I said, "are you crazy?
What do you think you're doing?"
I didn't see it as being a positive.
I saw it as Danny gettin' killed.
Anyone can learn anything they want.
It's all in your head.
You've just got to spend time on it.
I don't know that a lot of people really get Danny Way.
There's a lot of guys that...
that'll do whatever it takes to win.
Then there's guys that do whatever it takes to push themselves,
guys that do whatever it takes to progress their sport.
Danny's doing what he was meant to do, and you can see that.
And very few people get to experience that in their life.
When we first got to the great wall,
We were just like, "oh, my god.
This guy is gonna kill himself".
They would never let anyone build something like that here.
There was a mountain biker that jumped the wall
And careened to the bottom, dead.
His ramp wasn't built properly.
It was gut-wrenching for me.
The outcome of the end of it
Was what I was always afraid to face.
I'd heard about China for years.
Danny was on a flight
And actually saw the great wall from the plane,
And I remember him joking like,
"Yeah, I'm gonna jump over that thing".
I don't remember hearing how it all came together.
I just kind of remember hearing it was going to happen.
The role of a manager is to make your visions
And your dreams real.
Danny wanted to jump the great wall of China,
And ray and I felt that we could help do that.
This is what the next chapter
Of Danny's life was all about,
And we were the guys selected to make that happen.
So we go to China fueled by a dream
And ambition and nothing much else.
We pull up to juyoungguan gate...
and it's impressive.
The wall, in some spots is...
I guess it's just not as big as I envisioned in some spots.
I wouldn't want to cheat on this one,
So I'm trying to find some section on...
we're trying to find a section here
That would actually be a legitimate jump for me.
There's definitely spots on the wall that are enormous,
But there are some that aren't, and I just...
you know, I wouldn't feel right
Unless I found a spot that was really magnif...
Magnisi... nificent. Sorry, it's freezing out.
I can barely talk.
So, I think right here...
jumping from there over to here
Is the widest spot of the wall,
Which I feel does the most justice for skateboarding
And the possibility of breaking the world record.
We come back from China,
And Danny's on the phone with me at midnight
Going, "dude, is this real?"
And I'm like, "I don't know.
"But here's your job:
"Prepare, have your bag packed,
And you're jumping until I'm telling you you're not jumping".
I think the story really started
Before my brother and I were even born.
It started out with my mom and my father getting together,
And then taking off and going up the coast
In their vw van and following the hippie trail.
Everything that Dennis
Ever told me about life happened.
Within 45 minutes of me first meeting him,
He told me that I was gonna have two sons with him,
And that he was put on this earth
To teach me how to be a survivor.
From that moment on,
We were connected.
Dennis and I were on an adventure.
We went up to oregon,
And all the pieces of the puzzle
Started being put together.
Damon was so mellow,
And Danny wore me down.
That first year,
I thought I was gonna lose my mind with him.
Little did I know years down the road
I would go through a lot more
Than what I went through the first year of life with him.
We got tired of the rain in oregon,
So we ended up moving back to carlsbad.
Dennis's ex-wife worked
For the gas and electric company.
When we went to get our electricity hooked up,
That's when she found out Dennis was back in town,
And she had him putin jail
For 90 days for a $50 child-support payment.
And nine days after he was in there,
He got hung in jail.
That day was the worst day of my life.
And that's where the kids and I began our journey
As the three musketeers, I call it.
I don't really remember my father dying.
I don't really remember the period of time
Before him and our stepdad, Tim,
But I clearly remember us living with Tim
After my mom and him got married.
Tim was like a kid himself,
So when he met Damon and Danny, it was on.
Tim came into my brother and mine's life
And took on that father-figure role.
He surfed every day,
And lived that surfer/ bohemian lifestyle.
We started tuning in to that piece of culture
That was really free.
He gave my kids exactly what they needed
At that point in their lives.
He was really good with his hands and wood,
And he would build us skateboards.
He wouldn't go buy us a skateboard, he'd actually build it,
And the thing would have its shape and everything.
It was amazing.
We really little, and we'd ride them around out front.
Danny was a three-year-old,
And he mastered how to make that skateboard work for him.
He figured out that if he put a knee on the board
And pushed with his other foot,
He could keep up with Damon
Trying to get away from him on his bike.
Danny rode it fearlessly.
Tim gave them an opportunity to experience that,
Wasn't overprotective,
Wasn't afraid of them getting hurt.
Everywhere we went, we had to take the skateboard.
So, the skateboard was...
the beginning of Danny Way.
There has to be some sort of visual
That captivates you in such a way
That you just fall in love with it
So that nothing will get in the way of you
Wanting to get on your board and create,
Play, and have fun and outdo your own limitations,
And I think that moment that captivated Danny Way
Was that Del Mar moment.
I remember my brother and I, like,
Seeing it from the freeway and seeing guys
Flying out of pools and stuff, and we were freaking out.
My dad turned around and took us straight there
And got us memberships.
I was too young, so we had to lie about my age.
When the park started in 1978,
It was the full-on boom of skateboarding.
We had, like, six people working at a time.
You know, I think of those days...
I'd wake up at 8:00 in the morning
And go to denny's, get breakfast,
Come to the park, be the first one in there skating.
It was sheer passion.
Soon as I hit that park, padded up,
Paid my money, and, like, skated in there,
I just knew I wanted to be part of that scene.
I still remember
My initial experience at the park.
To hear the sound of the wheels
And the bearings on the concrete,
Just, like, that was it.
There was no turning back, completely hooked.
All the best skateboarders skated at Del Mar.
If you want to get better
And make a name for yourself, it's there.
Del Mar definitely defined my personality.
It gave me a sense of identity.
It gave me a community,
a group that I really enjoyed hanging out with,
and it set me apart from the normal high school kid.
The first time I went to Del Mar skate park, it was a done deal.
Like, I was addicted so fast that it's the only thing
I could think about from that point on.
Our stepfather, Tim, he would take us to the skate park
When Danny was, you know, six years old, and I was eight years old.
He'd go down and pay for them to hang out there all day.
It was almost, for me, like a baby-sitting program.
Some people spent every waking hour at that park.
They came when it opened at 9:00 in the morning
till 11:00 at night.
When I first saw Danny,
he was just a little kid from Vista
Trying to come into this scene that was Del Mar,
And, like, we were always kind of tough on him.
Unfortunately he was the little kid,
And we were the big 14-year-olds,
So, you know, picking on him,
Hiding his board...
I was always smaller than most my friends,
So I was in a position where I had to earn respect,
And I always was trying to prove myself.
We could Danny to do anything, and he would do it.
He's hang out with our neighborhood friends then,
And be like, "hey, Danny, go kiss that girl,"
And he would do it, just whatever it took,
To get the attention and respect of the group.
When I hit 28, I started partying a lot.
I realized that with alcohol and drugs
I could mask the pain of Dennis dying.
I would leave and not come home for a few days.
Mary had a hard time letting go
Of what happened to, uh, Danny's father.
I think that haunted her, and it affected the kids.
Our mom was gone a lot,
And so for Danny and I,
Skateboarding really became our family.
We were with each other every single day skating.
It was just what we did.
There was no alternative. There was no option.
After awhile,
I thought the grass was greener on the other side,
And I caused my marriage to go upside down.
And that's when Tim and I parted the sheets.
I got a lot of backlash,
Not so much from Damon, but from Danny.
Danny's had a level of anger inside him
For as long as I can remember.
He had a particular thing with my mom,
And I think a lot of that was just Danny's anger
And rage around losing our dad,
Then losing our stepdad.
My mom had so many different boyfriends,
From drug dealers to just abusive guys
Who used to beat the shit out of her
And my brother and I, and, um, you know...
yeah, it's just...
The police came to our house a lot...
a lot in Vista.
So, my kids grew up
Never knowing what they were gonna come home to.
Whenever things got really difficult at home,
Danny would always ask to go live with Tim.
He was always so happy around Tim.
He had a mentor,
He had somebody that could support him
And act as a father figure in his life.
You have scars from scraping himself on the sidewalk.
You also have scars in your mind
That you never can get rid of.
Sometimes it's good to talk about them,
But sometimes it's just too painful.
So, what do we do?
We go out and find something that's fun.
Sometimes it's dangerous, but oh, well.
It's worth it.
We've always been out to prove ourselves
Because of having to make up
For what we didn't have in the family structure.
What comes along with that is a strong, competitive spirit.
When I was watching Danny, he had a focus.
He made up his mind to do this one trick,
And he would keep trying it until he did.
I mean, he'd get beat up, man...
bam! Sometimes...
but he'd just get back up.
will he survive?
Gale webb was an interesting person in Danny's life.
She took Danny under her wing,
Got him hooked up in the demo circuit she was doing,
And provided some kind of structure for Danny.
At the beginning, he was kind of shy,
And then I generate the excitement.
I go, "oh, you like that? Come on, we wanna hear you!"
He'd look at the crowd, and he would just be different
With the crowd because they were rooting for him,
And all of a sudden he'd start pulling off some of these tricks.
When I first heard Danny's name,
I know we were doing a demo for a shop in Vista,
And the shop was a-buzz about Danny.
Witt hired a limonene to take Tony and some other people over,
And then I jumped in the limo with them,
So that was the first time I shot photos of Danny.
I think it was a little intimidating,
Because we all came, like, the hoard of us came
And descended on the ramp,
But at the same time he really wanted to show what he had.
I saw Tony look.
He look at me and he goes...
let's hear it for Danny!
Whoo! Danny Way!
Two months before the event,
We got permission to jump at the great wall.
We have a location,
But we still need money to build
The biggest skateboard ramp that's ever been built.
Dc, who was Danny's main sponsor,
They were hearing us going, "this looks real,"
But they weren't responding, and it was radio silence.
When Danny had the idea it was amazing,
But he was asking us to put up a lot of money
To build a ramp that we don't know what the end result's gonna be.
We had such a short amount of time.
I knew right then and there
This was gonna be a very massive project.
It was gonna take the toll on all of us
In certain ways that we just could never imagine.
I remember spending the night
At Damon's and Danny's all the time
Because it was a little more liberal than my house.
So, I got to just kind of hang out,
I could just smoke cigarettes, and skate the miniramp.
As a skateboarder and as a young kid, it was badass.
I had this group of friends in Vista,
This really talented group of skateboarders,
And Danny really wanted to be part of that group.
That was my crew. It was my people.
We'd go see movies, try to scam on chicks,
And skate all the areas all around.
Hi, what's your name?
- Courtney. - Amy.
- Come over here. - See if you can get a date and I'll film it.
Those were my friends I skated with every day,
And Danny would tag along and skate with us.
My brother always said they were his friends.
They always defined me as the young guy
Who was too young to be a part of their crew.
I was like, "we all skate. What do you mean?"
I just remember just boards flying,
You know, and elbows, slight little punches
And jabs in the stomach and boards in the shin.
Danny skated harder than anybody else,
So he wasn't going anywhere, and that caused friction, you know?
Damon really was a big influence on Danny.
He just wanted to emulate his older brother,
And he pretty much would do anything...
or try to do anything his older brother did.
We were skateboarding Vista high. It was me and Damon.
This jackass rolls up and just cold-cocked Damon.
And Damon fell down, hit his head on the curb.
There was, like, a little bit of a scuffle.
Then it kind of just died down. It wasn't that big a deal.
We skated for a little bit longer,
And then I took him home.
On the way home, his head's, like...
"I got a headache," as you would when you get punched in the face,
So it didn't alarm me.
I had gone to work.
Danny called me and said,
"Mom, Damon's eyeballs are in the back of his head".
And I hurried home, and Damon was
In full-blown epileptic seizures.
When we arrived at trl-city hospital,
The doctor said, "give or take 15 minutes,
We're gonna lose him".
His whole left side had been paralyzed.
When Damon was going through that injury,
I just remember Danny just being really focused on skateboarding.
He was just ripping harder than ever.
It's almost like he put all his pain
Or whatever he was going through 100% into skateboarding.
Danny was on a mission to turn pro
For the both of them.
When I first got introduced to Danny,
It was through a friend of mine.
He goes, "there's this little ripper kid
"Named Danny Way, and he should be on Hosoi.
"He's got guts and he's just crazy.
He just goes for it". And I was like, "really? All right".
And then I meet him, and he's this little blond kid
With braces and, like, freckles,
And a little guy, and I'm like, "this kid's crazy?"
You know what I mean? Looking at him, you would never think...
you know, he looked like Dennis the menace.
Next thing you know, we're going to this demo in arizona,
And we go to this hotel, and he just... boom!
Front-flips off the bed onto the ground.
I was like, "this kid's crazy.
What can he do on a skateboard?"
I was skating some miniramp by myself or something.
My brother comes up, and he's like, "yo!
Danny Way is here!"
I had my idea of what skateboarding could be
And how far a kid like myself could take it at that age.
That whole perception just got shattered on the spot.
When I think of a trick and I'm sitting at my house,
I come down here and learn it.
He would just think about tricks,
And then he would go out and do them.
Between 11 to 13 was like a game changer.
I remember seeing Danny doing stuff that doesn't even have names.
Just a clickety-clack blunt this to board to shuffle to revert.
I don't think there's ever been a 13-year-old kid
What would go after the tricks
And just skating in general the way Danny did.
I remember realizing
There's something about the way he's skating
That I'm not gonna be able to keep up with,
And here I am in my first couple of years
Of being a professional skater, and I'm thinking,
"I'm done".
yeah, Danny!
# Had no future #
# Remember youth #
# No pop culture #
There have been a few people in skateboarding
That have truly been able to not just spot talent
But allow that talent to bethe best it can be.
Mike saw talent,
But then he also was able to bring it out of people.
Mike would take kids
Under his wings and help them along.
He could get you to do things that you didn't want to do.
I mean, he would push you
To get you to go to another level
That you're not comfortable with.
But yet he could see it and say, "oh, yeah, you can do that".
Mike was a character.
Big-ass fanny pack and this ponytail
And his voice... I can still hear it.
You know how you don't see somebody forever
And you kind of lose their... lose their face?
I can hear his voice.
Yeah, john.
Yeah!
I felt really close to Mike almost from the get go.
Come back over, matt.
Yeah, matt.
He always had my back.
I just felt like this was different.
This wasn't some guy I was calling every once in a while,
Like, "hey, man, I need a sticker".
He was, like, in your grill every five seconds,
And not in a bad way, just close to you,
Making sure things were going your way.
Next up, we got a local boy from Vista.
yeah, man. Whoo!
Mike really cared for everybody
And was trying to make it all work.
Ripped it! That was it, dude. That was it.
There was so much new young talent
That was coming along in this new wave of skateboarding.
We were right in the middle of it,
And it was being created right then and there.
Mike and I were talking, and Mike's like,
"Have you heard of this kid, Danny Way?"
I go, "yeah, of course. Yeah, he rides for Powell. �
He's like, "that kid's phenomenal.
It'd be great if we had him".
I go, "you're not gonna take him from Powell".
Powell's the number-one company at the time.
This became a challenge for Mike,
You know, just personally,
Because Danny was on and then he was off.
It took us a while.
All of a sudden a contest comes up in houston,
Shut up & skate,
Big, big vert contest on the metal ramp back there.
Danny was upset because Powell
Wouldn't pay for him to go there.
And Mike said, "no problem. I'm gonna have you go there,
But by the time you do, you're riding for me".
For me to leave Powell to join a start-up company
Was a big deal, but Mike was the reason why.
Mike just had a... had a calmness about him,
Had a rational disposition that made Danny comfortable.
He couldn't do what Danny did,
But he could cultivate that out of Danny.
Okay, in first place, you already know this guy.
His name is Danny Way,
Got first place in sponsored am this morning.
It never occurred to me Danny was gonna be a pro skater.
I just thought it was kid's stuff.
I didn't really know that what was going on
With Danny was gonna go somewhere.
Mike took Danny under his wing,
And Danny really liked being associated with Mike
Because he just had that ability to get you
To want to be involved in what he was doing
And believe in what he was doing.
- I'll go like this. - Wave like that.
- Cut. - I gotta stop.
I can't look at Danny... get over something.
Start back. Get back a little ways.
Back right here.
There you go. Okay, now go in, now go crazy.
Mike, Tony, let me in!
Mike obviously understood the situation with Danny's home life,
And it was an instant connection between those two
And immediately took on a sort of father-figure type relationship.
- Hey. - Hey, Danny, what's up?
I want to get a part in the video.
Hey, look, man, video's already done.
It's all done. There's no more room in it.
Maybe you can be in the next one.
But if you need a board or something,
- Talk to Tony. - Watch! Watch this.
Tim wasn't around that much
After him and Mary split up.
It was becoming more difficult to figure out
A way to still be part of their lives.
And him and Danny, I think, grew apart.
You need a father,
And so if you don't have one you're looking for one,
And if there's somebody that can be that for you,
You grab on.
Mike reassured me that Danny would go somewhere
In the world with his skateboarding.
He didn't know where or what,
But he said, "he's got a lot of potential,
And I'd like to see him use it".
Here comes Danny Way. He is really hot.
This kid is 15 years old.
He's the youngest pro on the tour.
He took a real bad spill this morning.
He is doing a lot of flashy tricks out there.
He hurt himself in practice,
Came down on his tailbone very hard,
And yet he has managed to pull himself together
And get a nice routine going here. Oh, very nice!
He does a 360 transitioning
From the big ramp to the small ramp.
Very nicely done.
That'll be it for Danny Way.
Pulling him out of school,
It was the hardest thing for me to do.
So, I had to take a leap of faith.
I believed in my son enough
To believe that his dream would come true.
- First place, $2,500... - Congratulations, Danny.
...goes to the youngest pro on the circuit, Danny Way!
Danny, first of all, that was an outstanding performance.
What do you think did it for you today?
You had a lot of competition.
Um... basically, um...
uhhhh...
Let's do it again, take two.
Well, after a hard-fought contest, this is our winner.
This is Danny Way, the youngest pro on the tour.
Do you feel like you were hampered by your injury at all today,
Or did you skate through the pain?
It was kind of hard in practice, but in contest
I didn't think about anything but staying on,
You know, busting out.
Well, that was one heck of a comeback.
Again, he hit the floor.
I saw him a little earlier, and he hit it hard.
He wasn't feeling too good,
But he came back and won the contest.
Once again, Danny Way is our champion,
And that'll do it now from lansing, michigan.
Quiksilver had bought dc shoes,
So we go for a meeting with bob mcknight,
The chairman of quiksilver.
And bob writes a check for the money we needed.
That was one of those moments where
It finally strikes you and was like, wait a second.
This really is going to happen now.
this is a team effort,
So we brought jt and brian in
Because they are the experts in big structures.
With Danny, you're dealing with history.
The stuff he does is always so new and so creative,
Like, there is no norm to go from.
There is no fulcrum point to start from.
It's like, okay, let's try it with this and see what happens.
I have a lotto do with these guys' careers,
Making and breaking them.
I want to see Danny succeed, that's what I'm there for.
I don't want to see anybody get hurt.
The challenges of building a structure
That has not been built before was huge,
Never mind in a different country.
Probably get it here somewhere.
Twenty-one meters.
Twenty-one meters converts into 68 feet, 10 inches.
- What is it? - Sixty-eight feet, 10 inches.
- Hello? - Danny, jt.
Jt, how you doing, man?
- Good, how you doing? - Good.
Hey, I got a quick question for you.
I'm sitting here with brian, and the scaffolding's going up.
Everything's going good, but we're actually pulling measurements
Off of, like, distances and stuff.
It looks like right now, um,
The distance is between 65 and 70-foot gap.
Is that too gnarly or...?
- No. - Okay.
Nothing's too gnarly.
It's no more than 70.
Well, 70, that's getting up there, I mean, yeah.
It changes the game a little bit, which is good.
- I can do that. - Okay.
I'm not worried about it. Um...
okay, I was worried about, like we discussed earlier,
There was a good 55-foot gap now that got changed.
I want you to come out here
And know what you're getting yourself into
So you're mentally prepared for it.
No, I'm cool with it. I'm cool.
- All right, Danny. - All right, man.
Take care. Talk to you in a couple of hours.
- Sounds good, jt. - Okay, bye.
That same thing that makes Danny tick
Is what makes me tick.
I was just like,
"Yeah, but I've never done this before".
We all set goals.
It's what makes you go forward.
Goals can be dangerous.
I'd be coming home from work
And he had the little ninja motorcycles,
And I'd see "whooomp!" Right past me, and I'd go,
"God darn it, there goes Danny!"
And I turn my car around, try and chase him down
Because he'd already had it out
With the police in fallbrook several times.
One of my prominent memories of Danny's early success
Was when he started getting a little bit of money.
He could start affording his fantasies and things.
Quality american machine.
All of a sudden he started buying all this stuff,
And he had, like, motorcycles.
He'd ride them all over town, no license, nothing.
It was just, like, wild child.
- Going m. T? - Yeah.
I'm gonna seriously pack off the side, watch.
No, just go straight up and down.
Oh, shit!
The house out in rainbow that they lived in,
This was out in the middle of nowhere up on a hill.
Most of the time we had the house to ourselves.
Thought you were gonna land on your back.
I remember pulling up and bullet holes in the cars
And had the ramp there and everything
And just skate house.
It was lawless. Absolute lawlessness.
Danny didn't grow up the same way a lot of other people did.
He dropped out of school in ninth grade
And then he went into this skateboard touring mode.
there he is!
And he started hanging out with older kids right away,
So he really jumped that period that's formative
In all of our lives of going through high school
And finding out who we are and developing ourselves.
He was just chasing his passion at that point,
Which anybody else would do.
In the mid-'80s, there, a lot of parks were going out.
I just remember seeing Del Mar in chunks.
It was pretty devastating on a lot of people.
People were taking to the streets
Because they had nowhere else to go, and if you wanted to skate,
You just figured out how to use the urban landscape,
Learn how to use rails and ledges and benches and stairs.
The city was the skate park.
That didn't hurt that bad.
We were skating everything.
Calvary chapel was the hub. Like, everybody went there.
Everybody would meet there,
And then we'd all go wherever we would go.
Danny grew up skating Del Mar,
Riding transitions...
naturally talented little kid.
Then this whole evolution of skateboarding
In the late '80s into '90s of street skating,
He adapted to that.
He could do anything he wanted,
Whether it be in street or vert, anything.
And it looked right. It looked good.
Danny was doing some
Of the heaviest street skating at the time.
make it, d. Yeah!
He was taking those skills to the ramp
And opening a whole new doorway to tricks.
Because he had that background
Of being able to ride everything else,
It kind of led him down a different path.
Yeah, Danny, that was it!
We'd hear, like, rumblings of, like,
"Oh, there's gonna be this new super company
"And it's gonna be called plan B,
"And there's gonna be all these crazy people
That are gonna skate for it".
Danny Way, matt hensley, Mike carroll,
Sean sheffey, and rick howard. That's it.
- Cut and dry? - Cut and dry, that's it.
It felt the same way to me that I'm sure it felt
To the general public when the usa finally decided
To put together a dream team for basketball.
It floored everyone.
Plan B set the bar so high
As far as a group of guys all in one place.
It set the standard.
And these guys were creating something
That wasn't there before,
Tricks that weren't there before.
It was this totally new thing.
And Mike Ternasky saw what they could do,
And he brought the most out of them.
When I had to film something tough,
You'd want Mike t. There.
You'd want that reinforcement
While you were trying whatever you were trying.
'Cause in those days, you know, some of that stuff
You just didn't really know if it was even possible.
- Yeah! - Yeah, matt!
He gave you something that just blew up inside of you.
That just like, oh my gosh, I can't sit still now.
I have to work for this.
Yes! Hey, rodney. Push.
That accountability, like, we need that.
Mike saw different things in me that I didn't see.
He was a big part of making me a believer in myself.
You got it, dude. Just go right now.
You're not too tired. Do it again.
Talent only takes you so far.
It's putting your head down
And going that does the rest of it.
Danny worked really hard.
It wasn't like it was just easy for him.
We'd all slam and get back up,
But most of us would stop.
He never did. He just kept pushing.
That was real good.
If he says he's gonna pull this off,
There's not a doubt he's gonna do this.
If he didn't, he would do it
Until he either broke his leg or something.
You know, he would not stop.
Like terminator.
He had a new peer group that he needed respect from
And that he needed to be accepted by,
So he was pushing the limits of what he was capable of
And in doing so, you know, shifting the paradigm.
- Whoa! - Aah!
That's good enough, dude.
Danny Way could have done anything.
Anything.
Danny Way, skater of the year,
selected by the readers of Thrasher magazine.
During that era, he was also a pro snowboarder,
A gnarly motocross dude, and a super good surfer.
the higher your goal,
The more focused and intense you get.
I don't know Danny's whole process,
but I can imagine he has to get himself
into a place that's pretty intense.
And it's got to make interaction
with other people pretty hard.
And, uh, it's probably not all healthy.
Danny was a teenager with no parental supervision
With a peer group around him
That could perpetuate his adolescence.
Got two of these babies.
Mike wasn't with Danny 24-7.
He knew there was a lot of partying going on,
And had no problem calling anyone out
For anything at anytime,
So we just got better at hiding it.
You know, it's like any kid.
The mom's like, "my son's an angel".
Meanwhile the kid goes out the back door just ripping shit up.
We're seriously gonna jack someone up.
That peer group really, I think, pushed him in directions
That wasn't the best or the healthiest for him.
Someone right now is, like, walking
And they have no idea what's gonna happen!
Like, they're peacefully walking.
There was no parents to stop anything,
So whatever stupid idea that we came up with,
That's what we did.
Oh, my god, you missed!
Smashing something and running away
And getting away from the police
Is a great bonding experience.
That's a great way to build a friendship.
I didn't do shit!
- No? - No, bitch!
The type of men that are risk-takers,
They have a certain recklessness.
I think that's a necessity in what we do.
Ha ha!
Whoa!
If you can make it through that reckless time
And maybe find your direction
And kind of straighten the car out, you survive it...
but in the beginning, you have a lot of ammunition
And you're shooting at every direction,
Waiting to see if it hits something.
I was downtown skating and I looked across the street
And both my parents were, like, standing looking at me.
I knew it, immediately,
When I looked up and saw them the way
They were just looking across the street at me.
I was like, "oh, god, what happened?"
Mike was really happy with the way things were going, you know?
A lot of things were lining up,
And his guys were doing good in contests.
Colin and Danny were in the plane with him.
He told them that he had done so much of what he wanted to do.
You know, if he died right now, he'd be happy.
Well, I heard he was going into work.
I think dave andrews actually witnessed this accident,
Or he was actually driving to work
And he saw that there was an accident,
And had no idea that Mike was actually in that accident.
Yeah, I mean, just,
I mean, devastating,
And, you know, yeah, it was just devastating.
He was pulling out off a stoplight,
And an older lady ran the red light.
T- Boned him.
When Mike passed away, I was just like,
"Shit, man. This sucks for Danny.
What is he gonna do now?"
It was just absolutely tragic for him to lose Mike
Because I think it was at such a pivotal point in his life.
Short of our stepdad Tim, he was the only other person
In Danny's life that really grounded him.
He didn't have that sounding board
That could really tell him morally or ethically,
Whatever, that what you're doing is wrong or right.
I was a friend, and there's no way
I could be that sort of mentor to him.
I had no idea that that was on the horizon.
I always felt, like, this sense of security
With Mike in the picture.
"If all else fails, I can call Mike,"
And I was completely lost.
We're hearing that there's problems in the building,
But we're listening for the key things:
It's finished and it's safe.
At that level of danger,
There's no room for any error in the design.
- Thirty-two inches. - Okay.
If it's off a half inch,
That's all the difference in the world.
Hitting the quarterpipe at 50 miles an hour
Going into a ramp three stories tall
And flying three stories out of it,
That thing better be perfection.
Skateboarders are grown men
in T-shirts and shorts and puffy shoes.
The Chinese guys don't like being told
What to do by grown men in kids' shorts.
We know how to fix this.
It'll work if they will do what we ask them to do.
I know, but...
he think you change your mind many times...
we haven't changed shit!
Come over here and tell them exactly what I said.
This is the plan, the blueprint.
It's so hard to communicate with the Chinese,
And the whole process takes four or five times
As long as it normally would.
And then the pride gets in the way, and that's even harder.
Do you know distance?
How much do you want to move the scaffolding?
- Thirty. - Thirty.
Eighty. Eighty inches back.
A cultural barrier, that's a big one.
If jt and brian can't do what they do,
Danny can't do what he does.
It's definitely...
one of the most challenging situations.
I've just never failed before,
And I don't want to fail now.
Danny got injured surfing.
He got taken down by a wave
And driven into the bottom of the ocean headfirst.
It literally could have killed him.
I remember him coming home in a lot of pain
And describing the story,
And I was like, "yeah, whatever. Surfing".
And then he's like, "no, no, no. It's really bad".
He was very afraid then.
He didn't know if he was ever gonna skateboard again.
He was in a lot of pain,
And he went to try to relieve some of the pain,
And a chiropractor complicated things
And made things worse instead of better.
There was some concerns
That he wasn't gonna be 100% ever again.
I didn't have any experience
With medical trainers.
Skateboarding was never sophisticated in that way,
So when I finally got hurt at the level where I needed,
Like, real serious attention from legitimate doctors,
It wasn't available.
I remember visiting him,
And I had to lift him out of the bathtub.
I was only there for a week.
He dealt with so much of this on his own,
Like, literally at home with a broken neck.
I'd watched him for six months
Going from doctor to doctor.
He was all over the map
Just trying to find some sort of solution.
When Danny came to me,
He'd already had the injury for six months.
Danny's neck was like stone.
Any movement of his neck could literally tear his spinal cord.
So, you know, I knew I had my hands full,
And I knew that this was a coin toss at very best.
That moment in time was one
Of the darkest moments I've had in my whole life.
My motivation was out the door, like, I just wanted to give up.
I said, "Danny, I'm gonna need you to bring a skateboard here,
And I just need to see you ride it".
He said, "paul, I can't ride a skateboard".
I said, "Danny, look, I don't want
To delude you into thinking you can be fixed up
Because this is a career-ending injury".
When he's not skating or he's not skating well,
He himself doesn't have the same confidence when he walks around.
At that time, he was emotionally...
and confidence was a lot lower than I'd seen him before that.
Danny was literally sweating
When he took the skateboard out.
You could see he was paralyzed with fear.
Whenever you have a traumatic injury
Or life-threatening situation,
It's time for reflection.
Can you handle now not being invincible?
Athletes are used to winning
Because they're exercising their strengths.
So all of a sudden
When they are left without their strength,
They have to explore their weakness.
When you get hurt, you kind of analyze yourself
And question why you're doing it,
What you're doing it for, will you be able to do it again,
And all those things that dictate
Whether you're just good or you're great.
We have Danny Way riding for plan B.
He was told he would never be able
To compete as a skateboarder again.
Four months from the day he walked into my office,
He won his first contest back on a skateboard.
All right, Danny!
Let's hear it for Danny Way!
It was really quite a moment of joy
And celebration for both of us,
Because I saw the warrior in there.
I saw everything a great coach
Or therapist hopes that they can see in people
Because it's really the stuff of genius.
Danny was in and out.
You didn't see him all the time,
But when you did, you're like, "whoa, it's Danny Way".
There was a lot going on with him
At that point, and a lot more drive.
The injury kind of taught him
"I might not have another chance to do this".
He's always gonna rise up.
Man's broken his neck and was out, never gonna skate again.
Well, that was just another challenge for him.
Physically, mentally...
you just can't break this dude.
I saw Danny, I hadn't seen him forever,
And he was going so hard, just attacking it.
The vert ramp couldn't contain Danny.
The ramp was too small for this dude.
If you built something bigger, it could show his real ability.
Mike and I had always talked about building
These monster oversized ramps that'd break the world record.
But the ramp size that I need to build
Is gonna cost too much money
And when would that ever happen.
But Mike was always like, "it'll happen.
One day we'll get it figured out".
Once dc started, it was all about the finances
To do something like this,
And ken and me realized if you built something bigger,
It could showcase Danny's ability way more.
For me, Mike Ternasky
Is probably the biggest inspiration.
He was very good at putting people
In situations for them to succeed,
So I wanted to facilitate ways for Danny
To explore his talents
And to expand upon it.
Making Danny's vision come to life wasn't easy.
Driving up to this airfield,
I see, like, what looks like a quarterpipe.
I'm looking, and I was like, "holy shit!
What is going to go down on this right now?"
# Welcome to my world #
# Won't you come on in #
# Miracles, I guess ix
# Still happen now and then #
# Step into my heart #
# Leave your cares behind #
# Welcome to my world #
# Built with you in mind #
I remember talking to him,
And he's like, "we're gonna pull the helicopter in,
And I'm gonna jump out of the helicopter".
I was like, "you're gonna jump out of the helicopter into the ramp?"
I'm like, "are you kidding? Is he kidding?"
"Is he joking?" "He's not joking".
Like, they would let you do that?
They're gonna let you get in the helicopter...
like, they can keep it up... they're gonna let you do that?
He's like, "yeah, we're gonna do it right now".
"Okay," and then I thought, "are they messing with me?"
I end up getting in with Danny.
It was pretty crazy seeing him, like, filming him,
I'm like, "holy shit, this dude's jumping
Out of a helicopter into a ramp right now".
It went from this incredible day
To "I'm about to watch this insane disaster".
If it goes too early, you're jumping 15 feet to coping.
If you jump just a little bit off,
You're jumping 30 feet to the flat ground.
I was, like, so sketched out...
like, I was so off in the corner
Just, like, on each one, just like, "ooh!"
Him jumping out of the helicopter
I thought was the coolest thing ever.
I was just like, "oh, my god!"
It was absolutely mind-blowing.
When he landed into that thing,
It felt so absolutely incredible.
Everybody was gonna have to step up
After seeing that in the magazine.
that's Danny.
He dreamed something up
That nobody else on this planet would have,
And just figured out how to make it reality.
Tim was amazed that Danny
Had even visioned that ramp,
And that it could be skated.
He was pretty proud.
Shortly after that,
Danny got married and had a son, ryden.
Danny was a father similar to Tim.
It was like d�j� vu all over again.
What Tim planted in Danny
Was the opportunity to experience his capabilities.
That stayed with Danny.
He knew he could overcome pretty much anything
That was put in front of him.
Everybody grows up different.
I think Danny had a hard time,
And skateboarding was his... his thing.
It was like going to a doctor,
And the doctor says, "here are some pills. Take them".
Not with Danny. "Look, you have some problems.
Here's a skateboard. That's gonna make you okay".
Skateboarding brings it all right to now.
There's a lot of times I'm up there
And my head's going crazy,
And every time I drop in, it just dissolves all that.
Tim was out surfing with some friends of his.
He was coming back in on his board,
And he collapsed in the beach.
He passed away doing what he loves to do.
Danny felt a real loss,
And I think it brought back feelings that Danny had
From other losses in his life.
There's been a lot of, like, trauma in my life,
And the only thing that's steered me back on track is my board.
Some of us use our pain
And our anger as a motive to achieve things,
And that motive is very, very powerful,
But it also is a double-edged sword.
Skateboarders look at the world differently,
But Danny's unique because his gaze
Is a lot wider than most skateboarders'.
Leave it to Danny to not be satisfied,
So I need something bigger,
I need something faster.
I need something crazier
Because my head is in a different place.
Whatever else is going on in skateboarding,
That doesn't matter,
Because this is what I need to do with skateboarding.
I never imagined anybody going that big.
That was the first time
Anybody had even seen anything like that.
That was a shock, I think, to the entire skateboarding world.
He could very well have built something
Much, much smaller.
No one else would've done it that way.
No one would've convinced people
To put that much money into building that,
And then somehow thought they were gonna be able to do it.
Danny used his entire skill set
To do the whole megaramp movement.
His fearlessness, his vertical skill set,
His street knowledge... it's amazing.
It's a lifetime of effort to do that.
He's the pioneer of the gnarliest thing
There is to do on a skateboard.
It goes beyond skateboarding.
This is now life and death stuntmanship,
True daredevil stuff.
You can die.
If you look at the ramp, I mean,
That's the result of Danny being fed up
Of having to compete on vert
And saying, "you know what? I'm better than this.
I'm gonna create something new that's gonna jump everyone".
So, he created his own event
On his battlefield, you know,
Like that he was gonna excel at.
I really admired
And looked up to guys like Danny Way,
Guys that had this completely other ida
That was, to most people, crazy or insane,
But it was something that worked in their head,
And they were able to start this whole movement in this other direction.
They were able to start their own sports.
The #- Games contest is the gnarliest thing
I've ever seen live skateboarding.
I felt like I was watching gladiator or something.
Skateboarding is just such a notch up
From a lot of sports
As far as how tough you have to be to get that good.
I think that, in a lot of ways,
It gives you strength for the rest of your life.
In order to achieve greatness,
You have to go through a lot of pain.
You definitely have setbacks,
But in order to achieve that success,
You have to push through.
You're gonna have to battle injury.
oh, my gosh, Danny Way!
One to the world! You kill me!
Yeah!
Why keep going? Is staying undefeated really that important to you?
Naw, it's more... more my passion for skateboarding
And part of the challenge
Sometimes is battling the injuries
And, uh, you know, it's always gratifying
To push the human, you know, uh,
The human potential as far as how much abuse
You can take and come back from.
Danny! Whoo!
The very best guys are the ones
That are willing to push it past the limit
And take those chances
To get to that next level.
You have to believe that you can do something
That nobody else has done,
And somehow that concept has to become reality.
From the very beginning, it was totally
A different type of experience, for sure.
It all happened pretty quickly.
Danny was gonna jump the great wall,
We were going to shoot it.
I remember flying there on the night of fourth of july
And taking off from lax and seeing all the fireworks.
There wasn't a lot of information
About what was gonna happen.
I didn't know anything about the dimensions of the ramp.
We didn't know what it was built on.
I hadn't seen photos.
We were all really curious,
I think, to what exactly it was gonna be like.
The week leading up to it, it was pretty nerve-wracking.
These guys were just working day and night,
So it was a definite rush to make it happen.
The ramp was something on such another level.
I would've never imagined that it was gonna be
This 65-foot roll-in built on top of a wall.
If something happened, you'd just fall straight down.
This is a structure of a size
That one man on the planet maybe can do.
Now that's a quarterpipe.
Now, that's what we're talking about.
Oh, my god.
Jumping the great wall is insane,
But then there's a 32-foot tall quarterpipe
That he's gonna be charging towards after jumping the wall,
And this things, like, three stories tall!
He's gonna go 30...
he's gonna go 35 feet on this air!
He's gonna be 70 feet in the air.
Right here's a good ten foot of air,
Just rolling down this thing.
Once you realize that this is what you do
And this is who you are, then you're like,
Now I'm ready to really put it on the line,
And now I need to up the ante.
There's this quest not so much for perfection,
But it's a quest for significance or meaning
Or that I contributed or that I changed things
Or that I mattered.
A guy like Danny, he's only gonna participate
If he can offer something that will change things.
To me, like, that's honor.
I never would've thought that I'd be here
To watch my friend launching over the wall,
And it's hard to even grasp, like,
The size of this without being here.
This is bigger than the megaramps... the super mega.
I remember going there the first day and looking at it.
It was built on scaffolding.
It was sketchy.
It took forever to get up there.
It was definitely not stable.
You could feel it moving.
They would never let anyone build something like that here.
You go up and you look down, and it's just 100 feet down.
I was like, "man, I hope this is okay".
Like, "I really hope this is all right".
This whole thing is shaking around.
Don't move like that and it won't shake.
But watch. Literally, watch.
Feel the whole tower?
There is an addiction to progression.
You get this incredible buzz
When you land something the first time.
When you have that mindset,
It doesn't matter how successful you are.
You have to keep challenging yourself,
You have to keep doing it,
And at some point that becomes a curse.
Danny didn't go to the great wall of China
Uncertain that he could do it.
To the average person it seems farfetched,
But he knows what he's doing.
He's been skating probably just as long as I've been alive.
Of course there's human limits,
But he understands what he is
Or isn't capable of.
It's a different breed of human being.
It's Laird Hamilton, it's Travis Pastrana,
It's Danny Way.
Everybody has a self-preservation mechanism
In their mind
Blocking you from being fearless.
They don't have it.
I feel I've always been very good at risk analysis.
Everyone says you gotta be fearless
To do what we do, but it's not true.
I think anyone fearless gets hurt too quick
To ever be great at anything.
They might get a shade nervous,
But never once do they ever cross their mind
What might happen to them.
The only thing they think about
Is how they're gonna make it.
Once you lose the fear of death, you really learn how to live.
A lot of people are just so paranoid
To get injured or for failure
That they never let themselves step up and live life.
Well, I think we should have an extension up there.
I need... I want the speed.
We could get four feet taller on it.
Four foot taller. That thing looks so gnarly already.
I'd rather have that up there the first go
So I overshoot it than undershoot it.
If I land on that deck it's gonna be...
I'd rather land halfway down than land on the deck.
Better to have too much speed than not enough,
So at the last minute we decided to go a little higher
And built a little four-foot extension
So Danny can pump off this thing
To get a lot more speed.
At some point you have to realize
How much do you really love skating?
Are you willing to risk not having it in your life anymore
Because you want to do that one last thing?
The day before the official event,
Danny says, "I wanna try a jump".
I didn't know if he was supposed to practice
Or not supposed to practice.
We were pretty much just keeping on eye on him
And seeing what he was doing.
He wasn't supposed to skate it,
So we were sitting there all day,
And he's kind of tinkering with the ramp
And finally the Chinese officials
That were there to, like, look at everything,
And these dudes are pretty serious,
So we waited until they bounced,
And he was like, "all right, I'm going for it".
I just ran across this bridge to shoot it.
I just hear someone saying, "hey, Danny's gonna take a run".
There was no siding, no safety nets, nothing.
I'm like, "oh, my god, this can't be good. �
Danny will admit that he's scared.
He'll admit that he's scared
Standing on top of the roll-in
At the megaramp that he's scared of heights.
It's got my heart moving.
Whatever he does to channel that fear out
Is something that I don't think
Most living people ever learn to do.
You are rolling down this massive structure
Into the complete unknown.
It's hard to imagine a lot of other things
That could be any more terrifying.
When you finally do push off and you start going down,
There's no going back.
Oh! Oh!
Hey!
Danny!
It was terrible. Terrible.
I didn't know if he had a broken neck
Or if he was dead or, you know,
He'd broken his leg or what.
All you can do is just sit there
And watch it and hope that he's okay.
I'm speechless.
Speechless, man.
That was like a car accident.
No skateboarder has ever slammed like that.
God damn.
Dude.
I was like, "if this thing is cancelled right now,
That's fine by me. Danny's okay".
You need ice on it immediately.
Ice right now, please, and then we need this wrapped.
We need more roll-in, man. Fuck!
His foot was destroyed.
All I'm gonna do now is wrap it so it doesn't swell, okay?
I'm over this stuff.
I just lost about a year of my life
From standing up there already.
We rush him to the hospital and he's like,
"Ray, like, I just don't wanna know.
I don't wanna know if it's broken or not".
They are pissed.
We got a call basically in the middle of the night
From the major sponsor to say that
Danny isn't jumping without major changes.
He came up short, and we need to fix it.
We're gonna shorten the gap by ten feet,
So that's what our mission is now.
There's a selfish aspect to putting
These really difficult goals upon yourself
And putting yourself at risk because
There are people around you that love you
And they want to see you survive.
They want to see you grow old,
But you have such tunnel vision
You don't hear any of those voices
Because you have convinced yourself you're capable of it.
I think Danny wants his boy to see him
Be all the man he is, and that means do what he does.
Not like, "oh, now that I have my son,
I'm not gonna ride the giant ramp".
I don't think so.
I remember him calling the room
The morning of the jump and being like,
"Yeah," like, kind of laughing.
On the phone, he was like, "I guess it's a lot of pressure, huh?"
I was like, "yeah, do you think?"
'Cause he couldn't move the foot.
It was his back foot,
And that's how you steer your skateboard.
If he doesn't steer his skateboard right,
He's going off the side and he's not gonna make it.
The next day came,
And all of a sudden it's not practice anymore.
It's this huge thing.
There's people running everywhere.
There's crowds. There's camera crews.
Hopefully this works. He's gonna try it.
There's nothing that's gonna stop him.
Danny has to get his mind set before he does jump.
He's gotta be alone.
When he went in to do his meditating thing,
I went in to wish him luck,
And I said, "hey, Danny,
Tim wants to do the jump with you".
And he goes, "what do you mean?"
And I go, "put this in your pocket
So your dad's with you when you do the jump".
I would've never have started skateboarding.
He never in a million years
Thought I would ever think
To bring some of his dad's ashes to him
So Tim could be there with him
And make him land.
He needed skating to kind of get through
His hardships in life, and once you get through
Something like that and it's like,
Okay, now you're indebted.
He knows that skating made him who he is.
Now he's giving everything he can to skating.
We all went down some dark roads,
But it made us stronger, a lot stronger people.
There is a lot of anticipation.
You can just hear it in the crowd,
And I remember there being a lot of waiting
Because it was a live television thing.
Twenty-five million people are gonna see this.
Danny Way is in a very tricky position.
He could encourage a tremendous number of athletes
To try things that are dangerous,
But he's also gotta honor the pioneer in him
That wants to share what is possible.
I cannot even imagine what was going through his mind,
But he had put himself in a situation where he had to do it.
He knew that, and that's how he does it.
If you want to live a life
Where you're breaking ground,
That's an uncomfortable place to be.
It's full of uncertainty, it's full of challenge,
It can be full of disappointment,
And Danny's one of those people that can live in that space.
You get yourself all the way to the top
Of the mountain, and what's left but lightning?
And that, to me, just says Danny.
What are you doing?
But what else is left for you?
When he makes it, you're emotionally involved.
Everyone there was.
Congratulations, Danny! You're great!
I was so scared, I held my breath all the way.
How do you feel?
I think I'm more scared than you are, for sure.
So, are you satisfied with this jump?
It felt great. I'm going to take another jump just for personal satisfaction.
A lot of the people that were doing that event
Were just like, "what's going on?
Why would he do it again?"
But that's Danny.
Twenty-five million people learned what makes Danny Way
Danny Way live on Chinese television.
To do that takes such a great dream
And a dreamer.
It's the greatest expression of freedom
In a land that is so controlled.
It makes you realize anything's possible.
There are only three people
with their name in gold on the great wall,
And Danny's one of them.
And that, to me, is so incredible.
My son has his name on the great wall of China.
When he'd used to say crazy things, I'd laugh and stuff.
I don't doubt anything that he says
When it comes to skateboarding anymore,
And I never will again.
Where we came from had everything do with kind of who we are.
People didn't like people from Vista.
We felt like we had more to prove.
Danny's proved it.
He did it for himself. He really did.
And now he always tries to make the sport
Better and better and better
'Cause he knows what it did for him.
What all the reasons are, he may not know every reason,
But for whatever the reasons are that made him feel good,
He wants other children to experience that love
And that great feeling of just going out and skating.
I don't think I've been satisfied ever.
There's always an urge to do something
Above and beyond what you've done before.
The new territory,
You know, the land of the unknown,
The experimenting with things that
Could seem impossible and defining it's possible,
Those are the things that drive me.
At the end of the day, that's all that drives me.
# Oh, baby, it's time to go #
# And I know, I know, I know #
# Well, baby, it's time to go #
# And I know, I know, I know #
# Oh, baby, it's time to go #
# And I know, I know, I know #
# Well, baby, it's time to go #
# And I know, I know, I know #
# Oh, baby, it's time to go #
# And I know, I know, I know #
# Well, baby, it's time to go #
# And I know, I know, I know #