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Ever since ESPN’s X-Games, Generation X has been classified as the x-treme generation. A generation of young individuals who have been picking up skateboards rather than the old ball and glove, and who look up to Tony Hawk and Bam Margera instead of yesterdays heroes. ESPN and MTV quickly picked up on the x-treme sports market creating television programs targeted towards these x-treme individuals. ESPN’s coverage of the X-Games and the Gravity Games opened a whole new market for companies like Mountain Dew, Boost Mobile, and even 1-800-COLLECT. MTV created new segments such as Jackass, Viva la Bam, and Wildboys in which Bam Margera, Johnny Knoxville, and friends partook in stunts too silly for any professional stuntman and too stupid for any rather sane person. Now, it seems that the x-treme activities of this x-treme generation are moving onto the bigger screen.

Universal Films is ready to release Deck Dogz. The film’s synopsis is of a story all too familiar with the x-generation. Three young skateboarders, who call themselves the Deck Dogz, dream of making it in the world of skateboarding, and their one shot of getting noticed is by skating in front of the legendary 12 time World Champion Tony Hawk, who is looking for young talent a Sydney’s Beach Bowl. The only problem for the Deck Dogz is that their parents and teachers won’t let them travel alone to Sydney. The Deck Dogz solution is to go against their parents and teachers wishes, even if it means getting in trouble, to undertake a journey and make reality their own.

While on this journey, director Steve Pasvolsky goes out of his way by the use of special effects to make skateboarding appear more x-treme than it really is. The Deck Dogz fly over police cars and jump down unimaginable gaps, and one has to ask themselves, hasn’t Hollywood now gone too x-treme? Sure Hollywood has combined special effects and skateboarding in the past, and as silly as it looked, it was meant to look so. Deck Dogz seems to be Hollywood’s first attempt of sympathizing with the x-treme generation, however it becomes apparent just by watching the trailer that they have a lot more to learn about the this generation before they can do so.

Pasvolsky’s attempt to generate an audience understanding for Spasm, Poker, and Blue Flame, the three skaters that make up the Deck Dogz, is destroyed by the falsifications of special effects and bad one-liners like, “your going to nail that trick and Tony Hawk is going to sponsor you”. As a dedicated skateboard for the last 20 years, it’s hard for me to relate to Hollywood’s definition of x-treme, and as a marketer I quite don’t understand why companies want to use this exaggerated x-treme image to define their company.

Perhaps that’s why the over stereotyped x-treme group of guys the movie Harold & Kumar go to White Castle seem so amusing. It becomes obvious that the imagery in which Pasvolsky uses to make the audience relate to the Deck Dogz is the same imagery that director Danny Leiner of Harold & Kumar go to White Castle uses to poke fun at Hollywood’s stereotypes of the x-treme generation.

So how can companies jump into the x-treme market and relate to my so-called x-treme generation? How about not trying to make things seem so x-treme. Elwood Clothing is helping directors Brian Lotti and the Molloys release their independent film titled 1st and Hope, a film about friends spending an afternoon skateboarding through downtown Los Angeles. 1st and Hope paints a picture of skateboarders playing in the streets and looking for new spots to skate while the rest of Los Angeles goes about the daily grind of a another work day. This film relates to the skateboard generation more because of less. There aren’t any special effects, bad one-liners, or stereotypical images. It’s about a lifestyle rather than an x-treme sport, and that’s what skateboarding is to us skateboarders, a lifestyle.

Daniel Piersa has been a skateboarder for the last 20 years and recently joined Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners.