05.05.08 5:00 AM CDT
• TV & DVDs
• Robert DeSalvo
When not occupied following Hef, Holly, Bridget and Kendra around the world and filming their antics for The Girls Next Door, four crew members turned the cameras on themselves to create the documentary Livin Free: The Heart of Longboarding. Directed by The Girls Next Door DP Marc McCrudden, the film has been described as a “skateboard odyssey of the mind, body and soul.” What’s most interesting about Livin Free is how relatively serene it is. You might expect a typical doc on skateboarding to feature quick edits, bombastic punk and rap tunes and crazed fans. What we get instead is stunning footage of four guys finding their own personal Zen zones in longboarding as they travel to places like Boston, Chicago, New Mexico, California, Morocco, Australia, South Africa and more for the TV show. “It’s like surfing, but you’re on pavement,” says one of the skaters. “You move across all this hard shit we’ve laid out all over the place. I love skateboarding, especially when you have some other guys you’re riding with. There’s nothing like it.” Along the way the foursome mix with the locals and sometimes get static for doing what this documentary makes seem is such a personal, almost spiritual, experience for the guys. One scene that really makes an impression is a lengthy tracking shot of one of the guys skateboarding down a long, lonely desert highway with no one around for miles. While it has to be fun for these four to film the Girls Next Door at play, Livin Free highlights some surprisingly soulful behind-the-scenes action.
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