Thursday, January 19, 2012
Film Dragonslayer: Skateboarding as a Lifestyle, Tonight at Belcourt
Posted by Steve Haruch on Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 9:30 AM
Dragonslayer
Where: The Belcourt
When: 9:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19
If you’ve never bailed brown-greenish water out of an abandoned swimming pool, bucket by putrid bucket, just for the chance to carve the impossibly smooth belly of the thing on a skateboard — zipping over the tightly contoured concrete and clacking the porcelain tiles below the rounded lip with your wheels until you’re exhausted or someone chases you away — then it’s possible you’ve never really lived. But even if you have, you’ll still get a charge out of Dragonslayer, director Tristan Patterson’s documentary meditation on skateboarding and the entropy of youth through the eyes and below-ground shredding adventures of Josh “Skreech” Sandoval.
Patterson describes meeting the film’s singular subject at a party: “He looked malnourished and lost, and claimed he was on five tabs of acid. It was impossible to talk to him. ... Then I saw him skate.” Sandoval is a throwback anarcho-skater who will probably never pose with an energy drink in front of ESPN cameras. And somewhere around where Suburbia meets Gummo, Dragonslayer comes ripping through.
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