As we study the genre of nonfiction film in my IS Junior English classes, I came across this story in the Sunday Edition of The New York Times, titled “Extreme Sports Vault onto the Big Screen.” Obviously, Stacy Peralta is included in this article due to his documentary films Dogtown and Z-Boys, and the film that we studied in class about the history of big wave riding and culture, Riding Giants. He had some interesting ideas about what an “extreme sports” film should be:
Yet in the way these films focus on only the highlights, they’re what Mr. Peralta, in an interview, called “action sports pornography.” Mr. Peralta, who started making skateboard videos before moving to feature films, was particularly dismissive of the typical tricks compilation. “It has so little context,” he said. “All you see is exclamation point, exclamation point. It’s not interesting. Anyone can shoot and cut tricks. What they don’t know about was how to tell a story.”
