By Erik Dobko

From the makers of “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” Vice Media’s “All This Mayhem” is the tragic documentary of two brothers’ rise and fall from international skateboarding fame and notoriety to addiction, exile and murder.

With their relentlessly competitive edge, Tas and Ben Pappas were injected into the professional skating scene at an early age. Australian underdogs with an unstoppable drive to crush Tony Hawk’s monopoly on the sport, the Pappas brothers brought an edge with their no-holds-barred technique of “bonzing it” — a reckless blitzkrieg approach to vert skating. A skate video featuring the groundbreaking, surrealistic style of an LSD-fueled skate session first put the brothers on the map, and it wasn’t long until they had made their way from Melbourne to San Diego, the skateboarding mecca of the world.

While suffering a broken rib at the end of the 1996 X Games finals, Tas bonzed it to take the title of skateboarding world champion, pushing Hawk into third place behind his brother Ben. When a sniveling Hawk began to pout about his disagreement with the judges’ decision, the Pappas brothers famously responded with the mutual sentiment of “Fuck off Hawk, ya’ old wanker!”

Like most reckless libertines with an abundance of success, Tas and Ben quickly buried themselves in a Scarface-sized mountain of cocaine, binging for weeks in an ego-fueled tornado of self-destructive chaos. When Tas was diagnosed with spondylolisthesis, a condition in which a vertebra in the spine slips out from atop the bone below it, his rehabilitative hiatus from skating only shifted his flurry of excess into full gear. Shortly thereafter, the bank accounts for the brands they had started, XYZ and Platinum, were bankrupt. Ben was then arrested, caught smuggling considerable cocaine back into Melbourne, and resultantly banned from ever returning to the U.S. to skate. Unable to ever compete again professionally, his dream suddenly turned into a nightmare of apathy and heroin addiction.

The years go by, and Tas is subtly and unjustifiably blacklisted from the colossal money-making machine that the X Games has become, seemingly to secure certain other American skaters in their place at the top. Having spent innumerable hours toward landing the first 900 ever, Tas is dismayed to find not only that he is not allowed to compete, but that Tony Hawk is going to be attempting a trick that no one else has ever completed — the 900. Despite perseverance or skill, Tas, like his brother, finds himself barred from the livelihood he’d spent his entire life preparing for. A crack bender, a murder and a suicide follow, demonstrating the nihilistic desperation that occurs when passions are stolen and aspirations are crushed.

I found myself restless as the film first picked up, wondering what exactly was so pivotal about the home videos of some Australian skater kids. But like a punk rock version of William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience,” I was glued to the screen with devastation as their knee-pad-clad ambitions decayed into insanity and despair. The film’s descent into reality is effectively depicted in a way that any brooding, angst-fueled adult should appreciate.

Tas’s manic aggression depicts the in-your-face behavior that, after conquering everyone else in the pursuit of success, eventually turns on itself. His story tells the often-echoed warning that once you’ve been at the top, everything else in life is only a disappointing fraction of the immense satisfaction you once had. But despite the countless tragedies, his rehabilitation from out of a shattered life is ultimately a message of redemption that overcomes the themes of meaninglessness bombarding the viewer in the latter half of the film.

A documentary featuring kamikaze personalities living out the utmost success and disaster, “All This Mayhem” tells a deeply affecting story told with harrowing intimacy. The films airs at North Park’s nonprofit theater-lounge, Digital Gym, with show times running on Jan. 31 at 8 p.m. and February 2 – 4 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $11 for general admission, $8.50 for students and seniors, and $7.50 for Digital Gym members.

—Contact Erik Dobko at [email protected].