gorilla flicks

good night, and good luck

It was never my intent to become a writer or be allowed to have the luxury to play Legos with words. I was, first and foremost, a "professional artist" in the Romper Room refuge of the skateboard industry. Then Jeff Tremaine came along in 1992. He'd just taken over the reins of the fledgling Big Brother skateboard magazine as its new "Art/Editorial Director," and encouraged me to start contributing to the magazine in a writing sense. I mean, no one else was really around to help out aside from Earl Parker and Marc McKee, so he had to find someone to help fill the pages.

Up until that point all I'd ever written were letters to friends—a fun, creative diversion to my solitary life on the drawing table. I started out with a few amateurish (read: embarrassing) contributions to the magazine, but was swiftly shouldered with the responsibility of maintaining the "News" section because of my "skate nerd" inclinations. Then, as Earl Parker became increasingly MIA, I took on beefier assignments, my favorite being the travelogue writings that accompanied our various road trips and tours, documenting all the daily inanities and absurdities of our staff. I wasn't much of a drinker then, nor particularly social, so it was easy to sit back, disappear into the background, and take mental notes and photos of what everyone else of considerably bolder stock was doing. Then, every night before bed—as we were all traveling on the cheap and often crowded 6–8 people into a single hotel room [see Exhibit A above], I'd jot everything down to not forget. So, in short, I was simultaneously respected and loathed by both my friends and the skaters who dared travel with us then, because not everyone wanted a scrupulous laundry list of their nightly debaucheries aired in the pages of a magazine. Oh well!

By the time Big Brother was bought by Larry Flynt in 1997, I'd grown a lot more confident in my writing (or as confident as anyone can be holding a full house of insecurities in their head), perhaps overly so, because it was (and still is) too verbose for my own stylistic good.* Regardless, Marc McKee had abdicated the position of Editor and I got sucked up into his void and was suddenly at the helm of a skateboard magazine, or rather a co-pilot, I should say, as I was Tremaine's right-hand man for the next three years. Still, I never felt entirely suited to the position as I just didn't have the strength of personality, character, and charisma that our Managing Editor, Dave Carnie, did in fact have. So I was, quite honestly, relieved to remove myself from the position in 2000—allowing Dave to fully take charge and make his indelible mark on the Big Brother legacy—and tag along with Tremaine and Johnny Knoxville into the unknown on what would become jackass.

It didn't take long to find my niche within the production crew. Besides taking photos and documenting this new journey into even more absurd territory, I was responsible for compiling all the ideas and writing them into "treatments" for the various skits and stunts. These documents were run through the MTV gauntlet, which consisted of Development, Legal, Standards & Practices, and Safety, but I was emboldened by the leadership of Knoxville, Tremaine, and Spike Jonze, and treated the treatments with the exact same silliness and irreverence fostered at Big Brother. So again, nothing ever felt like real work, it was all just a circus of our own devise, and any writing that needed to be done, from DVD/CD box liner notes to cast and crew bios, was dished onto my plate making me the de facto "voice" of jackass—strictly in the written sense, of course, because all I was really doing was springboarding off the plethora of colorful personalities surrounding me.

Things really reached a ridiculous peak, though, when I became an "author" with the published pop-culture poop stain, The Official Jackass the Movie Companion Book, in 2002. Of course this disappeared into obscurity as soon as it rolled off the printing press, but the experience prompted me to finally step-up and really put my heart into a labor of love project chronicling the history of skateboard art with a subsequent Disposable follow-up years later.

In 2007, Dave Carnie and I were briefly reunited to captain the interweb vessel jackassworld.com, but this was a ship doomed before it even left the harbor to set out to sea. It's unfortunate—or maybe it is fortunate?—that no one thought to capture this disaster as it unfolded in reality television form, because it was indeed our very own "Hearts of Darkness" fiasco. However, it did get us up to the third dimension in 2010, whereupon I was somehow able to connive my way into doing yet another book, this one celebrating our "10 Years of Stupid." Maybe you have a copy, maybe you don't—yet again it slipped out like a church pew creeper from MTV Books, but it is without a doubt a damn treat for anyone to discover on a coffee table or toilet tank.

Since that time, I'd taken over all the social media and bloggier aspects of jackass, Dickhouse, and Gorilla Flicks, keeping the spirit and grammar alive along with the ebb and flow of various projects. The jig is finally up, however, so in short—ha! you long-winded motherfucker!—I'll forever be indebted to Tremaine and Knoxville for all the opportunities presented to me over the past two decades. It was the ultimate accidental tourist trip, and I couldn't have found a better dysfunctional family in which to thrive and continue to thwart the realities of adulthood. That said, it's been a distinct honor to serve in what has become an increasingly foreign legion of the absurd, and I look forward to one day being called back up out of the reserves to frolic in further dumb fields of folly should they appear on the horizon. Until then, I leave you with these three simple yet enduring words to live by in a world going more and more madly serious by the day: "Lighten up, Francis." —Sean Cliver

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* Consider this concise critical selection by Michael Dirda, wherein he tacks my tics and fawning, slack, vacuous ass to the wall:

"Writers generally hope that their sentences smoothly interlock, and that any reader's eyes pass swiftly down the page without effort. To assist in creating this frictionless continuity, we sometimes turn to words like naturally or phrases like of course, in fact, and that said. These usually appear at the start of a sentence, simultaneously announcing new material while subtly or overtly harking back to earlier content. The occasional use of these locutions to promote continuity is fine, but all too often they merely signal slack writing. In themselves such words don't actually carry any meaning; they are simply syntactic grace notes—and employed too often they grow into verbal tics. As much as possible, cast out these fawning connectives and make your thinking the dynamic that sweeps the reader along. Prefer concision to clutter, the meaningful to the vacuous."

(Photo by Dimitry Elyashkevich; 1998)

the great dimitry elyashkevich photo show

Be it my lowly Wisconsin origins or an unfortunately shallow embankment of brain cells, I'm certainly not above a little journalistic Cheez Whiz. So it's without much care or concern that I make the widely clichéd Warhol-attributed reference, "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes," because anyone, really, could have a 15-minute photo show nowadays. Once upon a time, no lie, it used to be a real pain in the ass to be a photographer: dealing with all that pesky film stuff, the inherent frame limitations to a roll, not knowing what the hell you got or if you even got it until all that tedious developing and processing crap... let's just say it wasn't for everyone. Obviously, that's not anywhere near the current case, and it would probably be quite the mind-blowing statistic to know how many photos are taken the whole world over in the period of just one single second. Boom! Even in the act of pondering there went the last of my synapses for the day. One or two more vaguely constructed paragraphs like this and I'll need to shut down and recharge my neural capacitors to deal with tomorrow's daily struggle.

Left to right: Tremaine on what could have been any night in the mid-late ‘90s; Rick Kosick and Chris Pontius, full metal ninja turtles; Kosick and a gold lamé Dave Carnie, post-Russian strip club destruction on the eve of yet another ill-fated Big Brother-sanctioned event.

But there existed a window of time in the '90s, just prior to the digital age of chaos, when the consumer-grade point 'n' shoot film camera reached the apex of its soon-to-be-meteored evolution with the Yashica T4. It was a magical pocket device indeed, and both professional photographers and commoners alike snatched them up at a very affordable price. This was especially so in the world of skateboarding, where it serendipitously coincided with the height of decadence right before the industry's li'l butt pucker was ruptured by the mainstream and all the booby-traps and pitfalls that came along with the unholy coupling (once the term "athletes" was heard and used in all seriousness, it was Crystal Clear with Capital Corporate Cs that the end was nigh and the doomsday clock was two minutes to midnight for the fuck-all-show-it-like-it-is rag that was then Big Brother skateboard magazine). For a few priceless years, though, it wasn't uncommon to see everyone out in the bar with a beer in one hand and a T4 in the other.

 

Left to right: Mike Crum was a darling of the "Last Call" parade of party photos in Big Brother, all thanks to the omnipresent lens of Dimitry; Scott Johnston, Jeff Tremaine, Dimitry, and Sean Cliver—all cleaned up and ready for the post-Y2K world at a respectable, no-nonsense Chocolate premiere at the DGA theater on Sunset Blvd.

I only embark on such tangents, because the late great photo show of Dimitry Elyashkevich this past weekend at the Door Gallery in Hollywood not only embraced and celebrated this slaphappy snapshot period in skateboarding, but embodied it in spirit as well. If I heard correctly, the show was to open at 9pm, yet by 7:30 that night there was still nothing on the walls?! I walked in at 9pm, at which point the sweat was pouring and the first words—as well as probably the next 20 or 30 or so—to come out of Dimitry's mouth to me were, "NO PHOTOS. NO PHOTOS. SERIOUSLY, NO PHOTOS." Apparently, no one was supposed to take any photos of the photos on display, because there were indeed some that may not have even been run in the pages of Big Brother when they were taken at the time. And that's saying a fuck lot. It's not like anything was that incriminating, but 20 years have since passed and everyone within the swath of Dimitry's lens back then is now a legitimate grown-up with families and respectable jobs—none of which was the responsible case in the ridiculous span of globe-trotting and partying years showcased in his buckshot blast of 4 x 6 prints taped up on the wall with Sharpies hanging beside them for anyone and everyone to add descriptions, word bubbles, and random comments in general. On a hypothetical comfort level scale of 1–10, it's safe to say this one went to 11 (but probably could have gone to 13, knowing what he has in his vaults).

Left to right: The El Rey Theatre, circa 1997, hours before all sorts of shit hit the fan before, during, and after the premiere of the Big Brother video number two; Faces in the crowd of aforementioned premiere.

So yeah. You're not seeing any of the really hot shit photos here; just the few that Dimitry let us take to share a few innocuous looks at the way we were before everything else transpired in life. —Sean Cliver

This last one, of course, is more of an inside joke than anything, but if you happen to be a stickler for skate trash lore then you know at one point in 1993 I found myself on the wrong hand of the legendary Sean Sheffey—and not entirely by my own doing. The truth would have been exposed in the dumb Big Brother documentary on HULU, where in a previous rough cut there was a section talking about the more "physical repercussions" to occur with the magazine staff, the crown jewel of which being my face-palming incident with Sheffey over a caption that had been blamed on me (a situation akin to being sentenced to death for a crime you didn't commit). Anyway, at the end of it all, Tremaine admitted that he was in fact the one who wrote the caption and then stood silently by as I brushed with death, but the segment was cutting room-floored after a note from HULU that it seemed like an unnecessarily negative side street to go down and detracted from the zany chase of the story arc. However, please let the record show for all of Interweb eternity that I was in fact innocent in the matter—case fucking closed. Oh, this photo, incidentally, was taken years after the OG confrontation, maybe 5–6, give or take a drink or two, at one of those great gala DC/Droors holiday affairs of the late ‘90s.

i survived action point: a photographer's tale

Half the fun of wondering if you swing to and fro on the mentally unstable side of life is to pit yourself in a one-on-one, right brain vs. left brain interview, which I'm about to self-indulge in now. The topic of discussion will, mostly, be about my experiences while working on Johnny Knoxville's newly released flick, Action Point, which, if you haven't already heard it about 369-odd times, is based on the old "less-than-lethal" amusement park, Action Park, once found in Vernon, New Jersey, back when rules were really just suggestions—not the legalese letter of the law they are today.

That said, let us begin.

Sean Cliver: Who are you and what do you do that warranted your involvement on a major motion picture?

Sean Cliver: My name is Sean Cliver. Years ago, 18 to be precise, I started shooting photos on the "set" of jackass during its formative MTV years. We'd all segued into Hollywood out of the pages of Big Brother skateboard magazine, so that's how our initial "crew" began—all of which can be seen in the documentary Dumb: The Story of Big Brother Magazine, but only if you have access to Hulu.

Anyway, the joke was then that we were all now considered to be "professionals," and we even had T-shirts printed up that stated so in lowercase Helvetica Bold. That's how I magically became a Co-Producer/Still Photographer of IMDB acclaim, despite my real profession being that of a lowly skateboard graphic artist. It's a crazy world.

Someone oughta sell tickets.

Sure, I'd buy one.

So go on. Skip the boring history shit and get on with it already.

Okay, so yeah, last year Knoxville contacted me while they were wading into production on the movie and said he wanted me to come down to Cape Town, South Africa to shoot some of the cockamamie stunts he was concocting. I guess he thought I'd done a decent job of catching him in some of his brighter moments on jackass--

Excuse me, but why exactly do you think that is, why you?

Honestly, I don't know… I guess it's because we were all so accustomed to working with one another in crazy scenarios—there's a comfort level in that—and I'd always had a pretty zen attitude about everything. And by zen I mean I just go to a cartoon universe while looking through the lens of my camera and reality goes slip-sliding away. That may actually be clinically diagnosed as a dissociative psychological disorder, but fuck, dude, when you've got throw-up, poo-poo, and pee-pee flying around you, what do you expect?

Alright, settle down. Back to Action Point.

Whatever. So they'd started shooting near the end of March or beginning of April in 2017, but I didn't end up going there until the beginning of May. Actually, my primary assignment on the trip was to shoot all the gallery photos of the cast, as well as groupings of them for possible promotional usage, e.g. movie poster, billboards, and all that crap, but I'm really not that kind of photographer. And I tried telling them so. But [Paramount] promised I'd be in good company and that there'd be a couple representatives from the marketing agency to assist me on the day of the formal photo shoot.

Still, I was nervous as a shithouse mouse, and couldn't wait for that day to be over so I could just kick back and relax on-set, waiting for Knoxville to fling himself off, into, or onto things. Well, other than that and any other scenes being filmed, the majority of my days were also spent hoofing it up and down the mountain to shoot the various park structures and rides from dawn to dusk, because if you know anything about movie posters it's that there's a whole heck of a lot of compositing that goes on in Photoshop. I first learned this on the jackass movie in 2002, when they combined two of my photos for the primary shopping cart image of the cast and then cobbled in all sorts of fancy background explosions and shit for the final poster.

So that was your first official movie poster?

Yeah, which is funny, because way back when I was a starry-eyed Wisconsin teenager, I had grandiose dreams of one day doing a movie poster—I was a big fan of Drew Struzan, who did all the kickass posters back in the '80s, and I loved the artwork on the schlockier, B-grade horror and sci-fi posters you'd find tacked up on the walls of video rental stores—but I'd always envisioned my doing so as an illustrator, you know? Not a photographer.

A friend of mine recently quipped that for an illustrator I have "more movie poster photography than most photographers." Again, crazy world, and I've really just been an accidental tourist stumbling through it all. Good times!

Tell me a bit about the set used for Action Point. Was that a pre-existing park?

No. Fuck no. Not at all. From what I know it was just a bare hillside prior to them coming in and erecting the whole damn thing, which really gave it that extra oomph in the backwoods-slash-jackassy department. Most of it, I believe, was constructed by the South African production company, but Knoxville had our longtime shady prop master JxPx Blackmon and his assistant Scott Manning shipped in to help design, build, and oversee everything for that authentic American feel. You'd be surprised what cultural differences can slip by, even down to the simplest of signage details. But it was pretty crazy to first set foot on the mountain… and that's not even because there were zebras and springbok roaming about the adjacent hillsides.

The other fun thing of note about my arrival was that it coincided with the onset of winter in South Africa. That really threw me for a damn loop, because I'd been told to prepare for 110-degree temperatures. So on my first early morning call time at 6:30am, I found myself in the pitch black, freezing my ass off, because the sun didn't rise until well after 7am, at which time I could still see the frosty exhalation of my breath. Total Southern California ass that I am, I'd only packed shorts and T-shirts for the entire trip, so off to the Cape Town mall I went to spend my per diem on a whole new working winter wardrobe. Fortunately the Rand to USD ratio was on par with Monopoly money.

That's nice, but you do know that we're talking about world currency and the weather now, right? Let's get back to the photos, like how would you describe your shooting style?

My shooting style? The fuck you talking about? I have a Canon Mark III 5d, if that's what you mean, and I have a remedial grasp of apertures, shutter speeds, and ISO—whatever an ISO is? Look, if you really want to tack a name on my "shooting style," I'd best describe it as "click 'n' wish." You know, just hope for the best and let god sort 'em out.

If anyone is actually reading this, they'd probably get the impression you have no idea what you're doing.

Yeah, well, first impressions are everything. Look, can we talk about the penguins instead? I was really stoked to see the jackass penguins waddling about Boulders Beach.

Save it for your Wildboyz fantasies. What was the wackiest thing you watched Knoxville do stunt-wise on Action Point?

Unfortunately I'd missed the power washer, where they blasted him down the water slide, but I got a real good giggle when Paramount gave me a sneak peek of that daily prior to my trip. The catapult—or trebuchet, sorry—was impressive, if only because we'd never managed to build a successful one on jackass and he went through the side of a barn with just a nick and a shave to his scalp. And of course I knew he was going to eat a mouthful of dusty shit on the alpine slide… he had a lot of physics on his side for that one and the whole eyeball-popping aftermath was just a surprise cherry on top.

The one that stood out the most to me was the "branch too far," where he jumped out of a tree and smack-landed on the roof of a shed. I already suspected that was going to be a tough one for him, because it's not like most of the stunts he prefers where things are just happening to him and he doesn't really have a choice in the matter. This one was different in that he alone had to instigate the jump—it's not like anyone pushed him or the branch broke. So commitment-wise that's a pretty big mental hurdle to clear. What was most difficult for me, though—because this is all about me, right?—was not bursting into laughter when he bounced off the roof—and he really did bounce!—because, you know, it's a real movie set and you're not supposed to make any noise, whereas crew laughter was always just another necessary ingredient of the jackass soundtrack. So I really had to rein in that natural impulse and stifle my braying.

Biggest regret?

What, like in life?

No, on the picture, dumbass. We're not here to hear your goddamn life story.

Oh, okay. Well, I guess it would be that by the time I'd arrived, Chris Pontius had already filmed the majority of his Benny the Lifeguard scenes. That was a bummer, because I could listen to Chris improvise lines all the live long day. I did luck out, though, because they had to do a later reshoot on this one particularly sexy scene of his where he finds himself trapped in a newsroom studio. The long and the short of it is that he gets cummed on, so I had the wonderful opportunity to relive that moment in time—again and again and again and again, because to know Chris is to love Chris. He's the undisputed scene-stealer of the movie.

How long were you in Cape Town?

At some point it felt like an eternity, but I was really only there for just over three weeks, whereas a lot of the other actors had been there since March and already created a castaway family of sorts. Luckily I was able to slip in to their circle on the coattails of Knoxville and Pontius, so I had a good time hanging out with all the Shitbirds.

Oh, the one funny thing about Cape Town was that both Knoxville and Pontius texted me soon after my arrival with the warning to not leave the hotel after sundown. It was a great hotel, but it was located on the periphery of a rather sketchy area—mostly because it's a tourist zone and they're easy pickins for ne'er-do-well individuals. I did have a beautiful view of Table Mountain from my hotel room, though, and it spoke volumes to my inner nature nerd.

On the nature tip, where exactly do you find a brown bear in Africa?

The simplest answer is you don't. From what I heard it was a very complex process and something not likely to ever happen again.

That's all I've really got to ask unless you have anything else you'd care to blather on about.

Well, I don't think it entirely came across on the screen, but like three entire days were spent filming the destruction of the park and it was nothing short of unmitigated chaos—and this is coming from someone whose career has mostly revolved around chaotic film sets. The director, Tim Kirkby, would yell action, and it was basically just a fucking free for all with hundreds of extras going total apeshit. The tennis ball-firing tanks were the real wildcard of these scenes, and as a crew member it was exceptionally thrilling, like you were "in the shit" documenting a real life war or rebel political coup. Actually, I don't know why I'm even talking about this, because looking back at my photos even they couldn't convey what it was like being in the middle of all that… I often fantasized that the footage would be quite beautiful if all played out in slow motion and edited to the tune of David Bowie's "Life On Mars."

Okay. Clearly it's time to end this, because I have no idea what you're going on about. I do know you're a shameless self-promoter, though, so you might as well get on with any last whore-ish sentiments you'd like to tack on for anyone left reading this.

Now that you mention it, I do have my hands in a new skateboard company that's about to launch called StrangeLove Skateboards. The timing isn't great, because the website's not entirely ready yet, so consider it a sneak peek of things to come… because they will come, and I don't mean that in an "on-the-hand" way.

(All photos by Sean Cliver—except the photo of Sean Cliver, as that was taken by Donna Stack Cliver; 2017)

johnny knoxville and his upcoming flick "action point"

You may have heard the rumors. You may have seen the eyepatch. Now hear it all from the man himself, Johnny Knoxville, who once again put his ass on the line for all your giggling enjoyment when Action Point opens in theaters this summer. So, without further ado, here's Rick Kosick to kick out the queries…

Rick Kosick: So what inspired you to make Action Point?

Johnny Knoxville: Well, I was sitting in my office one day, minding my own business like I normally do, and Derek Freda sent me an email but I was in a middle of a bunch of things. Derek is pretty laid back, so about 30 minutes goes by and he said, “Did you get my email?” I said, “I saw it, but I haven’t looked at it yet.” He goes, “You need to look at it right now.” I said, “Okay,” and it was a 14-minute documentary for Action Park, the theme park in New Jersey—and it’s amazing. There was this really dangerous theme park back in the ‘70s and ‘80s owned by the genius Gene Mulvihill. It was almost as if me and the guys had made a theme park—it was that dangerous. So that’s where the idea came from. We didn’t focus on their stories—the Mulvihill family—we focused on having a theme park like that and why it had to go away… and it was kind of the same reason for the downfall of the jackass TV show. Washington came down on MTV, then lawyers got involved and started ruining everything and it took away the fun.  So that’s where we went with it.

How long did it take for you to get this movie off the ground and into production?  

Three-to-four years. I can tell you right now. You want me to go through emails?

You don’t have to go through your emails, but it seems like you’ve been working on it for quite a while.

Yeah, it has been quite a while, since… what year is it?

It’s 2018.

So, yeah… I got an email from a conversation from me to John Altschuler, Dave Krinsky, Mike Judge, and Derek back in April of 2014, when it was us just kicking things around.

What’s the overall premise of the movie? 

It’s about my character, DC, trying to save his failing, hyper-dangerous theme park, and also salvage his relationship with his 14-year-old daughter in one summer—in 1979, basically, with the advent of class action lawsuits and the lawyers digging their heels into everything. It was kind of the last summer of fun before all that was taken away from us.

Did you hire a big-time Hollywood scriptwriter to do the story?

We did get some big-time scriptwriters. We had a number of writers. We started out with John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky who are great, and then we were lucky enough to get Robert Smigel to write a draft. He’s an absolute genius. Eventually I wrote the last four or five drafts, so it was a team effort.

Did you recreate any of the rides from the original theme park?

I think we had the power slide and the alpine slide, but most of them parks had an alpine slide back then. I think the one that was unique to Action Park was the battle tanks that shot tennis balls, but all the rest of the rides in the movie were found in any theme park back then.   

How was it working with Chris Pontius on this movie, did he deliver the goods?

Pontius steals the movie, he’s hilarious. I mean, you know Pontius, he’s just as funny between takes. He’s amazing. You know how much he loves hatchets, right? So he plays the lifeguard in the movie, so of course the lifeguard has a hatchet because Pontius always carries around a hatchet—at least one or probably two. In between takes he was constantly making different type of weapons, like spears and things for people on-set like the makeup ladies, like they were dying to get a six-foot long spear. But he would hand it to them and put so much time and energy and love into it that they were very touched to receive a spear. But he’s so funny in the movie, and I just kind of let him go. I tried to write in his voice, but most of the time you give him his lines and whatever he says is going to be better than what I wrote for him. And oh my god, you should see his outfits. You will absolutely love them. He was a scantily clad lifeguard. A lot of midriffs, tight shorts, and you know how is butt wiggles when he walks—it’s a sight to behold.

So I heard you got injured a few times during the filming process, what exactly happened to you?

Yeah, you can say I got injured a few times during the filming process.  Jesus Christ, I got injured on this more than any of the jackass movies—not combined, but just any one of them. I had four concussions, a broken right hand, a busted left knee, whiplash, and stiches on my head, lost two teeth, broke my orbital lambda bone in my face, and then I had a blow fracture in my left eye, so when I blew my nose my eye popped out of the socket. I think there’s some other stuff, but I can’t remember.

Were you able to do all the stunts you wanted to do or did you leave any on the table?

After doing the alpine slide where I got that terrible concussion and broke my face, there was another one I was supposed to do the next filming week but there was no way I could do that because I could have lost my eye. So we waited until I got back to Los Angeles to do it, because I still wanted to do it. Then we started editing the movie and realized we didn’t need another stunt, but we might need to do something else. So when we did some reshoots with me as the old DC character, I got my fourth concussion in the film and lost some teeth doing a chin-up on a bar that broke and came down and hit me in the mouth. Meanwhile, I landed on my head AGAIN.

You just love hurting yourself don’t you?

It’s not that I love it, I just want good footage and to get good footage certain things need to happen. And you know those things.

Why did you choose to film this movie in such a faraway place like South Africa?

We wanted to save a lot of money, and by doing this we saved a ton of money and built a theme park. We found a hillside in South Africa that had a nice bottom where you could put a bunch of rides, and the hill was perfect for the slide we built. When we got down there, we wanted to make South Africa look like New Jersey, but we didn’t have enough money. Then somebody said, “Hey, how about Los Angeles?” Now there you go! We can make it look as dry as it was. And just about the stunts, I asked the stuntmen to do them like I did them, like no cutting on the action and no pads. They were actually excited, because they never get to do that and it provided a great energy down there.

What was it like living in Cape Town for three months?

It was almost like four months. I don’t like being away from the family anymore. It was fun, I just don’t like being away from my kids that long. I think I am almost over that kind of travel for that length of time.

So who are the Shitbirds?

They are a group of juvenile delinquent kids I hired to work at Action Point. Basically they’re outcasts from the high schools they go to, and the only kind of place they fit in is at Action Point. We got a really great group of actors to play the Shitbirds.

Are you talking about some of the co-stars of the movie?

Yeah, Eleanor Worthington Cox plays my daughter Boogie in the movie and she’s wonderful. Johnny Pemberton, who’s great, plays a pre-vert named Ziffel. Bridgette Lundy-Paine plays Four Finger Annie and she’s fantastic. Josh Hoover plays a guy named Hot Head Pete. Dan Bakkedahl plays the bad guy and he is goddamn terrific. Matt Shulze is in it, too, and he basically plays himself: a gnarly dude who loves to fight. He loves it! And Eric Manaka plays Rodney, the voice of reason. I’d asked the casting director in London to go around to different skate parks to find someone who would fit the part of Rodney, and she found Eric. He was 16- or 17-years-old and he’d already been making his own films. He came in for an audition and was great. It was his first film he ever did and he was fantastic. I like giving someone that chance and they deliver.

So you brought JxPx Blackmon on as the shady prop master, but how would you rate his acting skills?

Haha… JxPx did an awesome job, as did Scott Manning and Charlie Grisham who was the stunt coordinator. Sean Cliver came down to shoot pictures for a while and he got some great shots for us. But JxPx as an actor? He was amazing! He played the shady janitor and Scott Manning and Charlie Grisham played cops since we were down in South Africa where most of the people had accents. They all did great, and it was so funny to have Scott as a cop because he’s so not a cop. He actually got sunburned really badly down there and I think his arm got infected or he’s allergic to the sun? So he would walk on set with his face covered and full sleeves and it was hot as hell. Poor guy. He worked his ass off though. Everyone did. Did I bring anyone else from our group down there?

No, you didn’t! And I don’t have any more questions for you, so when does the movie come out?

Friday, June 1^st, and I hope everyone comes out to see it. If you like to see me get broke off, you’ll like this movie.

(Top photo and sequence by Sean Cliver; Water hose photo by Coco Van Oppens; ©2018 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

last call: the 2017 gorilla flicks holiday party

This year, like every other for the past three to be precise, Tremaine locks down a location and rounds us all up from our various corners of the universe for a family-style night of drinks, food, and fun—the pinnacle of fun being a certain "White Elephant" gift exchange game that has only grown and amped up in energy over time. Catch LA was the restaurant of choice, and they wisely provided us with a room and bar all unto our own, thereby minimizing any collateral damage to other patrons of more intimate, eating minds and tolerances. But look at the photos, look at the silly little photos, and have yourself a good one this holiday season!

Please make note how all the photos are nicely composed and well lit, because it's not going to last long. This was still early in the evening, so Barry Smoler and Jen look pretty in black at far left; middlemen Wee-Man and Chris Pontius could be Dasher and Dancer; and Wayne and Shanna Newton came totally correct in their very formal party attire at very far right.

And it just wouldn't be a big time Hollywood night if Tremaine wasn't taking a call, so Sean Cliver and Mae Quijada adapted to the moment in kind at left, while Rick Kosick at right later caught him off the phone and in a shirt bearing his bang-a-gong likeness from jackass the movie!

Once the food hit the table, so did the people. At far left, Shad reflects upon his life choices and the watershed of reasons he doesn't allow people to comment on his Instagram profile, while Guch remains the eternal sage; Joe Oz ran the middle of the table in pitch perfect 1st AD form, while his next door neighbor David Siev made sure all the strings were orchestrated behind the scenes and running smooth, just as he does at the office; and then of course Amanda Adelson had to tell everyone to "Go To 15" via sign language amid an animated Spike Jonze, a bemused Kosick, and a confused Tremaine at far right.

Shanna and Spike eventually managed to coerce Amanda into not doing something unladylike for a photo at far left, while Lucky Pierre's Johnny Knoxville and Sean Cliver went the complete opposite direction. Wee-Man, on the other hand, grabbed the bull by the beef and filled his stomach accordingly at far right.

And so we finally arrive at the "White Elephant" game of thrills, where Dimitry Elyashkevich arguably came up on one of the true premiums of the night, a coveted #MAGA hat, at far left; or, did Shanna score the score of scores in the middle with Spike's original drawing of "Jeff and PJ Forever"? No, it was definitely Tremaine at far right who locked up the prize possession with some cockamamie if not outright disturbing Edward Scissorhands-esque straightjacket fresh off the racks of Hot fucking Topic.

Thanks again to Tremaine and Shanna for throwing down for the night of extended family fun. Thanks also to Kosick, Wee-Man, and Mae for having the presence of mind and wherewithal to take photos amid the revelry!

funding t-moe's ye olde destruction

They always say you can never be too clever, but you can—and annoyingly so. I should know, I do it all the time, but I just can't seem to help myself from routinely tripping over my dick. "So it goes," Kurt Vonnegut would say if he could say, but the point is no one's going to grasp the above not-even-close-to-passingly-funny reference to Finding Nemo, because none of y'all are hip to the abbreviated moniker of our longtime friend Thomas Campbell. Thomas, aka "T-Moe" or "T-Moss," like most of our friends, comes from the world of skateboarding, but perhaps a different skateboarding than the world presently knows—especially with the pursuit now being hailed as a "sport" (bleh) on the slate for the next Summer Olympics (bleh). Sorry, I come from that old world of skateboarding, too, where it once lay ignored on the outer fringes of society and went mostlyhated in whole by everyone—aside from the misfits and creative types that found an island all unto their own to design, that is. Again, times have changed, skateboarding's a hot Thrasher topic now, but there's still a bastion of individuals hellbent on preserving the "visual mythology" of skateboarding as a place to creatively escape the norm and mutter "fuck you" to the world. Thomas is one such defender and he currently has a very Thomas project in the works… —Sean Cliver

So what’s up with this latest project you’re working on?

I have been slowly working on a 16mm skate film called Y.O.D.—Ye Olde Destruction—for almost six years now with a solid grip of shredders, building a bit and skating DIY spots, mostly, but not totally. It's basically a driving movie, where two crews drive around in these two old cars and skate, eventually ending in destruction. Thus, YOD. Gonna try to finish this film by the spring of next year. The list of rippers that will be featured in the film include Evan Smith, Jon Dixon, Jason Adams, Rick McCrank, Max Schaaf, Dennis Busenitz, Caswell Berry, Brent Atchley, Arto Saari, Jason Jessee, Elissa Steamer, Zack Wallin, Ray Barbee, Nick Garcia, Al Partanen, Jeremy Leabres, Jackson Pilz, Zarosh Eggleston, Ben Raemers, Chris Russell, Keegan Sauder, Aron Suski, Roger Mihalko, Taylor Bingaman, Javier Mendizabal, Raven Tershy, Louie Barletta, Barker Barrett, Mark Suciu, and Collin Provost, amongst others.

How have you gone about finding funding for the feature?

I thought up an idea for a grass roots campaign with a lot of amazing visual artists. I asked them to do original art moves on completely unrefined skateboard blanks to raise some funds to get film processed and transferred and get this project completed. Making movies on film is kind of crazy financially in 2017, but the results will be a real treat, I believe. I’m trying to keep this project unsponsored by any companies, so it remains uninhibited in its creative nature and more of a visual gift back to skateboarding. Skateboarding has really given me my creative projection in my life… I pretty much owe everything to it. So this fundraiser is supported by the community and for the community.

What was the basic directive you sent out to all artists and who all responded in kind?

Please help. It was a very free idea. I just wanted my friends to have fun with it, so they really just did what they wanted. Here is a list of the artistic people that lent talented hands to the project: Todd Francis, John Herndon, Evan Hecox, Andy Jenkins, Barry McGee, Simone Shubuck, Richard Colman, Tim Kerr, Neil Blender, Ed Templeton, Cody Hudson, Ron Cameron, Jenny Sharaf, Russ Pope, Sean Cliver, Tod Swank, Chris Reed, Fernando Elvira,  Steve Claar, Mat O'Brien, Natas Kaupas, Lori Damiano, Jason Arnold, Jay Howell, Nathaniel Russell, Max Schaaf, Todd Bratrud, Brian Lotti, Geoff McFetridge, Jeff Canham, Jim Houser, and myself. So, to say the least, it takes a village. 

How has the response been so far on eBay?

Good… although, a lot of the planks are going for much less than market value. People are scoring. There was an amazing Evan Hecox piece that went for $520 the other day—that's crazy.

How many more sets of art will be rolling out?

There are close to 40 raw, painted, and sculpted blanks. We are dropping six tonight—Monday, December 18—for a five-day auction that will end on this Saturday night. Then we will take a break until after New Year’s and do three more sets of six or seven.

When do you hope to release the film and in what medium?

The film should be done by spring of next year. My plan is to make a limited edition, small, hardcover book with images from the film taken by Brian Gaberman, Arto Saari, Jai Tanju, Joe Brook, and myself—and a download number for the movie inside. After the book comes out, the film will eventually be released free on the Um Yeah Arts Vimeo page for all to enjoy. The band No Age will be making an original soundtrack for the film, and I hope to release a vinyl offering of those recordings also on Um Yeah Arts.

To view the auction listings, go down this rabbit hole: Um Yeah Arts on eBay

(Photo of Keegan Sauder's "f/s lip on the land sled" by Brian Gaberman)

cyber monday wheeling and dealing

Greetings! Seasonally speaking, that is, because we're here to help fan the flames that fuel the economy with a few gifty (and perhaps even thrifty!) ideas for your friends, family, loved ones, and any other sentient lifeforms you deem worthy of presenting a present. For the most part these items don't fall far from the extended branches of our tree (like most things, including but not limited to fonts, songs, and titles), but so it goes within our cloudy realm of nepotism. On that note, did you know that a nephophiliac is a person obsessed with clouds, like in a very loving and longing way? Consider that your word of the day—a free gift from us to you. Cheers!

If you didn't think this was going to start out with the Wildboyz, well, sister, you clearly haven't been a lifer in this wildery region. The gold standard by which all other shows on basic cable are measured by, Wildboyz was not merely one small step for man, but one giant leap for mankind. The show enjoyed a brief run on Netflix, but a few random Twitter rallies have yet to bring the show back to America's favorite black hole of binge. So if you want to see Steve-O and Chris Pontius streak across the globe in a relatively naked manner, then you're gonna have to do the VOD deal, or—gasp!—acquire the DVDs of Season 1, Season 2, or the collected Season 3 & 4. Learn yourself good!

Did you know there have been like 19 seasons of Ridiculousness so far? Holy crap. What a behemoth Rob Dyrdek did doth make, but when you've got a rectum like the internet crapping out Lincoln Logs of ridiculous clips, what can you expect? No, don't respond, that was purely for rhetorical effect; however, if you're looking for a way to wile away the winter days when the mercury drops below freezing and all you want to do is tell ole Jack Frost to suck it, why not choke on god knows how many episodes until the springtime thaw comes around? Again, that was rhetorical, but now that I think about it this is probably ridiculousness in and of itself to even recommend considering MTV pretty much runs Boston marathons of Ridiculousness all the live long day. Shit. Well, we've come this far so let's just plow on. We all plow on. You can vee oh dee or dee vee dee—the technological choice is your god given American right. Exercise it.

During the online days of jackassworld.rip, Johnny Knoxville decided to play dress-up with the "skull and crutches" logo and customize it in a staggering number of ways. Many (actually most all) have gone the way of the dodo, but the offical JACKASS storefront remains open on merchmethod.com where you can pick up a seasonal shirt to wear to Christmas dinner at Me-Maws or Pe-Paws house. Then there are, of course, all the other shirts, hoodies, jerseys, and zip-ups to get goofy on with your mom or dad's credit card, so give a good gander and don't forget to peruse what's under the rainbow as well on the official DICKHOUSE emporium. Totes? Yeah, got them too. 

For those of you who don't live in a world blanketed by the frozen white death, we have just the thing for you! An honest to goodness skateboard deck designed by next year's break out star of the silver screen, the one and only Chris Pontius. Don't have the skills but still have the will to enjoy the art? Hang them on your wall as a decorative fixture! Especially in those awkward narrow spaces where nothing else seems to work aside from broomsticks, fishing poles, didgeridoos, wizard staffs, javelins, two-handed broad swords, bazookas, gigantic novelty pencils, and a giraffe's neck if you severed it off at the base. Bonus: Not only has each of these boards been fondled and signed by Pontius himself, but you can swoop one now at a special sale price! See specs and learn more at paisleyskates.com.

Lastly, and mostly because the children are our future, you should consider clicking on over to gingkopress.com for a big, square, coffee table book of shit that details (sort of) the chronological history of Big Brother skateboard magazine—all the way from crappy Issue 1 in 1992 to the last gasp on Issue 106 in 2004. What does this offer that Dumb on Hulu did not? Words! And lots of them! Many of them so ridiculously small yet still legible with the aid of a magnifying glass and a good deal of eye strain. There's also some other naughtiness we weren't allowed to share in documentary form. That's worth the price of admission, right? Yep, that's right... rhetorical me, bemused you. Anyway, you should really just buy this book for the Issue 17 Mardi Gras spread, and don't forget to tell 'em that Chri$ Nieratko sent you!

director patrick o'dell on the making of dumb

Rick Kosick: So how did you get this gig to direct Dumb: The Story of Big Brother Magazine?

Patrick O’Dell: Hulu called Jeff [Tremaine], and I don’t know if Jeff thought of it, you know, “let’s make a documentary about my magazine,” but I think Hulu thought, “let’s make one about the magazine and how it became jackass.” You know, it’s an interesting story, but Jeff was self–conscious about making a documentary about himself. So I think he thought, “I still kind of want to do it, but throw in a third party.” I’d barely even met these dudes at all, but I do a show on Vice, a skateboard documentary series called Epicly Later’d, and I’ve been making them for ten years. So Jeff thought of asking me to help. It was still third party, but he did hire me. So I think it was Hulu’s idea, they threw it to Jeff, Jeff threw it to me, and then we started shooting.

How did you first discover Big Brother magazine?

The very first issue at Dodge skate park where I skated. The guy who worked there had a copy. When I got it, the cover had fallen off and somebody had done their homework on the cover. It was weird; I don’t think the guy even wanted it. He was just like, “It’s some weird World Industries catalog,” so I grabbed it and treasured it. I don’t hang onto much anymore, or even at the time, but I have it still. I loved it and thought it was cool and great. It surprised me later hearing people say the first issue sucked, because I was already a fan. So that was my introduction to Big Brother—a ripped-up copy of issue one.

What were some of the challenges you faced making this documentary?

Well, one challenge, because Sean Cliver was a big part of helping with the documentary, but he was also part of the magazine. And doing my show and sort of being familiar with the documentary process, I knew we had to streamline the story. It sucks to say, but there would be times where there are things for the people involved that were really important, but I’m constantly listening for places to make things tighter. You want to have each topic segue from one to the next. I can tell a lot of people involved, it’s their life, and certain things happened that were very important to them, but I didn’t think it would be important to other people. Sort of like, these dudes getting drunk for the first time. I don’t think it would be interesting to an outsider, but to them it’s interesting—this is my first tour and it’s the first time I got drunk.  I don’t know how to explain it, but I knew when we got into editing we needed to tighten this up. So I don’t know if it was a challenge, but it’s hard to tell someone, “Okay, that story of your life is not important.” Streamlining something into an hour-and-a-half timeline can be tough. It’s a big story with a lot of people and a lot of different side people need to get their shine. Plus, it’s also for people that are very interested in skateboarding, like there’s things they want to hear, but then there’s also the general audience stuff needs to be explained to people that don’t skate. So it was hard juggling the minutia… the behind-the-scenes footnotes that a fan would want. For instance, we turned a rough cut in to Hulu and they watched it and were like, “We don’t understand who Steve Rocco is, or we don’t understand what a zine is, or we don’t understand this Natas guy?” So we did have to resolve things for a general audience, but also balance it with something a diehard skater would be interested in. It’s hard to juggle those two sometimes.

So how long have you been a fan of the Bomfunk MCs?

That was a song that drove me insane. Now I like it, I’ve got to be honest, I’ve come around, but the theme song is something Jeff had been trying to use. He had this song and was like, “Check this out,” and I was like, “I hate it. I don’t like this at all.” It sounded like Prodigy or something to me. And Sean was like, “Oh yeah, he tried using this for the Wildboyz theme.” Jeff has been trying to use this song on a project after project and it never works out. Now there’s been a couple of revelations that where something I didn’t like, I learned to realize this is cool because we’re in Jeff’s world, like his creation, and putting things in like that it becomes like Big Brother—this weird song becomes like part of the story. Plus everyone else liked it and I was the only holdout that didn’t. Now I’ve got to admit that I’m happy the theme song is the Bomfunk MCs' “Freestyler.” I like it now.

Big Brother has been around for ten plus years, do you feel like you covered the whole span of the magazine existence in 90 minute documentary?

No. I really wish Clyde Singleton was in it. I hear Pat Canale was interesting. Rosa, she wasn’t Big Brother, she was Shorty’s, but still a big part of Big Brother. There are a few people missing and it sucks, you know, but my theory is that there are always more outlets for people to learn more about those things. Like this interview, we can talk about Clyde, or Jenkem can do a thing about Rosa or the “Washed-Up Skaters” article. There’s all kinds of stuff that people can talk about elsewhere and it doesn’t have to all fit in one documentary.

At any point did you feel like you crossed into the Twilight Zone and became a part of the Big Brother staff?

Yeah, there were definitely a couple times. And of course I was a fan of the magazine, I read it from cover to cover every issue, so when [Chris] Nieratko sent in an angry email about something, at first I was bummed and then I was like, “Oh, this is sick, I’m in Nieratko’s world.” Their various little arguing and in fighting. I would be sitting there and Jeff would throw footballs at me, like almost at my head, but it was cool to time warp into a thing I was a fan of.  

If there were to be a DVD version of this documentary, what would be your top three deleted scenes?

For sure the thing about the “Washed-Up Skaters.” It’s so funny, it’s like [Mike] Valley being still salty that he was on this washed-up skaters list. Ed Templeton talks about it, Tony Hawk talks about it, and it’s really funny. Vallely was still mad about it, but then he looks at the issue for the first time and he was like, “It wasn’t that bad.” If there was a DVD, I would probably demand Jeff buy me a plane ticket to North Carolina so I can interview Clyde Singleton, because he was hilarious and a big part of the magazine. The geographics and the budget kept us from really having him in the movie. It was regrettable, so I would add him to the bonus section. I’d like to give Clyde his own mini doc. And always more with Earl. I watched the video you made about Earl and I loved the dude. It’s hard to explain even why I’m a fan of Earl, but when I see him I get stoked. He’s just interesting. He’s a character from that time and he hasn’t changed. He still even dresses the same, I feel like he has blue-tinted glasses or something. He could use his own documentary. And Marc McKee is tough, because he’s really quiet on camera, soft spoken and a little odd, but he was such a big part of changing the way skateboarding is and was one of the owners of Big Brother. He did all those graphics, he changed everything, and he’s a little underplayed in the doc only because of how he talks on camera. Some of these big personalities make a bigger presence in the doc. Marc gets a lot of credit but he should get more because if he never existed could you imagine how skating would be? Especially on the art side. So I would include more on Marc. And Rosa. I’m interested in Rosa, because she was skateboarding first and probably only sex symbol ever. It’s interesting, people said some funny stuff about how much they liked her.

A short featuring Earl Parker directed and produced by Rick Kosick.

How did it feel getting invited to Robert De Niro’s house and having the TriBeCa film festival premiere the movie?

I was stoked. Jeff had mentioned at one point that we were going to try and submit this to some film festivals and I was like, “Oh my god, you’re so insane that you would think this movie would be in festivals.” Plus it was early on and I was still nervous how this was even coming out. It was kind of rough and wasn’t very far a long and he’s like, “Yeah, I’m going to submit to TriBeCa,” and I thought he was high. Like they wouldn’t have it. The fact they did, I couldn’t believe it. The only odd thing, and this is me personally, I wasn’t too shocked by the documentary. You know, I was pretty used to all of the poop and the Poocano, Johnny Knoxville shooting himself, and like satanic stuff, I’m kind of used to it. But because it got into TriBeCa, my wife’s mom was like, “Oh, I want to go.” So we invited my wife’s mom and then she told my parents. So my parents are like, “Hey, we’re coming to your documentary at TriBeCa.” And then my nephew came and my sister came and she brought her nephew. I didn’t think much of it, and I was like, “Oh, cool.” They wanted to see this doc, because it was in TriBeCa and it was on their radar. And then watching the documentary in front of a crowd… in front of my wife’s mom and my parents… and my nephew… it kind of made me realize how gnarly the documentary was. The whole time I’m thinking like, “Oh, my parents are seeing this,” and it was a definitely a new spin watching it through their eyes. It made me nervous the whole time. And that was a huge crowd at TriBeCa. It made it a way bigger event that I wasn’t expecting when we were working on it. That was trippy.

Patrick interviews cutting room floor casualty Giovanni Reda.

So you interviewed a lot of different people for this documentary, how did you decide who stayed in the picture and who hit the cutting room floor?

Seth Casriel, our editor who’s awesome, he made a lot of calls like that. I feel like he would get in there and edit everything and then I would watch it. A lot of the editing is sort of up the discretion of the editor in a way, because there was so much footage. I would interview each person for 45 minutes—and I’m not talking about Jeff and you and Sean—I’m talking about dudes who were in it only a little bit. It would get boiled down to like two quotes and there were a few people who were cut altogether—it sucks. But yeah, we interviewed so many people for like 45 minutes to an hour each, and when we got into the editing room obviously things had to go and it was tough.

Can you explain why this movie is only on Hulu, so everyone will stop asking why it’s not on Netflix?

Hulu paid for it. Companies like Hulu do that so people will subscribe to their platform and that’s how pretty much how any bit of media ever gets released. Like HBO pays for it and it’s on HBO. Or ABC pays for it and it’s on ABC. Well this one was Hulu. Hulu paid for it and it lives on Hulu. I feel like most people have Hulu. I already had Hulu, because I’m a cord cutter myself and I don’t have cable.  I just have Hulu, Netflix, and HBO.

When Andy Roy’s video surfaced demanding to be in the movie, were you a little bit nervous that he was going to Google your whereabouts?

Actually, I was scared. You know, it’s weird, I knew he was joking, but there was a little part of me that still wasn’t sure. Like is he joking, or this serious? I was a little nervous. I was 80-percent confident it was a joke and 20-percent a little shaky.

Setting up the shot to talk getting shot with Johnny Knoxville.

So what are some of your favorite parts of the movie?

One thing that was tough… I love Johnny Knoxville and I’m a huge fan. He’s gnarly and a great guy and has a good presence with his voice. To listen to him tell the story about how he got his start and he had a baby and the baby motivated him to shoot himself for a stunt—it was interesting. But one of the problems with the doc is once Johnny Knoxville shoots himself in the chest with a gun and a bulletproof vest, it was hard to then show anything after. It was basically like if it was a skate video and he filmed the last part, the after black hammer.  I remember Dave Carnie and Chris Nieratko wanted more stuff in the movie from their years of Big Brother, and I had to be like, once Johnny Knoxville shoots himself I don’t know how we’re going to show anything that gnarly. It was tough because everything is going to look lame after this dude does that. One of my favorite parts of the documentary is Johnny Knoxville narrating that stunt, and it gave it so much more intensity, so that’s one of my favorite parts. And we have Nieratko fucking with Ronnie James Dio right before that—that was so intense to watch that footage for the first time. Just being in the editing room and getting the tape and sitting through and watching it. That was my favorite zone of the documentary.

Looking back at everything, what would you have done differently?

I’m pretty happy with it. There were things I was nervous about and now that it’s released I’m not nervous anymore. It just makes me want to interview Clyde for something else or do something else with Clyde… it’s the one thing I regret. Other than that, I’m stoked on it. We all did our best. I also feel like if there’s anything missing, there’s the Big Brother book, there’s The Chrome Ball Incident with so much of Big Brother scanned in that you can find out more, or you can buy some of the issues on eBay. I don’t know, I’m pretty stoked on it.

(Photos by Sean Cliver; 2016)

last call: the dumb screening at cinefamily

In Los Angeles. Last Friday. And Saturday, actually, but that was more of a public affair, whereas the previous night was the VIP extravaganza (with an extra helping of the vaganza). Anyway, as always, here is a smorgasbord of people photos to pick through and feast upon, kind of like the fried macaroni and cheese balls that Cinefamily served up as eventide whore dervz… or hors d'oeuvres, I suppose, if you want to get all fancy-pants about it.

Dumb: The Story of Big Brother Magazine has since launched on Hulu and can be streamed on-demand in the privacy of your own home. Please be aware that this documentary features lots and lots of naughtiness, defecation, and full-frontal nudity—male full-frontal nudity—so maybe take Jeremy Klein's advice and not watch it with your mother. Historically speaking, Big Brother has never fared so well with the parental types.

Thanks again to Cinefamily and Hulu for pulling out all the stops on this West Coast event! Now on with the faces and traditionally dumb captions.

Left to right: Giovanni Reda may have wound up on the cutting room floor, but he was nominated to be the moderator of the post-screening Q&A; Johnny Knoxville was fresh off the boat from filming in South Africa; The Q&A panel consisted of almost all the mag's former staff, sans Chris Nieratko.

Left to right: Bret "Scan Boy" Banta with his twin-ish brother Bayard; Aaron "King of All Skate Nerds" with Mother Fuckin' David Deery; The Mansfield audio dudes.

Left to right: Rick Kosick curated a photography and ephemera show for the Cinefamily patio gallery; Keith "Blind Date" Hufnagel; Dave Carnie, Marc McKee, and Dimitry Elyashkevich anchored the left-side of the Q&A shitshow.

Left to right: Heather Lee Jones is now Heather Lee Dixon after getting hitched to Kenny; The one and only Earl Parker with Scott Manning, Jason Jessee, and the Carn Carn; Shanna Zablow Newton with the time zone-punched Chris Pontius.

Left to right: Longtime Dickhouse and Gorilla Flicks men Matt Kosinski, Barry Smoler, Seth Casriel, and Mike Kassak; Loomis Fall poses beside an original Wee-Man photo from 1995; Andy Roy did not have to goggle Dumb director Patrick O'Dell after all.

Left to right: Lionel Boyce makes a dwarf of Jeff Tremaine; Proud pee-er Kendra Gaeta and the barely present yet still accounted for Sean Cliver; The Beastie Boys were there! No, no they weren't. That's just Matt Probst and Josh Lingenfelter.

Left to right: Jason Shelton, Jason Searcy, and Bill "Not a Jason" Weiss; Duh, obviously; Photographer Tobin Yelland, artist Chad Muska, and musician Dave Roen cover all the creative bases.

(Photos by Rick Kosick and Jennica Abrams; courtesy of Cinefamily)

last call: the dumb big brother premiere at tribeca

I don't think any of us ever imagined a documentary about Big Brother skateboard magazine would find its wayward way into a film festival, but by god it did! The Tribeca film festival no less. So it was with great grandeur and a little red carpet that several of us (and Tony Hawk!) kicked Dumb: The Story of Big Brother Magazine into the spotlight at New York City on Thursday, April 27th. A jam-packed Q&A session followed the premiere, during which time questions were asked, some were answered, and a brief but ludicrous debate ensued regarding the metal talents of Dio versus that of Ozzy in Black Sabbath.

Unfortunately the formal after-party will not go down in history as a legendary Big Brother shit show, as so many have in the past, so there are no new tales to tell of tallied up damages. Several more screenings and Q&As followed in the days after, but now the documentary is back in the can until the wide release happens June 3rd on Hulu.

Photos left to right: Tony Hawk was always a good friend to the magazine and he proved it once again by happily talking us up on the red carpet; And here Tony proves yet again how good of a sport he is by making ridiculous poses for a press feature on the premiere; Oddly enough, and appropriately enough, Dimitry Elyashkevich was the only one to wear Dave Carnie's signature pro model DC Shoes shoes.

Photos left to right: The Q&A session that followed the premiere was not the shit show it was widely anticipated to be. Rick Kosick was the monkey in the middle of all 10 dudes with varying levels of hair gel or loss at play.

Photos left to right: Dimitry poses with Alex Corcoran, a staple feature of the New York skate scene; Fun fact: Brendan Canty, the drummer of Fugazi, did the original scoring for the Dumb documentary, and he's shown here interlocked with Supervising Post-Producer Volney Howard IV; Assistant editor Lacey Reilly and Associate Producer Lizbeth Gonzalez hang tough with Director Patrick O'dell of Epicly Later'd fame.

Photos left to right: Former Big Brother editors Dave Carnie and Chri$ Nieratko; Steve-O was perhaps the most handsomely dressed dude of the night; Travis Pastrana and Lyn-z Pastrana made an East Coast leap to attend the event and sit beside the right arm of Gorilla Flicks, Shanna Zablow Newton.

Photos left to right: Former Big Brother editor Sean Cliver with fiancee Donna Stack; Former Big Brother art/editorial director Jeff Tremaine with wife Laura; Scene-stealer and maker Atiba Jefferson with the man who was pretty in pink, Steve-O.

Photos left to right: Portrait of a man asking a question at the post-premiere Q&A; Matt Deis, Jess Margera, Brandon Novak, and Raab Himself brought an air of CKY ambience to the affair; Can you spot Rick Kosick in this photo from the world famous bathrooms of Max Fish?

(Photos by Rick Kosick, Donna Stack, and Sean Cliver; 2017)