it dawned on me and here's part of what I'm saying I had an infrastructure I had this deep layer where where it's like oh my gosh it's just your foot it's just the way you throw your board over just let the ledge do that and it's easy and next thing you know there's 20 more tricks based out of the variations so that's the kind of thing that you check this out here's another way and I won't overdo this a little indulgent I understand there's something called a primo slide it is the funnest trick ever to do it's like skin boarding is this one's looking on slide slide with every whichaway okay so when you're skating and you take a fall the board steps that way or that way kind of predictable this it goes every which way it's like a cartoon the Falls and that's what I love the most about it it's so much fun to do in fact when I started doing them I remember because I got hurt I hadn't I had to get a knee surgery right so they're a couple of a couple of days we're actually a couple of weeks where I couldn't skate at all it would give out on me now and watch the guys I go this warehouse were a lot of guys were skating my friends I was like man I gotta do something new I want to do something new I don't start fresh i'ma start fresh and so the night before my surgery I watched and I was like how am I gonna do this so I ran up and I jumped on my board and I cave and I flipped it down and I remember thinking I landed so light-footed figured if my knee gives doesn't have more work to do in the morning and so whether it was the crazy thing I don't know how many guys have had surgery but you were so helpless right you're on this gurney and you're watching the ceiling goodbye every time it's always that and right when they're putting the mask on you before you go to sleep all I was thinking is man when I wake up and I get better the first thing I'm going to do is film that trick and indeed I did it was the very first thing I found which was awesome oh now let me I told you a little bit about the evolution of the tricks consider that content in a sense what we do is Street skaters is you have these tricks say I'm working on dark slides or a primo did you guys know the stuff now what you do is you cruise around the same streets that you see a hundred times but suddenly because you already have something in this fixed domain of this target it's like what will match this trick how can I expand how can the context how can the environment change the very nature of what I do so you drive and drive drive and actually I got to admit this because I was struggling with this because I'm here but I'll just say it is I cannot tell you not only to be in front of you but when a privilege is to be at USC campus because I have been escorted off the campus so many times so let me give you another example of how context shapes content this is a place not that far from here it's a rotten neighborhood your first consideration because am I going to get beat up you go out and see this wall it's fairly mellow and its beckoning did you Bank tricks right but there's this other aspect of it that for wheelies so check this out there's a few tricks again how environment changes the nature of your tricks freestyle oriented more wheel down and wheelie down watch this one oh I love this it's like surfing this way the way you catch it this way little sketchy going backwards and watch the back foot watch the back foot mental note right there again we'll get back to that here back foot back foot okay up there that was called a 360 flip notice how the board flip and spun this way both axes and another example of how the context change and the creative process for me and for most skaters is you go you get out of the car you check for security you check for stuff it's fun you get to know their rhythm do you know all the guys that cruise around and skateboarding is such a humbling thing man no matter how good you are right you still got to deal with and so you hit this wall and when I hit the first thing you do is you fall forward as you just if you adjust you punch it up and then when I would do that it was drawing my shoulder this way which as I was like oh wow that's begging for a 360 flip because that's how you load up for a 360 flip and so this is what I want to emphasize that as you can imagine all of these tricks are made of sub movements executive motor functions more granular to the degree to which I can't quite tell you but one thing I do know is every trick is made of combined two or three or four or five movements and so as I'm going up these things are floating around and you have to sort of let the cognitive mind like rest back pull it back a little bit let your intuition go as you feel these things and these these sub movements are just kind of floating around and as the wall hits you they connect themselves to an extent and that's when cognitum I anything up 360 flip I'm going to make them so that's how that works to me the creative process the process itself of Street skating so next Oh mind you those are the community these are some of the best skaters in the world see this on my friends oh my gosh there's such good people and the beauty of skateboarding is that no one guy is the best in fact any of us is rotten to say my friends but a couple of them actually don't look that that comfortable on the board what makes them great is the degree to which they use their skateboarding to individuate themselves every single one of these guys you look at them you could see a silhouette of them and you realize like oh that temp that's Haslem that's costume there's these guys these are the guys and skaters I think they can be outsiders who seek a sense of belonging but belonging on their own terms and real respect is given by how much we take what other guys do these basic tricks 360 flips we take that we make it our own and then we contribute back to the community the in a way that edifies the community itself the greater the contribution the more we express and form our individuality which is so important to a lot of us who feel like rejects to begin with the summation of that gives us something we could never achieve as an individual I should say this there's some sort of beautiful symmetry that the degree to which we connect to a community is in proportion to our individuality which we are expressing by what we do next these guys very similar community that's extremely conducive to innovation there's a couple these shots from the police department Ballu is quite similar I mean what is it to have right it's knowing a technology so well that you can manipulate it and steer it to do things that was never intended to do right and they're not all bad you can be a Linux kernel hacker make it more stable right more safe more secure you can be an iOS hacker make your iPhone do stuff it wasn't supposed to not authorized but not illegal and then you've got some of these guys right what they do is very similar to our creative process they connect disparate information and they bring it together in a way that security analyst doesn't expect right doesn't make me good people but it's the heart of Engineering it's the heart of a creative community an innovative community and the open source community the basic ethos of it is take what other people do make it better give it back so we all rise further very similar computers very similar we have our edgier size too it's funny my dad was right these are my peers but I respect what they do and they respect what I do because they can do things it's amazing what they can do in fact one of them he was urged in young entrepreneur of the year for San Diego County so they're not you never know who you're dealing with he we've all had some degree of fame in fact I've been I've had so much success that I started always feel unworthy of I've had a patent and that was cool and we started a company and grew it became the biggest and then I went down and they became the biggest again which is harder than the first time and then we sold it and then we sold it again so I've had some success and in the end when you've had all of these things what is it that continues to drive you as I mentioned the nice stuff and these things what is it it will punch you because it's not just the mind what is that it will punch you and make you do something and bring it to another level and when you've had it all sometimes die they they died on the vine with all of that talent and one of the things we've had all of us is Fame I think the best kind of thing because you can take it off I've been all around the world and there'll be a thousand kids crying out your name and it's a weird visceral experience it's like it's disorienting and you get in a car and you drive away and ten minute drive and you get out and no one gives a rat's who you are and it gives you that clarity of perspective of man of just me and popularity what does that really mean again not much it's pure respect that drives us that's the one thing that makes us do what we do have had over a dozen bones these guys this guy over what eight take concussions to the point where it's comedy right he it is actually comedy they mess with it um next and this is something deeper and this is where I'm I think I was on tour when I was really one of the fine line biographies and it's the red one of the blue one and he made this he made this statement that was so profound to me it was it that the Nobel Prize was the tombstone on all great work and it resonated because I had 135 out of 36 contests that I'd entered over 11 years and it made me bananas in fact winning isn't the word I want it once the rest of time you're just defending and you get into this like turtle posture you know well you're not doing it it used up the joy of what I love to do because I was no longer doing it to create and have fun and when it died off from under me that was one of the most liberating things because I could create and look I understand that I am on the very edge of preaching right here I'm not here to do that it's just that I'm in front of a very privileged audience if you guys aren't already leaders in your community you probably will be if there's anything I can give you that will transcend what I've gotten from skateboarding the only things of of meaning I think in a permanence it's not Fame some popping that's all they say it's what it is is that there's an intrinsic value in creating something for the sake of creating it and better than that because man I'm 46 year old g-46 and how pathetic is out that I'm still skateboarding but there is there is this beauty in dropping it into a community of your own making and seeing it dispersed and saying younger more talented just different Talent take it to levels you could never imagine because that lives on so thank you for your time really we invented yourself in the past from freestyle the street and it was about four years ago you officially retired is that it what's next that's a good question something tells me it's not the app yeah III every time you think you've chased something down it's funny no matter how good you are and I know guys like this it feels like you're polishing a turd you know and I thought the only way I can extend this is is to change something infrastructure and so that's what I proceeded to do through a long story one of desperation so if I do it rather than talk about it if I do it all right we'll be the first to many more you

Channel: Hamish Macleod

Views: 3,899,354

Keywords: Rodney Mullen, TED, Plan B, A Team, Globe, Freestyle, Skateboarding, Innovation, Ollie, The Mutt

Id: uEm-wjPkegE

Length: 18min 20sec (1100 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 18 2013