All This Mayhem

All This Mayhem (2014), directed by Eddie Martin, is available to watch online on iFILM. The documentary tracks Tas and Ben Pappas, brothers from Melbourne who reached the top of professional skateboarding in the late 1990s — and then lost everything.

Tas won multiple X Games gold medals and bested Tony Hawk at his own game. Ben was right there with him. Then came the drugs, the blowups with governing bodies, and the controlled demolition of two careers that had once redefined what skateboarding looked like on a competition stage.

Martin doesn't look for villains or frame the brothers as victims. He lets the people around them — Tony Hawk and Steve-O among them — fill in the picture from the outside. The result is a straight-on document of talent colliding with no support structure, which is not a story unique to skateboarding. Watch All This Mayhem online on iFILM.