The epic June party was coming up, so we committed ourselves to shooting the party without ever visiting Skatopia. We were paying for this ourselves, so our crew consisted of one camera guy and ourselves (Laurie & Colin). We also brought our son Liam (15 months old) and his babysitter. Yes, we did have second thoughts about bringing a young, pretty babysitter & our small child to Skatopia, based on the stuff we’d heard about it. Not much choice however. We found a pop-up trailer (Camp Documentary) and headed off. We made it very clear to our nanny and camera person – we don’t know how many hours you’ll have to work, we don’t know if the rumors about rape and guns, etc are true, and we don’t know if you’ll be able to shower or where you’ll be able to take a shit.
Upon arriving, we scored one and lost one. We did have the cameras out right from the start (score one for camp documentary – something is always happening at Skatopia!), but we didn’t make it all the way up the gravel driveway (minus one for camp documentary and Colin’s manhood, since he was driving). We looked out to see Brewce Martin Рamidst a pack of howling pitbulls and mutts – cackling at the city slickers stuck on the gravel drive.
Brewce was a great host. Despite his reputation as a wild man he kindly helped us find the best spot to park our trailer so that the baby could occasionally get some sleep. He also took great delight in telling us when our cameras missed something great. 88 acres & 2 cameras. Sorry Brewce.
We had arrived not really knowing if we were going to find pure evil or if there would even be a story there. But we left really, really psyched about the film. We knew we could make a film that would be a totally hot film for skaters but also a great movie even if you’d never touched a board.
And though we didn’t know it at the time, we all left changed personally. In fact, during the next week, I made several really unsafe driving decisions and briefly took up smoking. Our son came back saying “git” and “fuck you”. But mostly, Skatopia was a big bucket of cold bracing water in our faces – a reminder to live and not just to exist.
Well, that’s enough history for now.