The part where he made the comparison to going to a Led Zeppelin concert then Jimmy Page and Robert Plant telling you after you were in the band and to come get some free gear was super cool.
Amazing episode. It did have me wondering about how much of his partying was known about by older people in the industry and possibly ignored because he was popular and got good footage like Allen said. Surely Reynolds, Ellington, Greco (and Brian Sumner? hahah), knew about it but didn't give a fuck because they were equally as fucked up. But somewhere higher up at Flip or Birdhouse or Zero or wherever the fuck someone must have known that this group of kids were beyond just "pissdrunx" and were smoking crack, shooting heroin, whatever. Kinda leaves me with a gross feeling and always has how the industry can let teenage children self destruct like that as long as they're jumping down stuff or acting outrageous for the cameras.
I wonder how many people went down the wrong path because of the popularity of the whole Warner/Baker/Pissdrunx thing?
I think the point you raise warrants a lot more discussion than it ever receives. I don't want to go pointing anymore fingers than have already been pointed, or inject anymore negativity into this thread, but the accountability - or lack there of - that skate companies have for their endorsed riders is something I would like to see more criticism of. I'm not waving the "please think of the children" flag, there's a pantheon of bad shit out there that can poison a kid's mind, and as far as I can tell watching movies by Flip, Baker etc. countless times as an impressionable teen fucked me up a hell of a lot less than any television program.
My concern rests solely with the kids who are talented/marketable/'lucky' enough to be flown around the world by lucrative corporations in order to boost profits. I can understand why producers like O'Dell, who have a vested interest in maintaining positive relationships with industry heads so as to ensure a prosperous journalistic career, may be reluctant to touch on this issue. And let's face it, recklessness in whatever form has always played a large role in skateboarding, furthermore a lot of young pros or would-be pros seem largely surrounded by other skaters, so as you said we gotta wander where these higher ups are and how much they know.
But somewhere along the way there needs to be a push for whoever is making all the money off these kids to find a balance between getting a few lifestyle clips of the crew getting fucked up, and the general well being and even future of said crew. It's different when the weekdntage dudes shotgun beers, that's core shit right there and they weren't making a dime off it for yonks. I'm sure crews like the Baker Boys and Piss Drunks weren't either but at some point in these underground collectives someone starts getting rich and whether or not the money people are getting just as fucked, the fact that remains that if they've got the clairvoyance to recruit new riders who they deem profitable, they ought to be able to have a little care for these rookies.
I realize the company's of which I'm speaking are few and far between, and I commend skaters like Andrew Reynolds, Jim Greco and most definitely Ali Boulala for offering retrospective analysis on this sort of thing, also a hat tip to Tyshawn Jones for keeping it squeaky clean for all the kids to see. But for every untimely, drug induced death in professional skateboarding (and one is one too many, though we all know the others), I've not seen a single company come forward and say "yeah hey sorry like he was a human being and free to make his own decisions, but maybe we could've looked out for him just a little more instead of funding his addictions and makin bank," though it may not be the most economically wise undertaking. Hopefully the industry can learn from stories such as these, as I'm sure we call can, to the extent that real change may occur to help prevent such tragedies in the future.
I have not meant to upset anyone, nor have I meant to use this tragedy as a mere platform to voice my own sentiments. Rather it is because of how this film affected me that I felt compelled to speak. Rest in peace Shane Cross, deepest sympathies for friend's, family and of course Ali.
Topic: Epicly Later'd Ali Boulala (Read 42040 times)