All This Mayhem

I don't like bringing it all up

because I would like to be friends with everyone again.

But you're asking me questions about that period -

well, that's what went on.

That's just the way it is.

That's the way it went down. I can't bullshit.

Don't want the Pappas brothers to be remembered

as just maniacs.

But it got pretty heavy. Yeah, just weird.

Stuff you wouldn't think would happen in skateboarding.

And the facts is this, boys -

there's three sides to every story -

there's my side, your side and the truth.

Back then, there was no place better to be

than Prahran if you were a skateboarder.

You had all different types of people rocking up there.

People in the tight, torn jeans,

long hair...

Messy ones, clean-cut.

No matter who you were,

you'd just get accepted if you were a skateboarder.

Do you like skaters?

- Yeah, I am one. - Do you like other skaters?

- Yeah, of course. I have to. - You have to?

What do you think of pedestrians?

Can't do much about 'em.

I used to finish school at 3:30,

get my board and go straight to the ramp.

It was the only thing that I wanted to do at the time.

- Oh! - You alright?

Dom! Why do you skate?

- For fun. - Fun?

Yeah. What else would I skate for? Money?

I had that sense of freedom with skateboarding,

and pretty much that was my life at the time -

I was just skateboarding.

School was OK, but skateboarding

was more than that to me.

Looking sharp there, Greg.

Yeah, looking very good!

Every weekend, every night after school,

we used to go down to Prahran.

It was so exciting because there were people

from around Melbourne, a lot of older crew and street guys.

Hey, why do you skate?

'Cause, you know, I've gotta get some enjoyment in my life.

- You know? - Go and have a pull, son.

My mum hated it.

She just didn't understand why I wanted to go to Prahran

all the time and didn't understand that culture.

Still to this day, they don't really understand.

What do you think of skateboarding?

Skateboarding? I haven't thought about it much.

But do you think it's a good sport, really?

If it turns people on, why not?

I was down at Prahran one day.

I was probably, like, 11 or 12.

And these kids padded up and just started from the bottom.

Looked like they'd never even stepped on a board before.

They just got on the ramp and started pumping,

going quarter of the way up, halfway up the ramp.

They didn't give two shits if someone said to them

to get off the ramp, they'd just go and have a skate.

You could see they were pretty hard, you know.

I found out they were called Ben and Tas.

We were young as fuck when we came to Prahran,

which is on the rich side of Melbourne.

We were just normal kids

brought up in a physical kind of atmosphere,

like having rock wars and climbing construction sites

and houses that were being built.

I saw the vert ramp and I was just mesmerised by the fact

that people could fly through the air, and that took over.

We were bogans.

There's bogans in every country.

I think in America they call them hessians or white trash.

They'd be the American bogan.

In Australia, it's just called a bogan,

but it's more the rougher suburb type.

We grew up in suburbia, half Greek, half Aussie.

Sort of rough.

Growing up was pretty hectic as far as Mum and Dad went.

They tried to be together and cool,

but there were just fights every night.

Mum was hardcore.

I mean, they had a fight, they got into it

and then she's screaming and I was, like, freaking out.

'Don't hit Mum!'

Then Mum would come back with a big glass ashtray,

smash Dad in the head, then he's... Bff!

..laid out on the floor with blood coming out his head!

I'm like, 'Ah! Dad's dead!'

That's the sort of things we saw growing up.

Me and Ben would always be going at it with each other,

smashing each other.

And we learned martial arts as kids.

I was in kung-fu when I was five.

They had to take me out of it

'cause I started smashing all the grade fives

when I was in grade one.

Just thought I was Bruce Lee.

My dad and Uncle Willie had a jujitsu school,

and the first thing Uncle Willie taught us

was all the pressure points.

Temples, eyes, behind the ears,

throat, up the nose, down the chin.

And he's teaching us all these death strikes.

Then he'd tell us in class,

'Right! Now, what are you going to do?

You've just walked in, some bloke's raping your mother.

Think about that. She's about to die.

Now what are you going to do to that bloke?'

We'd be in our heads, young, going, 'I'll kill him!'

And then they'd go, 'Now, spar!'

Then we'd go in there and fully spar.

Dad was like, 'Willie, maybe we should ease up

on the death strikes, they're children.'

But I took that to skating and so did Ben.

Sure enough, a week later they're dropping in.

Tas is dropping in, Ben gets up, starts dropping in.

They'd gotten good really quick.

They just did it for fun, how I did.

We'd become really good friends, me, Tas and Ben.

Ben! Yeah!

We were a really tight group

and everyone bonded with each other who could skate.

We were just complete pricks to other people who couldn't,

so it was that sort of mentality.

Do some fucking tricks!

When are you gonna fucking skateboard?!

That's the way! There you go.

- Oh, look at it. - It's not good enough!

Not fucking good enough!

You're a wanker! Let's go, man.

Everyone used to come back to my house

and just... all we did

was hang out in the lounge room and watch videos.

We always got really excited

by watching videos from the States 'cause that was it.

I used to just rock in and there was my brother

and a couple of friends watching the videos.

My drive is just progression.

Just to be able to keep going on and doing new things.

To see what they did, I didn't think was possible.

It just blew my mind away.

That's all we watched, and recited songs from them

and just had a laugh about what the skaters were saying.

How long have you been skating?

Six years.

- When did you start? - Um... six years ago.

The Americans had that twang in their voice,

like, 'Hey!' - we used to imitate that.

You're just flying around.

You're not skating any more, just flying around.

Wasn't that Tony Mag's quote in one of the H-Street videos?

It's like you're not skating any more,

you're just flying around.

All I cared about was H-Street.

New gen style, Danny Way style.

I remember being in my room, going,

'That's it. I'm going to America.

I'm going to be the best. I wanna smash Hawk!'

I had these huge dreams.

You just realised

that Australia just didn't have that same buzz.

So to be a part of that US skate culture was our dream.

I was living with my dad during the week

and we stayed with Mum on the weekends.

Mum moved to Clifton Hill,

so the closest vert ramp was Northcote.

That ramp was a lot bigger than Prahran,

and it was pretty much dead there

so we had the ramp to ourselves.

Sometimes these guys would rock up to the ramp

in these two Porsches,

I remember just tripping. 'Who are these two?'

They saw me and Ben learning, fighting and learning,

and he'll learn this and I'll learn that better,

I'll go higher here, and we were just battling.

These guys just so happened to be the two brothers

who had pretty much the biggest

distributorship in Australia.

We had no idea who they were either.

Lucky we didn't get lippy to them, eh?

So if you were starting off from the beginning

to learn skateboarding, is the book going to help you?

For sure. It also has a how-to-do section in it.

Stephen and Peter Hill approached us at the ramp

and said, 'Hey, do you guys want to come into Hardcore?'

Which is now known as Globe.

'We'll give you some product and stuff.'

I was expecting a T-shirt and we walked out of Hardcore

that day with so much shit, I was just blown away.

And from that day on, we were hooked up

with the Hill brothers and Hardcore.

Me and Ben, we got sponsored.

We couldn't exactly quite do things yet,

but they thought we were going to be good.

Jerry Sont here and welcome to Melbourne's Festival Hall

where, tonight, skaters from all over the world,