The LA times has run a review of the Gator * Movie that premiered at the 2003 * Sundance Film Festival *.

Says the movie's maker, Helen Stickler *, ""I don't like to be moralistic or didactic in my work. ... It could be interpreted as a cautionary tale. But I feel the film is really objective -- for instance, there's no narrator in there." "My number-one motivation wasn't that I wanted to do a story about the '80s, or that it was a cautionary tale," says Stickler. "It was really that this was an urban legend that I heard over and over in skating. And I'm really attracted to those types of stories."

"It was just so '80s," Stickler continues, "There have been a lot of boom-and-bust stories with child actors, or even other people in skateboarding who didn't fare so well. But his was such an extreme personality that it makes a very vivid story."

"As far as the prominence that it has in American culture now, skateboarding is youth culture," says Stickler. "But it's a really young sport. It's only been culturally recognized for a little over 30 years. And there's going to be fallout from stuff like that."

"Skateboarding represented freedom, independence and self-definition," Gator says in the film. "And just getting away from the humdrum that was my life. And chicks dug it, too."

As the article's author puts it, "In the end, Stickler thinks part of the film's value is as a wake-up call for other skateboarders."

Concludes Stickler, "Whatever cautionary aspects there are to Gator's story, I see that as being part of the growing pains of the industry. Maybe they'll all learn to look out for each other a little better as it goes on."

Photographer and songwriter John Brinton Hogan sees one other lasting effect. "The story's not over," he was quoted as saying, "There's a man alive in prison. We tend to see the credits roll and walk away. But he has to play this over and over every day. I try not to forget that."

The article also says that Helen stays in contact with Gator, who becomes eligible for parole in 2011.

The complete article by Dean Kuipers is entitled "Saga of a star riding for a fall " and was originally found on the Los Angeles * Times Website at http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/ cl-ca-kuipers26jan26,0,2515541.story? coll=cl-home-more-channels

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