What's up?
It's Tony Hawk, and this guy right here
is the godfather of all modern skateboarding tricks.
This is Rodney Mullen.
It's such a gift to be able to look at something
and to love it for the sake of it.
And nurturing and maintaining that, is one of the hardest tests
of any pro, much less for anyone to find, right?
What is the Beethoven who never found his piano or harpsichord or...
right?
And like, so for me, I had an intuitive yearning that skating was for me.
And when I'm found these movements and the little subtle things
that no one was pointing me, telling me what to do,
because I have such a visceral push against being told what to do.
Especially for this, you know?
For the joy of what I'm doing you're going to tell me what to do?
I struggle with it.
There's days you want to go out, it hurts to your sore, or you just suck, you...
you're...
you're not making progress.
You're ramming into...
and you feel defeated.
Like sometimes after filming tricks, it would be everything...
I could not from wanting turn my car off into the...
you know what I mean?
Like you take it that personal.
But that's...
that's the nature of love, you know?
It's got hate in there.
You know?
It's got pain in there.
And it draws you to it.
That's the magnetism.
That's what...
I guess I had that, I've nurtured in my life.
I see people with talent, with all those things,
but the one thing they don't have
is that just love for doing it for the sake of it.
And the sense of obligation to...
Do something with what you're given, you know?
There's something to there; it's important.
Riding for world industries,
the number one professional freestyle skateboarder
for the last 10 years at this sport.
Let's give a big round of applause: Rodney Mullen.
I think, getting what you want quenches the fire that got you there often.
Unless it's something replaced by something more permanent,
which becomes more intangible.
I think the successes of winning, right?
You want to be the best in the neighborhood,
and then win the local contest and then whatever, whatever.
It's, it just keeps going up,
and then by the time you get there, you can have a stadium
screaming your name; it's actually happened a couple of times to me.
And there is a visceral accele...
acceleration to it.
There is.
I've experienced that.
I know what that's like.
You land a trick and there's...
it just lights up.
It's crazy.
But at the same time, it's hollow, it's hollow;
that's not the thing that can drive you.
At least not for long.
It's being able to say, Oh, I had that, I had a model or I had people.
Autograph or whatever, all of these honors,
eventually that stuff phase to just static
and you're left with you and your board,
and if you decide that that's what you love,
that's what you're doing, then your days are numbered.
So the trick is to always peel back of why am I doing this in the first place?
Oh yeah.
I still like, I'm still that kid on the farm, and I cling to that.
Even the things that hurt, like the things that I grew up with,
the things that still like...
I got issues, but I nurture them.
That's what gets me out every night.
It is easy to say and I think it's smothering to say,
and often there is a culture of say that if...
if it cannot be proven, it must not be possible.
Best dudes around the world can be striving after one particular trick.
Finally one guy does it, and then the rest just come like lemming.
Rarely is it a question of talent or technique at those levels,
it's just one of belief,
and the concomitant will to kind of...
do something that either no one's done before
or even more, I think,
the crack open the barriers that people consider impossible, undoable.
And that kind of belief I think is rare than talent.
Talent is, it's around.
Having both of those levels,
there's only a few people that, that really have that, I think.
In the history they are the ones that have really changed things.
Speaking of... Umm, going out and skating...
I know you skate till like what?
3:00... 4:00 AM?
Yeah.
Sorry.
I get home usually between 3:00 and 3:30.
Yeah.
Umm...
alone?
Yeah.
And you've been skating alone for years like that, right?
In the middle of the night.
I mean, there are people that are like, there's Rodney sightings.
"I saw Rodney skating, this gas station at 2:30 AM" as if it's some rare thing.
And I'm like, "you saw Rodney in his element."
There's lots of things that cannot be proven though they are correct.
And I think that this idea too, with skating that,
because we see things so often in front of us,
the way that it should be done and it imposes a kind of barrier
through what people know and see, familiarity,
but maybe you can change something within you
that can be just outside a new set of axioms,
some new skillset that will take you further.
And I think that that's the history of development; certainly within skating.
So when you were in a contest, that's good,
feels good; especially the first time.
After that you are protecting.
The sort of only second place.
Actually, there is no second place there's only losing.
So contests were a big thing, and a number by your name that was important.
So once you're on that treadmill, you're on it.
And it, it, it militated against progression
because it forced me into a pattern of consistency:
do this, best in shot,
again and again, and again, and again, make this.
To me, that's never what drove me.
It's interesting how getting what you think you want
can end up being the force that pushes you into...
paint yourself into a corner, pushes you into...
there is something terrible to be top of the mountain,
I'm the best, I'm the King guarding it.
What's left for you we'll make it at the top, but lightning.
You know?
So I'm privileged that I started a few some tricks
and then other people have taken it more
and that's turned into a vocabulary for us to express themselves.
That to me is like a living trophy, because everywhere I look, I see a few there.
But as for those things, you're number one, number one for that?
Like,
most of those contests I didn't even give all I had, I just played it safe.
Those are representative of me being conservative,
not doing what I could have done,
because I just wanted to win, because I was afraid.
I left the trophies like that.
Have you broken out of that desire to just play it safe and win?
That helped me.
I can't say that I'm cured, I'm human I'm insecure, I'm all these things.
That's human nature, we're always fighting.
I don't think anyone ever gets to the top of mountain and kind of hovers,
you know?
Oh, I'm enlightened, you know?
But I'm better.
I'm not as tethered.
It becomes what you are in the moment,
what kind of man are you, and are you able to be there.
And that is something that I take with me, with age, with success,
that what you do in these reflexive couplings, shapes you,
you shape it, it shapes you, you don't disconnect from there.
You just tumble forward, over time,
they become what you do,
and you find hopefully at the end of that process,
you're not insufferable,
that you actually have something to give it can be present, you know?
So for all I've done, I appreciate it, I don't look at it as much.
So a long time ago I go out, like believe me, I'm going out after this,
I'm going out tonight, and I'll go out cause I have something,
right now, I can do, I'm close.
And if I do something, if I get it, I filmed something
and I will mean everything to me and I will.
But ultimately it just goes out there.
It's just what you do.
You just become one with that.
I think that's been a key for me
of why I've been able to sustain this fire
that's so seemingly easily quenched.
So when I see people who have had success,
I see boredom for the most part in them.
And then I see a tombstone.
And circling back to what trophies and those things represented, right?
Feinman, great physicist said that...
the Nobel prize would be the tombstone on all great work.
Just look at it.
I haven't done the study of Academy awards, right?
But usually when you get what you thought you wanted, fire goes away.
So if there's anything, just find joy in what you do for the sake of it,
and then recognize how you're being shaped in the process.
And hopefully you become a better man through, you know?