TV tale- That time a made ramps for a Christian "extreme sports" movie

The main skateboard montage from the 2001 movie Extreme Days.  You can see the bigger of the two launch ramps I built at :43 and 1:29 in the clip, when they ollie and air the dumpster off it.  The skate montage is decent, for the time.   The movie, however, is one of the worst ever made.

I was sitting in the Denny's at Beach and Ellis in Huntington Beach, in the spring of 2000.  I was freshly back from one of the coolest weeks of my life.  A few weeks before, I went to a book signing with activist Julia "Butterfly" Hill, seen here, coming down after living for two years in a redwood tree, to keep the 600 year old tree from being cut down.  I heard about the book signing in Santa Monica on KPFK radio, and went there one night in my taxi.  Much to my surprise, longtime BMX industry guy, Frank Scura, was there, working with Julia.  He's the one who introduced me to her.

After meeting her, and hearing her talk that night, I read her book, about living for two years, 180 feet up in a tree.  I spent much of my childhood wandering around the local woods.  But I'd never seen the huge redwoods in person.   I decided I needed to drive up the California coast, which I'd never done, solo, and go see the giant redwood trees.  The next day, I dropped off my taxi, packed up my Datsun 280ZX, and headed north.

It was one of the most epic weeks of my life, but that's a story for another day.  I shot video of the trip, and later made a 20 minute video of me driving up the coast, seeing young elephant seals, going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where I saw wild sea otters and a seal, in addition to the fish inside.  I went to Muir Woods, just north of San Francisco, after driving across the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time.  That's where I saw my first redwood trees.  Then I continued north, and spent a few more days driving around redwood country, walking around, and even inside, huge redwoods.  You can't even begin to comprehend those huge, old trees in photos or video.  You have to see them in person.  I hit Pinnacles National Park on the way back south, and then headed back to Huntington Beach, where I had been living in my taxi for a few months.

With a kind of mellow natural high going, I headed to Denny's for a big meal.  I was going to figure out what to do next.  The plan was to maybe get a room for the night, and then go back to taxi driving the next morning.

Then I overheard a couple of guys talking at a nearby table.  They were part of a crew making a movie, and the director wanted some skateboard ramps built for it.  I'd heard that kind of talk a lot while working in the Studio City/North Hollywood area, years before.  But it was unusual to hear in Huntington Beach.

The director wanted a ramp, so skateboarders could jump over a bunch of barrels.  You know, because that's what skateboarders do naturally, build ramps and jump over barrels.  Apparently the guy had seen one of those old videos of Tom Sims or someone jumping barrels in 1972.  I decided to ask the guys what they really needed.  So I walked over, said, "Hi," and told them I overheard them, and that I used to work for a skateboard company.  They told me what their director wanted, and even they knew jumping barrels was dumb, but hey, directors ask for dumb shit all the time.  They had no idea where to find a skateboard ramp builder.  The internet still wasn't widely used for things like that in 2000.  I knew how to build launch ramps, which is what they needed, I'd worked in the TV industry a few years before, so I knew how production worked.  I just happened to be the right guy, at the right time, with the right skills.  That's how you find work in "Hollywood."  Except I wasn't even looking.  

I walked out of Denny's with a verbal contract to build two big skateboard launch ramps, and a "handrail," for $500.  In typical Hollywood fashion, I had 48 hours to get the job done, and deliver it to a site in Hollywood.  No problem.  Of course, I was living in my car, a 280ZX, and had no real carpentry tools, and no place to work.  Details.  I'd worked on 300 TV episodes of several TV shows, I knew that doing the impossible immediately was standard operating procedure.  Luckily, I did have some money in the bank, which made the job possible.

I drove over to my old apartment on 15th street, in downtown H.B., and asked my former roommates if I could borrow the driveway out back for a day.  They were both cool guys... and stoners... so they were mellow, and said, "Go for it."  My next stop was Home Depot, where I bought a couple of power saws, plywood, 2 X 4's, a screw gun, screws, and other things I needed.  I went back to 15th street, and got to work.  The producer guys I talked to said they wanted ramps four feet high, which is huge for a skate launch ramps or.  I also had no idea what they would really be jumping over, or onto.  So I decided on a short, steep ramp, and a longer, mellow one.  So I made a 6 foot transition, 4 foot high ramp, and a 9 or 10 foot transition (I forget exactly), 4 foot tall ramp. I got the transitions drawn out, and and everything ready to go, and left it in my old roommates' garage.  I got a motel room for the night, got a pizza and a good night's sleep, and came out ready to work the next day.

Working alone, it took longer than I expected, and I got the wood cut, and started putting them together in the early afternoon.  But my old roommates lived in a sixplex, where 5 cars packed into the little driveway area every night.  As afternoon came along, I realized I needed to move everything, I also needed a U-Haul to transport the ramps, and I needed a place to work late into the night.  It was going to be a tough night to get the ramps done, and take them to Hollywood, by the 7 am call time the next morning.

I packed everything up, and bought my old roommates a 12 pack for letting me use their driveway.  I drove up to a place in the San Fernando Valley.  In fact, it's only about a block from where I'm sitting right now, pirating wifi, to write this blog post.  There's a huge banked wall I used to ride my bike on, behind a shopping center.  The place has huge lights on it all night.  Out of sight, and well lit.  Perfect.  I pulled the U-Haul behind the building, and got to work plying the ramps.  I called around earlier that day, trying to find a portable grind rail, but couldn't find one that somebody had pre-built, so I just blew it off.

A couple of people wandered behind the shopping center, and asked what I was doing.  I told them I was making skateboard ramps for a movie, and needed a well lit place to finish working.  They were cool with that, and there was no drama.  I finished the ramps about 2:30 am, as I recall.  With no traffic, and half asleep, I drove back over the hill to Hollywood.  The location was a church, right in Hollywood itself.  (Yes, there are churches in Hollywood, city of "sinners").  I pulled into the church parking lot, and fell asleep in the cab of the U-Haul.

I woke up to the sounds of somebody talking nearby.  The first couple of producers showed up about 6:30 am, and started getting things organized.  They wanted me to just leave the ramps.  But I wanted to stay and see who was skating on them, and just hang out on the shoot.  For one thing, I knew what a craft service table was, there's always free food on movie shoots.  I asked them if they had people to move the ramps, which were big and heavy?  The producers looked at each other.  "Tell you what," I said, "I'll stay and move them wherever you want, no charge."  They were cool with that, so I stayed.

An hour or so later, the skaters showed up, three of them.  The only one I'd heard of was Chet Thomas, part of Powell Peralta's Bones Brigade then, as I recall.  The steep ramp was good for rock 'n rolls, but way to steep to launch to flat.  But the big, mellow ramp worked well.  They ended up ollie-ing and airing over a dumpster, off the ramp.  You can see that in the clip above.  They also ollied over a VW Thing car, with the stars of the movie in it.  So I hung out, had fun, and got a little crap about not getting a rail.  But I got a couple of free meals, the shoot bought me a bunch of tools, and one of the producers wanted the steeper ramp for his kid.  We put it in his pick-up.  I took the other ramp back to Huntington Beach.  I wound up donating it to a little skate park in Seal Beach, where it lived happily ever after.  Hey, it's a movie story, it has to have a happy ending, right?  I got paid my $500 a couple of weeks later, and that was my first and only movie job (as opposed to TV production), on an absolutely horrible movie.  That's Hollywood.

Here's a better example of Chet Thomas skating.  As a bonus, a couple of these shots are from Huntington Beach.  Cool.  Full circle.