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(Music)

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(Music)

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(Music ends)

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(Applause)

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So, that's what I've done with my life.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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Thank you.

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(Applause)

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As a kid, I grew up on a farm in Florida,

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and I did what most little kids do.

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I played a little baseball,
did a few other things like that,

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but I always had the sense
of being an outsider,

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and it wasn't until I saw
pictures in the magazines

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that a couple other guys skate, I thought,

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"Wow, that's for me," you know?

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Because there was no coach
standing directly over you,

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and these guys,
they were just being themselves.

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There was no opponent
directly across from you.

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And I loved that sense,
so I started skating

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when I was about 10 years old, in 1977,

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and when I did,
I picked it up pretty quickly.

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In fact, here's some footage
from about 1984.

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It wasn't until 79
I won my first amateur championship,

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and then, by 81, I was 14,
and I won my first world championship,

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which was amazing to me,

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and in a very real sense,
that was the first real victory I had.

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Oh, watch this.

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This is a Casper slide,
where the board's upside down.

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Mental note on that one.

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(Laughter)

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And this one here?

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An Ollie.

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So, as she mentioned,
that is overstated for sure,

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but that's why they called me
the godfather of modern street skating.

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Here's some images of that.

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Now, I was about halfway
through my pro career

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in, I would say, the mid-'80s.

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Freestyle itself -- we developed
all these flat ground tricks, as you saw,

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but there was evolving
a new kind of skateboarding,

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where guys were taking it to the streets,
and they were using that Ollie,

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like I showed you.

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They were using it to get up
onto stuff like bleachers and handrails

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and over stairwells
and all kinds of cool stuff.

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So it was evolving upwards.

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In fact, when someone tells you
they're a skater today,

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they pretty much mean a street skater,

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because freestyle, it took about
five years for it to die,

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and at that stage, I'd been a "champion"
champion for 11 years, which --

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Phew!

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And suddenly, it was over for me,
that's it -- it was gone.

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They took my pro model off the shelf,

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which was essentially
pronouncing you dead, publicly.

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That's how you make your money, you know?

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You have a signature board
and wheels and shoes and clothes.

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I had all that stuff, and it's gone.

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The crazy thing was, there was
a really liberating sense about it,

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because I no longer had to protect
my record as a champion.

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"Champion," again.

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Champion sounds so goofy,
but it's what it was, right?

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What drew me to
skateboarding, the freedom,

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was now restored,
where I could just create things,

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because that's where the joy
was for me, always,

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was creating new stuff.

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The other thing that I had
was a deep well of tricks to draw from

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that were rooted
in these flat ground tricks.

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Stuff the normal guys were doing
was very much different.

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So, as humbling and rotten as it was —

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And believe me, it was rotten.

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I would go to skate spots,
and I was already "famous guy," right?

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And everyone thought I was good,

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but in this new terrain, I was horrible.

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So people would go,
"Oh, what happened to Mullen?"

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(Laughter)

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So, humbling as it was, I began again.

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Here are some tricks that I started
to bring to that new terrain.

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And again, there's this undergirding
layer of influence of freestyle --

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Oh, that one?

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That's, like, the hardest
thing I've ever done.

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OK, look at that, it's a Darkslide.

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See how it's sliding on the backside?

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Those are super fun,
and, actually, not that hard.

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You know, at the very root
of that, see, Caspers,

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see how you throw it?

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Simple as that, right? No biggie.

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And your front foot,
the way it grabs it --

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I'd seen someone slide
on the back of the board like that,

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and I was like, "How can I get it over?"

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Because that had not yet been done.

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And then it dawned on me,
and here's part of what I'm saying.

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I had an infrastructure.
I had this deep layer,

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where it was like, oh my gosh,
it's just your foot.

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It's just the way
you throw your board over.

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Just let the ledge do that, and it's easy,

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and the next thing you know,
there's 20 more tricks

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based out of the variations.

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So that's the kind of thing --
here, check this out,

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here's another way,
and I won't overdo this.

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A little indulgent, I understand.

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There's something called a Primo slide.

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It is the funnest trick ever to do.

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It's like skimboarding.

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And this one, look how it slides
sideways, every which way?

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OK, so when you're skating,
and you take a fall,

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the board slips that way or that way;
it's kind of predictable.

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This? It goes every which way --
it's like a cartoon, the falls,

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and that's what I love the most about it.

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It's so much fun to do.

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In fact, when I started doing them,
I remember, because I got hurt.

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I had to get a knee surgery, right?

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So there were a couple of weeks
where I couldn't skate at all.

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It would give out on me,
and I would watch the guys,

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I'd go to this warehouse
where a lot of the guys were skating,

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my friends, and I was like,

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"I've got to do something new,
I want to do something new.

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I want to start fresh."

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And so the night before my surgery,
I'd watched, and I was like,

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"How am I going to do this?"

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So I ran up, and I jumped on my board,

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and I Cavemanned, and I flipped it down,

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and I remember thinking,
I landed so light-footed, thinking,

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if my knee gives, they'll just have
more work to do in the morning.

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(Laughter)

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And so, when it was the crazy thing.

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I don't know how many
of you guys have had surgery, but --

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(Laughter)

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you are so helpless, right?

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You're on this gurney
and you're watching the ceiling go by,

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every time, it's always that,

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and right when they're putting
the mask on you before you go to sleep,

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all I was thinking is, "Man,
when I wake up and I get better,

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the first thing I'm going to do
is film that trick."

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And indeed I did, it was the very first
thing I filmed, which was awesome.

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I told you a little bit
about the evolution of the tricks.

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Consider that content, in a sense.

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What we do as street skaters is,
you have these tricks --

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Say I'm working on Darkslides, or a Primo,

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that you guys know this stuff now.

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(Laughter)

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What you do is, you cruise
around the same streets

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that you've seen a hundred times,

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but suddenly, because
you already have something

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in this fixed domain of this target,
it's like, what will match this trick?

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How can I expand, how can the context,

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how can the environment change
the very nature of what I do?

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So you drive and drive and drive,
and, actually I've got to admit,

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just because I was struggling
with this because I'm here,

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but I'll just say it,
is, I cannot tell you,

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not only to be here in front of you,

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but what a privilege it is
to be at US campus,

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because I have been escorted off
of this campus so many times.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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So let me give you another example
of how context shapes content.

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This is a place not that far from here,
It's a rotten neighborhood.

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Your first consideration is,
am I going to get beat up?

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You go out and -- See this wall?

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It's fairly mellow, and it's beckoning
to do bank tricks, right?

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But there's this other aspect
of it for wheelies,

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so check this out.

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There's a few tricks, again,

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how environment changes
the nature of your tricks.

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Freestyle oriented,
manual down -- wheelie down.

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Watch, this one? Oh, I love this,
it's like surfing, this one,

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the way you catch it.

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This one, a little sketchy
going backwards,

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and watch the back foot.

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Oops --

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(Laughter)

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Mental note right there.

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Again, we'll get back to that.

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(Laughter)

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Here, back foot, back foot.

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OK, up there?

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That was called a 360 flip.

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00:09:04,968 --> 00:09:07,701
Notice how the board flipped
and spun this way, both axes.

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And another example
of how the context changed,

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and the creative process
for me and for most skaters,

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is, you go, you get out of the car,
you check for security,

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you check for stuff.

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(Laughter)

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It's funny, you get to know
their rhythms, you know,

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the guys that cruise around --

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(Laughter)

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Skateboarding is such
a humbling thing, man.

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No matter how good you are,
you've still got to deal with --

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So you hit this wall, and when I hit it,

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the first thing you do
is you fall forward,

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and I'm like, all right, all right.

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As you adjust ...

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00:09:43,105 --> 00:09:45,440
you punch it up,
and then when I would do that,

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it was throwing my shoulder this way ...

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which as I was doing it, I was like,
"Oh wow, that's begging for a 360 flip,"

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because that's how
you load up for a 360 flip.

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And so this is what I want
to emphasize that, as you can imagine,

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all of these tricks are made
of submovements,

197
00:10:03,234 --> 00:10:04,552
executive motor functions,

198
00:10:04,576 --> 00:10:07,614
more granular to the degree
to which I can't quite tell you,

199
00:10:07,638 --> 00:10:08,994
but one thing I do know is,

200
00:10:09,018 --> 00:10:12,986
every trick is made of combining two
or three or four or five movements.

201
00:10:13,010 --> 00:10:16,275
And so, as I'm going up,
these things are floating around,

202
00:10:16,299 --> 00:10:19,034
and you have to sort of
let the cognitive mind rest back,

203
00:10:19,058 --> 00:10:20,324
pull it back a little bit,

204
00:10:20,348 --> 00:10:22,779
and let your intuition go
as you feel these things.

205
00:10:22,803 --> 00:10:25,310
And these submovements
are kind of floating around,

206
00:10:25,334 --> 00:10:28,298
and as the wall hits you,
they connect themselves to an extent,

207
00:10:28,322 --> 00:10:31,897
and that's when the cognitive mind:
"Oh, 360 flip, I'm going to make that."

208
00:10:31,921 --> 00:10:34,426
So that's how that works
to me, the creative process,

209
00:10:34,450 --> 00:10:36,338
the process itself, of street skating.

210
00:10:36,362 --> 00:10:37,737
So, next -- Oh, mind you ...

211
00:10:37,761 --> 00:10:38,827
(Laughter)

212
00:10:38,851 --> 00:10:40,015
Those are the community.

213
00:10:40,039 --> 00:10:42,688
These are some of the best
skaters in the world.

214
00:10:42,712 --> 00:10:45,835
These are my friends --
oh my gosh, they're such good people.

215
00:10:46,307 --> 00:10:48,815
And the beauty of skateboarding is that,

216
00:10:48,839 --> 00:10:50,803
no one guy is the best.

217
00:10:50,827 --> 00:10:54,199
In fact, I know this is rotten to say,
they're my friends,

218
00:10:54,223 --> 00:10:57,699
but a couple of them actually don't look
that comfortable on their board.

219
00:10:57,723 --> 00:11:02,739
What makes them great is the degree
to which they use their skateboarding

220
00:11:02,763 --> 00:11:04,022
to individuate themselves.

221
00:11:04,046 --> 00:11:06,369
Every single one of these guys,
you look at them,

222
00:11:06,393 --> 00:11:08,807
you can see a silhouette
of them, and you realize,

223
00:11:08,831 --> 00:11:11,120
"Oh, that's him,
that's Haslam, that's Koston,

224
00:11:11,144 --> 00:11:13,695
there's these guys, these are the guys."

225
00:11:14,323 --> 00:11:18,377
And skaters, I think
they tend to be outsiders

226
00:11:18,401 --> 00:11:21,742
who seek a sense of belonging,

227
00:11:21,766 --> 00:11:23,816
but belonging on their own terms.

228
00:11:24,704 --> 00:11:29,347
And real respect is given
by how much we take what other guys do,

229
00:11:29,371 --> 00:11:34,267
these basic tricks, 360 flips,
we take that, we make it our own,

230
00:11:34,291 --> 00:11:36,577
and then we contribute
back to the community

231
00:11:36,601 --> 00:11:39,227
the inner way that edifies
the community itself.

232
00:11:39,885 --> 00:11:42,095
The greater the contribution,

233
00:11:42,119 --> 00:11:45,198
the more we express
and form our individuality,

234
00:11:46,372 --> 00:11:50,237
which is so important to a lot of us
who feel like rejects to begin with.

235
00:11:50,699 --> 00:11:52,501
The summation of that

236
00:11:53,281 --> 00:11:56,366
gives us something we could never
achieve as an individual.

237
00:11:57,784 --> 00:11:58,951
I should say this.

238
00:11:58,975 --> 00:12:00,849
There's some sort of beautiful symmetry

239
00:12:00,873 --> 00:12:03,680
that the degree to which
we connect to a community

240
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is in proportion to our individuality,

241
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which we are expressing by what we do.

242
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Next,

243
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these guys, very similar community
that's extremely conducive to innovation.

244
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(Laughter)

245
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Notice a couple of these shots
from the Police Department.

246
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But it is quite similar,
I mean, what is it to hack, right?

247
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It's knowing a technology so well
that you can manipulate it

248
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and steer it to do things
it was never intended to do, right?

249
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And they're not all bad.

250
00:12:31,555 --> 00:12:35,625
You can be a Linux kernel hacker,
make it more stable, right?

251
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More safe, more secure.

252
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You can be an iOS hacker,

253
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make your iPhone do stuff
it wasn't supposed to.

254
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Not authorized, but not illegal.

255
00:12:44,574 --> 00:12:46,919
And then, you've got
some of these guys, right?

256
00:12:46,943 --> 00:12:49,485
What they do is very similar
to our creative process.

257
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They connect disparate information,

258
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and they bring it together in a way
that a security analyst doesn't expect.

259
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It doesn't make them good people,

260
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but it's at the heart of engineering,

261
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at the heart of a creative community,
an innovative community,

262
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and the open source community,
the basic ethos of it

263
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is, take what other people do,
make it better,

264
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give it back so we all rise further.

265
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Very similar communities, very similar.

266
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We have our edgier sides, too.

267
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(Laughter)

268
00:13:21,922 --> 00:13:23,385
It's funny, my dad was right.

269
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These are my peers.

270
00:13:25,908 --> 00:13:28,492
But I respect what they do,
and they respect what I do,

271
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because they can do things,
it's amazing what they can do.

272
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In fact, one of them,

273
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he was Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur
of the Year for San Diego County,

274
00:13:37,168 --> 00:13:40,228
so they're not -- you never know
who you're dealing with.

275
00:13:40,252 --> 00:13:43,734
We've all had some degree of fame.

276
00:13:43,758 --> 00:13:48,802
In fact, I've had so much success
that I strangely always feel unworthy of.

277
00:13:48,826 --> 00:13:51,785
I've had a patent, and that was cool,
and we started a company,

278
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and it grew, and it became the biggest,

279
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and then it went down,
and then it became the biggest again,

280
00:13:56,864 --> 00:13:59,535
which is harder than the first time,
and then we sold it,

281
00:13:59,559 --> 00:14:01,080
and then we sold it again.

282
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So I've had some success.

283
00:14:03,190 --> 00:14:05,667
And in the end, when you've had
all of these things,

284
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what is it that continues to drive you?

285
00:14:07,579 --> 00:14:09,864
As I mentioned, the knee stuff
and these things,

286
00:14:09,888 --> 00:14:11,454
what is it that will punch you?

287
00:14:11,478 --> 00:14:13,299
Because it's not just the mind.

288
00:14:13,323 --> 00:14:16,168
What is it that will punch you
and make you do something

289
00:14:16,192 --> 00:14:19,210
and bring it to another level,
and when you've had it all,

290
00:14:19,234 --> 00:14:22,879
sometimes, guys, they die on the vine
with all of that talent,

291
00:14:23,492 --> 00:14:26,160
and one of the things
we've had, all of us, is fame --

292
00:14:26,184 --> 00:14:28,994
I think the best kind of fame,
because you can take it off.

293
00:14:29,018 --> 00:14:31,064
I've been all around the world,

294
00:14:31,088 --> 00:14:33,708
and there will be a thousand kids
crying out your name,

295
00:14:33,732 --> 00:14:35,780
and it's such a weird,
visceral experience.

296
00:14:35,804 --> 00:14:37,411
It's like, it's disorienting.

297
00:14:37,435 --> 00:14:39,513
And you get in a car, and you drive away,

298
00:14:39,537 --> 00:14:42,407
and 10-minute drive, and you get out,

299
00:14:42,431 --> 00:14:44,242
and no one gives a rat's who you are.

300
00:14:44,266 --> 00:14:45,632
(Laughter)

301
00:14:45,656 --> 00:14:48,937
And it gives you that clarity
of perspective of, man, I'm just me,

302
00:14:48,961 --> 00:14:51,671
and popularity, what does that
really mean again?

303
00:14:51,695 --> 00:14:53,116
Not much.

304
00:14:53,140 --> 00:14:55,299
It's peer respect that drives us.

305
00:14:55,323 --> 00:14:57,644
That's the one thing
that makes us do what we do.

306
00:14:57,668 --> 00:15:01,749
I've had over a dozen bones,
this guy, over, eight, 10 concussions,

307
00:15:01,773 --> 00:15:04,293
to the point where it's comedy, right?

308
00:15:04,317 --> 00:15:07,048
It is actually comedy, they mess with him.

309
00:15:07,072 --> 00:15:08,500
(Laughter)

310
00:15:08,650 --> 00:15:09,821
Next,

311
00:15:09,845 --> 00:15:12,417
and this is something deeper.

312
00:15:14,250 --> 00:15:17,762
I think I was on tour when I was reading
one of the Feynman biographies.

313
00:15:17,786 --> 00:15:19,809
It was the red one or the blue one.

314
00:15:19,833 --> 00:15:23,515
And he made this statement
that was so profound to me.

315
00:15:27,101 --> 00:15:31,190
It was that the Nobel Prize
was the tombstone on all great work,

316
00:15:32,086 --> 00:15:35,921
and it resonated because
I had won 35 out of 36 contests

317
00:15:35,945 --> 00:15:39,286
that I'd entered over 11 years,
and it made me bananas.

318
00:15:39,310 --> 00:15:41,556
In fact, winning
isn't the word, I won it once.

319
00:15:41,580 --> 00:15:43,632
The rest of the time,
you're just defending,

320
00:15:43,656 --> 00:15:46,231
and you get into this,
turtle posture, you know?

321
00:15:46,255 --> 00:15:49,365
Where you're not doing --
it usurped the joy of what I loved to do

322
00:15:49,389 --> 00:15:52,541
because I was no longer doing it
to create and have fun,

323
00:15:52,565 --> 00:15:54,276
and when it died out from under me,

324
00:15:54,300 --> 00:15:56,356
that was one of the most
liberating things,

325
00:15:56,380 --> 00:15:57,966
because I could create.

326
00:15:57,990 --> 00:16:02,685
And look, I understand that
I am on the very edge of preachy, here.

327
00:16:02,709 --> 00:16:03,873
I'm not here to do that.

328
00:16:03,897 --> 00:16:06,639
It's just that I'm in front
of a very privileged audience.

329
00:16:06,663 --> 00:16:09,543
If you guys aren't already
leaders in your community,

330
00:16:09,567 --> 00:16:12,635
you probably will be,
and if there's anything I can give you

331
00:16:12,659 --> 00:16:15,839
that will transcend what I've gotten
from skateboarding,

332
00:16:15,863 --> 00:16:18,885
the only things of meaning,
I think, and of permanence,

333
00:16:18,909 --> 00:16:20,967
it's not fame, it's not all these things.

334
00:16:20,991 --> 00:16:24,902
What it is, is that there's
an intrinsic value in creating something

335
00:16:24,926 --> 00:16:26,719
for the sake of creating it,

336
00:16:26,743 --> 00:16:30,914
and better than that,
because I'm 46 years old, or I'll be 46,

337
00:16:30,938 --> 00:16:34,564
and how pathetic is that
I'm still skateboarding, but there is --

338
00:16:34,588 --> 00:16:40,411
there is this beauty in dropping it
into a community of your own making,

339
00:16:40,727 --> 00:16:44,014
and seeing it dispersed,
and seeing younger, more talented,

340
00:16:44,038 --> 00:16:47,279
just different talent, take it to levels
you can never imagine,

341
00:16:47,303 --> 00:16:48,967
because that lives on.

342
00:16:48,991 --> 00:16:50,693
So thank you for your time.

343
00:16:50,717 --> 00:16:57,717
(Applause)

344
00:17:00,616 --> 00:17:02,838
Kristina Holly: I have a question for you.

345
00:17:02,862 --> 00:17:06,610
(Applause)

346
00:17:06,634 --> 00:17:10,531
So you've really reinvented yourself
in the past, from freestyle to street,

347
00:17:10,555 --> 00:17:13,840
and, I think it was about four years ago
you officially retired.

348
00:17:13,864 --> 00:17:16,191
Is that it? What's next?

349
00:17:17,150 --> 00:17:20,879
Rodney Mullen: That's a good question.
KG: Something tells me it's not the end.

350
00:17:20,903 --> 00:17:24,687
RM: Yeah. Every time you think
you've chased something down,

351
00:17:24,711 --> 00:17:27,848
it's funny, no matter how good you are,
and I know guys like this,

352
00:17:27,872 --> 00:17:30,238
it feels like you're polishing
a turd, you know?

353
00:17:30,262 --> 00:17:33,468
(Laughter)

354
00:17:33,581 --> 00:17:36,028
And I thought, the only way
I can extend this

355
00:17:36,052 --> 00:17:38,083
is to change something infrastructural.

356
00:17:38,880 --> 00:17:42,118
And so that's what I proceeded to do,
through a long story,

357
00:17:42,142 --> 00:17:46,403
one of desperation, so if I do it,
rather than talk about it,

358
00:17:46,427 --> 00:17:48,370
if I do it, you'll be the first to know.

359
00:17:48,394 --> 00:17:51,396
KG: All right, we won't ask you any more.
RM: You'll get a text.

360
00:17:51,420 --> 00:17:54,395
KG: Right, thank you, good job.
RM: Thank you. Thank you.

361
00:17:54,419 --> 00:17:59,107
(Applause)