Tony Hawk Breaks Down Skateboarding Movies | GQ Sports

hey what's up everybody I'm Tony Hawk pro skater and this is the breakdown [Music] that's a good question I think there are different movies for their time and place that being said gleaming the cube probably had one of the most legit skate scenes because it was all pro skaters that see superlatives co-producing it and surprisingly police academy for we were the stunt crew and we were allowed to just do whatever we wanted so we had free rein to go downtown Toronto and closed-off spots and do wall rides and jump over fountains and so that one was kind of like a legit Street section I think the the apex of skating in a movie was Back to the Future that inspired a whole generation of kids to start skating not the best skate segment but it was enough to get him into it I have seen grind I politely decline any role in the movie for obvious reasons all right so here's burned [Music] so this looks like a pretty average competition site say in the late 90s or the 2000s because a lot of the x-games stuff was outdoors it was all Wood Street courses were actually more like ramp courses so a lot of transitions a lot of coping and that's what you're seeing in the background so this looks very legitimate so far I've got Randy Quaid was this and there's a quarter pipe blunt fakie that's a solid trick feeble grind on a really low rail and so that kind of stuff like the nose manual going across like these are all standard rail tricks hold on just pause that so for instance the one where the guy did a nose manual up on the deck of one of the quarter pipes that's not something to see in competition because the quarter pipes at the ends are usually just forgetting from the point A to point B if he's gonna do any sort of nose manual trick it would be in nose grind so if he was actually grinding on the coping right there I would believe that that was a skate competition trick this is just more for show I mean just so you have some action going on and right here this backside 360 that's pretty solid like he was doing up he's gonna do backside 360 over the sort of launch box that's the kind of thing we see in the mega ramp events now but for this one I think they were working within a pretty limited space you can tell how the bleachers are sort of crowded like they get they have a small crowd and they've sort of scattered them to make it look like it's it's more than it is I think this is more like the budget they didn't have enough money for a lot of extras generally at a skate event you can dress how you want yeah with the Olympics coming I don't know if that's gonna be the case I'm to be honest I'm not part of that process or what rules are gonna be put in place but at a skate contest yeah it's just more what's functional or what what kind of statement you want to make but I feel like this is very much in tune with the look of that era because what was it's around 2002 ish in a vert competition you don't really have to wear anything the vert skaters choose to wear knee pads and at least a helmet because of the risk factors involved I def rely on my elbow pads to save me and quite a bit but that's the thing about skateboarding there really aren't any rules even in competition those tricks would not have scored very huge I mean we did we saw a basic boardslide basic feeble grind no slide crooked grind I would say there there be hard pressed to make the finals you'll reason they make the finals is because someone else who was more talented bailed didn't miss the run okay so this is more vert skating and generally you wouldn't have two guys on the ramp at a time unless you're actually doing a choreographed routine with them that something is planned ahead it's not some battle you know it's not not some last-man-standing type of thing where two people enter the ramp and then it's only one is like it's one at a time when you're skiing very otherwise it gets really dangerous and right there we have Bucky lassic who I assume is doubling whoever that's the McTwist that's solid vert trick still to this day will get you points those are all real companies a few still exists s america and etnies are all the same umbrella group that's the shoe company they got into sponsors or to give product to the movie I think if you if you have the crowd behind you it definitely helps and especially if you're in competition mode they might encourage you to try something that that maybe you've been debating I would credit the crowd for getting me to land my first 900 because that night I really didn't expect to even try it and then once I've once I started trying it and the crowd was was so hyped on it I thought I got it I got to do it for them right there is a backside 360 that's a super hard trick your landing blind to the ramp that's the worst angle you could have had on it but and okay so it went straight from backside 360 and then suddenly he's turned the other way so bad editing there see right there he's going backwards and then he's going forward again into those grind and I can tell you from years of experience you would never ever ever drop in on someone who's just landing in that doesn't happen it's almost like he tried to cut him off on a wave okay so that right there was Bucky's signature trick frontside cab heel flip frontside air and that was Bucky's trick he was the only one that could do it at the time it was almost like having this trick in the movie gave it that validation there like we do have Pro skaters in this movie and doing some of the hardest tricks yeah that's just absurd with interference tap you would never be willingly interfering with someone's run I assumed you'd be disqualified I don't know we've never ever experienced that in skateboarding so this is a this is exploring new territory right there that's a frontside invert pretty standard vert trick another cab mute and then that is a fakie to fakie 540 which turned into a bale so that was a weird edit because he has it right there he's actually spinning he's gonna probably land backwards again so it's a fakie dude or actually he was doing a 720 there I take that back so they cut this a little a little wonky right there he was spinning in his body was doing a full 720 so right there he's on his last 360 and then they cut to a backside air 360 so that's a different grab different trick different body motion and then they cut to another 720 Bale I see so he's bailing a 720 that's that's the hole that's not something getting out but it was weird to throw in that backside 360 in the middle of that because it just it was not the right it doesn't match anything it's not the right motion and right there he's clearly on the board usually on a 720 you would grab what we call mute which is between your toes with your front hand and then on that backside 360 is is when you're grabbing what we call melon and that's with your front hand around your heels so you can see that the grab changes there that's interact right there that's the kind of hand plant right there like you can't be knocking people skipper with other hands that just this is like West Side Story they go but the irony is that that little tap of a board wouldn't knock you off anyway you get to handle that if you were expecting it for sure even if you're not expecting it you're just gonna feel a little bump on your board but you still make it no way he'll flip McTwist all solid ver tricks all once okay this I don't remember much about this movie but this is the most painful sequence for me because this trick right here is a trick that Bucky was working on during that time it's a heel flip frontside 540 so he do any heel flip and his body's doing a full one and a half spin while going frontside no one had ever done it he gets super close right here you can see how he catches his board and then he's actually putting it back on his feet that's probably as close as attempt ever right there and then instead of what I assume allowing him to make the trick and waiting for him to actually get it they cut to a different grab right there that's actually a lean melon grab frontside 540 that is not how he was catching his board that is not the hand he was using to catch his board but this is the make and I remember thinking like that is such a lame edit come on he's doing a frontside heel flip 540 and then you're showing him landing a totally different trick I don't think that we had any say in that I did not.we but as the pro skaters especially in these days when we were asked to be in a movie like it was just more like you're lucky to be in this you're lucky to be stunt doubling you're not gonna you're not controlling this narrative I thought the the skating in those Clips was legit you know there's some magical editing I think that the problem is they didn't have a skater in the editing room that's it but but the skating that they did document was good I think Chad Fernandez was one of the few guys that actually got a part and was a skater in it there were a lot of stunt doubles for the for the actors but Chad Fernandez actually had a speaking part next up has moving on familiar with gleaming the cube so this is the warehouse scene this is actually Mike McGill doubling for Christian Slater but for this movie I was we had to teach Christian Slater how to look comfortable to skateboard so we would go with him to school yards before shooting and spend a couple hours just showing him how to sort of slalom and and pick up his board and just look so he looked comfortable so those scenes that you where they cut away with him and his upper body he is actually skating but the funny thing about this is this is mostly Mike McGill doing Street skating Mike McGill is more known as a vert pool skater but since Mike was like the perfect stunt double for him they said okay we're gonna make this warehouse into your own little Street course and so you see Mike with a rare boardslide on a handrail here so Mike Scooby footed and here he is doing a method off the plywood this is pretty awesome that is a what we would call an alley oop wall ride not an easy trick in any context but for him to come off onto the flat ground like that is it makes it even harder because he's not going on a ramp I got to get Mike props on that one I mean this was shot in 89 to this day that would be a hard trick to make okay so here's the deal this changes to rodney mullen on rodney Mullins board so suddenly his board is about six inches narrower than when he was riding and Rodney's regular foot so there's a bit of suspended disbelief in there where it's like you just have to be in the mix and you have to you have to appreciate that they got rodney Mullen to stunt-double christian slater I mean we all have to just sort of accept it because he's he's a genius all that rail stuff and and this that's pure rodney mullen that's the signature stuff I mean all those things that he was doing usually you would just do one at a time and then land on your board with all four wheels he's snapping one into the other and landing on two wheels and keeping his wheels up and then going into another trick like only from the mind of rodney mullen that's why he's truly the godfather of modern Street skating and then all that stuff we call that a Pogo and all this fancy footwork like that's all straight from late 70s early 80s and even 360s like no one can do 360s these days and then right there is on one wheel Chuck Taylors were pretty standard for it skaters especially in the sort of early mid-80s there weren't that many skates was available vans didn't really come on the scene until the early 80s so I work I have plenty of footage in Chuck's and this is the Amazing Spider Man which I am honestly not familiar with okay not sure it was going on there it looked like he was trying to ollie he's regular foot there and right there he was goofy footed so he's definitely switched into stance up which means we know there's more than one person still doubling him that's a weird edit right there with the 360 on the ground but but he'd like tried to ollie and he kept his foot on the board you can see that his foot is attached to his board in an unnatural way so definitely his back foot right there is is stuck to the board somehow with something other than gravity so that's a tell right there where it's like all right we're not in reality here [Music] and then that right there is a kid foot to fakie on a legit vert wall okay super fake they're real super fake how do you keep your feet on skateboard when you do a backflip from a wall I've been skating a long time I seen a lot of stuff but I know that's not real I actually know that the stuntman who did that I'm Wayne Spencer he must have had the skateboard attached to the shoes and to go around and do a backflip and be confident enough and skilled enough to know that you actually are going to land on your feet is pretty awesome because that's that's risky like it's like imagine that you strapped a snowboard of your feet and someone threw you in a backflip you got to still land it and that's what he did but we know it's not real okay there nurse another one where he does the back handspring it's interesting where they choose to strap his feet to the board because if you think about it his feet are stuck he can't move them so they had to have like the perfect position of where his feet are and I guess it works oh we've got forklift so stationary manuals on forklifts not really a skate thing or handstands on forklifts so I guess that's that's where we have to realize that he's spider-man okay okay hold it right there I'm not saying no one could Ollie that high but you can tell by the way that he's holding the same position as he goes down that that's not the actual height that he jumped down because if you as you jump down something you have to continually straighten your legs to keep your board on your feet like that's just how to sort of counteract gravity and friction as you're going down you're sort of keeping your Boerner feet until you finally get to the ground and then you compress and so he's already just stuck in that position so his board to be flying away from his feet probably halfway through that and then when he lands you would generally land and sort of wobble a bit because of the because of a force you put on your board and a lot of times that forces your wheel to rub on your board itself and we call that wheel bite so basically a wheel bite is when you land and you land with such force that your wheel hits right here and that stops your motion the way he lands he's super solid there's no sign of any sort of wobbling that's how I know that he didn't jump that high I think it is possible to jump that high I mean we like one of our skaters jaws erina monkey holds the world record for 24 stairs so what jaws did when he did his huge set of stairs is he put wax right here where his wheel would normally rub and that allowed his wheel to keep spinning a little bit but you can see I got a little wheel right there I keep my trucks tight too so but I'm not jumping on those things all right so please count me forward this was my first job on a movie set [Music] I was doubling David Spade I can tell you that he did not want to learn how to skate he was eminently against it David already skated in fact I think he got hired because he was comedian and was into skating so a lot of this stuff you'll see is David really doing doing his own skating so this is basically the Bones Brigade Mike McGill Tommy Guerrero Steve Caballero that's Lance mountain that's Tommy so we we put Flint's in our trucks and so when we are grind it would make that sparking sensation and the the boards were like roughly 11 inches 12 inches wide at that time I think more like 11 I am in the pink shirt right there so I'm David Spade and at some point in the shoot I went through a growth spurt from the time I got hired for this movie to the time it shot I actually had grown quite a bit and about a week into shooting the director said this guy's too tall for a stunt double for David Spade's so we gotta get rid of him and I was I was quietly let go from from the movie and they brought in Chris Miller who looked much more like David but is regular foot so every once in a while you'll see the stance change in these scenes and that's Chris Miller they were trying to get me to stay low I remember like in these scenes every time that I'd go by the camera they be like stay low stay low sorry David okay so this seems pretty cool where we go down the stairs that was a pretty big set of stairs in those days and so we all agreed to do it and if you look at Mike McGill right there in the red he couldn't Ollie that far down the stairs so he started way further ahead of us and really grabbed it see how he's grabbing his board he's actually lifting it up himself and like even though at the time we were like that's kind of cheating that's super hard early grabbing stairs is no joke so I find that interesting every time I see that clip I think I can't believe Mike early grabbed two sets of stairs like that so during the shoot if we came to a stunt like that we we learned early on that if we acted nervous about the stunt that they would give us extra money say this and they said we'll give you guys a stunt bump and then and so we would come upon that like man I don't know and they're like okay we'll give you guys each 200 bucks extra okay we had no idea that that was like the secret to doing stunts at the time the coolest part about this is that we were on a Hollywood production so we were we just had free rein of downtown Toronto so if we chose a spot they would go get it approved this is kind of thing nice to do as a teenager we would get arrested for that in a parking garage and here we had full approval we're getting paid for it it was crazy that's David so this is all really David Spade doing his own skate zones that's cold oh-ho-ho in the 80s that was kind of a thing where people were emulating tricks from a vert ramp and doing handstands and hand plants and then if you could let go of your board and balance it on both feet that was called a hoe I think the idea that cops are prejudicing it skaters just because it came from the time when there were no skate parks around and the only places to skate were private property or public property and so you would go literally make the urban landscape your skate park because all the skate parks were closed down especially in the early 90s and I think that's when it got it at the height of the sort of friction between skaters and cops because cops were just kicking people out everywhere but but not providing places for us to do it I thought I liked it I liked that how I'd represented skating you know and during it's sort of underground Revolutionary time period in the early 90s mid 90s of course but but that's I associate skating's sort of rebirth from the years 92 to 95 ish that was when Street skating really came into its own and I think that's sort of the air that this covers yeah I mean that's that's a real street spot right there there's been quite a few stunts don't over that I think Daewon put a Ledge across there at some point I mean this feels like a real session like that where people egging each other on to try something it's like yeah I can you ollie it you know and everyone has their own skill level so they're trying to challenge each other with what they think would sort of push their own limits this gap like this roof gap is not huge but to someone who just started skating looks terrifying and that's well represented here where it's like some kids it's like all right I'm I'm gonna push my boundaries gonna try and that is the first mistake of trying something big is stopping yourself before the gap because we've seen as with many viral videos people can't stop themselves they have just worst case scenario falling into the gap it's better to just let your momentum take you across even if you're not gonna make it and he's obviously does not have enough speed that was pretty legit right there would be someone who doesn't have the skill level but is trying it anyway you know way outside their comfort zone and then paying the price and probably you know if I were to look at this in reality a kid like that doesn't see the the worst-case scenario it really doesn't see the actual risk of what's happening and has the I guess the advantage of being naive at this point is when you realize this is a stunt more than a slam because as ollie is one that he's trying to land on his back and he's trying to not hit the other side so this is where it becomes like skate fall but not a real skate fall and more of a stunt fall because it in reality if he were to ollie his upper body would be over his nose like that and he and he would have directed his upper body at least to get on to the other side but because they wanted to fall straight to the gap he's got to do this sort of back we call that the Wilson because of mr. Wilson Dennis the Menace so if you ever fall backwards that's a and the whole thing it's stuff like this happens keep filming nowadays especially yeah it's scary I've seen plenty of people get knocked out and you really don't know you never know how severe it is you never know like what internal damage is happening I mean it's that's that's probably the most frightening aspect of getting injured is head injuries for sure and obviously we know a lot more now than we ever have but I went to the hospital for big injuries I mean my first concussion and knocked on my front teeth too but in in later years you start to sort of learn the severity of your other injuries especially cuts and and even even bruises or to a certain extent fractures and so when I was in my probably 20s I took care of plenty of abrasions and Stitch it like did my own you know not stitches but like you by steri-strips you close it up I have a scar on all right here I cut from here to here and I went to the hospital and waited so long in the waiting room that I just gave up and went and got tape and taped it up and because we were on tour and it healed like that so it's kind of like that kind of stuff where you realize you could probably take care of the injure yourself and you know a lot of us didn't have insurance and stuff so we go to the hospital like we didn't have money to pay for it you just sort of learn to deal with the injury as your own this is me I am Will Ferrell in this clip so this is daddy's home we shot this in New Orleans and I was offered the job of being a stunt double for Will Ferrell at a very minimum price and the answer is yes always if you're asked to stunt double Will Ferrell whatever price they offer you take it I was honored the only bummer was that this ramp was super small and so it was hard to do any sort of big vert tricks we were doing the best we could with like handplant sand and rock and roll's and that's just super basic ramp tricks it's so the idea is that he's he's dusting off his board from the 80s and then we'll gets fired up to demonstrate his dormant skate skills and he has my board that's a legitimate production model right there the wheels are pretty big I think they're mini cubics so that's that's a bit of an exaggeration with how big those wheels are I would have seen that board in the 80s somewhere I had to do this first stunt here we see him up on the roof and I was actually feeding skate locations to Will Ferrell while he was while he was taunting Mark Wahlberg so somebody this is how we used to do it and I would say like in Reseda in Upland at Whittier hey who would like to see how we used to do it back in the empty pools of Encino Castaic Irvine Long Beach Santa Clarita Santa Cruz Fremont so I did this part on a wire right here that first alley I was actually on a harness wire and trying to keep the board on my feet as long as I could until it finally dropped off right there this is a pretty fun story I actually tried to do a McTwist for that move because that's the the you see when I take off from the ramp I kind of tuck and so I'm turning it into a 540 that's me right there and then I grab the board that's when they do CGI and they push me all the way up into the tree but on the actual attempt that I did they wanted me to fall I didn't pull out far enough and I ended up hitting the coping with my leg on the way down and ripping it open right here and getting stitches so I have stitches from this exact trick in this exact scene from bouncing off the coping and I remember laying there and thinking like well you got your slam that you wanted that's a harness but see I was trying to make it look like a real ollie as much as I could so they they allowed me to fall until my board actually left my feet and then they caught me I think I've seen this Wow so if you have a rail that is actually doing a such a sharp angle like that it's pretty impossible to stay on the rail and make the turn unless it's actually a curve and even then there are very very few people that could ever do that generally you wouldn't drop the board and flip it like that but it is rather fancy if you're really trying to get speed and in a situation like that you're grabbing the nose and you're running as fast as you can with the board and dropping it and so to do to drop it into like a flip like that would slow you down but here we are and you can tell that that ollie there's something about the way that see he always and his board almost goes vertical and it feels like something else is holding the board to his feet there's something about that that motion that is unnatural for a real ollie like like it's almost like it was he did a wall right up to it there was some invisible ramp leading him up to the rail and I've never seen anyone grind a handrail with snow on it but it's possible he goes from one rail to the next back to the other one and then into a 360 grab onto another rail yeah see now we're in video game territory it just gets crazy and I hate to say that this stuff's impossible because I have seen someone actually go from one rail to the next but in a very smaller setting but to do it in such a massive area like with such long stairs such a long rail we're just we're way out of reality okay so if you say someone bailed that means they intentionally fell off their board like if you're gonna try something and and you know you're not gonna make it or you're just testing it out or you're you just don't feel like you can do it you would actually bail off like bail out right if you what he did was he tried to make it so he slammed a slam is when you think you have it and you're straight into the ground bail is intentional slam is a mistake I feel like Back to the Future is a hugely important movie for skateboarding especially in the eighties it influenced a whole generation of kids to start trying skating you know maybe the older pros now started skating because of this movie it influenced them to get their first board so here's an interesting fact about Back to the Future Eric Stoltz was originally Marty McFly and they shot with Eric Stoltz for five weeks and he had a stunt double that was a skater Bob Smeltzer for the first five weeks they shot with with those two guys and shot a bunch of skate footage with them and then ended up letting Eric Stoltz go so they end up hiring Michael J Fox so they had to reshoot all the the skate scenes but some of the scenes they still use Bob Meltzer even though he wasn't Michael J Fox at stunt double because the skating was so good so that was parallel under props to both of them so there's a couple different skaters in this and I love the idea that that Marty McFly is the one who inspired kids to take the boxes off their skateboards because that was I mean that the original skateboards were scooters like that the only issue with that I have with this is that the board itself has two sets of trucks so it has four trucks and eight wheels and that may seem cool but if you truly rode a board like that the trucks would would counteract each other so as you're standing on it it would kind of force itself to keep going straight you'd have to get all the way on one side to make it turn because you only want to be on those two wheels or turn the other way on those two wheels so this skateboard would be so hard to ride like that the original skateboard was was a piece of wood with with roller skate wheels and trucks but only two in the front two in the back so you would have four wheels this is an eight wheeler but these guys managed to ride it and you can tell how they sort of forced a kick tail on it so there's a little pad on the back there that is not something that would have been on a scooter but they needed it for this effect and also so that they could put Flint's so they can do that sparking thing why do movies have to have sparking skateboards I don't know but all this is real I mean this is holding on to the truck and skitching I guess we would call it and then this right here like it wasn't a great ollie but it was real so that's what I like about that scene right there he went out he clearly went off a jump ramp because of the angle the board is already kicked up so he's not doing a real Ollie on that board and he has use of a ramp so you could see that the real skateboard wheels there they switch to the board up to one that's more functional so that those are that's like real trucks and real wheels on a board that kind of looks like that stunt board because they weren't doing the stunts on that eight wheeler with steel wheels that just wasn't happening but but I want to board that small with with such a dysfunctional kick tail to do an ollie over a over a bush like that was I thought was pretty impressive and then this he's going fakie that makes it a little bit harder he's going backwards [Music] that was a pretty good move it would be hard to actually time the skateboard if is already rolling backwards you would have to give it its own sort of push through and but you know it worked for the scene I thought it was clever riding that was a weird stop though because generally if you're stopping on a skateboard you're doing it with your heel if you do it with your toe it throws you into a spin you can see why his board sort of turned a 90 degree as he came to a stop because he was dragging his toe and that sort of forced it into that angle if we're skating and we want to slow down we generally will straighten our back foot and drag our heel like that so that it's sort of a rudder that keeps you slow and it keeps your board straight and it also prevents your tail from scraping on the ground because when you're a kid you'd scrape your tail to come to a stop and then your tail would end up getting worn out we it's called razor tail and so you'd have this sort of death almost knife on the back of your board and if it never hit you it would cut you yeah that board seemed to morph into a few different incarnations it had white wheels on it for a while and had the wider trucks it was more modern shaped but but hey I'm thankful I'm so thankful for back to the future that they included skateboarding and that it inspired kids to start riding skateboards and and that was you know for the time in place and for what they were trying to accomplish with with showing that he created modern skateboarding it was perfect that was it that was me dissecting the skate scenes of movies breaking him down and I hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you in the movies [Music]

Channel: GQ Sports

Views: 5,159,166

Rating: 4.9316807 out of 5

Keywords: skateboard, skateboarding, the breakdown, tony hawk, tony hawk interview, tony hawk 2019, tony hawk gq, tony hawk gq sports, skateboarding movie, skateboarding movies, tony hawk breaks down, tony hawk skating, tony hawk skateboard movie, tony hawk break down movies, tony hawk back to the future, tony hawk grind, tony hawk mid90s, tony hawk reviews, skating movie, skating movies, breaking down, tony hawk rates, sports, gq sports, gq

Id: 16g227KwNDM

Length: 33min 51sec (2031 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 22 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/JoeyJoeJoeJuniorShab]

We live in a society of laws! Why do you think I took you to all those Police Academy movies?

For fun?!

Well, I didn't hear anybody laughing! Did you?! Except at that guy who made sound effects...

[u/skinnypup]

i don't remember david spade in police academy 4...for some reason, I thought the police academies were way before his time...

[u/blackbeatsblue]

He looks like that famous skateboarder

[u/redpandasuit]

This is Skateboarding!

[u/itsonlykotsy]

Thanks for sharing! I loved these movies and have it on my bucket list to watch all of them in a row one day.

Yes, I know I have pathetic life goals.