Movies about skateboarding usually fill me with guilt and self-loathing. After being optically molested by a film like Grind, or Lords of Dogtown I first do some serious reflecting on the powder train of events that has kept me skateboarding all these years. The second thing I do is I shoot my skateboard an accusatory/dissapointed glance and think of all the sadistic ways I could maul it into something–anything–that would no longer be recognizable as a skateboard. Mercifully, the hues of red that have usurped my vision for the previous hour-and-a-half or so eventually subside, and I can go about forgetting (insert shitty skateboard movie here) ever existed.
Corey Adam’s new movie, Machotaildrop, just might be the promised film that will save at least a bit of skateboarding’s silver-screen dignity. In 2005 Fuel TV had a contest in which they invited a bunch of filmmakers to submit ideas for short films about action sports (I know, I know, not off to the best start). Corey pitched them an idea for a film called Harvey Spannos, and they ended up giving him 100 grand to make it. Corey and ten other ambitious young filmmakers then submitted their Fuel-funded films for a shot at the grand prize–a one million dollar budget for a feature. Harvey Spannos won, and Corey went on to make Machotaildrop which is currently making the rounds at film festivals nationwide.
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Before Harvey Spannos, Corey made some other, decidedly more avant-garde films such as Ming Juice, Drawing Face, and the Bangmastergeneral series. Almost beyond description, these earlier films deal with drugs (Bangmastergeneral itself could probably be classified as a class A narcotic) , skateboarding, and some guy with a bag on his head. I spoke with Corey about some stuff.
Vice: I haven’t seen Machotaildrop yet, but from the looks of the trailer it’s the first movie about skateboarding that doesn’t suck balls in recent history.
Wow, that’s a great compliment, thank you. When going into this that was our biggest fear. Alex (Craig) and I were always worried that we would just be adding to the pile of collective turd that is fictional films about skateboarding. We set the film in a fantasy world because we felt that would help us steer away from all the conventional, corny ways of trying to show what the essence of riding a skateboard actually is.
Can you give me a quick rundown of the plot?
I think IMDB says it best: It’s a highly visual and fantastical journey about an amateur skateboarder, Walter Rhum, who realizes his dream of turning pro and riding for the world’s greatest skateboard company–Machotaildrop. Set in an anachronistic time and place, Machotaildrop is the greatest skateboard company of its day. Walter’s journey serves as a window through which we discover the dark underbelly of what appears at first to be a benign skateboard company.
Sounds exciting. I know there are some pretty heavy hitters in the cast like Mcrank and Steve Olson, who else is in the film?
There’s also Frank Gerwer, John Rattray, and brief appearances from French Fred and Michael Burnett.
Who’s the main kid? I’m guessing there weren’t any stunt doubles, is he a skater?
His name is Anthony Amadori and yeah, he did all his own skating in the film. We made sure that there was no stunt doubling or anything like that.
Was it strange having such a comparatively high budget with Machotaildrop than with the other things you’ve done? Did you buy any shit you really didn’t need?
It was strange at first, you feel like it’s a ridiculous amount of money. But you quickly realize that it’s not that much and by the end you could always use more. I’m sure we wasted some on things we didn’t need. There were some pheasants that we bought that never ended up making it into the final cut.
Howcome you bought some pheasants?
One of the characters from the film was an amateur ornithologist. He had this giant cage, so we thought the pheasants would look good in his huge cage. Our Hungarian props man didn’t speak very good english though and he ended up letting the birds go before we shot them. When he let them out of the cage they tried to fly across the river Danube and I believe most of them never made it. Pheasants aren’t known for their swimming abilities.
How do you make a movie about skateboarding that doesn’t suck? Is it really centered all around skateboarding or what else is going on?
It’s really more about a company and the riders than it is about skateboarding. You could replace the skateboard with a basketball and pretty much have the same film. How it doesn’t suck I’m not sure. Someone commented on YouTube that it was the worst movie they had ever seen so I guess some people don’t like it.
The first I had heard of Harvey Spannos was when I was exploring your site. What’s that film all about? Am I wrong when I say it has a similar feel to Machotaildrop?
We always say that Harvey Spannos takes place about ten years before Machotaildrop. It has the same company in it and Blair Stanley is also in it but he’s dealing with things earlier in his career. It definitely takes place in the same world that Machotaildrop is set in.
Keith Jones acted in and did the illustrations for Drawing Face. He’s a rad artist in his own right, how’d you get connected with him for this project?
Me and Keith have been friends for quite a while. He was also in Harvey Spannos as host of a sporting show and is in Ming Juice as Rick after drinking the juice. There was another film we made that never got finished called A Birth of Moth. In that one he’s covered in dirt in his underwear and living inside a machine. He carves a cantaloupe into a vagina and makes love to it, a pig appears, and then the cantaloupe gives birth to a moth. I’m still not sure what the point of it was. One of the main characters ended up dying of AIDS so we never really finished it. But yeah, we’ve done many projects together.
What’s going on in Drawing Face? He draws the death of that girl before it happens?
Well, he’s afraid to leave his house without a bag on his head and is being haunted by visions of a drunken Santa Clause. He puts these visions on the page and the drawings end up manifesting themselves when a drunken Santa Clause enters his life. There’s also a beautiful girl who he finally shows his true self to, but the drunken Santa has other things in mind, and the film ends in tragedy.
What the shit is up with Bangmastergeneral?
It’s all about drugs. That’s it. The first four episodes are about a puppet on angel dust and the last four are about LSD. They were originally done as visuals for a fashion show, but we started to see a story emerge so I edited them into episodes and that’s what we ended up with.
Have you ever tried dust?
No, but I remember as a child that was the first drug I had ever heard of. It sounded so great, a dust that came from angels.
I thought the Machotaildrop trailer looked pretty weird until I saw Bangmastergeneral.
It is by far the most bizarre thing I have ever been involved with. I always seem to be attracted to things that are slightly surreal. I grew up watching films like Holy Mountain, Salo, and Rambo. I think they somehow all found a way to influence me in one way or another.
I saw a porn one time with a guy who looked almost exactly like the dude in the lab from Bangmastergeneral. It was in a lab setting sort of like that too, has he ever done porn?
I don’t think he has. But I’d like to see that set. Do you know the link? That guy once rode a granny bicycle from Vancouver to San Francisco.
The porn was an old VHS tape from years ago, it’s probably on PornHub though. The guy on the flying carpet or whatever, is he supposed to be like the guy in the cloud dropping the porcupine things in the old Mario Brothers games?
The whole thing was made to be sort of like a video game. Like, if drugs took over your mind while you were playing Nintendo or something maybe that’s what you would see. The guy on the carpet was the only one out of everybody who had actually done angel dust.
JONATHAN SMITH
