is in part a challenge against the dangers of disorder at bay.
This is The Alien Workshop.
This is The Alien Workshop.
It's a good setting.
First of all, I'd like to say thanks everybody for coming.
I appreciate the celebration of the video that we made.
A little bit of history. Mike and I have looked at G&S skateboards.
We made a video in 1989 called Footage.
Great video.
You can see a lot of the elements in it up in here, a little while ago.
G&S was a price center company, so we couldn't really do everything with Mike and Neil.
I'm Chris, I was always more of a business guy.
I certainly helped a lot with this video, but Mike and Neil were the true creative visionaries behind most of the content.
I helped film a lot of it.
I was a team guy, so I spent a lot of time with these guys.
But anyway, Footage sort of set the stage for this.
We quit G&S and we started Alien Workshop in the fall of 1990, and this released late summer, early fall of 1991.
We filmed entirely on digital high-eight, which was a big deal.
That was the new technology at the time.
Then regular, just 8mm videotape, and there's a ton of Super 8, and there's some 16 in there.
There's no computer, so we didn't digitize it.
Nothing was scanned into a computer.
It was all cut on this Sony high-eight dubbing deck where you put a tape in part A,
you put the master in B, then you set the time code, then you run the tape, and that's how you...
So it's back-to-back splicing the whole way.
You can't go back and fix it if you fuck something up.
So it just has to go in synchronicity, and it took forever to do it.
We started the company on a very low budget.
We didn't have a lot of money at all, but it was super low budget.
So the first part, the little ethnics on the very beginning by Jay Masters,
we spent a week editing that part alone, because all this stuff had to be created.
We were filming that stuff, Mike and Neil filmed stuff off the screen and little props,
and we spent a week editing that part, and I was like,
guys, we can't afford to rent this machine for two weeks, and they were like, we have to, it's got to be rad.
So we went back and used my credit card to rent it for the second week,
and we edited the rest out in the second week, a lot of all-nighters.
But anyway, that's sort of my background.
In the beginning of the intro, that took 50% of the editing time of the whole video.
So the rest of the video was equal time.
And I remember being in Europe, Rob and I were in Europe at the time.
Poop Contests was right when we turned pro.
And I remember hearing about the little ethnics on cutting it to the clips,
you know, to the cues of the music.
And like Chris was saying, like, we fucked that up in four minutes into the song.
It's not right, we're fucked.
You have to lay the audio down first, then you're back in at the top of the audio.
There's so many notes in the song, we're trying to hit all the notes in Super Contest.
Jay made the song, Neil's friends with Jay, we all became friends with him,
and he made the song just for the video, sent it to us like, yeah, so good luck.
So we were all honored that he would do that.
We all wanted to make it as best possible, so he'd be stoked.
And I was a huge Diane Storff fan before I was even on units.
So the fact that this was happening was just weird,
but like, Super Contest City, I was like, it was fucking amazing.
So you guys, what's the alien video coming about?
Oh, we just, we had a bunch of new young guys,
Rob, Nguyen, Scott Bowen, Thomas, and John Pratt.
We needed to make a video.
The company had started, and really the only way to communicate more about your team
was to make a video.
At the time, that was the biggest marketing thing you could do,
so we just had to make a video.
Like I said, we just made the footage video, so we wanted to make an alien video
and show the team how the young guys were turning pro and stuff, so.
What are you wearing on your head in the bathtub with Ernie and footage?
I think I was telling my wife about that the other day.
I've always been a fucking weirdo.
I mean, I started when I was...
We were at Contest, I was telling the story the other night.
We were at Tempe?
No, no, no, Phoenix.
We were in Phoenix, so it was the NSA, so NSA,
people were down there, National Skateboard Association,
Tony Hofstad, Frank Hock, he started that.
And this was the finals, so you had to like qualify in your district,
which there was six districts in the United States,
and then once you qualified for your district, then you went to the regionals,
which was then like the west, central, east,
and then you qualify for that, you go to the finals.
That was at the finals.
We were at the Contest, we went back to the hotel room,
and Mike Hill bought an Ernie doll, an Ernie puppet,
and swat me.
There was always a fucking swat me director.
Remember, it was in Reno, there was like a state fair,
there was always a weird ship.
You know, I had to talk to the low budget.
So he bought this thing, and we went back to the hotel,
and I just put a shark up on my head.
I had no fucking idea what it was.
It was a huge shark.
And I just started buying the puppet,
and it was Rob and Mike, and they were just like,
fuck, he's wrong.
And I was just like just being goof while talking to the puppet,
and they just lost it.
All for the best.
The project, was it something you were scared?
Like, or not scared, but was it like when it was finished,
because it's such a challenge to like the normal concept of the skate video.
Even by then, I feel like that was something you were scared like,
you don't know how people are going to take it,
or did you know something so that was special, you know,
it's going to be taken?
I think both equally.
Like, you never, you make videos.
Josh Stewart, by the way.
I know.
You don't want stuff for our other videos that we made over the years.
So he, I think that we're afraid to release it.
You're never done, right?
The only reason you're done is because while we were out of money.
But I think part of it, we thought the skateboarding was great,
but then the rest of it, we thought, we all loved it,
but we didn't know how people would embrace it.
But part of it, we didn't really care what it was,
what it is, what the company was sort of vision.
And again, I'm speaking my thoughts on it, not everybody's,
but it was, I think we thought it would be cool,
but a lot of people didn't like it.
You know, it was highly criticized.
After we released it, there's not enough skating to fuck this out.
I think it was right after Hocus Pocus,
a little Asia video, which was like gnarly trick after gnarly trick.
Boom, boom, boom.
And this came out like, this is bullshit.
There's no rapping.
Well, it's time that was happening in skating,
so we were, it was just, again, it was stunning.
I was a business guy, so I was like,
this thing's got to sell.
We need to sell, we're going to help sell decks.
So I had that goal in mind.
But also, we just wanted to do something totally unique.
I think it was the real goal, including the team.
I remember with the two of them.
This whole idea surrounding,
it kind of embodies this, how the workshop came about
and how we viewed it as like 16-year-old kids.
So it was like, you met at, what was it?
It was at Denny's in between Los Angeles and San Diego.
You knew Hill and Blender, right?
To come up with the workshop.
And then it was so fitting that when I was flowing out,
Rob and I were flying to California to be told
about the concept of the workshop.
We went to take it to fucking Denny's.
I think it was planned that way.
And the original workshop logo, the one that's shaped this.
The A and the W?
No, the original logo.
The one that's on the poster in the bottom right corner.
That's the Denny's sign that essentially has been altered
and made into, and therefore why that is.
The Denny's, like, that was as much as to do that.
Absolutely.
That's where it all grew.
And I remember when we were told about,
the concept was sitting around dinner
and the idea was told to me,
and I'm getting goosebumps,
and I was like, oh my god, this is the fucking raddest thing.
We're all going to move to Ohio,
and I was like, yes, no one's doing that.
I don't know how I even realized how amazing that was,
but Zuzka was super exciting.
So to do our own thing and not to care what, like,
the industry was doing at the time,
I don't know if I realized it so,
as I do now, how much I appreciated about it.
It was just exciting.
It came off as just pure teenage excitement.
The part that we took in with us, which was, you know,
it's not the coolest thing, but...
They got it to team.
I look back on the fact that they believed in our idea,
which we didn't have any money,
and they didn't know we were a team manager
and Mike was a graphic artist.
They didn't know if we could run a business,
but we convinced them we could, so...
How was that?
It took a while.
Who are the filmers of the skating?
Mike filmed a lot of it.
I filmed some of it, Neil filmed some of it,
and then like Bowie Scott and those guys
who were self-employed, why didn't they film you in Louisiana?
It's your friends, usually, right?
I don't know if any of that footage came from them.
I think that was, I think, the trip when it all came down,
and then it wasn't always happening.
It was at Florida, so we were like,
we did a Florida trip to go film with Scott and Bowie.
Right, I remember that.
That sounds like we didn't miss the film.
And then we bought a camera and sent it to Bowie and Scott
and Bowie to film, but that may have been after that.
I'm not sure.
Cameras were scarce back then, they were expensive.
Was there any stock footage?
What about the rest of the non-skating parts?
Where did that come from?
All over the place. No stock footage.
You filmed it yourself, all of it.
So it looks like it's from the 50s or something.
Some of the whole movie stuff.
Yeah, some of the whole movie stuff,
but did they re-shoot that?
Probably from the off-screen.
Yeah, it's from, who knows, they would find them.
The part midway, my point,
there's a Vietnamese guy talking about Louisiana.
Neal was in, Blender was in, I think it was in California,
which is, there's so many things that happen
that are so randomly perfect.
I don't know if I put that,
but Neal found his tape on the side of the road.
It was just, the guy talking about,
there's a large Vietnamese population in the world,
it's a chacuneau dude, but Vietnam War.
And this guy's experience of going to Louisiana,
he happened to have it and use it for my part,
which is such a weird...
So there's a lot of founds.
It wasn't original, it was found for stores.
There was no livestock back then.
We bought a bunch of super-great cameras in third stores,
and we would try to find super-great film where we could,
and everybody had a super-great camera,
armed and ready to go out and film something.
We saw something that she thought pretty interesting and cool,
and there's tons of stuff we didn't use, obviously, but, yeah.
It was Neal, I remember we were on tour or somewhere,
doing some trip, and it was Neal?
It was Neal, he went back home to Ohio,
to film that, that's where my recollection was.
He had to leave early, so he goes film this,
film this building in the house last night.
Was everyone on the team into their part being
manipulated into a camera?
Not everybody.
There were some guys that worked at the house,
they didn't see, I don't think anybody saw
the final product till it was completely gone,
and I'm saying that, you all had to see it,
there was no way to send it, there was no internet.
I remember the first time I watched it.
So yes, most people were, but I never made a video,
where everybody was happy with it,
to get a part to speak to that,
whoever's first and last,
because somebody else wants a spot.
I think for the most part, everybody was happy with the overall product.
The music was really good, and Neal Blender gets a credit
for being the music director, in fact, he would,
all the stuff he plays on and soundbites that he had,
various things, stuff he would record just for it,
like the preacher where the horse is walking,
he recorded that normally,
and he just sort of, literally an analog,
battery-powered, degraded order, and then he put music to it.
So a lot of really neat stuff.
The music was all pretty much Neal's doing.
His idea, what to use, and Mike had a lot of input on that too.
I think that's a special part of the film,
is the music ties so well to the imagery.
I think you remember song better if you can put an image to the song,
and the image better if you can put music to the image,
so those are two key ingredients for me.
When I watch anything in music, it's a very important part to me,
and it may create an emotion.
This video did an amazing job of that.
How'd he get all the music? Did he reach out to the bands?
He did a lot. He was in bands, he was in other bands,
and yeah, he reached out to the bands.
I think that the painting song was just a find out of where it came from.
Yeah, no one could contact him.
I remember that.
The artist knew the paintings,
but I remember them not getting paid.
Somehow I remember that, because there was no money to pay them.
We get credit.
Like I said, we knew Jay from Dinosaur,
he said he was using music, he was cool with it.
Neal did a lot of stuff himself.
He worked world.
I can tell he's credit to work world.
Neal was one of those bands.
Is that the connection to speedfruits and stuff?
There are certain things with speedfruits with Dinosaur Jr.
Yeah, Asian guys.
They license music and use it from SST for that video.
So that's where they got all the firehose, bad brains, black flag.
How come Neal doesn't have a partner?
He didn't want me, he had some little footage in there.
That's all I wanted, three questions.
I mean, at that point, how old were you then?
I was 26, 27, not that old.
I just wasn't skating as much.
We all moved out to Ohio, we were living in California,
and moved to Ohio to start counting,
and it wasn't the greatest place to skate.
Did that mean Neal worked together,
or was it like Mike brought his stuff and Neal brought it?
No, definitely worked together.
Because my cousin, he went to school on a date,
when he came back in 1991 with this little yellow tape.
He gave it to me, and I was like, what's this?
He's like, basically, they locked Neal Blander in a basement for two weeks.
We were all three locked in.
We weren't locked in when we were just in the basement.
That's where I watched the video for the first time.
Thomas Morgan and I watched that video for the first time in the same basement.
He split ahead of us.
I had to tell that story to the public.
The video, when we did the packaging,
we put specific instructions on there,
and watched it darker, and played through the kids' sound system.
There was instructions, and I talked to kids,
sensed the video was released,
but they told me that they did that,
and followed the instructions carefully.
That's always rewarding for me,
and I know they take it seriously like this.
Because if you play anything through a television,
it sounds like shit, right?
Especially in 1991.
This is the time when people, like, now,
I've been watching television for the most part,
the time it's so easy to do.
Was the video better on a hit of acid?
Oh, fucking, I guess.
Really, like, I mean,
but, like, watching that, like,
it just started, so it's like,
things that were happening, it's just like...
It was the first time you watched it, too, right?
It was literally the first time you watched a fucking movie,
and my mind was blown.
I mean, that sounds so cliche,
but I was just like, this, the video itself,
not even the skating, or, like, I was in it,
so, like, oh, that was just what it was,
like, I was 17 years old, you know,
and I didn't grow up with, like,
already parents or anything like that,
or whatever, and, like, these guys are, like,
my older brother, so, like,
they turned me on to this whole world,
and it totally, like, split my mind open, like,
largely influenced what I would do later
in my music now, which I have some for sale.
You know, like, CDs and all these things.
But, yes, absolutely, like, this very much,
kind of shaped what I would become artistically.
I was very, very, very lucky to be around these guys.
It's the inception of this video,
like, as a young kid.
It's how hard you can talk about it.
We're in the, I'm sorry,
we're seeing, you know, like, this,
the mystery behind what you guys were doing,
essentially, or it got me into the culture
of skateboarding now.
And I can't remember how, when did the video
come out as far as the life of the alien?
Like, was it something that basically introduced
people to alien, or was the story already being told
to, like, get out of your head?
We started running an ad straight away.
I don't think we put anything in the ad
because we were in business.
There was no skateboard photos.
That's the first day.
Right, thank you.
And keep a question to that, like,
what is it? What bar is under skating?
I don't know.
I guess it's a skateboarding company.
So, you know, that's,
but now I think the video, Josh, came,
we started advertising the video at some point
in that year, and then it came out.
It was last year.
It was in October 1990?
A little less of a year, yeah.
And you changed it before?
Who, all the graphics in our company?
You know, my,
my partner, all these users,
he's talked about it many times.
I think it's a huge undertaking.
I know he's spoken many times on wanting to do it.
You know, I would love to see it happen,
but it's going to be a huge undertaking.
But I know that he's talked about it
for a long time, too.
You guys have, like, a kind of documentation of it.
Yeah, we have a way, yeah.
Yeah, we have a way, yeah.
We have a lot of stuff.
I have a question about the,
there's, like, an avert section,
like a compilation where, like,
the story is skating and
someone doing, like, uh,
was that filmed the same time?
Or was that a little previous?
Yeah, Neil had filmed now.
I think it's 16. It was, you know,
I traveled all those contests in the 80s,
and I was gator, Tom Berholski,
and then Christian,
and we just had a good camp
and filmed it on those events and it was beautiful footage.
Because that was only, like,
a couple of years before it.
Yeah, and we were just super stuck on it,
so we put it under here.
I have a question.
For you.
So, how was Dr.
doing, helping John?
I mean, I was, like,
we didn't get the rights for it,
but we were making it back because it was so...
Short clip.
An excerpt.
Cool.
How much are those vignettes
or inside jokes?
They're famous even in the editing,
as far as, like, Barry Zurissi
with somebody's hands.
And even, like, the Mike Smith on the schools
are hot about it. How much of that is
just you guys fuck around with each other?
I spent a lot of time with Barry
and Neil and Barry, so we
just wanted to put them in the video because
Barry got to know them and understand it.
And then Neil's great friends with Mike.
He had that audio a lot. Again, you know how
a lot of these audio snippets, and then
he would pull them out and listen to them,
and they would come up with an idea,
although it was disconnected and made no real sense.
There was incongruity in the whole video, if you watch it.
Is it just like a series of inside jokes, though,
with you guys? I don't know if they're jokes.
They're just, like, just
something that we thought would be cool to put in the video.
Mike Smith's rad.
But I mean, what you said, it was
a lot of the time it was
like, Blender's humor and just, like,
all the humor was a lot of humor.
I think you stoked it.
Not a lot of taking it serious, like even, like,
doing, like, serious work.
Yeah, I'm just being stoked on it.
Trying to do something with it.
Put it in there. Yeah, it's
borderline ridiculous at times, but
I don't remember laughing.
You know, so
I just remember watching it
and, like,
asking it to me personally sometimes.
Really?
How many of us distributed it?
I'm like, how would someone see it
in 91? We sold it to skateboard distributors
and drops all over the world.
We remember selling decks and t-shirts
and all that. So just
do buy it from specialty skateboard shops.
That was actually an original copy of the tape
that wobbled my mind when I walked in here.
You can watch it on YouTube. It's out there.
You can get DVDs of it now.
We never released a DVD.
We never released it again
after it's the initial run.
I'd probably
say probably six, seven years maybe.
We stopped selling it.
How many copies?
I don't know.
I really don't know.
What happened after memory screen
as far as, as far as, like,
what you wanted to do?
We just got making a mistake of the other day.
It was
crazy sad. The next one was called
timecode, which was
so good.
It was a great video.
How did you push off family in the sense
after, you know,
I just don't think we had the time.
We weren't busy now. We're in our business.
We kind of made
products and we didn't have time.
Business was tiny at the time we did this.
So it was all over focus and effort.
So then we hired Joe Distruzzi
with Habitat. He got Workforce a couple
years before that and he worked on photosynthesis,
which was the next really
well-developed Habitat video.
Sorry, you don't know which video. I believe.
APPLAUSE
And thank you.
Thank you, Katie, for having
us on.
APPLAUSE
More shadows, Katie Marshall,
Zyna Puster,
and Daniel Burgos,
Zyna Trailer.
We're all volunteering with Spectacle
and have screens every night.
Thanks to Chris Grosseth not here,
but his tape it was.
That's it.
Wayne has records for sale here, so please
look when you go out.
Believe in autograph.
APPLAUSE
So Mike Hill,
the creator and editor of the video,
he
wanted to loop this
of the remainder of the VHS tape.
LAUGHTER
So there's a set amount of
tape on the
set and
he got to a point at this point
he was fucking
just drove himself mad at this video
and it kept stopping
at one point
there was more tape left
and it just kept fucking stopping
like and that drove him crazy
so having tried for another day
and then he just stopped and said
fuck it's finished and that's it.
APPLAUSE
