Award-winning 'Dragonslayer' looks at the life of a burned-out skater punk
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"Dragonslayer" follows Josh "Skreech" Sandoval on his quest to find empty swimming pools to skateboard in.
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Forget swimming pools with clean, chlorinated water and lounge chairs perfectly positioned to catch the California sun.
Josh "Skreech" Sandoval wants a "death box" -- an abandoned, empty cement bowl in which he can skateboard until the wheels come off or neighbors threaten to call the cops. Or he has to see his infant son, after washing his hands "because I smell like cigarettes and dirty skateboard stuff."
Skreech is the subject of "Dragonslayer," a documentary that scored awards at 2011's South by Southwest showcase for movies, music and emerging technologies in Austin, Texas, and opens Friday at the Harris Theater, Downtown.
The film is a loose descendant of "Lords of Dogtown," a fictionalized version of a 2002 documentary, "Dogtown and Z-Boys." In 2005's "Lords," starring Emile Hirsch and Heath Ledger, skaters realize empty California pools are their perfect playgrounds.
Back then, the pools were drained due to a drought, but now they're empty because of foreclosures and Skreech skates near his Fullerton, Calif., base and farther afield in places such as Copenhagen and Portland, Ore.
As he tells a boy in Denmark, "I quit skating, I got really depressed. I was too sad and I didn't care about skating no more and so I quit. And I quit all my sponsors and stuff, but I'm starting to skate again."
He skates no matter what, even living off the grid by sleeping in a tent in someone's backyard and existing on Cup o' Noodles. He looks like he could use a comfy bed and some home-cooked meals instead of his diet of junk food.
First Published February 2, 2012 12:00 am
