Talking Documentaries with Chris Martin

A while back my buddy Chris Marin (@buildcuriosity) contacted me with a great idea. Let’s get together and talk about documentaries that really affected us. Films that we enjoy watching over and over. We decided to do it in pairs, find some documentaries that would be good to watch together.

We came up with a list, watched the films separately, but came together to discuss them. I have to say so far it’s been a lot of fun.

Chris has a podcast called Beyond Your Imagination, and he figured it would be a good place to park these conversations.

Chris and I come from different backgrounds, and there is an age difference so our perspectives are pretty different when we view these films, and that’s what makes our conversations so interesting, to us anyway.

We got sidetracked for a while, (“Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.” - John Lennon), but now we’re back at it.

Our most recent watch was two films by filmmaker Stacy Peralta: Dogtown & Z-Boys (2001) and Riding Giants (2004).

I grew up skateboarding. Chris did not. Back in the day our skateboards had the ceramic wheels so if you hit any kind of rock no matter how tiny, the wheel locked and you became a missile.

Yard Sale - The evidence or remains of a catastrophic accident or wipe out in which the victim's belongings are scattered or spread out across a large area (resembling a traditional yard sale).

I read it was skiers and snowboarders who coined the phrase, “Having a yard sale”, when people wiped out. I feel it applies to skate boarding too. And wipeout we did. At some point I was surprised I had any skin left on my arms, or any brains left in my head.

Luckily ceramic wheels haven’t been used in decades. The newer wheels are so much better.

I have never surfed. It is something I have always wanted to try. Growing up with all of those images of Southern California, I still feel like I want to give it a shot some day, but probably not on the Oregon Coast. It’s just a little too cold for me.

From Chris Martin - Having no personal experience with skateboarding or surfing, it was eye-opening to have a front row seat to the movements presented in both films. Kelley and I dive into these films and talk about a range of topics including corporatization of sports, filmmaking from the perspective of the insider versus the outsider, why style will always be favorable over slick and shiny aesthetics, and the value of falls and failures.

While there are nuggets of wisdom throughout this conversation, I think this quote from Kelley sets the stage for this episode, specifically regarding creativity: “When you have no money and you don’t have a lot of options, you become creative.”

Here is a link to our conversation - https://byi.show/invent-the-wheel-ride-the-wave-with-kelley-baker/

Other films we’ve talked about so far include, Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus, It Might Get Loud, The Other F Word, Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage, and Muscle Shoals.

These conversations are not just about films. We talk about creativity, music, things that influenced us, learning new things, and discovering new and different art forms that are pushing boundaries.

I have always said that Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus, is an amazing documentary because it doesn’t feel like one. It doesn’t give you facts or history, it gives you a feeling. It works on emotions and by doing that it steps on a lot of the conventions of documentary filmmaking to make a really watchable film. I have spent time touring the South and this film feels like places I’ve been and people I’ve met.

I know most people look at successful documentaries like the works of Ken Burns, or Micheal Moore. The films we’ve selected are nothing like the films either of those filmmakers would make in either content or style. And to be honest, although I respect both filmmakers, I can’t sit through any of their films. They bore me. (Feel free to start throwing things at me now.)

Watching both Dogtown & Z-Boys and Riding Giants, what impressed me most was the amount of failure in both films. They look at failure as part of the learning process. If you don’t fail you don’t learn and you don’t get better.

In Muscle Shoals and Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage, not only do we see failure, we see tragedy as well, and yet the people in these films continue to move forward. Things may slow them down, but nothing stops them. It’s a great lesson for all of us, especially people who are creative.

The Other F Word, is a very personal film for me in many ways. It’s about punk rock fathers working on becoming better fathers than they had, even though they are often gone on tour for long periods of time. In my daughters early years I was on the road a lot working on films, or touring with my films. I was worried that I wasn’t being a good father and she and I were drifting away from each other. She didn’t really understand why I had to be away so much. We sat down and watched this film together and had a great discussion afterwards. Even though I’m not a musician, she understood why I do what I do and why I had to be on the road so much. I think this film helped bring us closer together during her teenage years.

We have more films lined up to watch and discuss and we’ll post them as we do them.

If you’d like to listen to any of our other discussions about films, here is the link - https://byi.show/season-3/

Thanks for reading. Have a great week.

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