It’s the new Kids [Actually it’s better]. There we said it. Though Larry Clark’s cinematic exploration of 90s skateboarding is an institution in our culture, things have come a long way since then (despite what Jonah Hill will have you believe). It’s 2019, and our world is reexamining its traditions of gender, sexuality, of what is important and what is okay. Minding the Gap is a moving examination of our time in skateboarding, following him and two of his friends as they deal with “real life”. Powered by 15 years of footage, this is a coming-of-age story about skateboarding and abuse set in Rockford, Illinois. With a Sundance win under its belt and an Oscar Nomination for director Bing Liu, say hello to the Boyhood of skateboarding.
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Bing, what is “the Gap”?
It’s mostly the one between childhood and adulthood. There is no definitive borders between those two things, but it’s there. Then there’s the gap between men and women, between children and parents. Those are the main ones I’ve been looking at.
How has it been, clearing those gaps?
It’s been a wild ride, and a lot of people have opened up about how they connected to a theme or aspect of the film, who I didn’t expect. Everybody that’s seen it has been surprised by it and connected to it. On the off chance we get nominated for an Oscar, that would be crazy.
Was this your first film?
I’d been a director on a series in 2015, and that also played at Sundance. That was my first professional break as a director , but I’ve been working in the camera department for ten years as a freelancer since then. This is really my first production of this calibre.
It’s funny, because it feels like we’re watching you grow into your filmmaking as well as your emotional journey, from the age of fourteen to now.
Yeah, we wanted to make it feel like it started out as just hanging out, as a fun thing, and then it becomes more serious.
“In skateboarding you’ve got nobody to blame, only yourself…and maybe the laws of physics.”
We wanted you to fall in love with the characters, to feel what they felt as kids growing up, so that when life gets difficult you already care about the characters.
So, how it feels growing up…
Exactly.
The film made me ask myself whether skateboarding is an abusive relationship – what do you think?
Yes and no. I feel like an abusive relationship needs two people, and skateboarding is such a solitary act. In skateboarding you’ve got nobody to blame, only yourself…and maybe the laws of physics. [Laughs]
Is there then an element of self-abusive then?
Yeah, you know I do know a lot of people who used it to abuse themselves. I did it to myself too. But it also represents taking control of your pain. A lot of the time when you’re in an abusive situation, you can’t control the abuse. You could do the right thing, the wrong thing, and you’ll experience pain. With skateboarding you fall and get hurt and to an extent you were in control of that. It helps you develop a sense of self.
I’ve seen this a lot, there are these skateboarding charities like Free Movement Skateboarding, which use skateboarding as an empowerment tool – it normalises failure.
Yeah, life is 99% failure. Skateboarding teaches you that.
Okay, so to take one character from the film, Zack. Do you think skateboarding got him into trouble or got him out of it?
I’ve come to believe that there’s a point at which skateboarding provides diminishing returns. It can help with a lot of things, almost spiritually, but: can it help you get a high-school diploma, get a job, can it help you overcome alcoholism?
“There’s no central authority. It’s the bitcoin of subcultures, and it’s the reflection of what its users are doing to it“
I don’t know. But it does do amazing things, like help me cope with my dead, abusive father, whom I loved and I hated.
How has your relationship with Zack changed since making the film?
I met him in my Junior year of High School, I was 16-17, and there wasn’t a public skatepark in Rockford until then. He was a couple of years younger than me, and he was really good. I was the main filmer in the city, so everybody wanted to film with me. That’s how we built a relationship. But it wasn’t until I came back to Rockford later to make Minding the Gap that I ran into him and found out he was about to become a dad, and we hooked up again. We grew really close after that, and he shared things with me that he had never shared with anybody. When I first found out that he was being abusive, I thought it was an important opportunity to examine the other side of that relationship.
What was his reaction to the film?
I showed him it before we picture-locked. He was crying by the end.
Do you want us as an audience to like Zack?
I didn’t want people to hate him. I wanted people to understand him. I wanted to understand him.
Which is an amazing response, considering your own relationship with your father. Actually, there’s a moment in the film where you ask Zack if you think that Elliot [his son] might grow up to be messed up. I wanted to ask you the same question?
If I think Elliot will be messed up? I think we all experience trauma in our childhoods to a degree. I don’t think he will be unable to succeed in any way, but with that question I wanted to make Zack think about what he had been doing lately. I’m not so worried about Elliot.
Do you think he’ll grow up a skater?
[Laughs] He’s already kinda’ riding around. There’s so much luck that goes into somebody sticking with skateboarding…
…and we’re always rebelling against our parents.
[Laughs] Yeah, true.
The third character in your friendship triangle, Keire [Johnson], talks at one point about how his father never let him forget he was black. That felt like a really significant moment for him, but it’s like he can’t quite express his feelings about race.
Totally. I think in many ways, people of colour who grow up in predominantly white subcultures end up having to make it okay for themselves, and okay for the other people around them. Keire used to make jokes all the time, like: “I’m black, I can’t swim!”, you know? But those jokes are awkward, uncomfortable, because he is uncomfortable in himself.
Yeah, then there’s that moment when he’s sitting with those younger generation skaters, and one of them is really woke about notions of race in society.
Yeah, and that guy is white. You know, in that working class city, both white and black people are both really poor. So you’ve in that scene you’ve got a working class white frustration voiced in the same room as the voice of historical oppression of black people in America.
Unlike Zack and Keire before them, that younger generation are talking about going to university and investing in their futures. It’s weird to see the difference even those few years have made to the priorities of young skateboarders in Rockford. Almost across the board it seems younger generations are more conscientious about their futures and issues in society, no?
Yes and no. Skateboarding eats up the types it eats up. Some of them have access to education and communication, some of them don’t. Ultimately, those are the factors that drive empathy, awareness and progressive thinking. But it’s never a given. For example, a friend of mine wrote an article on Jason Jesse, but none of the US magazines would publish it. These conversations are being had, but also being avoided. If you have, for example, Thrasher and The Berrics unwilling to publish something like that because they’re worried about pissing off sponsors, then there’s not much hope for a progressive wave in the community. But it is moving in the right direction I think, generally.
But take Kids, which shows conversations in the houses of young skateboarders in the 90s. In Minding the Gap, things have clearly changed…
Sure, but what I captured was me going in there and stirring the pot. Even with that conversation, I was egging them on to talk about that sort of thing, even subtly. I was asking how their classes were and that sort of thing. Same with Keire, I was asking him about his father and his race to get a response. But, funnily enough, they were watching Kids during that take. This film doesn’t necessarily represent a straight observation, because Zack and Keire wouldn’t have necessarily processed their childhoods unless we had made this film.
There’s also a moment where Keire’s mum’s boyfriend asks you not to film him. How much does you being in the room actually change the truth?
I think we are way past “truth” in the documentary field. Everything is staged to some degree. I certainly affected the story, that’s why my character in the film had his own arc. And that arc includes my choices as a filmmaker, to try to reveal what violence means, and through that I can tell my own story. But yeah, the film itself was why these issues were explored. They wouldn’t have happened in vacuum.
But then, on the other hand, your exploration of Keire’s mother’s situation couldn’t be explored because you were there. The boyfriend wasn’t having it…
But I wouldn’t have spoken to her without the camera…
Damn. Quantum.
I mean it’s clear from the fact that I was blocked that he was suspicious and controlling, and that’s all we needed really. He told me from the moment I met him: “I don’t want that pointed at me.” But that doesn’t mean I can’t build up his presence through his absence.
Presence through absence is the crux of your own character arc, and it’s only when you include your own interview with your mother that we see that come to a head. You’ve been exploring these complicated abusive relationships through the film, and then you’re finally able to direct all your questions with the camera pointed at you. Was it difficult to orchestrate that conversation?
No. It wasn’t hard to have. I called her up, picked a date, and there I was. It was the first time I hired a sound person or anything – up until then I had been a one-person crew.
Not quite what I meant! [Laughs] It felt like that sudden presence was the release of a building emotion throughout the film. Perhaps that’s the tension between masculinity and sensitivity, of keeping it inside. What can you say about that?
I grew up in a working class town. In terms of the boundaries of masculinity, there wasn’t a lot of room for emotional movement there.
“Life is 99% failure. Skateboarding teaches you that.“
But the skateboarders I knew, those were the people I was listening to Cat Power with, we also understood it as closer to dancing, or ballet, than say kickboxing or something more aggressive. It’s just that the outside world hasn’t caught on. You have to do it to be able to translate how it feels.
Are the traditional ideas of masculinity toxic for young men?
Yeah, it’s based off old power structures that weren’t fair to begin with. To be masculine is to feel you are in control, to make money, to succeed, and to repress emotion. How is any of that helpful?
I think that in skateboarding – as with, say, rock n’ roll – these traditions are still being promoted by the most popular channels.
Yeah, definitely. I think the mainstream American skateboarding culture is kidding itself. They’re really dismissive of emotions in a way that is hurting itself. It’s becoming more and more inline with traditional athleticism, but also what is acceptable as a skateboarder is so narrow – you have to be cool, not talk about your feelings.
Are you worried?
I’m not too worried. There’s no central authority. It’s the bitcoin of subcultures, and it’s the reflection of what its users are doing to it. It’s so amorphous, and part of why we’re even talking about mainstream skate culture is because it’s what we can see. There are all these dark corners of skateboarding that some people will never see. Like this interview, for example, this isn’t going to be posted on the Berrics instagram.
I don’t know… diversity is becoming cool now.
mindingthegapfilm.com
