How Did I Get Here (11 page)

The cover of the hugely successful
Tony Hawk’s Trick Tips Volume 1
. The success of this video led to two more videos in the series, and were later turned into television interstitials, an iPhone app, product giveaways, and more.

The success of
Trick Tips
taught me two lessons: to stick with what I know, and to pay close attention to the letters and e-mails and everyday comments I get from fans. Sure, some of the letters I get are moronic, self-serving, angry, greedy, or all of the above. Every celebrity has to deal with that. But if someone is willing to pay money for a product that has my name on it, and then takes the time to communicate with me about it, I’d be an idiot not to listen. It’s invaluable market research, and it’s free.

My Dad’s Home-Movie Hobby Pays Off

We used the profits from those first few productions to buy better equipment and take on other production jobs. In the first five years, we provided content for Activision’s
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
video games, a Bagel Bites commercial, the feature film
xXx
(starring Vin Diesel), a Powerpuff Girls commercial, a Fender Guitar spot, and one of the worst skate movies of all time,
Grind.

In 2004, productions slowed down and we started pitching ideas around Hollywood, none of which flew. We were passionate about creating a 3-D movie, and also came up with a few ideas for
American Idol
–type shows for action sports that we pitched to MTV, Spike TV, Fox Sports, and ESPN. We self-financed a pilot for a show we wanted to call
Fan Mail
, in which I’d show up to surprise someone who’d written to me. In the pilot, I arrived unannounced at some poor kid’s high school, during an assembly that the principal had agreed to set up without telling anyone why. It actually went off pretty well, so even though the show never went anywhere, we repurposed the footage into a segment for the
Secret Skatepark Tour
DVD.

We also got hired to produce a one-off show for OP clothing called “King of Skate,” in which various skaters, including me, competed to see who could do the craziest stunt. It aired on iN DEMAND, DirecTV, and TVN. I skated through fire on a grind rail, but I was a wimp compared to Bob Burnquist, who won the thing (and $25,000) by riding a full loop with the top cut out, while riding switch-stance. In other words, he jumped a gap at the top of a full loop while riding backward. Truly gnarly.

By 2004, 900 Films was in pretty big debt from these speculative productions. To keep it afloat, I assumed the loans, bought out my partners, and took the company in-house. Jared Prindle, THI’s first full-time employee, loved to shoot and edit film, and had evolved into a great videographer and director. Matt Haring, the ex–high school intern, had transformed himself into a skilled editor with a wonderful creative gift. We paid for him to go to school to learn the finer points of the Avid system, and he really blossomed. Shortly after graduating from high school, he became 900 Film’s full-time editor. Irene Navarro stayed on as line producer, and I became executive producer on almost all projects. My sister Pat began to approach our corporate partners to seek work for 900 Films. Before long, the business was thriving again.

At the same time, I was in the process of building a facility in the city of Vista, in northern San Diego County. The idea was to create a place where I could to set up the HuckJam ramp for practice, house the THI operations, build a sound-proof studio for my new Sirius Radio show, and provide offices for the folks at the Tony Hawk Foundation. Now that I was sole owner of 900 Films, we decided to go all-in and build two editing studios and a film library as well.

We soon set out to digitize and archive all the footage that I’d accumulated through the years, including old Super 8 and low-res video my father had taken of me skating when I was a kid. We’ve ended up dipping into that archive often. My dad’s stuff has been used by ESPN, several awards ceremonies, talk shows, and
60 Minutes.
It’s been in a McDonald’s TV commercial, and runs on a loop on my roller coaster ride at Six Flags amusement parks. The best part is that a lot of little kids have e-mailed me to say they’ve been inspired by the old footage of me as a scrawny skater in goofy shorts.

Dust Devils and Big Gaps

Every so often I wake up with an idea for a skateboard trick. When I was a kid, it was usually some kind of combination of maneuvers that had never before been melded, like a kickflip McTwist. As I got older, I’d envision bigger tricks. Some of them were more properly called stunts, like the Hot Wheels–style full loop. Or the time I used a launch ramp to jump between the roofs of two six-story buildings. And if I was going to risk getting maimed, I made sure it got documented. I mean, I like a good thrill as much as the next fool, but I’m not an idiot.

In 2000, I got the idea to build a big contraption in the desert that would enable me to clear a gap between two side-by-side quarterpipes. The key was to make one of the quarterpipes portable, so we could adjust the size of the gap. We got a builder and rented some land and we headed out with a film crew. Adio, my shoe sponsor at the time, and Birdhouse helped cover part of the cost, but I went out of pocket on most of it. My idea, my money. The ramp took a few days to build, and we were able to widen the gap by removing pieces of the ramp. The first day it was 12 feet wide, with a piece of coping spanning the void so I could grind across it. The next day it expanded to 18 feet and I pulled some scary tricks (like a 540) before we removed the last section to create a 24-foot gap. I attempted it a few times, made it once, and called it a day. This footage has been used over and over, and I feel lucky that I could afford to build the thing, pull off the stunt, get it all on film—and not get hurt. You can see it here:
youtube.com/watch?v=C2VG8ZtC8KU
.

I’ve wanted to film a 3-D movie for a long time, and over the years we pitched the concept to several studios. In 2006, I came up with the idea of going back to the desert, this time with the main part of the HuckJam ramp, including the long jump and a pair of massive quarterpipes, also set side by side with a scary gap between them. We found a studio that wanted to partner up with us, so we moved ahead, building a monolithic setup in the middle of nowhere. We had cameras on cranes, and made plans to rent a helicopter to shoot from above. Shaun White and I would be the skaters. Just as we got the set rigged, our deal with the studio fell apart. But by that time it was too late, so we tossed out the 3-D idea and used high-def cameras instead.

We set up our entire ramp system in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and the resulting photos and video were spectacular.

It turned out to be one of my favorite shoots ever, complete with dust devils and some nice doubles routines with Shaun. We used it in the Birdhouse video
The Beginning.
To see a clip from that day, go here:
shredordie.com/video/tony-hawk-new-birdhouse-video
.

Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now

Things have changed dramatically in recent years for 900 Films. Sales of DVDs and videos have begun to evaporate. Kids who want to see action-sports footage could pretty much get their fill on the Internet for free. When we distribute DVDs these days, it’s usually given away as an add-on with a retail purchase, like the time we arranged with Target stores to include a free
Secret Skatepark Tour
DVD with my video game.

As video moved online, the 900 Films crew began spending most of its time producing short pieces for various Internet sites. It helps to have a small and nimble crew that can get good footage with none of the overhead attached to most high-profile productions. My guys have slipped unseen into the restaurant at the legendary Chateau Marmont hotel in West Hollywood to interview Christian Slater over lunch. They’ve made a string of online commercials for Activision (makers of my video game) in a matter of days. When we catch wind that a skater has pulled something amazing, Jared will rush out and get the scoop.

As a result, we’ve been able to create a nonstop stream of fresh footage for various websites, with several clips closing in on one million views. A substantial chunk of that traffic has been driven to the website by my tweets. If you don’t know what that means, go to the next chapter. In fact, even if you do know what that means, you should probably go to the next chapter.

9

HASHTAG IS NOT A DEATH-METAL BAND

Reaching out through tweets, apps, and satrad

Some tweets from 2010

I love Apple (the computer company, not the fruit). I got my first PowerBook when I could finally afford one, at age 24, and I’ve been first in line to buy pretty much every major product Apple has released since: Macintosh, iMac, PowerBook, G3, G4, iPod, iPhone, iPad—and whatever’s next. I think of myself as an early adopter; friends say I have a fetish. (By the way, this is not a paid plug for Apple. The company has never given me anything for free, and, believe me, I’d take it if they offered.)

Anyway, my house is full of Apple and other electronic gadgets, and I spend many hours creating things with them and sharing the results through the Internet. I’ve been shooting, editing, compressing, and uploading video clips since the earliest days of the Internet. I’ve kept an online blog and road journal since 2000. I got my first camera cell phone in 2001 and I’ve been e-mailing photos and video clips to family and friends ever since.

One advantage to all of this technological innovation is that it enables people like me to communicate directly with fans. We no longer have to depend on paid advertising (or the press) to get the word out about appearances or events or products, or just to let people know what we’re up to. Perhaps my favorite tool right now is Twitter—the microblogging service that lets users upload brief text messages.

I found Twitter because some of my friends and celebrity acquaintances, like Lance Armstrong, were sending out funny and engaging tweets, and I quickly realized I could use it to talk to my own friends and fans. The best part is that anyone with a mobile phone can get your tweets as soon as you send them. Before long, I had several thousand followers myself, largely thanks to a “follow referral” by Lance.

One day in early 2009, I was driving home with an extra skateboard in my car, and decided to try a Twitter experiment. I stashed the board in some bushes beside the road and tweeted that I’d just hidden a skateboard, pinpointing its location. The feedback was almost scary in its immediacy and breadth. Apparently, people were re-tweeting my message to others in the area and anyone they thought might be nearby. Within 20 minutes, I got a response from a girl (including a picture), who wrote, “Thanks so much, I found it!”

Word spreads fast on the Internet—especially if there’s free stuff involved. That improvised one-off giveaway created a little online buzz, and my number of Twitter followers spiked to more than 250,000. So I made plans to try the same thing on a larger scale. That same year, with the help of friends in places like Seattle, Dallas, Detroit, and New York City, we staged a nationwide Easter–swag hunt. We shipped boards to my contacts in cities across the country, and they let me know exactly where (and when) they’d hidden a board in some public place—usually near a landmark. Then I’d forward that information to the masses through Twitter. The whole experiment was called the Tony Hawk Twitter Hunt, and we used the hashtag “#THTH” to mark each tweet related to it. That way, if someone wanted to search for any discussions or updates about the hunt, they simply had to do a Twitter search for #THTH to get the latest info.

I spent that Easter Sunday juggling texts, e-mails, phone calls, and tweets. The most stressful part was making sure I spread the word as soon as someone found a board, so other seekers wouldn’t waste time wandering around looking for a treasure that had already been found. It was a chore but also thrilling. I asked the winners to send pictures of themselves with their prizes. Most of them did, and they looked happy.

Two unanticipated things came out of that Easter hunt: First, it got mentioned by some mainstream news outlets and on hundreds of websites. “Well done Tony Hawk for unlocking the Easter Egg potential of Twitter,” one blogger from England wrote. “No matter how many followers someone has, they feel like they’re getting the inside skinny—information that is not widely available. Almost like being told a secret.”

Second, it sent my Twitter fan base through the roof. Within six months, I passed the million-follower mark. Eleven months after that, I was up over two million. Of course, the marketing potential of such a number is staggering—although I try not to abuse it. Mainly I look to entertain and engage by tweeting funny quotes I’ve overheard or links to photos and video clips I think people will like. I see and hear a lot of weird and hilarious stuff in my worldwide travels. I also have a crew of witty friends who send me links to some of the Internet’s best offerings, like
twitter.com/shitmydadsays
and
peopleofwalmart.com
.

I took the Twitter hunt worldwide in the fall of 2009, only this time, thanks to my sponsors, we sent out boxes of swag: skateboards, smart phones, video cameras, bicycles, backpacks, watches—enough to fill a UPS truck. We also scheduled the hunt to take place over several days, beginning in Europe and Australia. From there, we focused on the United States, starting on the East and West coasts, then moving in a big geographic spiral that ended in Columbus, Ohio, where I planned to put on a surprise demo with the Birdhouse team.

For the demo, I wanted to do another Twitter test, so after Steven Perelman, my event coordinator, scouted a good skatepark and got approval from city officials, we asked them to keep it quiet until we got there. We trucked out my big vert ramp. I waited until I got to town to send out a tweet announcing that my team and I were going to put on a performance, but I had sent out location clues the week leading up to it. About 5,000 people showed up. When the Birdhouse team and I left Columbus to tour the East Coast, we did very little advance publicity. The day before each demo, I’d tweet the locale and invariably we’d have a big crowd.

That proved to me that tweets could draw a crowd. I also knew from our Secret Skatepark Tours in 2006 and 2007 that you didn’t need a lot of advance notice to get kids to a skatepark to see pros perform. Back then, before Twitter got big, when our crew of famous skaters would show up at a park, the handful of locals on hand would get on their cell phones to call or text friends. The impromptu communication chain would grow exponentially, and within an hour there’d be hundreds of people pouring in.

My most memorable tweets came in June 2009, when I got invited to the White House to attend a Father’s Day ceremony with other pro athletes known for working on behalf of children. I got to meet President Obama, and moments later tweeted a photo of myself doing a manual on my skateboard down a White House hallway. That generated some press—not all of it complimentary. Some right-wing bloggers opined that I’d desecrated a sacred national monument. There were high school kids throwing a football around and tearing up the White House lawn, so football was okay but skateboarding wasn’t? Moments before I hopped on my board, I saw workers wheeling heavy metal carts down the very same hallway, so I knew my skateboard wasn’t going to do any damage. The bloggers also apparently forgot, or conveniently ignored, the fact that President George W. Bush used to go bowling in the same building.