STOKED: THE RISE AND FALL OF GATOR Rating: (out of 5 stars) Director: Helen Stickler Producer: Helen Stickler Director of Photography: Helen Stickler, Peter Sutherland, Dag Yngvesson Visit the IMDB page for full cast and crew

(Read the interview with Helen Stickler)

Review by: Warren Curry
8/18/03

There was a time, before ESPN 2 and The X Games, when the simple act of riding a skateboard was viewed as a rebellious, antisocial endeavor. In fact, if you grew up in an upper middle class Massachusetts' suburb in the 1980s (like I did), such an act could get you ridiculed or physically pummeled by hordes of testosterone overdosed male teenagers clad in high school football jerseys. While skaters in Southern California, the birthplace of the sport, apparently enjoyed a much less hostile environment in which they could pursue their passion, the past decade has seen a widespread acceptance of the skating subculture that probably no soul from the northern tip of Santa Barbara to the southern most stretch of San Diego would have ever envisioned.

Helen Stickler's superb documentary Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator is a snapshot of that period when skateboarding's appeal was making its way out of the underground and firmly into popular culture. It's also a piercing examination of one larger-than-life yet disturbed figure, Mark "Gator" Rogowski, who was both a beneficiary of this transition and perhaps its most notable and severe casualty. Furthermore, it's a cautionary tale about the price of celebrity -- especially as it pertains to the young and athletically gifted -- that's unusually timely in light of the ongoing plight of Los Angeles Lakers' superstar Kobe Bryant.

Mark Rogowski's story is, in some ways, such a clichéd, paint-by-numbers American tragedy that a fiction writer would be ridiculed for lacking imagination if he/she authored this script. In short, young hotshot achieves fame and fortune, the effects of this seductive lifestyle overwhelm the person living it, and this same young hotshot then hits rock bottom. But let me fill in some blanks -- this hotshot is, at one time, the world's most famous skateboarder (described by a friend as the Wayne Gretzky of skateboarding), his rise and subsequent fall happens in the span of a few short years, and there's no sugarcoated Hollywood third-act redemption to be found. On the contrary, currently Mark "Gator" Rogowski is serving 31 years to life in prison for the grisly murder of a 21-year-old woman, who he bludgeoned to death and buried in the California desert in 1991.

Rogowski's life is constructed in familiar documentary fashion. We witness footage of him in 80s skate videos, see present day interviews with those who surrounded Gator in his heyday, and in what turns out to be an effectively haunting technique, hear Gator's voice over a prison phone as he reflects on a life gone horribly wrong. In the early 80s, Rogowski, who grew up in suburban San Diego, emerged from a skateboarding culture that was high on energy and scrappiness and low on polish. In an infamous early incident, Rogowski's physical altercation with the police at a skate contest touched off a mini-riot. Documented in the pages of noted skate magazine Thrasher, this episode helped build the outlaw myth of Gator.

By the late 80s, Gator had become a dominant "vert" skater, touring around the world thanks to his sponsor, Vision Streetwear, made appearances on MTV, owned an elaborate home in north San Diego County, and was in a fairy tale relationship with a young woman named Brandi McClain. But Gator was also drowning in the excesses of his lifestyle -- mainly gorging on a steady diet of ego inflation that made for an uncomfortable partner with his violent mood swings and alcohol abuse. By the turn of the decade, Gator Rogowski had tried to re-invent himself as a much more accessible, conservative figure, even going so far as to adopt the name Mark Anthony, and had pretty much alienated all those who supported him from the start. With the demise of vertical ramp skating, the rise in popularity of street skating, and a sense of self-importance that had totally spun out of control, Gator quickly became yesterday's news -- desperately grasping onto religion as a final attempt to resist falling prey to his darker impulses.

Stoked is a most peculiar form of tragedy -- the kind where it's difficult to feel bad for anyone involved. Director Helen Stickler doesn't try to pretty up the package -- Gator is depicted as an egomaniac of the worst order; so distasteful in some ways and so laughably naive in others. Gator's tale is basically that of Dirk Diggler's in Boogie Nights, and it's very similar to the real life unraveling of another volatile, infamous young athlete who came to prominence in the 80s, Mike Tyson.

The film is also a portrait of the 80s, and Stickler includes footage that will embarrass all those whose youth was spent in that era. The decade was extremely interesting in the world of skating, as the sport evolved from its street-level origins (which is what basically gave it its identity) to a non-threatening commodity, scooped up and assimilated in the guts of mainstream America, with Gator serving as an obvious symbol of that conformity.

Sharing thoughts and memories about Gator are the man's skating contemporaries such as Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Jason Jessee (who pretty much steals the show every time he's on screen), and other friends of Rogowski's, including ex-girlfriend Brandi McClain, who seems to want to use the documentary to fulfill her own separate agenda. Stickler carefully interweaves the talking heads with the archival footage to create a fast pace that never overwhelms in its communication of information. Unlike the wonderfully entertaining skating documentary from 2002, Dogtown and Z-Boys, Stickler's goal isn't to make unappreciated heroes of these people. Stoked is a much more difficult, darker film, and I'll readily admit that it took a second viewing for the movie to really make a substantial impact. However, if you are looking for this film to take the shape of a bizarre, true-crime story, you will most likely leave disappointed.

In a time when American society, perhaps more than ever, expects so much from young people with extraordinary athletic skills (i.e. 18-year-old multi-millionaire LeBron James), Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator couldn't be more relevant. While one's appreciation of this film will certainly be enhanced by an interest in skateboarding and the people who comprise that world, it's never anything less than a fascinating journey.

(A Palm Pictures release. Opens in New York on August 22, 2003. Expands to more cities, including Los Angeles, on August 29, 2003.)

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