Cautionary tale of Australian skateboarders Tas and Ben Pappas skilfully told in All This Mayhem

ALL This Mayhem: Australian skateboarders Tas and Ben Pappas crashed the US pro circuit as if it was a party that could use some livening up, then burned their way out of the sport for good.

Cautionary tale skilfully told

A POWERHOUSE sports documentary from the team behind Senna, All This Mayhem is the cautionary tale of Melbourne brothers Tas and Ben Pappas.

In the blink of an eye in the 1990s, these gifted skateboarders crashed the US pro circuit as if it was a party that could use some livening up.

Just a few years later, the wild-child siblings had burned their way out of the sport for good.

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Scene from the film All This Mayhem.

Tony Hawk became the acceptable face of pro boarding around the world. The Pappas boys became a byword for hard drugs, excessive violence and boundless talent wasted.

Though the misadventures of the Pappas boys come with a compelling dramatic arc by default — it is not hard to imagine the events chronicled here one day becoming a feature film — this documentary still stands as an incredibly skilful piece of storytelling in its own right.

Plenty of home video footage of Ben and Tas honing their craft on their local ramps as teenagers is given great prominence early on.

Scene from the film All This Mayhem.

So, too, are archival clips of the subjects’ rapid ascent through the American ranks, just as skateboarding was experiencing its first boom of public popularity.

However, it is the brace of interviews conducted in the present day that really resonates with the viewer.

The mercurial personalities of the Pappas brothers perhaps meant their fate was sealed from the moment they took off overseas.

■ All This Mayhem is now showing exclusively at the Cinema Nova, Carlton

All This Mayhem

Director: Eddie Martin (Lionel)

Starring: Tas Pappas, Ben Pappas

Verdict: Four stars. Chairmen of the ‘board deposed

Originally published as Cautionary tale of Australian skateboarders Tas and Ben Pappas skilfully told in All This Mayhem