August 29, 2003

Skate Crimes

"Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator" Opens

Hot chicks. All-night partying. Big fat checks. Adulation worthy of a rock god.

That’s what it meant to be a pro skater like Mark “Gator” Rogowski in the ’80s.

Sounds pretty rad, huh?

Look again. Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator, opening today on the West Coast (and in other cities over the next several weeks), tells the whole story — about the charismatic prodigy Gator was, the failure he became, and the crime he eventually committed, which put him in jail for 31 years to life. The feature-length documentary artfully depicts the world he inhabited and helped to create, resurrecting archival footage of the vertical-ramp skating circuit of the 1980s and interviews — some of them hilarious — with all of the key players.

More than all that, though, Stoked is a riveting true-crime story about what sudden fame and wealth can do to a kid … and what happens when the hype abandons you for someone else. If a movie can be both insanely fun and darkly moving at the same time, this is it.

In other words, pretty rad.

Check local listings for opening dates, theaters, and times. For more information, log onto stokedmovie.com.