WARM BLOOD AND THE FILMS OF SIX STAIR
This September, Spectacle is proud to present a week long run of Rick Charnoski’s new experimental feature film WARM BLOOD, alongside skate films and documentary collaborations between Rick Charnoski and Buddy Nichols, founders of SIX STAIR FILMS, including FRUIT OF THE VINE, DEATHBOWL TO DOWNTOWN, and the roadtrip documentary NORTHWEST.
WARM BLOOD
dir. by Rick Charnoski, 2023
USA. 86 minutes
In English.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 – 7:30PM
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 14- 7:30PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 – 7:30PM, Q&A MODERATED BY JOHN VEIT
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – 5:00PM, Q&A MODERATED BY JOHN VEIT
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 – 7:30PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 – 7:30PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 – 7:30PM
ALL WARM BLOOD SCREENINGS FEATURE A Q&A WITH THE FILMMAKERS / $10 TICKETS
Set in the underbelly of 1980s Modesto, California, Warm Blood uses the real-life diary of a teenage runaway named Red (newcomer Haley Isaacson) returning home to find her father. In his narrative feature debut, director Rick Charnoski’s history as a skate video director informs the frenetic storytelling style, as he combines Red’s nihilist musings with a collage of documentary and B-movie meta-narratives that paint a seedy picture of life on the outskirts of town. Talk-radio bits and punk music underscore the auditory cacophony of doom, while frequent Kelly Reichardt collaborator Christopher Blauvelt (First Cow, The Bling Ring) lends his immersive, naturalist lens shooting on gritty 16mm film. While Red searches the streets, a constant foreboding presence looms around the chemically toxic river polluting the town. Via a cable-access news reporter interviewing the local residents about its impact, Charnoski infuses today’s growing apathy around the insurmountable nature of our man-made ecological disasters into this raw, politically subversive tale.
FRUIT OF THE VINE
dir. Rick Charnoski and Buddy Nichols, 2002
USA. 74 minutes
In English
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 – 10PM – THIS EVENT FEATURES A Q&A MODERATED BY JOCKO WEYLAND
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 – 10PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 – 10PM
FRUIT OF THE VINE is a super 8mm film that documents the incredible and often dangerous lengths that skateboarders go to in order to ride deserted, empty swimming pools. It is not a historical documentary, but a collection of stories shot in 1999 while Coan and Rick traveled from southern California to Seattle and around the east coast in search of pools to ride. FRUIT OF THE VINE profiles the people who search for, find, break into, and ultimately glean some use out of these pieces of the American suburban wasteland. With skate luminaries like Tony Alva, Lance Mountain, Steve Baily, Salba, Shaggy, Chris Senn, Pete the Ox, Tony Farmer, Tom Groholski, Mark Hubbard, Pat Quirk and many more. Soundtrack features Bad Religion, The Clay Wheels, Steel Wool, The Loudmouths and more.
DEATHBOWL TO DOWNTOWN
dir. Rick Charnoski and Buddy Nichols, 2008
USA. 86 minutes
In English
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 – 7:30PM
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 – 10PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 – 10PM
On one level Deathbowl to Downtown is about street skating, but it’s also an overview of skateboarding’s shift from the parks and pools of the 70s, to the ramp skating in the 80s, to the street ascendancy of the 1990s and beyond. An entertaining, thought provoking take on why the action on New York’s hectic streets represents skateboarding to millions of people worldwide.
NORTHWEST
dir. Rick Charnoski and Buddy Nichols, 2003
USA. 74 minutes
In English
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 – 5PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – 10PM
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 – 10PM
In this real-life road movie, Coan Nichols and Rick Charnoski focus their lenses on hand-sculpted concrete skate parks, and the skaters who build and ride them, while making friends, visiting old ones, and wreaking havoc across the Pacific Northwest.
After the underground success of their first film, the super 8mm skateboard classic Fruit of the Vine (1999), Coan “Buddy” Nichols and Rick Charnoski founded the independent production company Six Stair, which operates under the same DIY ethics of the subculture that raised them: skateboarding and punk rock. Since 1999 Nichols and Charnoski have charted an unorthodox path, making a broad range of films that consistently go beyond tired tropes to illuminate deeper truths.
After catching the eye of renowned cinematographer Christopher Doyle for their specialty in Super 8mm and 16mm filmmaking, he tapped Charnoski and Nichols to shoot the dream sequences for Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park (2007). They have since worked with a wide range of respected artists and filmmakers including Cameron Crowe, Richard Serra, Peter Beard, Julian Schnabel, and NeckFace as well as on commercial projects for Vans, Nike, Converse, Mountain Dew and the Gold Effie Award winning Ouch! campaign for Tylenol.
Their documentary work includes Tent City (2003), which followed the notorious Anti Hero skate team throughout Australia; Pearl Jam‘s Vote for Change? (released 2008), capturing the band’s “Vote For Change” tour across America; the feature length Deathbowl to Downtown (2009) narrated by Chloe Sevigny as well as many other short films. Other subjects they have turned their attention and cameras to are Christo’s “Gates” project, fashion shows, music videos, surfing, airplane flight, and Jamaican dub pioneers.
They’ve shown their work worldwide at countless skate shops and hole-in-the wall venues, as well as the Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, The Graduate School of Architecture, at Columbia University, Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, the MU Art Foundation in The Netherlands, the Melbourne International Film Festival in Australia, MOCA Tucson and MoMA New York.
Currently they produce and direct the popular web series “Love Letters to Skateboarding” for Vans and are in development of their first narrative feature (Warm Blood) and continue to work on a variety of both independent and commercial projects out of their back alley studio in Hollywood, CA.
Special thanks to Factory 25