It’s been too long since anyone released a good skateboarding documentary, so we thought we’d do it ourselves.
All This Mayhem tells the story of Australian pro-skaters Tas and Ben Pappas, who – from the late-80s into the 90s – morphed from teenage skate rats into a relentless, two-headed vert ramp phenomenon. In the process of making their way to the number one and number two vert spots in the world, they feuded with Tony Hawk and ingested just about every drug available.
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But the endless parties, girls, powders and pills caused the Pappas brothers’ time at the top to be short lived. By the early-2000s, drugs and jail sentences had eclipsed their skating and soon their lives and relationships with one another took a swift downwards turn. What happened next plays out on screen like a gruesome Aronofskian tragedy.
Directed by Eddie Martin and exec-produced by VICE Films, All This Mayhem is a cocktail of skate tapes, handicam home videos taken at the time and present day interviews from Henry Sanchez, Lance Conklin, Dom Kekich, Bill Weiss and Tas Pappas himself.
The film will be premiering at this year’s Sheffield Doc Fest, which kicks off this Sunday, the 8th of June. To celebrate, we’re throwing a huge, All This Mayhem-themed party in Sheffield’s Plug venue that evening. Mike Skinner will be headlining, and our own Noisey DJs will be on the ones and twos until 3AM. Entry is free and there will be a bunch of complementary drinks, meaning there’s literally no reason not to come.
And for those of you who’d rather take a sober approach to enjoying the film, Tas and Eddie Martin will be doing a Q&A at the BFI London this Saturday, the 7th of June, before heading down to Southbank for a skate.
