Here are a few things you need to know about Rodney Mullen: He's been a professional skateboarder for almost four decades, including a nine-year tenure on the legendary Powell Peralta Bones Brigade. After leaving Powell, he and a business partner borrowed money from a sketchy loan shark and started a board company called World Industries that they would eventually sell for twenty million dollars. He's a seriously devout Christian. He's battled anorexia. He holds two U.S. patents. The Smithsonian Institute has one of his personal skateboards in its holdings. He doubled for Ben Stiller in the skating sequences in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. His close friends include various active-duty Navy SEALs, Ben Harper, and Orlando Bloom. He loves Happy Gilmore and Nietzsche, Linux and Ghostbusters, Richard Feynman and the Swedish death-metal band Amon Amarth. He gets lost easily and often, including pretty much every time he tries to find his way back from the restroom in a restaurant. His Redondo Beach home is full of keepsakes from his heroes—including one of Harper's Grammy awards, an old iPhone case signed by UFC Hall-of-Famer Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell, and a ton of SEAL paraphernalia—but it's remarkably lacking in his own trophies; he's given them all away. He quit competing cold turkey years ago; he won't even play checkers.
Here's what you need to know about Rodney Mullen's skating: It. Changed. Everything.
Courtesy of Thrasher
Before Mullen, skateboarders were largely earthbound. He grew up skating in Florida, most often alone in his father's barn, so he didn't have much context for what others were doing or much of a gauge for what should and shouldn't be possible. He invented the flat-ground ollie—the maneuver that allows you and your board to jump over and onto obstacles without using your hands, and which is the cornerstone of every modern trick—by questioning foot placement and the small machinations that everyone else took for granted. Where other skaters saw a dead end, he saw an expanse of endless and nuanced possibility. In 1982, the trick made the cover of skateboarding's bible, Thrasher magazine, but no one understood what they were seeing. The image looked doctored, impossible. Of course, it wasn't. And, of course, it was just the beginning.
In the intervening years, Mullen stacked unprecedented trick atop unprecedented trick, amassing an unfathomable arsenal through a rigor and savant-ish curiosity familiar to theoretical physicists but completely alien to the typical skater. He also got very, very famous in his world. As in, people got his board graphics and his face tattooed on their bodies. As in, he would get hounded by fans on the street, so he stopped skating in public and became something of a recluse. Skaters tracked him like he was Bigfoot, reporting unconfirmed sightings in computer stores and sushi bars. Every few years, he released shockingly progressive video parts—which are a professional skateboarder's lifeblood, analogous to a writer's novels—but even that stopped in 2004. It's not quite as mythic as Bobby Fischer's disappearance from the chess scene, but it's also not that far off. When the world's most influential and important skateboarder goes dark for over a decade, the void in his wake deepens year by year, trick by trick.
Courtesy of Steven Sebring
Which is why the promise of the forty-nine-year-old's new video—his first skate part in twelve years—was trending on Facebook last week. The video, Liminal, is a groundbreaking collaboration between Mullen, elite fashion photographer Steven Sebring, and George Harrison's son, Dhani. Shot in a dome whose walls form a halo of 100 linked Cannon Rebel cameras, the project signals where Mullen has been, where he is now, and where he's going. The tricks are simultaneously old and new, familiar and unconventional, and some of them will again redefine what is and is not possible on a skateboard. (You may know how when you step on a skateboard, surfboard, snowboard, or wakeboard, you stand either goofy or regular footed. Mullen no longer accepts that premise, so some of the tricks are distinctly "stanceless.")
The video is stirring and powerful and Matrix-y. It will also be endlessly polarizing. Some skaters will scrutinize the minutia to learn the tricks; others will troll him for releasing it through Vogue rather than a core skate site. They'll debate its every aspect—the music, the camera angles and lenses, the sequence of tricks, the position of his feet and proportion of his weight when he lands. They'll say Mullen's still got it. They'll say he doesn't. They'll say he hasn't aged a day. They'll say he's too old. They'll say he'll still be on top when he's sixty. They'll say he should have retired. They'll say he's the greatest to have ever lived. They'll say skating left him behind. They'll say he's ahead of his time. They'll say the part doesn't matter. They'll say it's a game-changer that should win all the awards this year. They'll say all of this without taking their eyes off their computers and phones. They'll watch it again and again and again, and each time it ends, they'll lie and say they're only going to watch it one more time.
Esquire: The preview of your video was the number one trending story on Facebook. The irony is staggering: For decades, skaters have bucked trends and yet here you are. How does that feel?
Rodney Mullen: My manager and friend called the last two days kinda doing the We're No.1! dance at the Facebook trending stats. While I appreciate what that means, it doesn't connect with me. This piece is a kind of visual testimony of who I am, written in the movements themselves, which are mostly so subtle that they speaks in whispers. The way I skate is different from what's mainstream, so it's humbling and almost bewildering that there is this interest.
What matters to me more than anything is to see these dreams I've had for my skating come together with a kind of authenticity that's palpable, that I can be known through my skating. My eyes are so focused on that rather than what I think people may want, so by the time I look up and see this kind of response, it humbles and heartens me, in that this seems to ultimately be what people want to see in the first place. I once heard someone say that people create an intimacy with actors and musicians—complete strangers—because they reflect essences that we all have within us. More than anything, when I see these stats or see dudes give me that Fight Club nod with skinned elbows, it registers all the more as a privilege, that it really is me they know through what I do, rather than celebrating the tricks themselves. That kind of connection with otherwise strangers is such a gift.
Blabac photo
How did this collaboration come about?
A few years ago, Dhani [Harrison] had been this idea of creating an iOS app using a special camera system created by Steven Sebring. He said that he'd like to have me in there before moving on to Eric Clapton and a few other names that made my head spin. A couple of weeks later, I met him and his manager in their Santa Monica office. I apologetically explained that I had not filmed in years and did not know when I would be strong enough to film again—explaining how my bones had fused. I committed to them that I'd treat it as though it was the last thing I did. We shook hands, and within a year, we did the first tests, which made me all the more certain. Two more years passed, and the very day I knew I was strong enough to shoot again, I called Steven, and he welcomed me as soon as I could get there; three trips later, it was done.
"This piece is a kind of visual testimony of who I am, written in the movements themselves, which are mostly so subtle that they speaks in whispers."Wait: your bones fused?
I'd built up a ton of scar tissue from all the years of skating, and it probably has something to do with all I went through shifting from freestyle to street. Every skater has landed tricks that bounce the back foot off while the front one stays on the board, leading you to a split. That happened to me a few too many times— one bad split in particular—that tore tissue in the area connecting my thigh to its hip socket. Eventually scar tissue connected the whole area, from rump to thigh—such a mess. Soon it cinched down so tight that whenever I'd flex the muscles in my back leg—even climbing stairs—it yanked the bone into the socket with a thud, grinding as much as 20 times per day. The grinding caused an adhesion between the bones, which locked my leg down so it moved like a stick shift rather than a ball-and-socket.
My radiologist took a bunch of shots and said the hip still looked good, and said I could tear bits myself if I could use these pointy tools to get the muscles, a process called myofascial release. Six to eight years later and thousands of hours of compulsive poking, prying, and tearing, I finally broke the last adhesions and not only became free, but undid what the asymmetrical nature of skating does to all of us, giving myself an insight into the very nature of stance— decoupling it from direction—and opening a doorway that allows for tricks I have never been able to do. This video has one trick that bats this home in no uncertain terms, while it permeates the way at least half a dozen are done.
Blabac photo
What was it like skating in that dome? It looks about the size of an elevator. Did you ever break any of the cameras? Or suffer claustrophobia?
Skating in an elevator would be easier, because at least there are no crazy shadows and the lights don't give you sunburn—plus, with the corners, you'd at least you'd have a sense of orientation. After about 90 minutes in there, you get a sense of being seasick. The biggest factor in lining up the direction of the trick is dealing with which shadows will affect you the least. That you happen to be surrounded by halo of 100 camera lenses makes a tiny space even smaller. In the video, you can see there's about a nine-foot radius of light, which is where I mainly had to stay. Another issue was always keeping in mind how I'd catch the board if it spit out toward a camera. The first night in there, I lept to catch it and fractured my thumb in the process. It took nine weeks to heal. You also get a countdown for the three- to four-second shot, then the sound of the shutters falling like spring-loaded dominos circling you induces a stage fright that I've never experienced. One particular trick I made eight times in practice, but the sounds would freak me out so much when the cameras rolled that I never got it on film.
Another irony of having a video in mainstream outlets is that skaters have always been misfits and outlaws. Skaters, as we grow older, often tend to spiral into other subversive communities. Tell me about your hacking life.
When my bones first started to fuse and I couldn't skate or film the way I had, I needed to funnel my energy into another outlet that consumed me in a similar way. While I still found a way to skate, I craved something else that would allow me to dissolve into the actual work or practice of it, while at the same time providing creative outlets and a community that felt like home. I have an analytic bent and a super gifted friend who's a good-hearted hacker, so I quickly found myself turning to the core end of computing—primarily the open-source Linux community. That naturally lead to a little coding, which is empowering. Hacking itself is another world of empowerment and is super creative. The community itself is rogue, very much along the same lines as skating. Like my friend, I don't have the heart to do rotten stuff, but I love the fun of making disparate connections in ways that others haven't, with the little adrenaline of, you probably shouldn't be doing this…
Blabac photo
You're a big draw in the TED Talk world and a regular speaker at places like JPL and Apple and even Anna Wintour's Task Force Meetings—and yet you also love watching UFC. If I were going to look for some connective tissue here, a constant that relates to skating as well, I would suggest that it all comes down to angles. You're someone who appreciates certain geometries and ways of acquiring and leveraging motion.
Absolutely. There are skaters who can do hard tricks, but within that top tier, skaters who have a flow from within are often considered the best, because it creates a synergy with the mechanics of what we do. This speaks to how much the community values individual expression over dry metrics, which makes it more of an art than a sport. The more I'm exposed to TED, Foo Camp, and other tight circles, the more I see that there is a common rouge element to the genuinely special people I meet, an ethos of individuation through innovation.
We all have a craft that has to be honed with rigor, but its expression has to have an authentic voice resonant with who we are as individuals. The thing I love about UFC—aside from being the glue of my relationship with my girlfriend—is its dimensionality and raw connection to what powers the fighter from within: beyond physicality and often even technique, ultimately, it's the sheer heart of the fighter that often wins, which brings them to a core humility when all else is spent. Skating is like that in so many ways.
You mentioned that you'd originally thought of Liminal as your last video part. Do you still feel that way?
As far back as maybe two years ago, I felt dwarfed by the opportunity, that I would never be good enough to see it through in way that was more than a somber good-bye, that I was limping into the sunset. An early cut leaked out about a year ago, which depicted exactly that. I kept pushing myself, and one harsh night with my medieval methods, I disconnected something, which pushed the rest of my left leg into alignment; I knew it as soon as I got off the ground. It wasn't long before I filmed my first tricks with Ben Harper, then I kept ratcheting up, until finally in late November I filmed a museum project with Shaun Gladwell. I'd promised him three tricks and gave him 15; it was like a starter pistol. I called Sebring from the parking lot of the museum.
"We all have a craft that has to be honed with rigor, but its expression has to have an authentic voice resonant with who we are as individuals."On New Year's Day I flew to New York, and within three trips it was done. My last night, I kneeled in the dome and felt the hot ground from the crazy lights, and just ran my fingers over the grooves I'd put into the floor. As much as it marked the finality of this project and the end of that long liminal state, I climbed up from and out of that dome, and in our goodbyes we nodded about a part two—Return to ThunderDome. We were kidding. But Steven already has the gear for a big rig, which would give me so much more to work with for another part. Plus there are a few others have come to me, too.
There is no way I can just walk away from what came at such a high price, from what I feel within. These are flat-ground tricks, so they just give a glimpse of what is possible, of how this notion of stanceless-ness can amplify the myriad combinations of tricks we do in regular parts. I just want to take my time and do it right, with integrity. Having the gift of being able to work with people as talented as Steven and Dhani has opened my eyes to the power and benefit of collaboration with people like that. All I know is that the gratification I get from creating something like this at this stage in life is the reward in itself. All the other stuff— which of course I'm grateful for— is secondary at best.
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