Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator

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

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.

Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator is a documentary about the former skateboard star Mark "Gator" Rogowski, his troubled youth, his rise to fame and fortune and his inevitable fall from grace. However, his no ordinary fall: He is currently serving a 25 year to life sentence for the first degree murder of his ex-fiancé's friend, Jessica Bergsten. The story begins with how he began his rise. He started in the 70's in the skate parks of Southern California as a wild child with a gift for skateboarding. Skateboarding itself has risen and fell in popularity over the years, and each time it comes back it seems to be reincarnated, new styles, new tricks, new medium. In Gator's case, it was the half-pipe or vert. He was only 14 when he was sponsored and went pro. He had a good-looking but bad-boy look, a snotty punk rock attitude and loads of talent to boot. He was a hit, both in the corporate world (He became a mascot of sorts for Vision, a leading skateboard company at the time), and with the cute young girl groupies, or Bettys. At one point in his career he was making $20,000 a month before he was 18. His story is told by many of Gator's former associates and friends (including Tony Hawk and Stacy Peralta), and it lays the groundwork for his sense of entitlement and the madness that includes alcohol and drug excesses, anger, mental illness and eventually murder, that shows his slow but definite fall.

Because the skateboarding community was so shaken by this event, many who knew anything about it or even Gator did not want to talk about it at all for a long time. So this movie is to be commended for trying to tell the story of what happened. It makes some excellent points about what happened to Gator once the limelight and money was gone, in particular by Pro skaters Steve Cabellero and Stacy Peralta. To be washed up before you are even 25 would pretty hard to take, with nothing to fall back on once it is over. But nothing else is really explored at all, and that is where the documentary really falls short. For example, his troubled childhood is glossed over, they give the bare-bones of the case, you learn nothing about his victim other than she was the friend of his ex-fiancé's, they merely mention the conditions of depression he was diagnosed with after he was in prison, and it seemed to me that so many more people should have been interviewed that were more directly related to the story. They show lots of pictures of him with his mother, yet his mother is not interviewed, to name but a few. Overall a good attempt but when the majority of the case is treated so lightly, the feeling I was left with was that the whole story was not heard. It could have been much better with a deeper look at all the sides of the story. 6 out of 10.

This movie was ok, but if you weren't part of what was going on back in the mid 80's, then you probably won't have any interest in it? I lived in Del Mar and worked at DelMar Skatepark, where a lot of it was filmed. I knew some of the people that are in this movie, so for me it was a trip down Memory lane.

I do not think this was a great documentry, I just think it was interesting for anyone who grew up and skated in the 1980's.

It was sad to see the decline of Gator, and for some reason I understood the isolation and desire to re-attain the spotlight, mostly because some of these guys were friends, and I saw what happened to them when the light faded.

See this movie if you want to know part of the History of what Skateboarding really is and was, and if you want to know what can happen to you if you start to believe other peoples versions of who and what you are ~!

Don't see this is your looking for some ollie kick flip "XGAME" pretense marketing idea movie!

This film NAILS it by juxtaposing the fast rise and rocky descent of 80's counter-culture commercialism with the tragic story of Gator and his victim. We get to know Gator as a wild punk, arrogant jock, immature romantic, and finally, a violent and dangerous man. He was made for stardom, but the path to skater stardom was even younger than its pioneers... he was the era's most notable fallen angel.

I haven't yet seen a more vivid reflection on the style and attitude of California in the 1980s. It's very easy to get lost in this one; it's a sad, enlightening, and socially significant piece of journalistic film-making. Kudos to the filmmakers.