"I don't like bringing it all up, because I'd like to be friends with everyone again." "But you're asking me questions about that period, well that's what went on." "It's just the way it is." "It's the way it went down." "I can't bullshit." "I don't want the Pappas brothers to be remembered as just maniacs." "And it got pretty heavy." "You know, just weird." "Stuff you wouldn't think would happen in skateboarding." "And the facts is this, boys, there's three sides to every story." "There's my side, your side and the truth." "Back then, there was no other place better to be than Prahran if you were a skateboarder." "You had all different types of people rocking up there." "People in the tight, torn jeans, long hair." "Messy ones, clean cut." "No matter who you were, you were just accepted if you were a skateboarder." " Do you like skaters?" " Yeah, I am one." " But do you like other skaters?" " Yeah." "Of course." "Have to." "All right, what do you think of pedestrians?" "Can't do much about 'em." "I used to finish school at 3:30, get my board and go straight to the ramp." "It was the only thing that I wanted to do at the time." "Whoa!" " You all right?" " You all right?" " Dom, why do you skate?" " For fun." " For fun?" " Yeah." "What else would I skate for, money?" "I had that sense of freedom there with skateboarding and..." "Pretty much that was my life at the time." "I was just skateboarding." "I mean, school was okay, but skateboarding was more than that to me." " Looking sharp there, Greg." " Yes, looking very good." "Every weekend, every night after school we used to go down to Prahran." "It was so exciting because there was just people from all around Melbourne, a lot of older crew and street guys." "Hey, why do you skate?" "'Cause, you know," "I've got to get some enjoyment in life." " You know?" " So go and have a pull, son." "My mum hated it." "She just didn't understand why I wanted to go to Prahran all the time and didn't understand that culture." "Still to this day, they just don't really understand." " Okay, go." " What do you think of skateboarding?" "Skateboarding?" "I haven't thought about it much." "But do you think it's a good sport really?" "Oh, if it turns people on, why not?" "I was down at Prahran one day, I was probably like 11 or 12, and these kids padded up and just started from the bottom." "It looked like they had never even stepped on a board before." "They just got on the ramp and started pumping, going quarter of the way up, halfway up the ramp." "They didn't give two shits if someone said to them to get off the ramp." "They would just go and have a skate." "You could see they were pretty hard, you know, and I found out they were called Ben and Tas." "We were, like, young as fuck when we came to Prahran, which is on the rich side of Melbourne." "We were just normal kids, brought up in a physical kind of atmosphere." "You know, like having rock walls and climbing construction sites and houses that are being built." "And I saw the vert ramp, and I was just mesmerized by the fact that people could fly through the air and that took over." "We were bogans." "There's bogans in every country." "I think in America they call them Hessians or white trash." "They'd be the American bogan." "In Australia, it's just called a bogan, but it's more the rougher suburb type." "We grew up in suburbia, half Greek, half Aussie." "Sort of rough." "Growing up was pretty hectic as far as Mum and Dad went." "They tried to be together and cool, but there was just fights every night." "Mum was hard core." "I mean they had a fight, they got into it." "And then she's screaming, and I was, like, freaking out." "Like, "Don't hit Mum."" "And then Mum would come back with a big glass ashtray, smash Dad in the head, and then he's, boof, laid out on the floor with blood coming out of his head." "I'm like, "Ah!" "Dad's dead."" "That's the sort of things we saw growing up." "Me and Ben would always be going at it with each other, smashing each other." "And we learned martial arts as kids." "Yeah, I was in kung fu when I was five." "They had to take me out of it, 'cause I started smashing all the grade fives when I was in grade one." "Just thought I was Bruce Lee." "See, my dad and Uncle Willie had a jujitsu school and the first thing Uncle Willie taught us was all the pressure points." "Temples, eyes, behind the ears, throat, up the nose, down the chin." "And he's teaching us all these death strikes, then he'd tell us in class like," ""Right." "Now what are you going to do?" ""You've just walked in." "Some bloke's raping your mother." ""Think about that." "She's about to die." ""'Now, what are you going to do to that bloke?"" "And we'd be in our heads, young, going," ""I'm going to kill him."" "And then they go, "Now, spar!" And then we'd go in there and fully spar." "And Dad was like, "Willie, maybe we should ease up on the death strikes, hey?" ""They are children."" "But I took that to skating and so did Ben." "Sure enough, like a week later they're dropping in." "Tas is dropping in." "Ben gets up, starts dropping in." "They'd gotten good really quick." "They just did it for fun, how I did." "We become good friends." "Me, Tas and Ben." " Ben..." " Yeah!" "Just sort of a really tight group, and everyone bonded with each other who could skate." "And we were just complete pricks to other people who couldn't." "So, it was just that sort of mentality." "Do some fucking tricks." "Why don't you get a fucking skateboard?" "That's the way." "There you go." "Oh, look at it!" "It's not good enough!" "Not fucking good enough!" "You're a wanker!" "Let's go, man." "Everyone used to come back to my house and all we did was just hang out in the lounge room and just watch videos." "We got really excited, like, just by watching videos from the States 'cause that was it." "I used to just rock in, and there was my brother and a couple of friends watching the videos." "My drive is just, eh, progression." "It's just to be able to keep going on and doing new things." "To see what they could do, you know, I didn't think was possible." "It just blew my mind away." "That's all we watched." "And just recited songs from them and just had a laugh about what the skaters were saying." "How long have you been skating?" "Six years." "When did you start?" "Um..." "Six years ago." "The Americans had that twang in their voice, like, "Hey."" "You used to sort of imitate that." ""You're just flying around." "It's like you're not even skating anymore." ""You're just flying around."" "Wasn't that Tony Mag's quote in one of the H-Street videos?" "It's like you're not skating anymore." "You're just flying around." "All I cared about was H-Street, new gen style, Danny Way style." "I remember being in my room going, "That's it." "I'm going to America." ""I'm going to be the best." "I want to smash Hawk."" "I had these huge dreams." "You just realized that Australia just didn't have that same buzz." "So, to be a part of that US skate culture was our dream." "I was living with my dad during the week and we stayed with Mum on the weekends and Mum moved to Clifton Hill." "So the closest vert ramp was Northcote." "That ramp was a lot bigger than Prahran and it was pretty much dead there, so we had the ramp to ourselves." "Sometimes these guys would rock up to the ramp in these two Porsches." "I remember just tripping." "Like, who are these two?" "They saw me and Ben learning, fighting and learning." "And he'll learn this, and I'll learn that better." "I'll go higher here, and we were just battling." "These guys just so happened to be, you know, the two brothers who had pretty much the biggest distributorship in Australia." "We had no idea who they were, either." "Lucky we didn't get lippy to them, eh?" "So if you were starting off in the beginning to learn skateboarding, is the book going to help you?" "For sure." "It also has a, um, how to do section in it." "Well, Stephen and Peter Hill approached us at the ramp and said," ""Hey, do you guys wanna come into Hardcore?"" "Which is now known as Globe." ""We'll give you some product and stuff."" "Like, I was expecting a T-shirt." "And we walked out of Hardcore that day with so much shit." "Like, I was just blown away." "And from that day on we were hooked up with the Hill brothers and Hardcore." "Me and Ben, we got sponsored." "We couldn't exactly quite do things yet, but they thought we were going to be good." "Hi, Jerry Sont here and welcome to Melbourne's Festival Hall where tonight, skaters from all over the world, including USA's number one Christian Hosoi and Sweden's Tony Magnusson, will compete against Australia's best." "My wheels are way more new than his." " Better trucks." "They're way stronger." " We have got the ultimate trucks." "The drawings are so shit." " It's independent..." " Grip tape." "Grip tape really..." "Independent is where it's at." "1989 Ramp Ride." "They wanted us to go on it and I told my dad, I'm like, "Dad, we gotta go."" "Me and Ben are like, "Yeah, you gotta let us go," ""to go on tour around Australia."" "Someone from Hardcore spoke to our parents, and the next thing you know we're in the team van." "And then we're touring around Australia seeing all this mayhem go down." "We were staying in the hotel with 30-year-olds partying out of control." "We live to skate 100% of the time." "When we travel, we skate." "When we're at home, we skate." "The skating shouldn't be organized." "It's like trying to, you know..." "It's like trying to chain, you know, a wild animal." "You know, it shouldn't be done." "And they're all just coke, drinking maniacs with all these chicks." "And naturally, that's what me and Ben saw as young, young kids." "And we were like, "This is what skating's about."" "And you're, like, young and going, "Yeah, these pros are cool."" ""I want to be a pro skater." "What's that white shit they're sniffing?" ""Oh, It makes you skate better?" "Hmm." "Get me tons of that."" "You know, like, you'll do it." "So, that was our first taste of pro skateboarding." "I got into video just because so much stuff was happening at Prahran." "It was just really entertaining to actually watch peoples' reactions to themselves on video." "Why are you filming all the time?" "Apart from the skating, we were just hanging out, doing what your regular boys would do at that age." "Oh, look at that little baby." "Mmm." "She's just asking for a root." "Mmm." "Lana, want to fuck?" "No, don't say that." "Buzz'll root ya." "I'm just asking for Buzz." "He hasn't got the guts to." "And at the same time, I could see Tas and Ben were getting really good." "They were improving, like, really quickly." "Just go for it." "They were doing new tricks that, in some respects, were better than some of the pros who were in the American videos." " Shut up while I'm trying to skate." " All right, fair enough." "Tas was an in-your-face kind of guy and his skating was the same." "He'd just go for it." "Always put together the hardest stuff back to back." "And if he slammed, he slammed." "You know, if he couldn't make a trick, it was like" ""Look out heads, here's a board coming."" "Fuck me dead!" "Fucking hell!" "Fuckin' hell!" "...want to fuck?" "No, don't say that." "Buzz'll root ya." "I'm just asking for Buzz." "He hasn't got the guts to." "Ben, so on that session we just watched there, what's your outcome, your response?" "Oh, well, nothing." "Ben was always different to Tas." "Maybe because he was the younger brother." "He was quite laid-back." "And he was just a bit more open-minded." "It was weak." "At the time, there was a big boom in street skating." "It had its own energy, it had its own language." "It was a new generation of kids taking all the old tricks and adding kickflips to create a whole new dynamic form of skating." "Ben would come along and skate street with us, and actually try these street tricks on the vertical, which was just unheard of." "Ben Pappas." " Kick Indy revert." " Yep, do it." " After a heelflip?" " No, try the varial." "You're so fucking close to the varial." "The thing that was really amazing about Ben was he was just, like, completely natural." "If you thought anything, he would do it." " Foot kickflip." " Oh, you'll never do it." " All right, watch me." " You're dreaming." "Obviously, it'd take time, but he would actually do it." "And then do it all the time, really easily, and that's when all that sort of vert and street mix was coming to power I guess you could say." "Wonder where Sean's gone, eh?" "He liked the quote, "He's my brother."" "The movie Platoon, that was the war between Elias and Barnes." "And he'd say like, we skated like Barnes and Elias." "Like, Elias was more free flowing and stoned and because Barnes was like," ""If the machine breaks down, we break down."" "You know, he just gets hammered and just makes things happen, and that's how Ben reckons I skated." "Like, I'd roll in and try to do everything and land it or die." "And he'd call it "Barnesing it."" "And Ben was more flick perfect, and he was more the Elias, 'cause he tried to be more understanding." "We did everything together." "We were inseparable." " You filming?" " Yeah." "The scene was really sort of dead in Australia at that point." "Just feed it, don't hurt it." "But it sort of brought us closer together." "It's trying to attack me!" "And Tas and Ben both knew how to have a fun time." "Come on." "I'm recording." "Hang on." " Did it work?" " No." "They just got a big fart in the eye." " Did it work?" " No." " Got it, mongol?" " Fucking wait." "Tas always had something new up his sleeve, you know." "If it was causing mischief, he definitely wouldn't hold back." "Hold it upside down till the plastic starts burning." "The bomb is going to go off!" "Little bogans, I suppose." "That's what we did." "We were always looking for a rush, trying to have fun." " Move." " Fuck off!" " Get away from it!" " You're a fucking goober." " Get away from it!" " Fucking don't hit me, ya fucking idiot." "You're a cunt, Tas." "Fuck you, mongol." "What kid doesn't have fun blowing up lighters, or smashing things or finding a stolen car in a paddock and smashing all the windows in it and setting it on fire?" "What little kid didn't enjoy that stuff?" "That's what everyone does, don't they?" "Didn't they?" "Why are you here?" " I'm doing a demo." " And what do you think of the demo so far?" " It sucks." " Why?" " Shit ramp." " Is there any good-looking chicks out there?" "Oh..." "Most of them are lizards." "I suppose if you're free." "How could you sum Sydney up with one word?" "Fucked." "It went sort of slack for a bit." "Not much skating went down." "And then that was when I made up my mind." "I was 16." "Worked for a year and a half, saved up my money, jumped on a plane, vowing to myself, "I have to go there and I have to beat Hawk."" "Hello and welcome to the Skate Park of Tampa." "I'll be your tour guide." "My name's Bill." "Welcome to the pro shop." "We just refinished it." "You've got Brett over here, he gives instructions." "Park employee and the Sandman." "The first time I met Tas was in Tampa, Florida." "They had a vert ramp in a warehouse where lots of people from all over the world would show up." "It was not only a great place to skate, but it was a really fun place to party, and it was just kind of like a cool environment." "We lived in the skate park, behind the ramp." "There was, like, the skate park and then there was like an office building type thing inside the warehouse." "And we lived directly under the ramp in the Charlie Brown room." "It was painted yellow with a black zigzag all the way around the room." "Trippy room." "Gave you really weird dreams in there." "He was a kid." "I don't even know how you'd gather the kind of money it takes to get a plane ticket from Australia to fly all the way to the US, with nowhere to stay in sight trying to chase a dream that, you know, doesn't seem very realistic." "You get here and if you're the new vert skater from Australia that shows up, nobody cares." "Tas came over here and his skating was what put him on the map, period." "It was, like, undeniable." "The level of skating there was mad." "Everyone was just going off at the time, just bloody filming constantly." "Everyone's there every day." "Welcome to the pool room." "Hi, strangers." "Hi, clowns." "What do you know?" "It was full blown mayhem." "It was crazy, man." "A lot of acid taking going down." "You get sheets, mini sheets of acid, and I'd just have acid all the time." "Madness and mayhem." "I filmed my whole part." "All my tricks in the "Mad Circle Let The Horns Blow" I was on acid." "And I got Video Part of the Year." "When I'd get on the acid, it was like everything just felt like I was moving well." "You know that Da Vinci painting where the guy is like this and like this and it's in the circle and there's all the numbers?" "I started feeling like him." "I always wanted to be able to do everything in a line at the end." "I just thought the best thing is I can imagine all these mad, single tricks these guys have filmed, and then everyone thinks that's your video part done, and then at the end of your part, be able to do it all in one line." "The "Mad Circle" video really put him on the map." "Because he was certainly the next guy that was changing what you thought was possible or how it was done on vert." "There is one line that stood out that was like all the hardest tricks that no one had really ever seen, but put into one line." "And..." "Rumor has it that that line was done on mushrooms as well, so it made it that much more iconic." "In that period when Tas was in the States," "Ben was preparing himself to be a world-class skater." "Whoo-hoo!" "Oh, my God!" "That was so huge!" "You guys are fucked!" "He was filming all the time with me, hanging out, having fun, but also trying to do the best he could to prepare himself to go to America." "Start again." "Bunch of slack-jaw faggots around here." "This stuff'll make you into a goddamn Tyrannosaurus, just like me." "I was 16, finished year ten and went to the States." "My brother was already over there 'cause he finished school 'cause he was two years older than me, so he was already in Tampa, Florida." "So I flew over to Tampa, met Tas there." "Ben blew straight onto the scene like his brother." " What's your name?" " Ben Pappas." " Where are you from?" " Australia." " How old are you?" " Sixteen." "And these guys were putting such a heavy hit on vert skating that it was just, like, unbelievable." "Me and my brother and this guy Bo Turner, we would go to the skate park to go skate." "And then seeing these dudes skate the vert ramp like no one else I've ever seen skate the vert ramp." "Like, out of nowhere, like who the fuck are these guys?" "Like, "Oh, it's the Pappas brothers from Australia."" "Both those guys were," ""I'm going to fucking make this trick, I don't give a shit."" "That was the mentality." "When they were on it, it was like," ""Dude, stand back and fucking watch some really, really good skateboarding."" "Got onto the comp circuit." "Being an outsider from another country, it was hard." "To come up you've gotta start doing stuff that's just obviously light years ahead or way harder combos which no one's even bothering to do." "Tas went from a guy that was living in the skate park at Tampa to a guy that started to pick up, like, a bunch of really good sponsors." "Ben as well during that had really stepped into that arena just like, you know, Tas." "Like, they were both so fucking gnarly." "It took Ben a bit to get used to the pressure of the world stage." "But once he did, he just started killing it." "I never thought about the money." "I was just enjoying going on tour and chicks and new best friends in every city." "You know, it was fun." "Tas Pappas, ready to go." " He's a feisty one." " He's a feisty one." "As the comp circuit went on, I started realizing how weird it was getting." "Tony Hawk." "All of a sudden it's ESPN and you got your Hawks playing it up to the camera and really going, like, full mainstream, Brady Bunch type stuff." "It is skateboard vert and it is Tony Hawk's turn." "Can I go?" "Like, some X Games it was like, "X Games welcomes Tony Hawk."" "Like, he was fully in there at ESPN." "I think he married a chick from ESPN, and it was like he owned it." "He's a pretty smart businessman, I'd give him that." "Tony Hawk." "One of the greatest ever in this sport." "He's got his own skateboard company, he's into videos." "He even took a stab at directing in our ESPN truck." "Hey, I just have a question." "I thought, yeah, what is this?" "This isn't us." "Skate boarding is about individuality and they were taking that away." "Whoa!" "Nice!" "Is he going for something new?" "Some of the stuff I saw, I remember just shaking my head, just going, "Wow." ""Is this what skating has turned into?"" "We've seen that he can fly high." "And here he goes scooting across there." "He's in the water!" "Hawk takes a swim and the crowd love that." "If you want to be a pro racer, where do you go?" "Indianapolis 500." "You want to be an actor, you go to Hollywood." "You want to be a model, go to fucking New York." "You want to be a pro skateboarder, you come to San Diego." "I moved to California in '95 and ended up living with Danny Way and then those guys came out." "As soon as me and Ben moved to San Diego we felt at home." "You went all the way." "Should go all the way forwards." "Then when Danny and Colin invited me and Ben to go skate the Plan B ramp with them, we were just psyched." "Yeah!" "It was just like hanging with the boys." "There was no fakeness going on, you know." "Cocky bastard." "They were skating with their hero, Danny." "The level went up huge." "It was like, "Holy fuck, dude, did you see that?"" "Those guys fed off each other." "They were fucking competitive." "Tas would be saying shit to Danny and they'd get into arguments and like, "Fuck, I can't wait to see the skateboarding go down," and it went down." "You trick thief." "Jake's been trying that." "And then those guys ended up living at the house and that was quite a, you know..." "I don't know what to say." "I mean, that was another mayhem living at Danny's house." "It was just party time again." "Me and Ben are chopping coke non-stop, skating, partying." "It was just..." "You couldn't escape it in those days, you know what I mean?" "The first time me and Tas sat down, he took my brand new bag of weed and I look over and he is chopping it all up with the cigarettes, you know, and to me that was like, you know, like disrespect." "I was a little pissed, like, "That's my fucking weed." ""It's my brand new bag of weed."" "And he's chopping it up, making himself a mole." "You know he was like, "It's a fucking mole, mate."" "You know, chopping it up." "I don't really think it was something he tried to do." "I just think it was just..." "He was just a natural asshole." "At the time, me and Danny were starting a skateboard company called Platinum Skateboards and we wanted Tas and Ben to be on the team." "So you know, we started talking to them and it was just on." "Platinum was a bloody dream team." "It was a sick bloody team." "Chet Thomas came on board with us." "Henry Sanchez." "But the big draw card was me and Ben were together." "Tas and Ben were acquaintances until I got on XYZ Platinum." "And from that point, we got pretty close." "It opened up a different side, for me anyways, 'cause I was a street skater." "And just seeing those guys, like, skating vert just going crazy, living the rock star lifestyle, is just pretty awesome." "And you kind of appreciate it as a street skater, 'cause you don't get that rock star status that the vert guys get." "You know, they do a couple of big twists and come off the ramp and literally girls are, like, surrounded." "Ben wasn't so much like that, but Tas just indulged in that lifestyle, you know." "They both rode for this new company." "There was all this huge hype surrounding them." "They had this really cool apartment just steps away from the beach." "Tas' dad had come over and started living with them, so that was really cool." "And then the contest season started to pick up in the vert world and there were some big contests." "Tas and Ben, they just killed all the contests, you know." "They were powerhouses, man." "They come from Australia and they just had that Australian attitude, you know, of not giving a shit." "From Melbourne, Australia, Tas Pappas." "There was a bit of push and pull all year between me, Ben and Hawk." "Tas Pappas, opening a door." "I just remember going to each comp and we'd be doing, like, the latest tricks." "Tas really had a good run." "And Hawk was still just doing his normal stuff." "He wasn't flipping his board or any of that stuff, and he'd be winning the comp still." "We were a bit mind boggled." "And the judges scored a 90." "That means we are deadlocked and we will have a run-off for the championship." "He's an amazing skater." "I don't particularly like his style." "He just wasn't doing the latest moves, and it's a bit hard to cop at times, you know." "Oh, incredible." "Outstanding run by Ben." "Then all of a sudden, Ben went off." "I think he got three firsts in a row or something." "Just on this roll at one point." "Oh, my goodness!" "Ben Pappas is the best skateboarder in the world right now." " You've got to be stoked." " I'm stoked ass." "It was like, "He beat me again."" "And then I'd beat him and he's like, "Next comp."" "Like, brotherly push." "It's always been like that since day one." "Another fakie into a 720." "Holy cow!" "And it got to a point, we weren't even thinking about anyone else." "Hawk wasn't in there." "It was just about pushing each other further and further." "We've been entering contests ever since we were kids, like, it's all the same when it comes down to it, it's just a contest." "You are there, you've got to do your best." "I was told on the day that," ""You and Ben are like one point apart for number one in the world."" "Ben just had to place higher and he would have had it." "The crowd, are you guys ready?" "1996, Hard Rock Cafe, Vans World Championships." "Jam format right here." "Tony Hawk is banging trick after trick." "Not a lot of skateboarders are able to do what he is doing." "Hawk did his normal run, which is a good run, but it wasn't, like, great." "Although he does do a lot of tricks, the level of intensity wasn't quite as high as some of the other skaters." "Ben Pappas dropping in." "Dropping straight into a huge kickflip indie." "Winner of three previous events coming into this contest." "It was a long hard season and Ben had a tweaked lower back, so he was struggling." "So, I decided it was up to me." "And I figured I just had to Barnes it and Barnesed it is what I did." "So close for Tas Pappas right now." "He's our number one qualifier." "Hawk was a very smart competition skater." "He's a chess master on a skateboard as far as a comp run is concerned." "But I wasn't interested in that." "I did my stuff and I slammed on a 720 and slid out and went bang!" "I knew straight away I had broken my rib, but it didn't matter 'cause I'd already done my best run, so I didn't think I had to skate again." "Was that enough to beat Tony Hawk?" "What do you think?" "What do you think?" "That is a dead tie, so we are headed for a run-off with Tony Hawk and Tas Pappas." "I didn't believe it." "I was saying, "Oh, my God!" "What more can I do?"" "I remember Ben going off to the judges." ""How the hell is it a head-to-head?" "He did kickflips ten foot high."" "Now I've got to try again?" "And it was even harder in the head-to-head because he'd just be going, 540, 540, 540, 540, air fakie, 720, 540, 540, grind, grind, grind." "You know what I mean?" "Well, in situations like this, you always have to favor the veteran in the sport." "He's been here before." "Tony just doesn't fault." "Tony dropped in and he did his run and did every single trick that he was pretty much doing that day." "And I thought he had it in the bag." "I thought, "Yeah, Tony has definitely got it."" "I was on top of the roll in and I am like," ""What have I got to lose now?"" "My rib's already broken, so I may as well just go for it." "If I didn't win," "I just wanted to be known as the guy who went completely ballistic." "Look at that!" "He's going giant." "Oh, my goodness!" "Oh, my God!" "Fakie 540 to fakie." "One of the hardest tricks you can do." "Oh!" "That was amazing!" "It's going to be a tough call for the judges." "Was that enough to beat Tony Hawk?" "What do you think?" "Yeah!" "Well, it's kind of deja vu." "In Las Vegas, Tony Hawk and Tas Pappas went head-to-head for a final." "They did it again today as you saw and I'm going to tell him for the first time." "Tas, you are the champion!" "I don't know if you know that, but you won the contest." " Did I?" "No." " You won the contest." " Are you serious?" " Yes, you did." "Nah." "Well, kind of an unbelievable reaction, because I know Tas..." "I just didn't believe it." "I thought they were just taking the piss." "And then after that I was like, "No way!"" "Are you pretty stoked right now?" "What are you thinking right now?" " You're in disbelief." " I don't believe you." "It felt sick." "You are at the top." "You're on the best teams, you're affiliated with the best guys, winning comps." "That was the goal, to be there, to do that." "It was bloody amazing really." "When they called it, it was just like, "Holy shit."" "Yeah, that was amazing." "I'll never forget the day." "I was just blown away." "Afterwards, Hawk was, you know, he was sort of angry and cut." "And he came up and he looked at me, he's like," ""I just feel like I should have won that."" "And then Ben's just come out going, "Fuck off, Hawk." ""All year they've been giving you the comps" ""and you come to us, 'I think I should have won.'"" "And Ben goes," ""Why can't you just be happy for someone else who has done it, man?" ""You don't flip your board."" "He goes, "Fuck off old man, you're over."" "Then because Ben went to bat for me so hard," "I was thinking, "Do I do the right thing here and be, 'No, no, no, Ben'?"" "I couldn't leave Ben with it and have Hawk hate Ben's guts and not hate my guts at the same time." "I was like, "Well, if my brother's going off for me this hard," ""I'm not going to have him look like the only dick." ""I'll be a dick with him."" ""Yeah, fuck off, Hawk, you fucking wanker." ""You can't even flip your board, you old prick!"" "And that's one of the things that led to our feud." "Tas did a really good job at burning bridges." "You know, um..." "He thoroughly would burn down the bridge, you know." "It wasn't like he stepped on someone's toes and then kind of worked it out with them or anything." "He would step on your toes, spit in your face and fuck you." "No, it's not New York." "It's Melbourne's Prahran skate ramp where the Pappas brothers have come home to a hero's welcome." "I've had tapes from when they were younger and they weren't as good and now they've just, like, reached the top and they're just, like, the best now." "They've got the technique, everything, style." "Whatever it takes, they've got it and they did it." "Tas Pappas and his younger brother Ben are now the world's number one and two ranked skateboarders." "I just did it to pass time, and then it just started working out for the better." "I couldn't believe it myself, you know." "I thought they would probably get in the top ten or top five, you know." "But I'd never expected them to take it that far." "I am a professional athlete." "I'm about to do an interview." "We went back home to celebrate." "We were just on such a high, we just didn't want the party to end." "So everywhere we went, we had a few casual little lines of coke, which turned into three weeks at a time." "Yeah, it was party time." "Come in, James, are you there?" "Tas Pappas, everyone." "Give him a round of applause." "Tas?" "Can I just ask Tas a question?" "You are world champion, you won the $10,000 prize also recently up against Tony Hawk, and you did it with a broken rib." "How did that happen?" "Oh, no, that was just in my final run." "I slammed and smacked my ribs." "I was watching TV and Hey Hey It's Saturday came on, and I saw Ben and Tas and I went, "Oh, my God."" "They were completely bonkers." "This is Tas' brother, Ben." "They were just all pumped up, egos were flying and high as fuck." "Good fun having your brother on the world circuit with you?" "Yeah, I'm stoked to have Tas on the world tour." "It's rad." "You know, you just get to cruise around, skate." "Yeah, I think he likes it too, yeah." "There's kind of a new lingo thing going on here." "Listen, well, thank the boys for showing us what they can do." "We're proud to have the number one and number two in the world." "Yeah, these guys rock." "Whoa!" "Heavy slam!" "Tas." " Hey Tas." " What's in your mouth?" "I just ate it." "I was training with Danny's trainer." "I just was feeling pain and he did a full check on my body." "X-rayed everything and then it turned out I had spondylolisthesis." "Spondylolisthesis is where the vertebrae breaks off the wings." "My spinal cord was jammed down the bottom." "And he told Danny," ""Don't force Tas to skate, he'll end up, you know, paralyzed."" "And he told him like, "He needs some time to get strong."" "We ended up paying him ten grand to do my physio." " You want a Jack and coke?" " Yeah." "When I get injured, I just go party." "You know, I'm not going to sit at home doing this and that, I just get on it." "What are you going to do when you're young, you've been on top of the world, you've got major injury, you're thinking this and that?" "Well you're going to party, aren't ya?" "Once you've already got a habit why are you going to stop?" "You got money, you got this." "You think it is never going to end." "Gone from nothing and then making money when you're that young." "And you're in a foreign land, like, it's got to be weird." "Like all of a sudden you can do shit." "When those guys started making a lot of money, they got a nice house and they were cruising around." "They were having a good fucking time for a while." "You know, everything was great." "But then, fucking doing drugs and stuff, that definitely fucks you up." "I'd always have, like, tons of coke on me." "I had a pound of coke at one time, just sitting in my dresser." "I didn't even think if I got caught I'd get a bunch of time." "I remember waking up in the mornings and I just had a big brick of the shit and I'd had a mad knife in my top dresser and I'd wake up, and it was sharp as," "I'd just scrape the top of the brick." "And then straight off the knife." "And just have it just sitting there at all times." "And Lee Ralph came over and I'd just break off a brick, a good chunk and do it till it was gone." "I just liked to buy in bulk back in those days." "Those fucking guys went nuts." "Going over to their house to pick up Tas to go film with him one night and he's doing coke." "There was a mound of it." "It looked like Scarface." "I mean it was like a mound of cocaine." "Like, "Hey, Lance, fucking, you want to do some?"" "I'm like, "All right."" "He'd bring some along with him, and we're driving to the Plan B ramp and we get pulled over by the cops." "Get out of the car." "And I'm like, "Oh, shit, dude." And I know he's got it with him." "They went, "What are you guys doing?" We're like, "We're about to go skate a ramp."" "The cop's like, "Yeah, right."" "And I'm like, "Look there's a skateboard and all the pads and everything."" "I'm like, "You want to watch?"" "We got away with that one and I'm like, "Fuck man, we almost got busted for that."" "That's when I was like, "Man, you've got to stop doing that shit."" "Let me film all this shit." "I'll fucking film it." "There was definitely more partying that went on than skateboarding and Tas became, like, impossible to deal with." "You fucking rule, mate." "Hey, I'm the same as you guys." " We all skate." "We skate." " Right on." "Yeah." "I'm just the same as you fucks, you know." "If I was..." "It could be called fucking..." "The fact of the matter is, it's the skaters, for the skaters and fucking Platinum is for the skaters." "You guys rule." "The Vegas contest we all went out to," "I remember Tas getting so wasted and so belligerent, he didn't even skate the contest." "XYZ!" "XYZ!" " Who rules?" "Who rules?" " XYZ!" "He went up on top of the platform and we had, like, a box of XYZ stuff that he was throwing out to the crowd during a contest run." "The main chick that ran the whole contest tried to, like, stop him." "He called her a cunt, told her to fuck off, you know." "It got the crowd, like, away from the contest, you know, chanting." " XYZ!" " One more." " Louder." " XYZ!" "He disrupted the whole event." "And you know, at the time he was so drunk," "I don't think he saw really what he was doing." "He was just stoked on the energy that he was creating." "XYZ!" "Everywhere Tas went was like a fucking tornado, man." "He just truly didn't give a shit." "XYZ!" "Platinum or I'll fuck your mom." "I'll fuck your mom." "Tommy's like, "Why aren't you skating?"" "I think he was starting to confuse the issue with my partying, as to just not wanting to skate." "And that's when the downfall started." "Right there was when it started to go sour." "We just had good times, drank a lot and smoked a lot of weed and just partied." "Had a good time." "Me, Ben and Sanchez were always smoking bongs, doing snow cones, smoking coke." "We thought that the money was never going to stop because I was number one in the world and Danny Way had his name and we were just killing it and we were rock stars." " That was fucking insane." " I almost thought I was going to get burned." "I thought this house was going up in flames, right?" "When you start making a lot of money, a lot of shit comes along with that." "People get ego driven and greedy." "You get a shitload of people that pretend to be your friend just to get stuff out of you and especially if money's involved." "I mean, shit can get pretty messy." "Oh, my God." "There was really no direction in the company." "How you survive as a skateboarder is, basically, you get a good team and you film a video and you make good products." "It's that simple." "But there was no direction at all." "I mean, Danny would send me to San Diego to skate and film, and I would skate vert." "I'm a street skater." "So, you know, nothing was very organized at all." "It seemed like XYZ all of a sudden, which was part of Platinum, they had built this huge ramp." "One of the first really big ramps at this warehouse." "So now these guys, they had this really, like, gnarly practice facility or vert ramp to themselves." "Everyone was like, "What?"" "You know, you'd never seen anything like that." "Danny and Tommy never listened to budgets, and then the investor's like," ""What's going on with the money from XYZ?"" "It was just dwindling away." "And I couldn't skate because of the back, but I was still blinded by the light, sniffing the lines of coke from hell." "Just like, "Yeah, whatever, I'm the best, whoo-hoo."" "I disagreed with the money spending thing." "I thought it was stupid." "Fucking buying dumb shit, and I'm just like, "We don't need that." ""We're a young company."" "And it felt like they expected me to be like, "Fuck, let's just go for it."" "Like, "No."" "You need to put the money back into the company." "Don't start buying fucking vans and stupid shit we don't need and partying and, ugh..." "I just wanted to make it in skateboarding and that's why I got out of it." "They came and picked me up, took me for a drive and Danny and Tommy were in the car." "And they said, "Listen, um, we're going to have to let you go." ""Platinum is no more."" "And they said, "There's just no more money." And, um..." ""Yeah, we hate to break it to you," ""but your dad, you know, he embezzled the money." ""He took the money and there's just no more money."" "And I went, "What?"" "I was in the car and I remember going, "You're fucking kidding." ""My dad wouldn't take money." "What are you talking about?"" "They fully tried to say my dad stole all the money from the company, and then it got out in the industry that that's what was said about my dad and I wasn't having that." "Kicking him off the team wasn't easy." "It was like, I had to deal with this guy and it would now turn into, like, a little personal war." "I felt at the time, you know," "I've put a lot into him, I helped him out as much as I could and he thoroughly, um..." "I felt, fucked us over." "I had a lot of resentment and a lot of frustration and anger towards him where, you know, I wanted to fuck him up." "We were sitting at our house one night." " Next thing, you know, we hear..." " On my roof." "I go outside and it's a fucking beer bottle with a sock on fire and full of petrol." "Lucky it didn't break." "We heard fast footsteps and it sounded like little legs, and Tommy's got little legs." "He tried to petrol bomb the house." "And I thought, "Fuck, this guy is off tap."" "You know, I did things on my end to let him know that," ""I wanted you fucking out of here, man." ""Like, we helped you get here and you can leave now."" "Hey." "Hey, drop in off that and go right here, okay?" " Okay." " Okay, mate?" "XYZ." "Platinum." "Both had kind of fallen apart." "And then sort of quickly, from everyone being this sort of, like, Band of Brothers mentality there seemed to be this huge falling out between, like, Tas and Danny." "That all of a sudden it was like cut ties and Tas and Ben were not even allowed to skate the ramp anymore." "It turned kind of ugly really fast." "I started thinking, this is crap." "Is this really what skateboarding's all about?" "Just backstabbing bullshit over money." "Like, I hated it and Ben hated it." "We'd be talking and Ben says," ""You know, I can't handle the fakeness over here."" "So he decided to go home for a while." "We dropped Ben off at LAX." "So I slept in, and then I woke up to the phone ringing, and it was Ben at Melbourne Airport." "And all I heard Ben say was, "Tas, I fucked up."" "Ben Pappas was arrested at Melbourne Airport after his credit card triggered a high cocaine reading." "X-rays of his sneakers revealed 103 grams of cocaine with a street value of more than $50,000, concealed in the sole." "Ben Pappas and his brother Tas are youth sensations, idolized in the United States where skaters rub shoulders with rock stars." "The pair is ranked one and two in the world, but such heights are now likely to elude Ben Pappas, after he was caught smuggling cocaine into Melbourne." "As imports go, it was only a small amount, just over 100 grams for his own personal use." "But importing the drug is punishable by a hefty fine or, at worst, a term in prison." "Whatever happens to him it's almost certain that Ben Pappas will never be allowed back into the United States to compete." "That was just bloody the most shattering phone call, because I knew Ben couldn't come back." "And that shattered me." "Like, I cried and" "I just couldn't believe it." "Picked up the paper and it was just Ben Pappas just, like, busted at Melbourne Airport for cocaine in his shoe." "And you just thought like, "What the fuck are you doing?"" "Like, "You're blowing it."" "My jaw pretty much dropped." "I thought he was in the motivation to become number one." "I didn't think it was like Ben to do that, you know, like bring it over." "You know, I used to get along with Ben back in the day, so, you know, I kind of really felt for him, you know, at the time." "And you know, I wanted to see him get through it." "Being pro skaters who are traveling a lot, people always propositioned each other." ""Imagine we just brought it from here because it's so much cheaper."" "But you know not to run them across borders." "It's just, the payoff is not big enough." "Does it mean the end of competition?" "It beat him up big time." "He just had a lot of regret." "He used to say to me, "Fuck, you know if only I left my shoes on the plane."" "He couldn't go overseas, he couldn't travel and make a living from it." "So for him, that was a huge wake-up call, man." "Coming from second in the world to, like, rock bottom, that's it." "That would be like a spear through the heart pretty much." "I was shattered." "My partner in crime has gone." "I'm going to be touring the world alone now." "Any country I go in, no one's really got my back anymore." "It was me and Ben against the world, and now it's only me." " What are you guys up to?" " Nothing." "We're just looking around for pro skaters." "Hello." "Can you sign right here?" " What's your name?" " Gabe." "I was living with Tas at the time when Ben got caught." "And I remember everyone was kind of devastated." "Switch." "Ollie." "Do it." "This is it." "I started filming him a lot, and that's when he started doing the 900 and he was so close." "Oh..." "Fuck off!" "After Ben got busted I was thinking, "Right it's time to knuckle down."" "Try to kick the doors open again for me and Ben like I did when I first came to the States." "And if I nailed a nine that could lead me to money, which could help get my brother back." "Tas, do a 900!" "The 900 was something that had never been done before and was very scary." "A 540 is one and a half spins." "But for the 900 you go up, you do a 540 and another 360." "Bang!" "He was so close landing them, almost making it." "And we had a couple of people from TransWorld magazine come and shoot sequences of Tas." "Yeah, he's going to do it, Grant." "You wanna bet a hundred?" "Grant Brittain, he's an old school photographer who works for TransWorld who has shot Hawk for years." "He shot all his photos." "They've been mates for years." "I just thought, "Oh, yeah, sick, Grant is being cool again."" "Whoa!" "You gotta give him the free run." " Yeah, what?" " Get him over there when he's hyping up." "Oh!" "He almost made it." "He was, like, way high, way high in the air and just, like, almost making 'em." "It was pretty." "It was like a legit 900." "He heard that everyone at TransWorld, it seemed like Hawk and everyone was going to look at his sequences." "Hawk, man, everyone went and studied his work." "I was just about there and I was thinking it was on and then I was thinking, "That's it, I'll do it at the '99X Games."" "From Melbourne, Australia, mate, it's Tas Pappas." "Chris, just from watching him in practice after being gone from pro skating for a little while, the man is on a mission." "This guy's just been going off all day today and all day yesterday in practice." "He's on fire, man." "He has so much confidence going right now, I want to see the 900." "Phenomenal." "I think he's going to save that, maybe for the best trick contest if he's in it." "Tas and Bill were just super psyched because there was a best trick contest." "But for some reason, they didn't let Tas skate." "I've done the comp, this and that." "I've been doing all right and Don Bostick's like," ""Oh, you're not in the best trick comp this year, Tas."" "And I went, "What do you mean?"" "I've been in every best trick comp all year for the last few years." "Why just out of nowhere just this one?" "They said, "Oh, yeah, you're not in it."" "I said, "Well who is in it?"" "Tony Hawk." "Tony Hawk." "It's the 900." "You guys wanna see it done?" "And then the best trick comp started and I saw Hawk trying nines." "And I was just like, "No way!"" "900!" "900!" "900!" "Tas was devastated." "Because that was it." "If he would have entered that contest, he would have did it, because he's that kind of skater." "Everybody touch him." "Here we go!" "I thought, "What a weasel maneuver." ""At least give me a chance," you know." "He probably would have beaten me to it, but at least I could have had a shot-for-shot for it." "You know what I mean?" "When Tony Hawk did the 900 I was there, I witnessed it." "You know what?" "I didn't think it was all that impressive compared to what I saw Tas doing." "I know he would have at least tried it." "I don't know if he would have nailed it, but he would have tried it." "And it would have made" "Tony Hawk's 900 less impressive." "If it weren't for you people I would never have made that." "Thank you." "Thank you." "This is the best day of my life." "I swear to God." "I realized right then and there who I was up against." "It didn't matter how good I was or how close I was getting to something." "It was just, "Stuff you." "Piss off home, Aussie."" "Oh..." "Fuck you!" "Bring a beer, ya cunts!" "I hadn't seen Ben for two years after he got busted." "He'd just disappeared again." "But then I saw him in the city just off chance, and he was completely a different person, like, stacked on the kilos." "Just mega overweight." "You filming again?" "He was just doing a lot of drugs and playing music, but just trying..." "He just totally did not skate." "He reckons he didn't skate for about a year, a year and a half and just was totally removed from it." "But he was really unhappy and just really down on himself." "It's easy to get sucked into doing drugs, partying and shit like that, but in the end it brings you nothing but bullshit." "Basically, it taught me, well, you reap what you sow." "If you do good things, good things are going to happen to you." "Pretty much karma." "He was on anti-depressants." "He would get depressed." "And he gained a lot of weight." "At the time, like, I'd put on the kilos as well." "I was on some anti-depressants myself." "You know, everyone used to see us and see, like, two fat people and you know, we're trying to skate the new Globe ramp." "Hey, Dom!" "Has it stopped raining?" "Yeah?" "At that time, I kind of felt that I'd caught up with a good friend again." "He needed somewhere to stay, so I said, "Yeah, you're in."" "And having him around was good." "All right, this is it." "Like this one." "Whoa!" "So, Dommy, tell us the vibe." "It's not looking too bad." "We're just going to go to the ramp now, see if it's all right to skate." "Maybe throw down a few tricks, yeah, mate." "Top one." " Back off with the camera." " Yeah!" "Started skating together all the time, just hanging out, going out to bars and stuff." "Having a good time and skating a lot." "He was basically coming back to who he was 'cause he'd been on that sort of arrogant high thing." "He realized, you know, "That's not who I am,"" "and just went back to being Ben." "She's got side burns." "Fucking hell." "Professional skateboarder Tony Hawk is known worldwide as an innovator in the sport." "I'd met this young chick, Colleen." "She was just sort of a friend of the family and we hit it off." "She was responsible and didn't party, all the traits that I wanted because I'd had my drug problems." "I kept that hidden from her, but she inspired me to really get my act together." "Within a year she was pregnant and we had Kaia." "Once I had Kaia, it just made me start to think, "Right, time to get serious."" "So I'd sort of grown up a bit, and once you've had a kid you start to realize, "Hang on a second here." ""I'll do whatever it takes to feed my kid."" "Ramp it up, ramp it up, ramp it up!" "The Vert Doubles Final at the First Union Center's out of control." "Crowd peaking for Bob and Bucky, giving Tony and Andy a run for their money." "By then, the mainstream scene that had blacklisted me had changed completely." "It had fully turned into show business." "And of course, ESPN and the X Games ran the whole show." "Oh, the crowd loves that one." "They are showstoppers this team Boom Boom." "You know, and I thought it was bad in the '90s." "Erin Hawk." "Those guys won." "You win." "Even Danny was getting in on it, jumping the Great Wall of China on his mega ramp." "And it didn't take long for the X Games to cotton on to that one either." "Of course, they said it was a way to attract a new generation to skateboarding." "I mean, to me it just looks like it's only something the privileged can do." "You know what sucks, is that whole X Games shit." "When I found out how much money those assholes were fucking..." "Assholes, the X Games were making." "Take a fucking shit!" "You guys fucking can fuck off." "How much they fucking scoop off of fucking skateboarding." "Suck it." "But even though I was shut out by the scene by the two main vert camps," "I found a way to support my family through skateboarding." "All right Tas Pappas sets up for the 180." "There we go." "All the pros were doing X Games." "But then I just heard that there was another comp circuit." "You get paid 250 a day for a half an hour demo." "You're gone for a couple of weeks out of the month." "So I started thinking," ""Right, I'll pull my head in, I won't be a prick anymore,"" "stuck to myself and skated." "Tas Pappas." "You'd better recognize!" "This guy will put you in a headlock if you don't shut up." " Yeah, like this." " Ahhh!" "What?" "Ben liked to keep everything to himself, you know." "Like, he met this girl Lynette and he started seeing her and he didn't tell me anything." "It was odd actually." "He was never actually honest in saying, you know, "This is who I am seeing."" "She just used to rock up at the ramp." "She was just this little, small, flesh and bone." "She was really skinny." "She never said a word to me." "One time we went to a pub around the corner from Prahran." "But she just popped up and just sat down next to him." "And I was like, "Whoa, this is really bizarre."" "That's the first time I knew they had a connection, and he was actually really embarrassed by it." "You could tell he was like, "Fuck." You know?" "Two sides to his life." "Just a really weird sort of situation." "But every time I saw them hanging out or knew they were hanging out, he looked like he'd taken a lot of drugs." "It was obvious that Ben and Lynette's relationship was revolved around drugs." "You know, I could see he'd been using it because he was down and gaunt, you know." "I knew he was on the Xanax, but he didn't admit that he was using heroin to me." "I didn't even see him around for like two or three months or something." "He'd taken everything from my house at this stage." "I don't know who he was staying with." "I didn't think he was going to get into bloody heroin." "What broke my heart was when I heard he got into heroin." "I just couldn't bloody believe it." "I went home one trip." "It was this Globe comp." "He comes with Lynette..." "And they were both off their face." "Pin-pricked eyes, just full smacked out, just had a shot each." "I realized then that she was a junkie." "Ben was a junkie." "And so I went off." "I was being mean." "I'm like, "You get the fuck out of here." ""Stay the fuck away from my brother, right."" "We got into a bit of a fight, so I left." "What am I supposed to do?" "He's 25 years old." "I'm 27, 28, with a kid." "And he was under the impression I was having this great time in America, and I'm like, "Ben, mate, you think I'm having fun?"" "Tas Pappas comes into this event injured." "He's got some back..." "I had to be top ten at every comp." "That's how I was living trying to support my family." "Shortly after that, Aydin was born." "And then the pressure was on." "The pressure was on hard." "Being away all the time and not seeing my kids, we'd fight a lot while I was gone." "She'd be angry I'd be gone." "It just strained the relationship hard core." "When I would get injured I'd start sniffing a bit of ice, purely to be able to stay in the comp to make the money." "And it would numb your body, the speed." "And it worked." "But the problem was after the comp, you're already on speed so you're figuring, "Who cares?" "I'm already off my face," ""so let's just charge the rest of that gram and get another eight ball" ""and then we'll just go for days."" "And then, boom!" "I'm back on drugs." "Smoking ice, smoking crack." "Then I hit psychosis mode bad and I just lost the plot." "It was weird." "It was like me and Ben lived parallel lives." "Whenever he fucked up, I fucked up." "It was like we were twins." "Reckon I should make this one, Gregsy?" " Yeah?" " Yeah." "Now." "We can do it for another two hours if you want." "Now?" " Yes." " All right." "Ben looked terrible." "He was going down to Prahran fully, like, on drugs." "He used to have this bottle of Xanax and when we were filming, like, he used to pop two Xanax before the skate and I was like, "Are you off your head?"" "He was really upset." "He was trying to get out of that sort of routine." "You could tell he was trying to get away from that." "He knew in his heart that, that wasn't the right thing to do, like do drugs with her." "He'd just say, "I've just got to get away from her." "She's not good for me."" "But I think he didn't know where to go at that point." "What's up?" "Not today." "I went to jail two months." "I went on a mad ice and crack bender." "I came home and tripped out, got in a fight with Colleen." "Did a silly thing." "Slapped her and hit her." "I was off my face." "I couldn't remember." "I was ashamed of myself, too, because I've got a daughter and if anyone did that to her, I'd want to kill them." "And it's something that's been hard for me to admit and people look at it like, weak." "You know, you hit a chick and this and that, and I don't know." "I am ashamed of myself for that." "They had me in the mental pod because I was fried on the drugs." "And then Homeland Security came to me when I was in jail." "They said, "You're going home."" "I was like, "What do you mean I'm going home?"" "They said, "You're going home." "You're getting deported."" "And I stayed in jail from that point on." "I just couldn't believe what was going on." "I was losing my family." "My whole goal was to never lose my kids." "And then, boom!" "It was just shit." "Me and Greg went to the ramp at Prahran, met up with Ben." "I hadn't seen him in a while." "And it was the first time I had seen him so gaunt and just down." "Didn't want to skate, didn't want to talk to anyone." "You know, I thought, his brother's in jail." "You know, his brother can't come over to Australia to visit him." "He was acting really weird and, like, completely like he just did not care about anything." "I even remember I said, "Where's your board, man?"" "And he's like, "Oh," he said to me, "I won't be needing my board anymore."" "Ben said, "Oh, Dom, I need somewhere to stay." ""Can I stay at the house for a few days or something?"" "Because he was such a good friend, you know, I couldn't refuse." "Ben wasn't talking or, you know." "He was just really down." "I was trying to ask him what's on his mind." "And he started crying and said, like, you know he..." "He couldn't remember anything..." "Like what happened." "And I said, "Well, what do you mean what happened?"" "He said he just remembered waking up on a bench in the city a few days before and dropping some Xanax or something like that." "And then I saw a news flash." "The body of a woman was found wrapped in material at Dights Falls yesterday." "Police believe the woman is 27-year-old, Lynette Phillips." "The body has been wrapped in material, and there's a backpack apparently with weights in it, thrown over the material and the body." "Results of an autopsy expected to be known later tonight." "I thought, "Shit, don't tell me he's gone and done something stupid."" "It just felt surreal." "Couldn't believe it was happening, you know." "I said, "Did you see the news?" "Lynette's been found, like, dead."" "And he's like, he said, "Shut up!" "Don't tell me anymore."" "And he left." "It was out of this world really, because you thought he was down and out, but you never thought that one of your good friends could do that." "I didn't want to believe it, you know." "The Feds came around to my house." "They started asking questions about Ben." ""When's the last time I saw him?"" "They said, "Can you come back to the station and answer some questions?"" "They said, "Now we are going to give you some pictures." ""If you can, identify if this is yours."" "They give me a picture of a backpack and I said, "Yeah, that's mine."" "I gave it to Ben, like, maybe six months ago." "They told me, like, she was weighed down with that." "So I was like, "Shit!"" "They showed me another picture, my doona cover, saying that's what she was wrapped up in." "And I started just bawling." "Like, seriously just didn't believe it." "Just thought, "No fucking way."" "I just had the impression, like, "Fuck, Ben." ""Gosh, what are you doing?" You know?" "Police say one of the world's most talented skateboarders," "Ben Pappas, is a person of interest in the murder of Lynette Phillips, a recovering long-term drug addict who was studying to become a counselor." "Her battered body found wrapped in a blue cover." "After a week, no one could find Ben." "So, everyone was concerned for his life, you know." "And then I saw a news flash." "The body was found in waters off Victoria Pier around 7:30last night." "Divers were sent in after a wallet was found at the scene." "The dead man is believed to be former world skateboarding champion Ben Pappas." "An autopsy is being carried out to confirm his identity." "Pappas was the main suspect in the murder of..." "Everyone was so blown away." "Just, like, blown away and devastated about what had happened." "Didn't even think about Tas, no." "I was calling Colleen one day." "She just wasn't answering the phone, and I'm getting bloody paranoid." "So then I called my dad." "He goes, "Tas, I need you to be strong for me."" "I go, "What?" "What are you talking about, Dad?" ""Be strong for you?"" "He goes, "Look, Tas, I need you to be strong for me."" "I go, "What are you talking about, Dad?" "What the fuck's Colleen doing?" ""Where's my kids?"" "He goes, "Tas, I need you to be strong for me."" "And I went, "What are you talking about, Dad?"" "And he goes, "Ben's drowned."" ""Yeah, what do you mean Ben's drowned?"" ""Ben's drowned."" "I've gone, "Fuck off, he's drowned." ""He can swim." "We used to surf in massive surf." "He didn't fucking drown." ""What are you talking about?"" "He goes, "That's..." "Ben's dead."" "I just remember being in the day room." "And I've just gone, "Fuck!"" "And I remember just fucking storming the room in circles just fucking pissed, hoping some cunt would kill me." "You know, like..." "I just felt fucking so bad, like, thinking about his brother, thinking about how sad his dad must have been, you know, let alone the whole family." "And then Tas being in jail during all this." "I just remember talking to him and just saying," ""Man, fuck, all your friends love you." "I know that you're in a lot of pain, man," ""but fuck you've got a lot going for you right now." ""It doesn't seem like you do, but you do."" "And I just remember he was fucking pissed, man." "He didn't sound good." "Honestly, deep down," "I felt like I failed him." "And I was so shattered my brother's dead and I was so fucking pissed off." "Tas got deported." "He came back here." "In his mind, his relationship at the end with Ben wasn't what it should have been." "There's a lot of stuff that wasn't resolved." "And he was really in a bad way." "Like, he was actually like, looked like he was suicidal." "Go." "Four." "He was completely out of his mind." "This is crazy." "Just crazy out there." "He was just a mess." "You know what I mean?" "He was taking it really hard." "That's for you, you cunt!" "He was in bad shape." "He said to me, "I can't believe this is happening."" "It's going to be really hard for him to continue on life." "My whole world fell apart at once." "I lost my kids..." "Got deported, came home to a dead brother." "I just thought I deserved to suffer." "I hope I die and maybe I do something like the way Ben did." "So, I got on the same drugs as him." "Methadone, Xanax, ice, hammer." "People were saying to me, "Oh, fuck, Tas is just a complete write-off."" "And then his dad passes away." "Dad died of a heart attack." "He got stuck in America." "He was just broken." "Then I just had enough." "I figured the start of the real end was when Ben got busted." "That was the end for everyone." "I just thought I deserved the misery Ben got, because I wasn't there for him." "Because he died and I just wanted to die." "Then I just thought, "You know what," ""I'm a piece of fucking shit anyway." "Who gives a fuck?"" "Next thing you know I'm in Argentina with ten grand Australian, a few skateboards, a bunch of grip tape, glue and a cheese grater." "I don't even know what I was thinking, but I just came up with the plan." "I went straight up to the taxi rank." "I've met this cab driver." "I've told him the deal." "And he was like, "Okay, you wait for me."" "Then we get driven into some weird little ghetto thing." "Next thing you know I get given a little bag." "It's got two discs in it and like a scorpion pressed in the back of it." "That's it." "Fine. 500 grams each disc." "I've gone back to the hotel." "And I've started grinding away." "I was creeping around the room and I knew that I've got the answer that's going to fix everything." "Oh, spirit brother." "My turn." "This is for you." "I'm there for four days." "I packed everything up, grabbed the bag I had, put everything in it." "Welcome to Sydney." "Local time approaching fifteen minutes past 11:00." "Next thing you know I'm coming in, landing for Sydney and I've had a moment of clarity." "And I've gone, "Am I fucking kidding?"" "I've got a kilo of coke," "I'm off my fucking head and I've changed my ticket." "I've only been gone five days." "I look like a zombie." "I'm fucking done." "It was so loosely packed, man." "There were smears of coke on everything." "As soon as I walked into the airport," "I think the coke machine just started buzzing." "That thing just started going ballistic as soon as it saw me." "That's how much residue there was all over me." "It was so loosely packed." "The first question they asked, "What's in the boards?"" "You know, it was that bloody obvious." "They all jumped on me, cuffed me." "Quite a fiasco." "I'd ground up a kilo to a nice little pile on a table and it was falling on my clothes." "It's all over the boards when I was packing it in." "I just wiped it off with water." "What was I thinking?" "I was completely gone." "Like, I was so embarrassed, I was so ashamed then." "There was these pictures on the Internet from an Australian skateboarding website." "These three or four boards with "fragile" stickers wrapped around it, and then it said, "A skateboarder is caught" ""in Sydney Airport with cocaine in his boards."" "And you just knew instantly it was Tas." "You didn't even have to say Tas." "It just screamed Tas all over it." "You would have to be completely off your head to even think you were going to get away with those skateboards." "It's such a similar subconscious thing that was happening with what Ben did." "It was actually..." "It was pretty sad." "In the end I got three years." "All right, I'll do a 50-50, if you know what I mean?" "I think it's been good for me." "It's been very good for me." "It's exactly what I've needed." "I needed to be locked in a cell to really think about my brother." "Because I couldn't handle the pain, it was too much at once." "I went straight and I was forced to face my issues, which was good." "You feel like you're weak because of it, but it's actually strong when you can admit it." "I miss my brother." "I miss him." "Yeah, I just cried a lot in jail thinking about Ben as a kid, me as a kid and how it all turned out." "It seems like they are painted one way and people perceived them in that way, and to me they weren't like that at all, man." "Like, they were fucking crazy, crazy as anyone else at the time." "But those guys were just really cool people, man." "They were really generous, and I think that's truly the mentality of most skateboarders." "On top of that, vert skating was pretty much dead, and they put a big hand in saving skateboarding right there." "When I heard about Ben, I was like, "Damn!" ""Skating just lost one of the sickest style skaters in the history of skateboarding."" "I think those guys belong in the history books, you know." "And Tas." "Tas is still here, so he definitely," "I think, he definitely needs to be in the scene with all those guys, you know." "Those guys should still be right here fucking kicking ass, doing the same shit they were doing." "It's fucking sad." "Skateboarders got fucked in the ass so bad by bullshit." "Skateboarding used to be so fucking great, and it still is." "But it's so fucking fucked." "Skateboarding is a gift." "It did take me and Ben away from crap in St. Albans." "But somehow we got sucked back into the life we would have had in St. Albans anyway." "I mean, I don't care." "I'm over it now." "There's no point in holding onto it, but it got pretty heavy." "Somehow in my big demented stage," "I met Helen." "We fell in love." "We had Billy straight away." "She stuck by me." "Yeah, I just needed a strong Australian woman to help me through my shit." "I feel like God's given Ben a second chance." "His soul is coming back in this kid." "When I look at Billy, I feel it's Ben." "I feel like I will Barnes it to the death for my new Elias."