How Did I Get Here (12 page)

www.talktofans.com

In 1998, before the word
blog
was born, I started posting an online diary/journal on my website
tonyhawk.com
. The journal eventually got compiled into the book
Between Boardslides and Burnout
, but once I started tweeting, the blog went the way of rotary-dial telephones. The website is now mainly a place to aggregate and connect my various ventures, sponsors, and projects, each of which has its own site: Birdhouse skateboards, Hawk Clothing, the Boom Boom HuckJam tour, and the Tony Hawk Foundation.

After meeting President Obama, I celebrated with a nose manual on the front driveway of the White House.

My main webmaster for several years was one of my best friends, Ray Underhill. Ray had been a great vert skater back in the day, and a fellow member of the Bones Brigade. Although he had moved back east to start a family, we had a great relationship. He designed the original
tonyhawk.com
and
tonyhawkfoundation.org
websites, and I trusted him to always represent the heart of skateboarding in anything he created and updated for us. He was smart, witty, and intuitive. Tragically, he passed away in 2008 from brain cancer. I miss him dearly.

In 2007, we met with the venture capitalists who financed the successful comedy website
funnyordie.com
, which was co-owned by such Hollywood heavyweights as CAA, Will Ferrell, Judd Apatow, and Adam McKay. It’s the site that blew up after producing and posting the hilarious short video titled
The Landlord
starring Ferrell and Adam’s toddler daughter as Ferrell’s ruthless, alcoholic rent collector.

In fact,
funnyordie.com
was so successful that the financiers decided to create a network of related “Or Die” video websites. One was to be aimed at blue-collar comedy fans, another at foodies, and still another at video game geeks. Most of the footage on the sites was to be user-generated, as with YouTube, except in each case the owners also partnered with celebrities who would shoot and cut professional grade video clips exclusively for the site.

By coincidence, we’d been shopping around the idea of launching an action-sports website, and even were at the point of possibly financing it ourselves, when the people behind
funnyordie.com
came calling. We decided to team up with them and create a site called
shredordie.com
. They’d build the site (using the same content-management system as
funnyordie.com
) and sell ads. We’d provide content from our existing library of skate videos, as well as shoot and deliver fresh clips. They also wanted us to ferret out and license footage from the best filmmakers in the other major action sports: surfing, snowboarding, BMX, and motocross. I liked the idea, so we partnered up.

It was a big undertaking. We installed editing studios in my building and hired a team of eight producers and editors. The site went live in 2008 after we seeded it with a boatload of footage from our archives. Users quickly started adding their own videos, and by spring 2010 it had nearly 10,000 clips and 20,000 members and was getting a quarter of a million hits a month. A couple of the videos have had more than 500,000 views. Those numbers are small by Internet standards, and in 2009, the original investors started talking about pulling the plug. I stepped in and took over majority ownership and now carry most of the financial risk.

Even though the site has yet to turn a profit, I’ve stuck with
shredordie.com
because the audience is plugged in and influential, and the site itself is a fun, creative outlet for my gang. We’ve created a channel called “Dissent TV,” in which I joke around with celebrities I run into at various events, like Jack Black, Keanu Reeves, Lance Armstrong, Michael Phelps, Ed Helms, John Krasinski, Christian Slater, Jon Favreau, David Spade, and Adam Carolla. We did segments on Shaun White’s twenty-first birthday party in Las Vegas (
shredordie.com/video/dissent-tv-tony-and-shaun
), and on Tommy Carroll, a blind skater from Illinois (
shredordie.com/video/dissent-tv-tony-with-blind-1
).

We’ve also done a few in-house “challenges,” in which we bring in skaters of all levels, beginners to pros, to try something new and scary. The first one was simple: Three guys who barely skated competed for $1,000 cash by trying to drop in on the giant vert ramp in our warehouse (
shredordie.com/video/1000-vert-drop
). All they had to do was make the drop, roll across the ramp, and climb out on the other side. The U-shaped ramp is 13 feet high, with two feet of vertical at the top. Most people don’t realize how intimidating that is for the average skater, because they only see pros ride the thing. I enjoyed watching the novice skaters edge up to the coping and look over, then inch by inch build up the nerve to take the plunge. Two of them made it on the third try, and split the cash.

For the next challenge, we set up the HuckJam’s full loop in the parking lot outside our building and invited six skaters to give it a go. That one resulted in some hilarious near-death slams (
shredordie.com/video/the-loop-challenge-2008
). Two guys actually pulled it off: Alex Chalmers and Josh Borden.

In August 2009, we hosted our first huge online skate contest, called “Gear 4 a Year,” in which we invited amateur skaters to upload video of themselves. The winner would receive a year’s worth of skate-related products (from Foundation Skateboards, Silver trucks, Pig Wheels, Quiksilver clothes, Etnies shoes, and Nixon watches), guaranteed coverage in
The Skateboard
Mag
, and automatic entry into the prestigious Tampa skate contest. The winner, Mike Thompson, didn’t even know his friend had edited and posted the video until he’d been named a finalist (
shredordie.com/video/video/listForContributor?screenName=2ceol9y3qchu8
).

Some of the stuff we do on
shredordie.com
is more about laughing than shredding. On our “Free Lunch” channel, we take athletes out to lunch and try to make them as uncomfortable as possible. Dennis McCoy, the BMX legend, had just come out of surgery and arrived for an interview still woozy from anesthesia. His free lunch came back up. That was a popular video (
shredordie.com/video/free-lunch-with-dennis-mccoy
).

One of my favorite original
shredordie.com
shorts was made by vert skater Jesse Fritsch, BMXer Mike “Rooftop” Escamilla, and my hilarious nephew John Dale during the 2010 Gumball rally. Gumball is a car freak’s decadent wet dream. Rich guys and celebrities from all over the world gather in Europe to drive ridiculously expensive cars (Ferrari’s 612 Scaglietti, Bentley, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Aston-Martin DB9, Mercedes-Benz ML63 AMG, and more) in a big convoy from country to country. I’ve done it a few times as a special guest (meaning I agree to do press in exchange for a waived entry fee).

In 2010, we drove from London to Copenhagen, then flew to Boston to continue the race in the cars, which had been flown from Copenhagen to Maine. The organizers chartered a flight for most of the participants, and John, Jesse, and Rooftop persuaded pretty much everyone on the plane to join in making a mock music video to Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” (The song request came from the rapper Xzibit, of all people.) Rappers, actors, tattooed DJs—all melodramatically mouth one of the goofiest power ballads ever written. Best scene: Xzibit singing, “Every now and then I get a little bit helpless and I’m lying like a child in your arms,” while John tenderly hugs him (
shredordie.com/video/gumball-2010-part-3-total-1
).

That one went viral.

Unheard Music

In 2004, Steven Van Zandt came to our HuckJam arena show with a producer named Scott Greenstein. “Little Steven,” as he’s known, is a guitar player in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, but I knew him best for his role as Silvio Dante on
The Sopranos
. They came to ask if I’d be interested in hosting a weekly music and talk show on the satellite radio station, Sirius. Little Steven is a huge fan and supporter of underground music, and their enthusiasm for this new, uncensored, subscription-based radio format was infectious. Sirius eventually signed up Howard Stern, the superstar of raunchy radio, and their subscription base grew exponentially in a very short time.

The idea was to have me do a weekly, one-hour show in which I’d get to play music I liked and banter with my friends in the action-sports world. It would air on their punk rock channel, called Faction. They said they’d even build me a studio in my existing office building. The deal included stock options, and it sounded like fun, so I signed on. We decided to call it “Demolition Radio.”

The executives at Sirius liked that I wanted to do shows live from my office, in the same building where I keep the HuckJam ramp assembled. That way, any skaters or BMXers who happened to drop by when we were on the air could join the show.

For a cast, I turned to two old friends, Jesse Fritsch and Jason Ellis. Both of them skate vert, play (or have played) in punk bands, and know how to make me laugh. In fact, Jason was so good on the air that Sirius soon gave him his own talk show. Now he’s on five days a week and is one of Sirius’s biggest stars. I replaced Jason with my nephew, John Dale, a budding stand-up comedian who’s starred in videos on
funnyordie.com
and
shredordie.com
.

Our show has been fun and comfortable from the start. A lot of famous action-sports athletes have popped in, sometimes still sweating from their skate sessions: Shaun White, Bob Burnquist, Bucky Lasek, Andy Macdonald, Pierre Luc Gagnon, Kevin Robinson, Simon Tabron, and Dennis McCoy. We’ve also had on-the-air visits from Miley Cyrus, Elle Macpherson, Johnny Knoxville, Tom Green, Jon Favreau, and Reverend Run from Run-DMC.

Will Pendarvis from Sirius (which has since merged with its former rival, XM) has been my producer the whole time, helping to bridge the gap between the network’s corporate office and all things Tony Hawk. He also makes sure we’re geared up to record the show remotely when I’m on the road—which happens a lot. We’ve broadcast from trade shows like E3, the holy grail of video game conventions, and from the HuckJam and skatepark tours.

One of the most telling examples of the power of new media is that once I tweet that “Demolition Radio” is on the air, our phones light up with people calling in from all over the world—some of whom have told us they don’t subscribe to Sirius/XM. Thanks to Twitter, I now have fans calling in to be on a live radio show they can’t even hear.

10

HOW TO NEVER GET A MOVIE MADE

Hollywood will break your heart, or at least piss you off

I know for sure that there are a couple of things I do better than most people. One of them is ride a skateboard. The other is take meetings for movies that never get made. I’ve been doing it for decades, and I’ve become an expert at it.

Here’s a Hollywood heartbreaker: In 2003, I got asked to star in a follow-up to the Warner Brothers hit movie
Space Jam
, which had teamed a real-life Michael Jordan with WB’s Looney Tunes cartoon characters. This one would be titled
Skate Jam.
I’d be the featured human, acting alongside such two-dimensional icons as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. I don’t remember exactly how many times we met, but I do recall that the group pitching the project brought a lot of energy to every meeting. They set up storyboards illustrating the action-packed plot, and even had a cartoon-voice actor read lines from proposed scenes.

When it came time to have our last big meeting to finalize the deal, I was already scheduled to fly from Los Angeles to Australia, so they met me for dinner at that big tower-top restaurant at LAX. Everyone, including the WB contingent, was giddy with optimism. By then, they had the whole story fleshed out, and I liked what I heard. When the meal ended and we all shook hands, everyone was confident that we had the green light. As my agent walked with me toward the terminal, he claimed that the studio planned to offer me at least $1 million. I laughed all the way to Australia.

Unfortunately, the final decision on whether to go ahead with
Skate Jam
hinged on the success of another semi-sequel to
Space Jam
, called
Back in Action
, which turned out to be a relative flop.

I never even received a follow-up call.

Supreme Existential Strangeness

Because my career as a professional skater has continued after I stopped competing, I’m not one of those retired athletes who’d kill to be in a movie or to have his life story told. In fact, sometimes my existing ventures get in the way of Hollywood deals.

Let me illustrate that point with another cinematic tragedy: In 2001, my agent set me up with a producer who wanted to make a film based on my life story. The producer worked with Buena Vista, which was the distribution arm of Disney. Disney co-owned ESPN, which put on the X Games and thus owned rights to the footage of my first 900. It was all neatly linked.

The producer had read my autobiography, had watched the X Games replays, and was buzzing with enthusiasm. He envisioned the film opening with actual footage from the day I made that first 900, then freezing on a close-up of my face just before I dropped in for the successful run. Fade to a child actor playing me on a bench at a Little League game, trying to muster up the courage to tell my dad (who coached my team and ran the league) that I wanted to quit baseball and focus on skateboarding. All of that was true, so it sounded good to me. The best part was that I wouldn’t have to do any acting. They’d have the “real” me through the X Games footage and then use actors of various ages to play the young me through the years.

Of course, we had many meetings. They even hired a screenwriter, who came to my office and pored over old photos, news clips, and memorabilia. I could tell that the writer was going to take some literary license with the facts—consolidated storylines, inflated drama, that kind of thing—but it wasn’t enough to scare me away. I remember we actually had discussions about what advice I’d give the actor during scenes involving my first sexual encounter—a concept of supreme existential strangeness that I couldn’t possibly have imagined back in high school when the encounter actually happened… back when I used to get routinely ridiculed for riding a skateboard. The whole idea of an autobiographic feature film was almost too much to consider, and I refused to discuss casting (Who would play my mother? My girlfriend? The 12-year-old me?) until I knew such decisions were imminent.

Everyone said it was a no-miss. Skateboarding and other action sports were just starting to take off, and Disney/ESPN was eager to give the category (and thus the X Games) a boost with this movie.

While the writer researched my most embarrassing adolescent anecdotes, my film agent at William Morris worked on hammering out the Disney contract. Problems arose when they started talking about the possibility of creating and selling consumer products related to the movie. Merchandising, as it’s called, was practically invented by Disney; they’ve been doing it since 1929, when Mickey Mouse’s image first appeared on a children’s writing tablet. So they like to have control over licensing outside products. I couldn’t see how a biopic would have much merchandising potential, but it turned out to be a major snag. I couldn’t grant them licensing rights in categories that already had products with my name on them, like apparel, sporting goods, and some toys. I knew the project was in trouble when I heard both sides were arguing about coffee mugs.

Needless to say, that movie never got made, either.

A similar conflict scuttled an idea for a Saturday morning cartoon series that my agent brought to the table in 2004. It would be for young boys, and have my name on it. The proposal came from a production company that had produced some successful direct-to-DVD movies based on some very popular toy brands. I liked their idea, but, again, we clashed over licensing rights.

Not surprisingly, the biggest source of revenue for most televised cartoon shows comes from consumer products that get sold around the brand: SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas, Yo Gabba Gabba sippy cups, that kind of thing. Also, good animation is expensive. Consequently, the producer wanted to use the revenue from merchandise sales to cover the costs of production, estimated at $500,000 or more per episode. I would have been cool with figuring out a revenue-sharing deal for the sale of products—but they insisted that “Tony Hawk” had to be in the show’s title and thus would be on the merchandise, and that (again) would create too many conflicts with my existing licensing business.

Although the sales of Boom Boom Sabotage were not what we hoped for, the creative work was amazing. Here is the animated “me” along with the rest of the characters.

Courtesy of © Rainmaker Entertainment Inc.
®

After a long series of less-than-pleasant negotiations, we killed the series idea and instead agreed to produce an animated, direct-to-DVD movie based on my Boom Boom HuckJam tour. This also fulfilled a contractual obligation that would have been costly to escape from. Sales weren’t great, but the final product was much better than I’d expected, especially in light of all the conflict leading up to it.

False Promises, Fast Cars

All of this frustration has taught me a couple of lessons.

First, never bank on anything that has to do with Hollywood. A movie can be hours away from actual production, with actors hired and a crew assembled, and someone at the top might still pull the plug. So if a movie mogul shakes your hand and looks you in the eye and promises that this film you’ve been pitching is
definitely
going to be made, don’t run out and buy a Lamborghini just yet.

Second, despite the limited chance for success, take all the meetings you can with legitimate filmmakers, and remain polite (unless you’re dealing with a certified asshole), because the film industry is all about connections and unburned bridges

For example, not long after the Buena Vista deal fell through, my agent set up a meeting with Stacey Snider, longtime chairman of Universal Studios. Stacey had an impeccable reputation. She’d been instrumental in developing such hit films as
Erin Brockovich, The Fast and the Furious
, and
The Mummy
movies. (She eventually left Universal to head up Dream Works.)

I had a cameo as an astronaut in
The Lords of Dogtown
. Lhotse had a smaller cameo as a NASA publicist.

Stacey seemed genuinely interested in developing a project for both me and my production company, 900 Films. She suggested we meet with screenwriter Gary Scott Thompson, who’d just written Universal’s big hit,
The Fast and the Furious
, starring Vin Diesel. Over lunch, Gary told us he was looking to do something with action sports. Soon, he began coming up with concepts for a film. But again, as is so often the case in Hollywood, Gary got sidetracked by other projects. Eventually, NBC picked up his television show
Las Vegas
, and nothing ever came of our meetings with him.

However, that connection eventually led us to the director of
The Fast and the Furious
, Rob Cohen, who was working on another Vin Diesel action feature called
xXx
. Cohen was interested in working with 900 Films because the movie was about a rebellious action-sports star who gets recruited by the National Security Agency to infiltrate a group of terrorists. Cohen ended up using several well-known skateboarders, BMXers, and motocross riders as stunt men, extras, and bit players. He also hired 900 Films’ best cameraman, Matt Goodman, to shoot the snowboarding and other stunt sequences.

This, in turn, led Matt to shoot all of the main action for a terribly cheesy movie about skating called
Grind
(which I declined to be in after reading the script). The movie was overwhelmingly panned, although several reviews noted that the film’s only bright spot was Matt’s action footage. I still don’t understand how so many bad ideas get made into films while good ones get quashed.

Tom Cruise Gets Mushy

These days, through my company 900 Films, I’m more interested in the production side of the movie business. I’ve been especially intrigued by a project we began pitching a few years ago in which we’d use dazzling 3-D technology to film original stunts by top athletes in four sports: surfing, skateboarding, BMX, and motocross. We’d document each stunt’s entire process, from inception to execution, in exotic locations. Sort of
The Endless Summer
meets
Road Trip
, in 3-D.

We started getting interest from a few studios after we aligned with Brett Morgen, director of such acclaimed documentaries as
The Kid Stays in the Picture
,
On the Ropes
, and
Chicago 10.
As an accomplished documentarian, Brett was an expert at weaving together strong narratives out of existing footage—and this time the footage was guaranteed to be mind-blowing. At one point, we had Kelly Slater, Shaun White, and Mat Hoffman in the main cast. As the project started to build a little buzz, our agent hinted that we might even luck into the best possible scenario: a bidding war.

The big moment came when Brett and I got summoned to have dinner with Tom Cruise, who’d just become head of MGM’s newly resurrected studio United Artists. The meeting was to take place at his house. I had no idea what to expect, but it seemed like a good sign. We drove to an inconspicuous gate off of Sunset Boulevard, then made our way to a guest house/screening room. Tom arrived a little late because he was out flying with his kids. We were joined at dinner by Paula Wagner (his UA partner), his agent, and the agent representing Brett and me.

Tom told us he knew our world because he used to ride his BMX bike down a steep hill and fly off a launch ramp at the bottom. Paula was shocked, and kept saying things like “Oh my gawwwwd, Tom! You’re craaaaazy!”

The weirdest part was that Tom’s sister would come in periodically and hand him a note, which he’d share with us. First note: His wife had just landed in New Orleans. Second note: She was at the hotel. Tom picked up a nearby house phone and proceeded to have the mushiest oh-baby-I-love-you-miss-you-so-much-have-good-dreams goo-goo conversation I’ve ever witnessed. It was one of the most awkward things I’ve ever had to sit through. In the end, though, he redeemed himself in my eyes when it became clear that he’s a good father who genuinely loves his kids. And his kids were extremely courteous and respectful, so I’ll cut the man some slack.

Anyway, the pitch didn’t go well. Tom grilled us about very specific filmmaking details, like what kind of lenses and camera mounts we’d use to capture the action. Most of all, though, he wanted to know about the storyline, which we had always figured would unfold as the shooting progressed. It was, after all, a documentary. But he said he needed a dramatic arc that he could “bring back to my people.”