Tas Pappas’s hell ride with skate superstardom

Two talented and inseparable boys move from a rough suburb in Melbourne to the skate fringes of America with a dream to displace the cookie-cutter, homegrown hero, Tony Hawk. It's the story of Australian skateboarding brothers Tas and Ben Pappas, subjects of filmmaker Eddie Martin's new documentary All This Mayhem. The brothers become number one and two in the world, but their painful histories catch up with them and they descend into a downward spiral of drugs, crime and violence. Tragically, Ben loses the battle and also his life. Unable to cope, Tas flies off the rails and winds up in jail where a three-year sentence helps him find religion and a new chance at happiness. Here, Tas recollects his rollercoaster ride with skate superstardom.

MY FIRST SKATEBOARD

“My mum bought me a skateboard for my 12th birthday. I skated it for a year before it got broken and I asked for a good skateboard, a Vision Psycho Stick. Ever since then I’ve always skated… Skating’s got its own feeling. It just feels like you’re doing what you shouldn’t be doing. It feels like you’re defying gravity and flying.”

GROWING UP IN ST. ALBANS, AUSTRALIA

“Where we skated, not many people skated. People would want to bash you for being a skater, that was accepted. It’s a cool thing to be a skater now. It was different when we were growing up. We had to fight, you know? The other kids were into footie, smoking bongs, getting drunk. The suburbs were rough.”

“It’s a cool thing to be a skater now. It was different when we were growing up. We had to fight, you know? The other kids were into footie, smoking bongs, getting drunk. The suburbs were rough” – Tas Pappas

MOVING TO TAMPA SKATEPARK

“We’d sleep all day because it was hot, and then get up around six at night and stay up all night – get on the ramp, film. Everybody’d be drinking, getting on the acid, cruising around. It was just party mode and skating. Mad Circle would send me a bunch of extra product and we’d sell that and occasionally we’d get work putting up massive circus tents for events. After my Mad Circle part got done, I turned pro, got a bit of cash and started doing the comp circuit worldwide.” 

IMPOSSIBLE TO BEAT

“My aspiration as a kid was to, ‘Go to America and smash Tony Hawk.’ Everyone was saying, ‘Hawk is impossible to beat, he just doesn’t fall off.’ And that’s when I was like, ‘Right, no one can beat him? I’m gonna go there and smash him.’ I was a kid with aspirations to beat the best. I know he’s the best. I know he’s gifted beyond belief on a skateboard but he’s never really barnsed it and gone huge. I’ve never said he wasn’t a good skater. He is! He’s Tony Hawk!”

THE AMERICAN DREAM

“America, for me, was the chance to accomplish a dream. At the start we were kind of accepted but as it went on, being Australian, you say it how it is; over in the skate scene in the States, it’s better to be diplomatic and keep your views to yourself. Me and my brother weren’t raised that way, so we’d just call people up on being hypocrites, and that’s what led to however it went down. We got sick of playing the game. I thought becoming a world champion skater was the answer to all my problems, because I suffered with mental illness and I didn’t know it, and when I became world champion I was like, ‘Now what? I still feel like shit.'”

SKATING ON ACID

“Of course I thought acid made me skate better at the time. At the start of an acid trip you get this mad rush of energy and I’d use that to skate, but two or three hours into the session I’d find myself just spinning my wheels, staring at them, for like an hour straight. I’d feel like, ‘Oh no I’m tripping too hard now, I’ve gotta go to my bedroom and trip out for the next six hours.’ Anything I ever did, I did it better sober. I had a very shit start in life, and the drugs sort of made me feel whole. But it’s all bullshit in the end. When it all comes down to it, all that weird mumbo jumbo thinking, like, ‘Oooh I accessed this part of my brain and I now think differently.’ It’s like, cool, now what? I just got over drugs. The novelty wore off. What kicked me into gear was serving a three-year sentence – get off the drugs, get your shit together, train, read the bible, change your life, get out, get on a mission, skate again. Look after your family.” 

THE 900

“The way I was wild living back then, I wasn’t a good role model. I understand that. And that’s why I believe I ended up getting shafted by the X Games. They didn’t want me in there doing a 900 because I was an unpredictable drug addict. But the way I see it now is God is fair, and this doc did come out and it has been exposed. These corporates are trying to dictate who blows up, who goes in comps, who gets a career. Most kids I know who got into skating did come from dysfunctional families and broken homes – they were the misfits, the outsiders. Now skating’s been turned it into this cookie-cutter rich kid thing, which is wrong.”

FUTURE

“I’d like to be a pro-skater again, but I don’t know. It’s always the dream. If I don’t skate my body’s just gonna fall apart. If you stay strong your whole life, who knows, you could skate till you’re 80. So I’m just not going to give up. Whether or not I can be a paid pro-skater again, that’s another story, but I’m going to keep trying to learn the hardest shit I can for the rest of my life. I want to make it back to America so I can find my kids there. I don’t want to lose any more time. I’ve wasted enough.”

All This Mayhem is released on DVD in the UK on October 27