Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator

Awesome. . .bummer

Mark Anthony `Gator' Ragowski used to look like Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Dark hair, wild stoned eyes, huge grin, punk jock clothes, mocking gestures, obscene air of fun. In the early Eighties he was beyond doubt one of the greatest vertical skateboarders. He reflected one extreme edge of the skateboarding world and the punk hip hop style cultures that were whirling around at the time.

He was one of the fastest, strongest, most radical and inventive skateboarders at a moment when the sport was still growing and dominated by pioneers. When he punched a cop at a public skate event, his iconhood was assured.

Gator was so good he went professional at 14 and by the age of 17 he was making a hundred thousand dollars a year. Later the film tells us he made twenty thousand a month.

He was a superstar and he palled around with Christian Hosoi and they're both in jail now. Gator and Hosoi were both wild boy idols whose lives burned out flamboyantly after a flashy arc of fame and money; followed by a sudden decline no street kid with a board and some wheels could have dreamt of, let alone been ready for.

Now they're born again Bible thumping Christians, trying to stabilize themselves for life outside. But there's a big difference. Gator is in for 31 years to life for murder and Hosoi is just in on relatively minor drug charges and about to get out.

This film describes the moment in American culture and skateboarding that was the background for guys like Gator and Hosoi. It focuses on Gator's life, which indeed is a rise and fall. Those who have seen Dogtown and Z Boys remember there are stars from that time who have stable existences and profitable businesses (like Tony Hawk), others that are just eking out a life somewhere; and a few who crashed and burned or wound up in jail. Skateboarding is an independent, loner-friendly activity that appeals to misfits (like Kathryn Hepburn)/ Some of the careers in skateboarding, including the prominent ones represented by Gator and Hosoi, have had the kind of downward arc chronicled here.

This doc goes beyond Dogtown and Z Boys in history and implications by starting off in the Eighties when the exploitation of this once seemingly incorruptible and uncommercial activity was well on the way to becoming a bankable showy Team Swatch tour sponsored sporting event. Skateboarding in the Eighties became more stylish, more mainstream and, consequently, more surrounded by money. In particular an outfit called Vision Wear tried to take over and make a lot of business out of the popularity of the skateboard look. But that look had been by definition artisanal, individual, and oddball: you can't codify wild style or hip hop things. When Gator became the front man for Vision Wear he made a fool of himself. Vision Wear became too big, couldn't go with the flow, and bombed. And Vision Wear was part of Gator's ride to a fall.

Gator made such a splash maybe nobody in the public noticed his downward slide at first. He was always a confused insecure kid with missing parents and a rage problem. When he was co-opted by tours and corporations and Vision Wear he bought the lie. He first became an ass***e, then an idiot, and finally a perverted murderer. On the way he did some fabulous skateboarding and had a lot of fun. He went on wild escapades with fellow bad boy Hosoi. When the money was rolling in at high speed he built a big round house out by avocado groves where a lot of rich skateboarders moved. But there was nothing to do there and Gator's isolation became magnified. His relationship with his girlfriend, Brandi, was less stable and grounded than with his earlier girlfriend. Brandi, who speaks often on camera for the film, was more of a trophy blonde than a viable future mate and her relationship with Gator deteriorated and she left him for a handsome blond surfer hunk.

In a tailspin, Gator wound up pursuing and entrapping a young woman friend of Brandi's. The girl died and he hid the body out in the desert but then it was dug up and Gator went to jail. He denied guilt but during the trial he went belly up and confessed. Phone interview excerpts show that he is reformed and close to his mother, and jail sure enough has made him grow up and gain perspective on life. Mark Anthony Rogowski, who at one point abandoned his name and called himself `Mark Anthony,' is finding himself but now he just looks like an ordinary guy. His isn't a happy story. It's a story of childhood problems never properly confronted and of a rapid decline when fame and money were more than he could handle. Skateboard stars, one of them says on the film, had a short early time in the sun. When you start being famous at fourteen and begin declining in your early twenties, you can crash hard, and Gator crashed hard.

As a package, Stoked makes sense. It does two things: it talks about the skateboarding world as Dogtown and other films have done, but it begins at a later, more advanced, stage and anchors itself in the story of Gator Rogowski. His downfall isn't just a cautionary tale. It helps you get deeply enough inside a single important figure of the skateboarding world to understand better what the life was like, how early it could bring fame and excitement, where the people came from and where it all sometimes could end. From an interview with Christian Hosoi, in jail but still in touch with the skateboard world, it's clear that these lifestyle problems live on among the younger skaters. Hosoi has pledged himself to be a positive example and not just an icon when he gets out.

I think Stickler's documentary, "Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator" gave us an interesting look at the character of Mark Anthony Rogowski through the comments of those who knew him. It was as objective as it could have been. It certainly didn't glorify him as the demigod he seemed to think he was during the peak of his career. I learned a lot from this movie about the skateboarding culture and how it affected the participants and the fans. There was a lot of hype given to Gator's abilities and personality during the 80's. As talented as he may have been, I'm sure there were other skaters just as talented who were not being promoted with the same enthusiasm. It was clearly Gator's reckless regard for his own well being that put him in the limelight in the first place. Would Stickler or any other director in the industry have wanted to do a documentary on this troubled youth if he hadn't turned his fame into notoriety by brutally raping and murdering an innocent young lady who had the misfortune of crossing his path? It gives one cause for pause. I think it's sad that the victim, Jessica Bergsten, like most other victims of violent crimes, became nothing more than a segment of Gator's seedy past. It's almost as if Jessica's death was merely a springboard to more publicity for Gator, long after he deserved it. He even said it himself over the phone from prison in this documentary: "Since 1991 I thought about this over and over...They say the past does not define the future but it'll always be a part of who I am. I know that." Not that he'll regret for the rest of his life killing someone who was no threat to him, but that it tainted his reputation permanently. He'll never be able to live it down. In his mind, it's still about Gator, even after ten years in prison. He hasn't changed his perspective at all. Chilling! It was a story worth telling, and my praises to Helen Stickler and everyone who had a hand in this production for telling it.

"Stoked" is a documentary about the rise and fall of Vision skate company's glory boy, Mark "Gator/Gravity" Rogowski/Anthony. When you could still keep track of the number of pro skaters in the mid and late 80s, Gator was counted as one of the best, matching ranks with Christian Hosoi and the Bones Brigade Team. For four years (it seems a lot longer), Mark Rogowski was on top of the world as the pinnacle of vert skating. He sure made Vision Street Wear plenty of money, and with his fall, so came the demise of his primary sponsor.

This documentary is less about skateboarding, although skate enthusiasts familiar with the cast of pro skaters, will probably enjoy it for several reasons. They know who Mark Rogowski is, and are probably familiar with the story. However, this story doesn't introduce much of anything new that had not been written about him in the past. The recounts are pretty much all the same in piecing together the story of the extreme rise and fall of a once-great skater.

The movie pans out more like an illustration, and perhaps a valid caution, of stories so common to celebrities of any field. When Rogowski and skaters like himself (most of whom--but not all of whom--didn't have such a destructive finale to their careers) couldn't make the transition into street skaters, the next wave of skateboarding that took over in the early 90s, they suddenly found themselves out of the spotlight. Whereas guys like Tony Hawk and Steve Caballero, and hell, even Tony Alva, were able to keep up with the transitions, and hang on tight to their super-stardom. Not Rogowski.

Like young superstars given all the attention and the money and fame, and then to have it all taken away for the next best thing (and the cycle repeats itself), Rogowski started out at a crucial developing point in his life--going pro when he was in high school and enduring much of the fame in his late teens and early twenties--and couldn't seem to adapt when the skateboarding audiences were taking interest in a new generation of skating. He got depressed, turned on to religion (too much), and then killed a girl.

I think to enjoy this movie, you would have to have some interest in Rogowski, as he was a pretty egotistical guy (and why not, his sponsors made him into god's gift to skateboarding). He seemed arrogant much of the time, and his days seemed like nothing but one big unimportant party. The image became so big, I'm not even sure if it was about skateboarding for him at one point. He was the badass of the sport, but it just seemed to be entirely show. Everything Rogowski did seemed to be one big show, and for that, a movie about him seems hollow and hardly interesting. Of all the stories of skateboaders, why is his the most interesting? I think much of Lance Mountain's interviews sums it up best. Speaking from experience as one who faded from the scene, Lance says that the whole thing is so phony. That they're given a false superstar/invincibility status as such a young age, and they're not taught how to cope with it when it's all over. At their age, they just assume it will last forever. And the way skateboarding always fluctuated in popularity, someone should've sense that it wasn't.

The movie sweeps across from being all the bruhaha about the wild Mark Rogowski, then eerily resembling an episode of 'Unsolved Mysteries' as California law enforcement involved in the case piece together the murder of a twenty-year old girl. Any appreciation for Mark as a skater seems lost in the tragedy . It's sad, but it's not sympathetic. I suppose the movie makes a useful caution to people desirous of the fame and fortune, especially at such a young age and with such an unpredictable medium (skateboarding). The movie leaves you with a cold feeling about it all, especially when following up with information about the fate of other fellow skaters from that time.

"Stoked" is probably a movie most appreciated by skaters familiar with the scene, but otherwise, Gator doesn't make a very sympathetic creature (not even to those who knew him). He was just another naive kid who thought the kick would last forever and wasn't sure what to do when it finally did. I wonder if they have made support groups for former young superstars.

Mark `Gator' Ragowski (later `Mark Anthony' briefly) rode his skateboarding skills to the heights of fame and success in the mid-to-late eighties. He was one of the giants of the sport's development from vertical skating in trespassed abandoned swimming pools to pop phenomenon ramp touring. Unfortunately, he just as quickly hit the skids as the sport changed styles to street skating, leaving him and his over-commercialized and suddenly unpopular `vert' world behind. While skaters like Tony Hawk made the adjustment and thrived even to the present day, Ragowski took a hard dive instead into substance abuse, briefly emerging from an alcoholic haze as a `born-again' skater, only to take a harder descent into violent sexual crime, landing him in prison for a 31-year term. A fascinating doc, exploring a lurid tale from a rarely seen culture (last explored in 2003's "Dogtown and Z-Boys"), with clips of Ragowski in his "glory" MTV/ Swatch tour days, as well as intimate peeks into backstage shenanigans on tour, and his frustrations in trying to move to a street style.

Using the life of Mark 'Gator' Ragowski as the thread, director Helen Stickler tracks the rise of skateboarding from underground pastime to cultural phenomenon. As corporate America jumped all over the sport, the proponents got richer and the sport of skateboarding more mainstream, but some of the players weren't equipped for the fame and money - Gator amongst them.

With a great soundtrack, excellent original resources and unparralleled access to the sports biggest names (many of whom skated with Gator and are now owners of Skateboard companies), Stoked is as much a look at the Eighties and the gluttony of the times; some made it through unscathed, some profited nicely, and one at least is going to be in jail for some time to come!

Stoked is a great documentary, for fans of skateboarding and pop culture junkies alike