Movie Review : Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off (2022)
You don’t need to be a skateboarder to appreciate how skateboarding is a great metaphor for the human experience. It’s slightly dangerous, but not lethal. There’s a constant chance that you trip, fall or hurt yourself and when it eventually happens, there’s nothing you can do, but get up and start over. Also, there’s no real meaning to it outside fleeting moments of aesthetic beauty. That is why Tony Hawk is interesting to me. He’s basically been a human metaphor all his life without even realizing it.
I expected to learn more about the man in the brand new documentary Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off and I did, but mostly learned about the existential virtue of skateboarding, passion and how to age in a way that doesn’t fucking terrify me.
Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off is a very, VERY (sometimes too) formal and comprehensive retrospective on the life of the man who became the face of skateboarding in the mind of people who don’t know shit about it. But it’s not just about him. Tony Hawk’s has revolved around skateboarding so much and since he was more or less present in all its cultural up and downswings, it’s a lot about skateboarding too. How does it feel to be know for something so precise and how you can skateboard even when you’re old.
Commitment, sacrifice and outsider culture
One creative decision that makes Until the Wheels Fall Off great is the inclusion of the members of Bones Brigade, Tony Hawk’s old skateboarding team. Because they have lived through similar ups and downs in their careers to various degrees. All of them (except one, I believe) have persisted and succeeded because they have a genuine love for skateboarding. Even if it’s a brutal and thankless sport, each of these guys would’ve skateboarded all their lives for free. I thought this was inspiring as fuck.
As a 39 years old man, I find it super moving to see older dudes who found themselves through commitment and sacrifice still being fulfilled by a process that brings them as much pain as it brings them joy. Older, lesser known skateboarders like Lance Mountain and Rodney Mullen also have navigated existence through the prism of skateboarding and the coherence of their respective testimonies speaks for the quality of their time on this planet. Their shared passion gave them an identity, purpose and community.
The story of Until the Wheels Fall Off is a story of the dangers of success, but I believe the most interesting story in there is about the redeeming power of passion and commitment. Tony Hawk (and his Bones Brigade teammates) truly loves skateboarding. He probably loves it more than I love anything else and even if he fell in a lot of stardom traps, he always had that love to fall back on. That one pure thing that was independent of anything else in his life. When you love something this much, no one can take it away.
The latent normality of Tony Hawk
One question I had before watching Until the Wheels Fall Off was: how the fuck is Tony Hawk so normal looking? Outside of his breakneck passion, he is the quietest, most relatable guy out there. He could be grilling next door to you and you wouldn’t even know it. Sam Jones’ documentary highlights that like many people, Tony Hawk has never felt normal for a day in his life and why would he? He is absolutely not like anyone else and that is what is so relatable about him. The struggle with his own greatness.
Tony Hawk is famous in a way we’d all like to be famous: he’s considered a Godlike figure within a certain community, but it’s possible that he could eat at a restaurant without being recognized once. He doesn’t dress like a rock star, doesn’t believe his own opinions to be more important than social cohesion and it seems like the celebrity dating game never really interested him. His celebrity is just the byproduct of him being Godlike at what he does and I’m sure we can agree this how it should always be.
So yeah, Tony Hawk is definitely NOT normal. None of the Bones Brigade guys are. They are passionate outsiders who created a community for themselves almost like self-flagellating monks did in the middle ages. It was Mark Manson who said : the acceptance of a negative experiences is in itself a positive experience and I think this is at the heart of what these guys do. Tony Hawk and, to an extent every self-respecting skateboarder masters of pain and failure. They embrace it in order to create beauty.
It should be more normal than it is.
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You definitely should watch Tony Hawk : Until the Wheels Fall Off. In fact, it’s a terrific movie to watch when you don’t know what to watch. It’s smart, accessible and heartfelt. It’s a little intense with following Tony Hawk’s life beat-by-beat at times, but the overall passion and philosophy of learning and celebrating the imperfections of life is quite intoxicating. For skateboarders, there is no beginning, middle and end. There’s just falling, getting up and starting over and we could all learn from that.
