Some Old Ass Movie With Skaters who, uh, date, kinda.

November 1, 2007 5:24 PM

Noel Black's first project after graduate film school at UCLA was writing and directing Skaterdater, a short subject cinematic romance without dialogue, which used only music and sound effects to advance its plot. It won nine international film awards.

The film is circa 1965, just few years prior to my freewheeling days, but it still makes me nostalgic for simpler times.

Warning: google vid, about 20 mins long, lots of artsy depictions of "old school" skateboarding. Enjoy.

posted by snsranch (11 comments total)

God, whatever happened to Black? He made a fantastic feature (Pretty Poison), wrote a great script (Mischief) and then — nothing. A bunch of fairly undistinguished TV work (and not a whole lot of that). Go figure. (And go see Pretty Poison if you get the chance, it really is great.)
posted by ubiquity at 5:41 PM on November 1, 2007

Opening reminds me of this.
posted by phrontist at 5:48 PM on November 1, 2007 [3 favorites]

That bare foot skating just freaks me right out.
posted by autodidact at 5:49 PM on November 1, 2007

Terrific short. It's always mentioned in books on shorts and screenwriting and is brought up much in film school but pre-internet was always hard to see.

I agree with ubiquity on the other stuff-PP is excellent and Mischief's worth a watch as well.

That bare foot skating just freaks me right out.

I have the same reaction to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. There's a scene where Etta's on the handlebars of a bicycle being ridden on a dirt rode and she rests her feet on the front hub. And she's barefoot. Every time I watch it I get taken out of the movie and think, "They'd NEVER let one of the leads of a movie do that in this day and age."
posted by dobbs at 5:53 PM on November 1, 2007

Yep, I skated bare foot. Once.
posted by snsranch at 5:56 PM on November 1, 2007

Thank you phrontist, it was driving me crazy trying to remember what I had seen that looked just like that.
posted by ill3 at 6:38 PM on November 1, 2007

I imagine that they must be emulating surfboarding by riding their skateboards with bare feet.

It's interesting to note that the uploader of that video is Glen E. Friedman. Those other video links of his are pretty interested as well.
posted by cazoo at 7:47 PM on November 1, 2007

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. There's a scene where Etta's on the handlebars of a bicycle being ridden on a dirt rode and she rests her feet on the front hub.

YouTube to the rescue.
posted by ericb at 8:20 PM on November 1, 2007

Great short film.
Few things:
- That bicycle scene is so similar to the one in Butch Cassidy I'm willing to believe somebody on that film was influenced by Skater Dater.

- I see additional photography was by Carroll Ballard who did many great children's films.

- How did that dog get in the rain gutter!?
posted by Rashomon at 9:39 PM on November 1, 2007

I had a little skateboard like that. I fell off a little skateboard like that many times.
posted by lee at 2:43 AM on November 2, 2007

Soundtrack available from Metafilter's own recordbrother. (If the links still work, i can't check at the moment)
posted by algreer at 5:05 AM on November 2, 2007