I don't like bringing it all up
because I would like to be friends with everyone again.
But you're asking me questions about that period -
well, that's what went on.
That's just the way it is.
That's the way it went down. I can't bullshit.
Don't want the Pappas brothers to be remembered
as just maniacs.
But it got pretty heavy. Yeah, just weird.
Stuff you wouldn't think would happen in skateboarding.
And the facts is this, boys -
there's three sides to every story -
there's my side, your side and the truth.
Back then, there was no place better to be
than Prahran if you were a skateboarder.
You had all different types of people rocking up there.
People in the tight, torn jeans,
long hair...
Messy ones, clean-cut.
No matter who you were,
you'd just get accepted if you were a skateboarder.
Do you like skaters?
- Yeah, I am one. - Do you like other skaters?
- Yeah, of course. I have to. - You have to?
What do you think of pedestrians?
Can't do much about 'em.
I used to finish school at 3:30,
get my board and go straight to the ramp.
It was the only thing that I wanted to do at the time.
- Oh! - You alright?
Dom! Why do you skate?
- For fun. - Fun?
Yeah. What else would I skate for? Money?
I had that sense of freedom with skateboarding,
and pretty much that was my life at the time -
I was just skateboarding.
School was OK, but skateboarding
was more than that to me.
Looking sharp there, Greg.
Yeah, looking very good!
Every weekend, every night after school,
we used to go down to Prahran.
It was so exciting because there were people
from around Melbourne, a lot of older crew and street guys.
Hey, why do you skate?
'Cause, you know, I've gotta get some enjoyment in my life.
- You know? - Go and have a pull, son.
My mum hated it.
She just didn't understand why I wanted to go to Prahran
all the time and didn't understand that culture.
Still to this day, they don't really understand.
What do you think of skateboarding?
Skateboarding? I haven't thought about it much.
But do you think it's a good sport, really?
If it turns people on, why not?
I was down at Prahran one day.
I was probably, like, 11 or 12.
And these kids padded up and just started from the bottom.
Looked like they'd never even stepped on a board before.
They just got on the ramp and started pumping,
going quarter of the way up, halfway up the ramp.
They didn't give two shits if someone said to them
to get off the ramp, they'd just go and have a skate.
You could see they were pretty hard, you know.
I found out they were called Ben and Tas.
We were young as fuck when we came to Prahran,
which is on the rich side of Melbourne.
We were just normal kids
brought up in a physical kind of atmosphere,
like having rock wars and climbing construction sites
and houses that were being built.
I saw the vert ramp and I was just mesmerised by the fact
that people could fly through the air, and that took over.
We were bogans.
There's bogans in every country.
I think in America they call them hessians or white trash.
They'd be the American bogan.
In Australia, it's just called a bogan,
but it's more the rougher suburb type.
We grew up in suburbia, half Greek, half Aussie.
Sort of rough.
Growing up was pretty hectic as far as Mum and Dad went.
They tried to be together and cool,
but there were just fights every night.
Mum was hardcore.
I mean, they had a fight, they got into it
and then she's screaming and I was, like, freaking out.
'Don't hit Mum!'
Then Mum would come back with a big glass ashtray,
smash Dad in the head, then he's... Bff!
..laid out on the floor with blood coming out his head!
I'm like, 'Ah! Dad's dead!'
That's the sort of things we saw growing up.
Me and Ben would always be going at it with each other,
smashing each other.
And we learned martial arts as kids.
I was in kung-fu when I was five.
They had to take me out of it
'cause I started smashing all the grade fives
when I was in grade one.
Just thought I was Bruce Lee.
My dad and Uncle Willie had a jujitsu school,
and the first thing Uncle Willie taught us
was all the pressure points.
Temples, eyes, behind the ears,
throat, up the nose, down the chin.
And he's teaching us all these death strikes.
Then he'd tell us in class,
'Right! Now, what are you going to do?
You've just walked in, some bloke's raping your mother.
Think about that. She's about to die.
Now what are you going to do to that bloke?'
We'd be in our heads, young, going, 'I'll kill him!'
And then they'd go, 'Now, spar!'
Then we'd go in there and fully spar.
Dad was like, 'Willie, maybe we should ease up
on the death strikes, they're children.'
But I took that to skating and so did Ben.
Sure enough, a week later they're dropping in.
Tas is dropping in, Ben gets up, starts dropping in.
They'd gotten good really quick.
They just did it for fun, how I did.
We'd become really good friends, me, Tas and Ben.
Ben! Yeah!
We were a really tight group
and everyone bonded with each other who could skate.
We were just complete pricks to other people who couldn't,
so it was that sort of mentality.
- Do some fucking tricks!
When are you gonna fucking skateboard?!
That's the way! There you go.
- Oh, look at it. - It's not good enough!
Not fucking good enough!
You're a wanker! Let's go, man.
♪ The Star-Spangled Banner
Everyone used to come back to my house
and just... all we did
was hang out in the lounge room and watch videos.
We always got really excited
by watching videos from the States 'cause that was it.
I used to just rock in and there was my brother
and a couple of friends watching the videos.
My drive is just progression.
Just to be able to keep going on and doing new things.
To see what they did, I didn't think was possible.
It just blew my mind away.
That's all we watched, and recited songs from them
and just had a laugh about what the skaters were saying.
How long have you been skating?
Six years.
- When did you start? - Um... six years ago.
The Americans had that twang in their voice,
like, 'Hey!' - we used to imitate that.
You're just flying around.
You're not skating any more, just flying around.
Wasn't that Tony Mag's quote in one of the H-Street videos?
It's like you're not skating any more,
you're just flying around.
All I cared about was H-Street.
New gen style, Danny Way style.
I remember being in my room, going,
'That's it. I'm going to America.
I'm going to be the best. I wanna smash Hawk!'
I had these huge dreams.
You just realised
that Australia just didn't have that same buzz.
So to be a part of that US skate culture was our dream.
I was living with my dad during the week
and we stayed with Mum on the weekends.
Mum moved to Clifton Hill,
so the closest vert ramp was Northcote.
That ramp was a lot bigger than Prahran,
and it was pretty much dead there
so we had the ramp to ourselves.
Sometimes these guys would rock up to the ramp
in these two Porsches,
I remember just tripping. 'Who are these two?'
They saw me and Ben learning, fighting and learning,
and he'll learn this and I'll learn that better,
I'll go higher here, and we were just battling.
These guys just so happened to be the two brothers
who had pretty much the biggest
distributorship in Australia.
We had no idea who they were either.
Lucky we didn't get lippy to them, eh?
So if you were starting off from the beginning
to learn skateboarding, is the book going to help you?
For sure. It also has a how-to-do section in it.
Stephen and Peter Hill approached us at the ramp
and said, 'Hey, do you guys want to come into Hardcore?'
Which is now known as Globe.
'We'll give you some product and stuff.'
I was expecting a T-shirt and we walked out of Hardcore
that day with so much shit, I was just blown away.
And from that day on, we were hooked up
with the Hill brothers and Hardcore.
Me and Ben, we got sponsored.
We couldn't exactly quite do things yet,
but they thought we were going to be good.
Jerry Sont here and welcome to Melbourne's Festival Hall
where, tonight, skaters from all over the world,
including USA's No.1 Christian Hosoi
and Sweden's Tony Magnusson,
will compete against Australia's best.
The wheels are way more new than his.
Better trucks, they're way stronger.
We've got the ultimate trucks...
These are so shit. It's a joke.
- It's independent. - Grip tape, really chunky.
Independent is where it is at.
1989 Ramp Riot, they wanted us to go on it,
and I told my dad, 'Dad, you've got to go!'
Me and Ben were, 'Yeah, you gotta let us go
to go on tour around Australia.'
Someone from Hardcore spoke to our parents,
and the next thing you know, we're in the team van.
And then we toured around Australia,
seeing all this mayhem go down.
We were staying in a hotel with 30-years-olds,
partying out of control.
We live to skate 100% of the time.
When we travel, we skate. When we're at home, we skate.
The skating shouldn't be organised.
It is like trying to chain a wild animal.
It shouldn't be done.
They're all just coked, drinking maniacs
with all these chicks.
Naturally, that's what me and Ben saw as young, young kids
and we were like, 'Oh, this is what skating is about.'
And you're young, going, 'Yeah! These pros are cool.
I wanna be a pro skater.
What's that white shit they're sniffing?
Oh, it makes you skate better? Hmm.
Get me tonnes of that.' You know, you'll do it.
So that was our first taste of pro skateboarding.
Harder.
Fuckin'... Unnggh!
I got into video
just because so much stuff was happening at Prahran,
it was entertaining to actually watch
people's reactions to themselves on video.
Why are you filming all the time?
Apart from the skating, we were just hanging out,
doing what your regular boys would do at that age.
Look at that little baby. Mmm. She's just asking for a root.
- Mmm. - Lana, want to fuck?
No, don't say that. Buzz will root you!
Nah, I'm just asking for Buzz. He hasn't got the guts to.
At the same time,
I could see Tas and Ben were getting really good.
They were improving, like, really quickly.
Just go for it.
They were doing new tricks that, in some respects,
that were better than some of the pros
who were in the American videos.
Shut up while I'm trying to skate. All right?
Fair enough.
Tas was an in-your-face kind of guy,
and his skating was the same.
He'd just go for it,
always put together the hardest stuff, back to back.
If he slammed, he slammed.
If he couldn't make a trick,
it was, 'Look out, heads, here is a board coming.'
Fuckin' dick! Fuckin' homo!
Fuckin' eh!
- No, don't say that. - Buzz will root you!
Ben, on that session you just watched today,
what is the outcome, your response?
Ah, well... nothing.
Ben was always different to Tas,
maybe because he was the younger brother.
Quite laid-back and he was just a bit more open-minded.
It was weak.
At the time, there was a big boom in street skating.
It had its own energy, it had its own language.
It was a new generation of kids taking all the old tricks
and adding kickflips
to create a whole new dynamic form of skating.
Ben would come along and skate street with us
and actually try these street tricks
on the vertical, which was just unheard of.
Ben Pappas.
- Kick indy revert. - Yep. Do it.
After the heelflip?
No, try the varial. You're so fucking close to the varial.
The thing that was really amazing about Ben
was he was just, like, completely natural.
If you thought anything, he would do it.
- Back foot kickflip. - You'll never do it.
- All right. - You're dreaming.
Obviously take time, but he'd actually do it
and do it all the time, really easily.
That's when all that sort of vert and street mix
was coming to power, I guess you could say.
Look at how Sean's going, eh?
He'd like to quote movies, my brother.
The movie Platoon was the war between Elias and Barnes,
and he'd say, like, we skated like Barnes and Elias.
Elias was more free-flowing and stoned
and Barnes was like,
'If the machine breaks down, we break down.'
He just gets hammered and just, 'Raah!'
Makes things happen. That's how Ben reckons I skated.
I'd roll in, try to do everything and land it or die.
He'd call it 'Barnesing' it.
Ben was more flick perfect and he was more the Elias,
'cause he tried to be more understanding.
We did everything together. We were inseparable.
Go slowly.
- Wait, are you filming? - Yeah.
The scene was really sort of dead
in Australia at that point.
Just feed it. Don't hurt it.
But it sort of brought us sort of closer together.
It's trying to attack me!
Tas and Ben both knew how to have a fun time.
Come on!
Get off!
I'm recording.
Yeah, hang on.
Did it work?
- Nah! - No!
- Did it work?
- Got it, mongol? - Fucking wait.
Tas always had something new up his sleeve, you know.
If it was causing mischief, he definitely wouldn't hold back.
Hold it upside down until the plastic starts burning.
The bomb is gonna go off!
Little bogans, I suppose. That's what we did.
We were always looking for a rush, trying to have fun.
- Fuck off. - Keep away from me!
- You're a fucking goober! - Get away from me!
- Fucking don't hit me. - Get away from me, you idiot.
- You're a cunt. - Well, fuck you, mongol.
Yeah!
What kid doesn't have fun blowing up lighters
or smashing things or finding a stolen car in a paddock
and smashing all the windows in it and setting it on fire?
What little kid didn't enjoy that stuff?
It's what everyone does, don't they?
Didn't they?
Why are you here?
I'm doing a demo.
What do you think of the demo so far?
It sucks.
- Why? - Shit ramp.
Any good-looking chicks out there?
Most of them are lizards. I suppose there'd be a few.
How could you sum Sydney up in one word?
Fucked.
It went sort of slack for a bit.
Not much skating went down.
That was when I made up my mind.
I was 16, worked for a year and a half, saved up my money,
jumped on a plane, vowing to myself I have to go there,
and I have to beat Hawk.
Hello, and welcome to the skate park of Tampa.
I'll be your tour guide. My name is Bill.
Welcome to the pro shop. We've just refinished it.
You've got Fred over here, dealing with construction...
You've got Olly, park employee. And the Sandman.
The first time I met Tas was in Tampa, Florida.
They had a vert ramp in a warehouse where lots of people
from all over the world would show up.
It was not only a great place to skate
but it was a really fun place to party.
It was a cool environment.
We lived in the skate park behind the ramp.
There was the skate park
and then there was an office building inside the warehouse.
We lived under the ramp in the Charlie Brown room.
It was painted yellow with a black zigzag
all the way around the room.
Trippy room, gave you really weird dreams in there.
He was a kid.
I don't even know how you'd gather the kind of money
it takes to get a plane ticket from Australia
to fly all the way to the US with nowhere to stay in sight,
trying to chase a dream
that, you know, doesn't seem very realistic.
You get here and if you're the new vert skater
from Australia that shows up, nobody cares.
Tas came over here
and his skating was what put him on the map, period.
It was, like, undeniable.
The level of skating there was mad!
Everyone was just going off all the time,
just filming constantly, everyone is there every day.
..in the pool room.
Mike Frazier, Mike Crum! What do you know?
It was full-blown mayhem. It was crazy, man.
A lot of acid-taking going down.
You get sheets, mini sheets of acid
and I'd just have acid all the time.
♪ Madness and mayhem... ♪
I filmed my whole part,
all my tricks in the Mad Circle Let The Horns Blow,
I was on acid, and I got Video Part of the Year.
When I'd get on the acid,
it was like everything just felt like I was moving well.
You know that da Vinci painting
where the guy's like this and like this
and it's in the circle, there's all the numbers?
I started feeling like him.
Always wanted to do everything in a line at the end.
I just thought the best thing is, like,
imagine all these mad, single tricks these guys have filmed
and then everyone thinks that's your video part done
and then, at the end of your part,
be able to do it all in one line.
The Mad Circle video really put him on the map
because he was certainly the next guy that was changing
what you thought was possible or how it was done on vert.
There was one line that stood out
that was like all the hardest tricks
that no-one had really ever seen, but put into one line.
Rumour has it that that line was done on mushrooms as well,
so it made it that much more iconic.
In that period when Tas was in the States,
Ben was preparing himself to be a world-class skater.
Oh, yeah!
Whoo-hoo!
- It's fucking cold!
Oh, my God! That was so scary!
You guys are fucked!
He was filming all the time with me,
hanging out, having fun, but also trying to do
the best he could to prepare himself to go to America.
- Start again. - Shut up!
Bunch of slack-jawed faggots here.
This will make you a goddamn sexual Tyrannosaurus,
just like me.
I was 16, I finished Year 10 and went to the States.
My brother was already over there. He finished school.
He was two years older than me,
so he was already in Tampa, Florida.
I flew over to Tampa, met Tas there.
Ben blew straight onto the scene like his brother.
- What's your name? - Ben Pappas.
- Where are you from? - Australia.
- How old are you? - 16.
These guys were putting
such a heavy hit on vert skating
that it was just unbelievable.
Me, my brother and this guy Bo Turner,
we would go to the skate park to go skate,
and then seeing these dudes skate the vert ramp
like no-one else I've seen skate the vert ramp.
Out of nowhere, like, 'Who the fuck are these guys?'
'Oh, they're the Pappas brothers from Australia.'
Both those guys were,
'I'll fucking make this trick. I don't give a shit.'
That was the mentality.
When they were on it, it was like, 'Dude, stand back,
and fucking watch some really, really good skateboarding.'
Got onto the comp circuit.
Being an outsider from another country, it was hard.
You come up, you've gotta start doing stuff
that is just obviously light-years ahead,
or way harder combos which no-one's even bothering to do.
Tas went from a guy
that was living in the skate park at Tampa
to a guy that started to pick up
a bunch of really good sponsors.
Ben, as well, during that
had really stepped into that arena just like Tas.
They were both so fucking gnarly.
It took Ben a bit to get used to the pressure
of the world stage, but once he did,
he just started killing it.
I never thought about the money.
I was just enjoying going on tour
and chicks and new best friends in every city.
It was fun.
Tas Pappas, ready to go.
He's a feisty one.
He is a feisty one...
As the comp circuit went on,
I started realising how weird it was getting.
All of a sudden, it's ESPN
and you got your Hawks playing it up to the camera,
really going, like, full mainstream
Brady Bunch type stuff.
It is skateboard vert,
and it is Tony Hawk's turn.
Can I go?
Some X Games it was like, 'X Games welcomes Tony Hawk'
like, he was fully in there at ESPN.
I think he married a chick from ESPN.
It was like he owned it!
Pretty smart businessman, I'd give him that.
Tony Hawk,
one of the greatest ever in this sport.
He's got his own skateboard company, he's into videos,
even took a stab at directing in our ESPN truck.
Hey, I just have a question...
I thought, 'Yeah, what is this? This isn't us.'
Skateboarding is about individuality,
and they were taking that away.
Whoa, nice.
Is he going for something new?
Some of the stuff I saw, I remember shaking my head,
just going, 'Wow, is this what skating has turned into?'
We've seen that he can fly high.
Here he goes, scooting across there. He's in the water!
Hawk takes a swim, and the crowd love that!
If you want to be a pro racer, where do you go?
Indianapolis 500.
You want to be an actor, you go to Hollywood.
Want to be model? Go to fucking New York.
You wanna be a pro skateboarder,
you come to San Diego.
I moved to California in '95
and ended up living with Danny Way,
and then those guys came out.
It's not even that hard.
As soon as me and Ben
moved to San Diego, we felt at home.
Do it all the way. Should go all the way forwards.
Then when Danny and Colin invited me and Ben
to go skate the Plan B ramp with them,
we were just psyched.
Yeah!
It was just like hanging with the boys.
There was no fakeness going on, you know?
Cocky bastard.
They were skating with their hero, Danny.
The level went up, huge.
It was like, 'Holy fuck, dude, did you see that?'
Those guys fed off each other. They were fucking competitive.
Tas would be saying shit to Danny
and they'd get into arguments.
'Fuck, I can't wait to see the skateboarding go down!'
And it went down.
Ah, you trick thief. Jake's been trying that.
Then those guys ended up living at the house
and that was quite a... You know.
I don't know what to say.
That was another mayhem,
living at Danny's house - it was just party time again.
Me and Ben are chopping coke non-stop, skating, partying.
Just... You couldn't escape it in those days,
you know what I mean?
The first time me and Tas sat down,
he took my brand-new bag of weed and I look over
and he's chopping it all up with his cigarettes, you know,
and, to me, that was disrespect.
I was a little pissed.
You know, 'That's my fucking weed.
That's my brand-new bag of weed, '
and he's chopping it up, making himself a mull.
'It's a fucking mull, mate.' Chopping it up.
I don't really think it was something he tried to do.
I just think he was, like, a natural asshole.
At the time, me and Danny were starting a skateboard company
called Platinum Skateboards
and we wanted Tas and Ben to be on the team.
We started talking to them and it was just on.
Platinum was a bloody dream team.
It was a sick bloody team!
Chet Thomas came on board with us, Henry Sanchez,
but the big drawcard was me and Ben were together.
Tas and Ben were acquaintances
until I got on XYZ Platinum,
and from that point, we got pretty close.
It opened up a different side - For me, anyways,
because I was a street skater.
Seeing those guys skating vert, just going crazy,
living the rock star lifestyle was pretty awesome.
You appreciate it as a street skater
'cause you don't get that rock star status
that the vert guys get.
They do a couple of Mac Twists and come off the ramp
and literally girls are surrounded.
Ben wasn't so much like that,
but Tas indulged in that lifestyle, you know.
They both rode for this new company.
There was all this huge hype surrounding them.
They had this really cool apartment
just steps away from the beach.
Tas's dad had come over and started living with them,
so that was really cool,
and then the contest season started to pick up
in the vert world and there were some big contests.
Tas and Ben just killed all the contests, you know.
They were powerhouses, they come from Australia,
and they just had that Australian attitude
of not giving a shit.
From Melbourne, Australia, Tas Pappas!
There was a bit of push and pull all year
between me, Ben and Hawk.
Tas Pappas opening the door.
Kickflip indy. Wow!
I just remember going to each comp
and we'd be doing latest tricks.
Tas really had a good run.
Hawk was still just doing his normal stuff.
He wasn't flipping his board or any of that stuff,
and he would be winning the comps still.
We were a bit mind-boggled.
And the judges scored a 90.
That means we are deadlocked
and we will have a run-off for the championship.
He's an amazing skater.
I don't particularly like his style.
He just wasn't doing the latest moves
and it was a bit hard to cop at times, you know.
Oh, incredible! Outstanding run by Ben.
Then all of a sudden, Ben went off.
I think he got three firsts in a row or something.
He was just on this roll at one point.
Oh, my goodness!
Ben Pappas is the best skateboarder
in the world right now.
- You've got to be stoked. - I'm stoked as.
I was like, 'He beat me again.'
Then I'd beat him and he's like, 'Grr, next comp.'
Like, brotherly push.
It was always been like that since day one.
Another fakie into a 720. Holy cow!
It got to a point
we weren't even thinking about anyone else.
Hawk wasn't in there.
It was just about pushing each other further and further.
We've been entering contests ever since we were kids.
It's all the same when it comes down to it.
It's just a contest. You're there, you gotta do your best.
I was told on the day
'You and Ben are one point apart from No.1 in the world.'
Ben just had to place higher and he'd have had it.
The crowd, are you guys ready?
1996, Hard Rock Café Vans World Championships.
Tony Hawk is banging trick after trick.
Not a lot of skateboarders are able to do what he is doing.
Hawk did his normal run,
which is a good run, but it wasn't, like... great.
Although he does do a lot of tricks,
the level of intensity wasn't quite as high
as some of the other skaters.
Ben Pappas dropping in,
dropping straight into a huge kickflip indy.
Winner of three previous events
coming into this contest.
It was a long, hard season
and Ben has a tweaked lower back, so he was struggling.
So I decided it was up to me.
I figured I just had to Barnes it,
and Barnesed it is what I did.
Tas! Yeah!
Let's give a little applause for Tas Pappas right now.
He's our No.1 qualifier.
Hawk was a very smart competition skater.
He's a chess master on a skateboard
as far as a comp run is concerned.
But I wasn't interested in that.
I did my stuff and I slammed on a 720
and slid out and went bang.
I knew straight away I had broken my rib,
but it didn't matter 'cause I'd already done my best run
so I didn't think I had to skate again.
Was that enough to beat Tony Hawk?
What do you think? What do you think?
That is a dead tie, so we are headed for a run-off
with Tony Hawk and Tas Pappas.
I didn't believe it.
I was saying, 'Oh, my God, what more can I do?'
I remember Ben going off to the judges,
'How the hell is it a head-to-head?
He did kickflips 10ft high!'
Now I gotta try again?
And it was even harder in the head-to-head
because he would just be going 540, 540, 540, 540,
air to fakie, 720, 540, 540, grind, grind, grind.
You know what I mean?
Well, in situations like this,
you always have to favour the veteran of the sport -
he's been here before.
Tony just doesn't fault.
Tony dropped in, did his run and did every single trick
that he was pretty much doing that day.
I thought he had it in the bag.
I thought, 'Tony's definitely got it.'
I was on top of the roll in...
..and I'm like, 'What have I got to lose now?'
My rib's already broken so I may as well just go for it.
If I didn't win, I just wanted to be known as the guy
who went completely ballistic.
Are you ready for Tas Pappas?
Look at that, just going giant!
Oh, my goodness!
Oh, my God.
Fakie, 540 to fakie, one of the hardest tricks you can do.
Oh!
That was amazing. Going to be a tough call for the judges.
Was that enough to beat Tony Hawk?
- What do you think?
Well, it's kind of déjà vu in Las Vegas,
Tony Hawk and Tas Pappas went head-to-head for a final.
They did it again today, as you saw,
and I'm gonna tell him for the first time.
Tas, you're the champion,
I don't know if you know that, but you won the contest.
- Did I? No... - You won the contest.
- You're serious? - Yes, you did.
- Nah.
An unbelievable reaction because I know, Tas...
I didn't believe it.
I thought they were taking the piss.
Then after that, I was like, 'No way.'
Are you stoked right now? What are you thinking right now?
- You're in disbelief. - I don't believe you.
It felt sick! You're at the top.
You're on the best teams,
you're affiliated with the best guys,
winning comps.
That was the goal - to be there, to do that.
It was bloody amazing really.
When they called it, it was like, 'Holy shit!'
Yeah, that was amazing.
I will never forget the day. I was just blown away.
Afterwards, Hawk was sort of angry and cut,
and he came up and he's looked at me, he's like,
'Uh, I just feel like I should have won that.'
Then Ben's just come out, going, 'Fuck off, Hawk.
All year, they have been giving you the comps
and you come to us, "Uh, I think I should have won!"'
And Ben goes, 'Why can't you just be happy
for someone else who's done it, man?
You don't flip your board!'
He goes, 'Fuck off, old man. You're over.'
Because Ben went to bat for me so hard,
I was thinking, 'Do I do the right thing here?
No, Ben.'
I couldn't leave Ben with it and have Hawk hate Ben's guts
and not hate my guts at the same time.
'If my brother's going off for me this hard,
I won't have him look like the only dick.
I'll be a dick with him.
Yeah, fuck off, Hawk, you fucking wanker!
You can't even flip your board, you old prick.'
And that's one of the things that led to our feud.
Tas did a really good job at burning bridges.
You know, he thoroughly would burn down the bridge.
It wasn't like he stepped on someone's toes
and then worked it out with them or anything -
he would step on your toes,
spit in your face and, 'Fuck you!'
No, it's not New York.
It's Melbourne's Prahran skate ramp
where the Pappas brothers have come home to a hero's welcome.
I've had tapes of them when they were younger.
They weren't as good.
And now they've reached the top and they're the best now.
They've got the technique, everything, soul,
whatever it takes, they've got it and they did it.
Tas Pappas and his younger brother Ben
are now the world's No.1 and 2 ranked skateboarders.
I just did it to pass time
and then it started working out for the better.
I couldn't believe it myself, you know.
I thought they would probably get in the top ten or five,
but I never expected them to take it that far.
I am a professional athlete. I'm about to do an interview.
We went back home to celebrate.
We were just on such a high,
we just didn't want the party to end.
Everywhere we went, we had a few casual lines of coke,
which turned into three weeks at a time.
Yeah, it was party time.
Come in, James, are you there?
Tas Pappas, everyone, give him a round of applause!
Tas, can I ask a question? You are world champion.
You won the $10,000 prize or so
recently up against Tony Hawk
and you did it with a broken rib.
How did that happen?
That was in my final run. I slammed and smacked my ribs.
Watching TV and Hey, Hey, It's Saturday came on,
and I saw Ben and Tas,
and I went, 'Oh, my God!'
They were completely bonkers.
This is Tas's brother, Ben.
They were just all pumped up,
egos were flying and high as fuck.
..brother on the world circuit with you?
I'm stoked to have Tas on the world tour. It's rad.
We get to cruise around, skate.
Yeah, I think he likes it too.
A whole new lingo thing going on here.
Thank the boys
for showing us what they do.
We're proud to have the No.1 and No.2 in the world.
Yeah, these guys rock.
- Whoa! - Heavy slam!
Tas!
Hey, Tas.
What's in your mouth?
I was training with Danny's trainer.
I just was feeling pain and he did a full check on my body,
X-rayed everything
and then it turned I out I had spondylolisthesis.
Spondylolisthesis is where the vertebrae
breaks off the wings.
My spinal cord was jammed down the bottom.
He told Danny, 'Don't force Tas to skate.
He'll end up paralysed.'
He told him, 'He needs some time to get strong'.
I ended up paying him ten grand to do my physio.
Do you want a Jack-and-coke?
When I'd get injured, I'd just go party,
I'm not going to sit at home doing this and that.
I'd just get on it.
What are you going to do when you're young,
you've been on top of the world,
you've got major injury, you're thinking this and that?
You're going to party, aren't you?
Once you've already got a habit, why stop?
You've got money, you've got this,
you think it's never going to end.
Going from nothing and then making money
and you're that young and you're in a foreign land,
it's got to be weird.
All of a sudden you can do shit.
When those guys started making a lot of money,
they got a nice house, they were cruising around
and having a good fucking time for a while.
Everything was great.
But then... fucking doing drugs and stuff,
that definitely fucks you up.
Everyone looks better in gold. The gold rim.
I would always have tonnes of coke on me.
I had a pound of coke at one time
just sitting in my dresser,
Didn't even think if I got caught I'd get time.
I remember waking up in the mornings,
I had a big brick of this shit,
and I had a mad knife in my top dresser.
I'd wake up, and it was sharp as,
and I'd just scrape the top of the brick
and then...
Straight off the knife,
and just have it sitting there at all times.
Lee Ralph came over and I'd break off a good chunk,
and do it until it was gone.
I liked to buy in bulk back in those days.
Those fucking guys went nuts.
Going over to their house to pick up Tas
to go film with him one night, and he's doing coke.
There was a mound of it. It looked like Scarface.
I mean, it was, like, a mound of cocaine.
Like, 'Hey, Lance, want to do some?'
And I'm like, 'All right.'
He'd bring some along with him
and we're driving to the Plan B ramp
and we get pulled over by the cops.
Get out of the car.
I'm like, 'Oh, shit, dude.'
I know he's got it with him.
Get your driver's licence out.
They're like, 'What are you guys doing?'
'We're about to skate a ramp.'
The cops are like, 'Yeah, right.'
I'm like, 'Look, there's the skateboard,
all the pads. Want to watch?'
What's this contraption on here?
- It's a skateboard. - A what?
We got away with that one
and I'm like, 'Fuck, man, we almost got busted for that.'
That's when I was like,
'Man, you've got to stop doing that shit.'
Let me film all this shit.
I'll fucking film it.
There was definitely
more partying that went on than skateboarding,
and Tas became impossible to deal with.
You fucking rule, mate.
I'm the same as you guys. We all skate. We skate.
Yeah!
I'm just the same. I just got lucky.
I could be God fucking...
Fact of the matter is it's the skaters for the skaters
and fucking Platinum is for the skaters.
- Yeah! - You guys rule.
The Vegas contest we all went out to,
I remember Tas getting so wasted and so belligerent
he didn't even skate the contest.
- Who rules?
He went up on top of the platform
and we had a box of XYZ stuff
he was throwing out to the crowd during a contest run.
The main chick that ran the contest tried to stop him.
He's called her a cunt, told her to fuck off, you know.
It got the crowd away from the contest, chanting.
Louder!
He disrupted the whole event.
At the time he was so drunk,
I don't think he saw really what he was doing.
He was just stoked on the energy that he was creating.
X-Y-Z! Platinum!
Platinum!
Everywhere Tas went was like a fucking tornado, man.
He just truly didn't give a shit.
XYZ, Platinum! Or I'll fuck your mum!
I'll fuck your mum.
Tommy was like, 'Why aren't you skating?'
I think he was starting to confuse the issue
with my partying as to just not wanting to skate.
That's when the downfall started.
Right there was when it started to go sour.
We just had good times.
We drank a lot, smoked a lot of weed and just partied.
Had a good time.
Me, Ben and Sanchez were always smoking bongs,
doing snow cones, smoking coke.
We thought that the money was never going to stop.
I was No.1 in the world and Danny Way had his name,
and we were killing it and we were rock stars.
- Holy shit!
- He just went off. - That was fucking insane.
I thought I'd get burned.
I thought this house was going up in flames, dude.
When you start making a lot of money,
a lot of shit comes along with that.
People get ego-driven and greedy.
You get a shitload of people that pretend to be your friend
just to get stuff out of you,
especially where money is involved.
Shit can get pretty messy.
Oh, my God!
- Jesus!
There was no direction in the company.
How you survive in skateboarding is basically
you get a good team and you film a video
and you make good products. It's that simple.
But there was no direction at all.
Danny would send me to San Diego to skate and film,
and I would skate vert, I am a street skater.
So... nothing was very organised at all.
It seemed like XYZ all of a sudden,
which was part of Platinum, they had built this huge ramp,
one of the first really big ramps, at this warehouse.
Now these guys had this really gnarly practice facility
or vert ramp to themselves.
Everyone was like, 'What?'
You'd never seen anything like that.
Danny and Tommy never listened to budgets,
and then the investors are like,
'What's going on with the money from XYZ?'
It was just dwindling away.
And I couldn't skate because of the back,
but I was still blinded by the light,
sniffing the lines of coke from hell.
'Yeah, whatever, I'm the best.'
I disagreed with the money-spending thing.
I thought it was stupid.
Fucking buying dumb shit and I'm like,
'We don't need that. We're a young company.'
It felt like they expected me to be 'Fuck, let's go for it.'
No.
You need to put the money back into the company.
You don't start buying fucking vans
and stupid shit we don't need and partying and... Eugh.
I just wanted to make it in skateboarding,
and that's why I got out of it.
They came and picked me up,
took me for a drive
and Danny and Tommy were in the car.
They said 'Listen, we're gonna have to let you go.
Platinum is no more.
There's just no more money.
And we hate to break it to you,
but your dad embezzled the money, he took the money.
There's just no more money.'
I went, 'What?'
I was in the car going, 'You're fucking kidding.
My dad wouldn't take money. What are you talking about?'
They fully tried to say
my dad stole all the money from the company,
and then it got out in the industry
that that's what was said about my dad
and I wasn't having that.
Kicking him off the team wasn't easy.
It was like, I had to deal with this guy
and it would now turn into a little personal war.
I felt at the time I've put a lot into him,
I helped him out as much as I could
and he thoroughly, I felt, fucked us over.
I had a lot of resentment and a lot of frustration
and anger towards him
where I wanted to fuck him up.
We were sitting at our house one night.
Next thing you know we hear boom, boom on my roof.
I go outside and it's a fucking beer bottle
with a sock on fire and full of petrol.
Lucky it didn't break.
We heard fast footsteps. It sounded like little legs.
And Tommy has got little legs.
He tried to petrol bomb the house.
I thought 'Fuck, this guy's off tap.'
I did things on my end to let him know that
'I wanted you fucking out of here, man.
We helped you get here and you can leave now.'
We need to get the ball rolling, all right?
All right.
Jump in off that and go right here, OK?
OK, mate.
XYZ Platinum both had fallen apart...
..and then sort of quickly from everyone being
this sort of band of brothers mentality,
there seemed to be this huge falling-out
between Tas and Danny.
Then all of a sudden, it was, like, cut ties
and Tas and Ben were not even allowed
to skate the ramp any more.
It turned kind of ugly really fast.
I started thinking, 'This is crap.
Is this really what skateboarding is all about,
just backstabbing bullshit over money?'
I hated it and Ben hated it.
We'd be talking and Ben says,
'I can't handle the fakeness over here.'
So he decided to go home for a while.
We dropped Ben off at LAX.
So I slept in and then I woke up to the phone ringing,
and it was Ben at Melbourne Airport.
And all I heard Ben say was, 'Tas, I fucked up.'
Ben Pappas was arrested at Melbourne Airport.
His credit card triggered a high cocaine reading.
X-rays of his sneakers revealed
103g of cocaine with a street value of more than $50,000
concealed in the sole.
Ben Pappas and his brother, Tas,
are youth sensations, idolised to the United States,
where skaters rub shoulders with rock stars.
The pair is ranked one and two in the world,
but such heights are now likely to elude Ben Pappas
after he was caught smuggling cocaine into Melbourne.
As imports go, it was only a small amount -
just over 100g for his own personal use.
But importing the drug is punishable by a hefty fine
or, at worst, a term in prison.
Whatever happens to him, it's almost certain that Ben Pappas
will never be allowed into the United States to compete.
That was just bloody the most shattering phone call
because I knew Ben couldn't come back.
That shattered me. I cried and...
..I just couldn't believe it.
Picked up the paper and it just was Ben Pappas,
busted at Melbourne Airport for cocaine in his shoe.
You just thought, 'What the fuck are you doing?
You're blowing it.'
My jaw pretty much dropped.
I thought he was in the motivation to become No.1.
I didn't think it was like Ben to do that, bring it over.
I used to get along with Ben back in the day,
so I kind of really felt for him at the time.
I wanted to see him get through it.
Being pro skaters who are travelling a lot,
people always propositioned each other.
'Imagine we just brought it from here
because it's so much cheaper.'
But... you know not to run 'em across borders.
The pay-off is not big enough.
Does it mean the end of competition?
It beat him up big time.
He just had a lot of regret.
He used to say to me,
'Fuck, if only I left my shoes on the plane.'
He couldn't go overseas,
he couldn't travel and make a living from it.
For him, that was a huge wake-up call, man -
coming from second in the world
to, like, rock bottom, that's it.
That would be a spear through the heart, pretty much.
I was shattered.
My partner in crime has gone.
I'm gonna be touring the world alone now.
Any country I go in, no-one's really got my back any more.
It was me and Ben against the world. Now it's only me.
What are you guys up to?
- We're just looking around. - Hello!
- You can sign right here. - All right.
- What's your name? - Gabe.
I was living with Tas when Ben got caught.
I remember everyone was kind of devastated.
Switch ollie.
Dude, this is it!
I started filming him a lot,
That's when he started doing the 900, and he was so close.
- Whoa! - Fuck off!
After Ben got busted, I was thinking,
'It's time to knuckle down,
try to kick the doors open again for me and Ben,
like I did when I first came to the States.
If I nail the nine that could lead me to money
which could help get my brother back.'
Tas!
Do a 900.
The 900 was something that's never been done before,
and it was very scary.
A 540 is one and a half spins.
With a 900, you go up, you do a 540
and another 360, bang.
Whoo!
He was so close,
landing on 'em, almost making it.
We had a couple of people from Transworld Magazine
come and shoot sequences of Tas.
Yeah, he's gonna do it, Grant. You want to bet 100?
Grant Brittain, he's an old-school photographer
who works for Transworld who's shot Hawk for years.
He shot all his photos, they've been mates for years.
I just thought, 'Sick, Grant's being cool again.'
Oh!
You've got to get him to free run.
What?
Get him over there when he's hyping up for it.
Yes!
- Oh! - Yeah!
He almost made it.
He was way high, way high in the air
and almost making them.
It was like a legit 900.
He heard that everyone at Transworld,
Hawk and everyone was gonna look at his sequences.
The Hawkman, everyone went and studied his work.
I was just about there and I was thinking it was on.
Then I was thinking, 'I'll do it at the '99 X Games.'
From Melbourne, Australia, it's Tas Pappas
and just from watching him in practice,
after being gone from pro skating for a little while,
the man is on a mission.
This guy has been going off all day today
and all day yesterday in practice.
He's on fire.
Has got so much confidence going on right now.
I want to see the 900.
Phenomenal. I think he's gonna save that
maybe for the best trick contest if he's in it.
Tas and Bill were just super psyched
because there was a best trick contest.
But for some reason, they didn't let Tas skate.
I've done the comp, this and that.
I've been doing all right and Don Bostick's like,
'You're not in the best trick comp this year.'
I'm like, 'What do you mean?
I've been in every best trick comp all year
for the last few years.
Why just out of nowhere just this one?'
They said, 'You're not in it.' I said, 'Well, who is in it?'
Tony Hawk, Tony Hawk.
It's the 900.
You guys wanted to see it done?
Then the best trick comp started
and I saw Hawk start trying nines.
And I was just like, 'No way.'
Tas was devastated.
Because that was it -
if he would have entered that contest he would have did it
because he's that kind of skater.
Everybody picture it. Here we go.
I thought, 'What a weasel manoeuvre.
At least give me a chance.'
He probably would have beaten me to it,
but at least I could have had a shot for shot for it,
you know what I mean?
When Tony Hawk did the 900,
I was there, I witnessed it.
I didn't think it was all that impressive
compared to what I saw Tas doing.
I know he would've at least tried it.
Don't know if he'd have nailed it, but he'd have tried it.
It would have made Tony Hawk's 900 less impressive.
If it weren't for you people I'd have never made that.
Thank you. This is the best day of my life.
I swear to God.
I realised right then and there who I was up against.
It didn't matter how good I was
or how close I was getting to something,
it was just, 'Stuff you. Piss off home, Aussie.'
Ahh!
Leave it there, you cunts.
I hadn't seen Ben for two years after he got busted.
He just disappeared again.
But then I saw him in the city just off chance,
and he was completely a different person -
stacked on the kilos, just mega overweight.
You filming again?
He was just doing a lot of drugs and playing music.
He totally did not skate.
He reckons he didn't skate for about a year, year and a half
and was totally removed from it.
He was really unhappy and really down on himself.
It's easy to get sucked into doing drugs,
partying and shit like that,
but in the end it brings you nothing but bullshit.
Basically it taught me that you reap what you sow.
If you do good things,
good things are gonna happen to you.
Pretty much karma.
Was on antidepressants. He would get depressed.
He gained a lot of weight.
At the time I had put on the kilos as well.
I was on some antidepressants myself.
Everyone used to see us and see two fat people,
and we were trying to skate the new Globe ramp.
Hey, Dom.
Has it stopped raining? Yeah?
At that time, I kind of felt
that I had caught up with a good friend again.
He needed somewhere to stay
so I said, 'Yeah, you're in.'
And having him around was good.
All right, this is it.
Make this one!
Whoa!
So, Dommy, tell us the vibe.
Not looking too bad. We're just gonna go to the ramp now
and see if it's all right to skate.
Maybe throw down a few tricks.
Yeah, mate.
Top one.
Fuck off with your camera.
Yeah!
So here we are...
We skated together all the time, just hanging out,
going out to bars and stuff,
having a good time and skating a lot.
He was basically coming back to who he was,
because he'd been on that sort of arrogant high thing.
He realised 'That's not who I am.' Went back to being Ben.
She's got sideburns. Fucking hell.
Professional skateboarder Tony Hawk
is known worldwide as an innovator of the sport.
I'd met this young chick, Colleen.
She was a friend of the family and we hit it off.
She was responsible and didn't party -
all the traits that I wanted.
I had my drug problems, and I kept that hidden from her,
but she inspired me to really get my act together.
Within a year, she was pregnant and we had Kaia.
Once I had Kaia, it just made me start to think,
'Right, time to get serious.'
I had sort of grown up a bit,
and once you've had a kid, you start to realise,
'Hang on a second here.
I'll do whatever it takes to feed my kid.'
Ramp it up, ramp it up, ramp it up.
The vert doubles final
at the First Union Centre's out of control,
crowd peaking for Bob and Bucky,
giving Tony and Andy a run for their money.
By then the mainstream scene that had blacklisted me
had changed completely.
It had fully turned into show business.
Of course, ESPN and the X Games ran the whole show.
Oh, the crowd loves that one.
They're show-stoppers, this team Boom Boom.
And I thought it was bad in the '90s.
Erin Hawk.
Those guys won.
You win.
Even Danny was getting in on it,
jumping the great wall of China on his mega ramp.
And it didn't take long for the X Games
to cotton on to that one either.
Of course they said it was a way to attract
a new generation to skateboarding.
To me it just looks like it's only something
the privileged can do.
You know what sucks?
It's that whole X Games shit.
When I found out how much money
those assholes were fucking...
..assholes... the X Games were making.
Take a fucking shit.
You guys fucking can fuck off.
How much they fucking scoop off of fucking skateboarding?
Suck it.
But even though I was shut out by the scene,
by the two main vert camps,
I found a way to support my family through skateboarding.
Tas Pappas set up for the 180...
All the pros were doing X Games,
but then I heard that there was another comp circuit,
you get paid 250 a day for a half-an-hour demo.
You're gone for a couple of weeks out of the month.
So I started thinking, 'Right, I'll pull my head in,
I won't be a prick any more.'
Stuck to myself and skated.
Tas Pappas, you'd better recognise.
This guy will put you in a headlock if you don't shut up.
- Yeah, like this! - Argh!
What?
Ben liked to keep everything to himself.
He met this girl, Lynette, and he started seeing her,
and he didn't tell me anything.
It was odd actually.
He was never honest in saying, 'This is who I'm seeing.'
She just used to rock up at the ramp.
There was just this little small flesh-and-bone...
She was really skinny. She never said a word to me.
One time we went to a pub
around the corner from Prahran,
and she just popped up and just sat down next to him.
I was like, 'Whoa, this is really bizarre.'
That's the first time I knew they had a sort of connection.
He was actually really embarrassed by it.
You could tell - he was like, 'Fuck.' Two sides to his life.
Just a really weird situation.
But every time I saw them hanging out
or knew they were hanging out,
he looked like he had taken a lot of drugs.
It was obvious that Ben and Lynette's relationship
was revolved around drugs.
I could see he'd been using it because he was down and gaunt.
I knew he was on the Xanax,
but he didn't admit that he was using heroin to me.
I didn't even see him around
for two or three months or something.
He had taken everything from my house at this stage.
I don't know who he was staying with.
I didn't think he was going to get into bloody heroin.
It broke my heart when I heard he got into heroin,
I just couldn't bloody believe it.
I went home one trip.
It was this Globe comp.
He comes with Lynette and they were both off their face.
Pinpricked eyes,
just full smacked out, just had a shot each.
I realised then that she was a junky, Ben was a junky.
So I went off. I was being mean.
I'm like, 'You, get the fuck out of here.
Stay the fuck away from my brother, all right?'
We got into a bit of a fight, so I left.
What am I supposed to do?
He's 25 years old, I'm 27, 28, with a kid.
He was under the impression
I was having this great time in America
and I'm like, 'Ben, mate, you think I'm having fun?'
Tas Pappas comes into this event injured.
He's got some back...
I had to be top ten at every comp.
That's how I was living, trying to support my family.
Shortly after that, Aydin was born.
And then the pressure was on. The pressure was on hard.
Being away all the time and not seeing my kids,
we'd fight a lot while I was gone.
She'd be angry I'd be gone,
it just strained the relationship hardcore.
When I'd get injured I'd start sniffing a bit of ice,
purely to be able to stay in the comp to make the money,
and it would numb your body, the speed.
And it worked, but the problem was,
after the comp, you're already on speed so you're figuring,
'Who cares? I'm already off my face.
Let's just charge the rest of that gram
and get another eight-ball and then we'll just go for days.'
And then boom, I'm back on drugs.
Smoking ice, smoking crack.
Then I hit psychosis mode bad and I just lost the plot.
It was weird, it was like me and Ben lived parallel lives.
Whenever he fucked up, I fucked up.
It was like we were twins.
Do you reckon we should make this one, Gregsy?
- Yeah. Now. - Yeah.
We can do it for another two hours if you want.
- Now? - Yeah.
Ben looked terrible.
He was going down to Prahran fully on drugs.
He used to have this bottle of Xanax - when we were filming,
he used to pop two Xanax before the skate,
and I was like, 'Are you off your head?'
He was really upset.
He was trying to get out of that routine.
You could tell he was trying to get away from that.
He knew in his heart that that wasn't the right thing to do,
do drugs with her.
He'd just say, 'I've just got to get away from her.
She's not good for me.'
But I think he didn't know where to go at that point.
What's up? Not today.
I went to jail two months,
I went on a mad ice and crack bender.
I came home and tripped out, got in a fight with Colleen,
did a silly thing, slapped her and hit her.
I was off my face, I couldn't remember.
I was ashamed of myself too because I've got a daughter
and if anyone did that to her, I'd want to kill 'em.
It's something that's been hard for me to admit,
and people look at it, like, weak,
'You hit a chick, ' and this and that.
I don't know. I am ashamed of myself for that.
They had me in the mental pod
'cause I was fried on the drugs,
and then Homeland Security came to me when I was in jail.
They said, 'You're going home.'
I was like, 'What do you mean I'm going home?'
They said 'You're going home. You're getting deported.'
I stayed in jail from that point on.
I just couldn't believe what was going on.
I was losing my family.
My whole goal was to never lose my kids.
And then boom, it was just shit.
Me and Greg went to the ramp at Prahran,
met up with Ben.
I hadn't seen him in a while.
It was the first time I'd seen him so gaunt and just down.
Didn't want to skate, didn't want to talk to anyone.
I thought his brother is in jail,
his brother can't come over to Australia to visit him.
He was acting really weird
and completely like he just did not care about anything.
I remember I said, 'Where is your board, man?'
And he said to me, 'I won't be needing my board any more.'
Ben said, 'Dom, I need somewhere to stay.
Can I stay at your house for a few days or something?'
Because he was such a good friend, I couldn't refuse.
Ben wasn't talking. He was just really down.
I was trying to ask him what's on his mind.
He started crying and said
he couldn't remember anything, like, what happened.
I said, 'What do you mean what happened?'
He said he remembered waking up on a bench in the city
a few days before
and dropping some Xanax or something like that.
And then I saw a newsflash.
The body of a woman was found
wrapped in material at Dights Falls yesterday.
Police believe the woman is 27-year-old Lynette Phillips.
The body has been wrapped in material,
and there's a backpack apparently with weights in it,
then over the material and the body.
Results of an autopsy
expected to be known later tonight.
I thought, 'Shit, don't tell me
he's gone and done something stupid.'
Just felt surreal. Couldn't believe it was happening.
I said, 'Did you see the news? Lynette's been found dead.'
He said, 'Shut up. Don't tell me any more.'
And he left.
It was out of this world really.
You thought he was down and out, but you never thought
that one of your good friends could do that.
I didn't want to believe it, you know.
The Feds came around to my house,
they started asking questions about Ben -
when was the last time I saw him?
They said, 'Can you come back to the station
and answer some questions?'
They said, 'Now we're going to give you some pictures
if you can identify if this is yours.'
They gave me a picture of a backpack and I said,
'Yeah, that's mine. I gave it to Ben maybe six months ago.'
They told me she was weighed down with that,
so I was like, 'Shit.'
They showed me another picture,
my doona cover, saying that's what she was wrapped up in.
I started just bawling.
Like, seriously didn't believe it.
Just thought, 'No fucking way.'
I had the impression, 'Ben, gosh, what are you doing?'
Police say one of the world's most talented
skateboarders, Ben Pappas, is a person of interest
in the murder of Lynette Phillips,
a recovering long-term drug addict
who was studying to become a counsellor.,
her battered body found wrapped in a blue cover.
After a week, no-one could find Ben.
So everyone was concerned for his life, you know?
And then I saw a newsflash.
The body was found in waters off Victoria Pier
around 7:30 last night.
Divers were sent in
after a wallet was found at the scene.
The dead man is believed to be former
world skateboarding champion Ben Pappas.
An autopsy is being carried out to confirm his identity.
Pappas was the main suspect in the murder of...
Everyone was so blown away,
just blown away and devastated about what had happened.
Didn't even think about Tas, no.
I was calling Colleen one day.
She just wasn't answering the phone.
I'm getting bloody paranoid.
So then I called my dad.
He goes, 'Tas, I need you to be strong for me.'
'What are you talking about, Dad, be strong for you?'
He goes, 'Tas, I need you to be strong for me.'
I go, 'What are you talking about, Dad?
What the fuck is Colleen doing? Where are my kids?'
He goes, 'Tas, I need you to be strong for me.'
I said, 'What are you talking about, Dad?'
He goes, 'Ben has drowned.'
'What do you mean Ben's drowned?'
'Ben's drowned.'
I've gone, 'Fuck off, he's drowned.
He can swim. We used to surf in massive surf.
He didn't fucking drown. What are you talking about?'
He goes, 'Ben's dead.'
I just remember being in the day room
and I've just gone, 'Fuck!'
I just remember just fucking storming the room in circles,
just fucking pissed, hoping some cunt would kill me.
I just felt fucking so bad.
Thinking about his brother,
thinking of how sad his dad must have been,
let alone the whole family
and then Tas being in jail during all this.
I remember talking to him and saying,
'Man, fuck, all your friends love you.
I know that you're in a lot of pain, man,
but, fuck, you've got a lot going for you right now.
It doesn't seem like you do, but you do.'
And I just remember he was fucking pissed, man.
He didn't sound good.
Honestly, deep down, I felt like I failed him.
I was so shattered my brother is dead...
..and I was so fucking pissed off.
Tas got deported and he came back here.
In his mind, his relationship at the end with Ben
wasn't what it should have been.
There was a lot of stuff that wasn't resolved.
He was really in a bad way.
He actually looked like he was suicidal.
Go.
Four.
What are you, Colleen?
He was completely out of his mind.
This is crazy, just crazy out there.
He was just a mess, he was just taking it really hard.
That's for you, you cunt.
He was in bad shape.
He said to me, 'I can't believe this is happening.'
It's gonna be really hard for him to continue on life.
My whole world fell apart at once.
I lost my kids, got deported,
came home to a dead brother.
I just thought, 'I deserve to suffer. I hope I die.
And maybe I'll do something like the way Ben did. '
So I got on the same drugs as him -
methadone, Xanax, ice, hammer.
People were saying to me,
'Fuck, Tas is just a complete write-off.'
And then his dad passes away.
Dad died of a heart attack.
He was stuck in America. He was just broken.
I just had enough.
The start of the real end was when Ben got busted.
That was the end for everyone.
I just thought I deserved the misery Ben got
because I wasn't there for him-
because he died, and I just wanted to die.
Then I thought, 'I'm a piece of fucking shit anyway.
Who gives a fuck?'
Next minute, I'm in Argentina with ten grand Australian,
a few skateboards, a bunch of grip tape, glue
and a cheese grater.
I don't even know what I was thinking,
but I just came up with the plan.
Went straight up to the taxi rank, met this cab driver,
I told him the deal and he was like, 'OK, you wait for me.'
Then we get driven into some weird little ghetto thing.
Next thing you know I get given a little bag
and it's got two discs in it
with a scorpion pressed in the back of it.
That's it. Fine. 500g each disc.
I've gone back to the hotel
and I've started grinding away.
I was creeping around the room,
and I knew that I had got the answer
that's going to fix everything.
O spirit brother, my turn. This is for you.
I'm there for four days, I packed everything up,
grabbed the bag I had, put everything in it.
Welcome to Sydney.
Local time approaching 11:10.
Next thing you know, I'm coming in, landing for Sydney
and I've had a moment of clarity
and I've gone, 'Am I fucking kidding?
I've got a kilo of coke. I'm off my fucking head
and I've changed my ticket.
I've only been gone five days. I look like a zombie.
I'm fucking done!'
It was so loosely packed, man.
There were smears of coke on everything.
As soon as I walked into the airport,
I think the coke machine just started buzzing.
That thing went ballistic as soon as it saw me.
That's how much residue there was all over me.
It was so loosely packed.
The first question they asked, 'What's in the boards?'
It was that bloody obvious.
They all jumped on me, cuffed me. Quite a fiasco.
I had ground up a kilo to a nice little pile on a table
and it was falling on my clothes,
it's all over the boards when I was packing it in.
I just wiped it off with water.
What was I thinking?
I was completely gone.
I was so embarrassed. I was so ashamed, man.
There were these pictures on the internet
from the Australian Skateboarding website -
three or four boards
with all 'Fragile' stickers wrapped around
and it said, 'A skateboarder is caught in Sydney Airport
with cocaine in his boards.'
And you just knew instantly it was Tas.
You didn't have to say Tas. It screamed Tas all over it.
You would have to be completely off your head
to think you were gonna get away with those skateboards.
It was such a similar subconscious thing
that was happening with what Ben did.
It was actually... It was pretty sad.
Switch...
In the end, I got three years.
I'm doing 50-50s, you know what I mean?
I think it's been good for me.
It's been very good for me, it's exactly what I've needed.
I needed to be locked in a cell
to really think about my brother.
Because I couldn't handle the pain. It was too much at once.
Went straight. Forced to face my issues, which was good.
You feel like you're weak because of it,
but it's actually strong when you can admit it.
I miss my brother.
I miss him.
I just cried a lot in jail thinking about Ben as a kid,
me as a kid and how it all turned out.
It seems like they're painted one way
and people perceived them in that way.
To me, they weren't like that at all.
They were fucking crazy, crazy as anyone else at the time,
but those guys were just really cool people, man.
They were really generous
and I think that's truly the mentality
of most skateboarders.
On top of that, vert skating was pretty much dead,
and they put a big hand
in saving skateboarding right there.
When I heard about Ben,
I was like, 'Damn, skating just lost one
of the sickest skaters in the history of skateboarding.'
I think those guys belong in the history books
and Tas... Tas is still here so he definitely needs to be
in the scene with all those guys.
Those guys should still be right here
fucking kicking ass,
doing the same shit they were doing.
It's fucking sad.
Skateboarders got fucked in the ass so bad by bullshit.
Skateboarding used to be so fucking great, and still is,
but it's so fucking fucked.
Skateboarding is a gift,
and it did take me and Ben away from crap in St Albans.
But somehow we got sucked back into the life
we would have had in St Albans anyway.
I mean, I don't care. I'm over it now.
There's no point in holding onto it.
But it got pretty heavy.
Somehow in my big demented stage,
I met Helen, we fell in love, we had Billy straight away.
She stuck by me.
Yeah, I just needed a strong Australian woman
to help me through my shit.
I feel like God has given Ben a second chance.
His soul is coming back in this kid.
When I look at Billy, I feel it's Ben.
I feel like I will Barnes it to the death for my new Elias.