Words and interview by Nathaniel Kennon Perkins.

Photos by Aladdin Abdulaziz. 

Tanner Ballengee’s work speaks to a nuanced and excited understanding of life, while still acknowledging that everything is still more than capable of being a total fucking shitshow. Over the years, his artistic output has come in the forms of paintings and collages, digital art, zines, and the two excellent books Sixty Tattoos I Secretly Gave Myself at Work and Tourorist: How I Failed to Find Myself in Southeast Asia. Now, with the debut of his first full-length skate video, TB can scribble the word “filmmaker” on the bottom of his long resumé. 

Piss, as the almost-40-minute video is delightfully titled, seems to consist of 11 parts, sometimes clearly delineated and at other times fluid. Filmmaking took place over almost three years, and the tight-knit crew of skateboarders that it stars is Arizona based. The video is fast-paced, with a clear punk rock ethos. However, what Piss does best is the same thing that all of TB’s work achieves: it actively contributes to the creation of a world that I am happy to live in. In addition to the barrage of tricks and slams, this film addresses an intricate and invaluable cultural ecosystem made up of beer, graffiti, pop cultural references, drugs, urban landscape in the American West, and (dare I say it?) positive and healthy masculine relationships. 

I watched Piss like three times. It’s good. Are you stoked on it?

I’m pretty fucking stoked. It’s exactly what I pictured, so yeah.

It seems like nothing ever works out that way. That’s about as good as it gets, I think. When was it released?

We had a live premiere at the Palo Verde Lounge, which is a dive bar in Tempe, Arizona like two blocks from my house. That was on January 14, which was just kind of a random date. Someone said we should do it Friday the 13th, but we thought it’d be better on a Saturday. Also, Steven (Salazar) has a tattoo that says “Saturday the 14th.” You know, everyone gets Friday the 13th tattoos, so he got a Saturday the 14th tattoo.

What was the premiere like?

It was pretty insane, honestly. PV is fucking small. It’s like just a dingy tiny dive bar, like a cash-only place. They have a lot of punk and metal shows. The setting isn’t ideal for showing a skate video, but I didn’t really care. I was really worried the cops were gonna get called for overcapacity. I almost wanted to warn the people who work at PV to be prepared, but I was too afraid they would cancel the event. So I was like, alright, fuck it. Let’s just see what happens. Like 100 more people showed up than I thought would come. There was a group of people outside of the bar that couldn’t get in. It was a packed to the fucking brim. And there was only one bartender.

Tell me about the process of making this film. A bunch of people were involved, right? How does that compare to writing a book where most of the process is just sitting by yourself?

I was just thinking about this earlier. Filming and editing are obviously related because they both involve cameras and taking video footage and stuff, but they’re also kind of completely different things. Filming is just documenting experiences and real life moments, capturing time. Editing is putting all those memories and ideas into cohesion and into one unit or narrative, a lot like a book. So the process is similar to writing a memoir. If you want to write about your life, you have to live it first, you know? And if you want to make a skate video, you have to go out and fucking skate first. So you need all those experiences and captured moments in time. It’s just the same with a memoir. You have to do the trip first. You have to have those experiences. And then, when you think you’re ready, that’s when you sit and write it all down, put it all into one document or manuscript.

That was my next question. Sixty Tattoos is a memoir. Tourorist is a memoir. Is Piss a memoir, do you think?

I think it is. It’s pretty much me telling my own story of the past three years. And also the story of my friends. I tried to make each part represent their personality and their skating.

As a skateboarder, you view the world in a different way than everybody around you. There’s this sense of geography and physicality that’s so inherent to skateboarding. And your books are also super geographically based, and they exist so strongly in the physical world. Does your experience with the way you view the world through skateboarding have an impact on the way that you write?

Ian McKay has that quote that says, “Skateboarding is not a hobby. And it is not a sport. Skateboarding is a way of learning how to redefine the world around you.” We all live in the same world. It’s not different for anyone else physically, but it takes the mind of a skateboarder to redefine it in a way that suits their needs and wants and interests. The same goes for writing. A writer looks at the world differently, the way a skateboarder would.

Another major part of your writing is the unique way it engages with nostalgia, especially as it ties into art, media, and culture. How does Piss engage with the same themes of nostalgia that your books do?

For starters, when I decided I wanted to start this project, the first thing I had to do was buy the camera I wanted to film with. Skateboarders in their 30s will know that the Sony VX 1000 is the classic skateboard filming camera. It’s the workhorse, you know? And then the Century Optics MK1 fish-eye lens, also called the Death Lens. Those are staples for late 90s/early 2000s skateboard videos, when skateboard videos were really popping off, right around when they switched from VHS to DVD. And that’s when I started skateboarding and was fully climaxed in love with skateboarding. I loved watching skate videos. They meant so much to me. I wanted that same feel and same look. There’s no question I wanted my video to be in that format. And that quality too. I wanted to recreate what I loved, what I grew up on. They say to write the books you want to read. I thought, make the skate video you want to watch. This is what gets me stoked. I’m not overly concerned with what other people want to see.

That comes out in the way you released the film, too. You put it out on DVD and VHS. It speaks to that time period also, but it’s a departure from the standard way of releasing a skate video now.

Yeah, definitely. And even having a real premiere people come to. They still have premieres now, but a lot of times when big corporations in skateboarding release a video, their release is just on the internet. That’s their premiere. On the internet. And the videos that do have actual premieres in theaters or venues or whatever, usually the very next day it’s put right on the internet, right on YouTube, right on Thrasher. I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to have it fully out there right away. I wanted to recreate that thing where the only people who can watch it are the ones that have physical copies. And that’s not just me being money hungry or anything. I could care less about that. It’s more like recreating my childhood, like you can only watch the video if you own it. Eventually I will put it on the internet. It’s kind of counterintuitive in terms of the times, but I’m in my 30s and I’m being stubborn. I want kids to respect their elders. Just kidding, but yeah.

That was such an important part of that era. Going to the fucking skate shop. Getting some 411VM on VHS and bringing it back and popping it in and being so stoked. Watching it over and over and over again because it was one of the three videos you had. I know those videos from that time so much better than even the best videos that come out now because I watched them so many times.

I remember being a little kid going to the mall with my mom and wandering off and going into the skate shop, and asking, “what’s the newest video?” And the newest video was a 411. I bought that. And then the guy working there pulled out a shoe box out of the back. He was like, “we also have these like used ones for half off.” You could tell it was that guy’s old videos. I bought two of his used videos, and one of them was Thrill of it All, the Zero video. I still own those videos to this day and watch them over and over again. I was so stoked. That experience, at least to me, is so much more memorable and more important than just clicking a link on the internet. Now, the video doesn’t stick in your mind as well because you didn’t do as much in order to get it, you know? With my video, you have to really want to see it in order to get it.

Speaking of which, where can people get it?

I have a Big Cartel link set up right now for physical copies, and there is an unlisted YouTube link I’ve been including with the copies people buy. I will make that public at some point, probably sooner than later. I didn’t want to stretch it out super long and make people wait because I don’t want to think too highly of myself, like, “Oh, yeah. Everyone’s just dying to watch this.” In reality, a lot of people are gonna forget, and a lot of people don’t give a shit. That’s my fear anyway, gatekeeping something not many people care about. I could be underselling myself too, but I don’t want to be like a prick about it. But I do want to be fair to the people who actually did spend money, so when I do release the video for free for everyone to watch, the people who paid money don’t feel like, “Well, what the hell did I fucking buy this for?”

I noticed in the end credits of the film you credited yourself as being the editor, not as the director or anything else. Why did you choose to do that?

The simple answer is this was our video. If I’m filming someone skating, we are in it together, we’re both doing it. That’s an equal amount of effort. In the beginning, I wanted to make a video that just included parts by three of my friends. Nothing to do with me. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I wasn’t good or anything. I wanted to show these three dudes off because of how talented they are. I wanted them to get more recognition in this scene. Hyping up the homies. But it was just me and Steven for a while. After he did his tricks super quick, I would skate around and he’d pick up the camera and start filming me. And eventually I started getting really stoked on skating and getting footage again, like I did when I was a kid. And one day, I was like, fuck it. I’ll have a part. It wasn’t just me who filmed. I wanted it to be our camera, you know? I mean, I paid for it, but I didn’t want that to be the thing. I work at the post office, so I’m working a lot, and my friends would come pick up the camera to go film when I couldn’t. It was really a collaborative effort in that way. We all put in fucking work to make this together. But the editing was like 90% me. The only person I asked for help with the editing was Steven, because it was a couple days before the premiere party, and I was feeling pretty weighed down and daunted by his immense amount of footage. I had it all together, but eventually I was kind of losing steam and disillusioned. He was the only person I actually asked for help editing their part. We collaborated on that. That’s why the only credit I solely wanted was for the editing.

How did it grow to be more than just the three original people?

I just started meeting people along the way, through skating. They would learn I was making a video, and if we clicked and got along we would keep fucking skating and hanging out again. After someone gets three, four, or five clips, you’re like, this guy might have a part. It’s gonna sound corny, but it’s like taking a trip and picking people up along the way. Ending up becoming lifelong friends with those people who were strangers just moments before.

I saw some Southern California spots, but it’s mostly filmed in Arizona, right?

We took two trips, went to Minneapolis in the beginning and then to LA last summer. Typically, you would take more trips than that, but we’re all full-time working adults. When it was just me and Steve filming and one or two other people, it was just kind of a side project. But then, about a year ago, it moved up on the priority list of everyone who was involved. It started snowballing to the point where, leading up to the premiere, it was the most important thing in my life. I purposely took a break from writing to focus on the video for the last few months.

What’s something that happened that’s intricately tied to the making of the video in your mind, but isn’t necessarily something that would come through to somebody who didn’t know?

There’s a lot of little easter eggs. For example, Steven’s part has three songs. His first song is an instrumental piano piece from a Leftover Crack song. That was referencing a different Leftover Crack piano song we originally used for a little iPhone part. You know that skate company, FA? And Hockey? They released the part on YouTube of Aidan Mackey skating to that exact same piano song. Me and Steve kind of freaked out when we saw that part of Aidan Mackey because we’re like, dude, you stole our song. We were stoked that someone else high up in the industry had the same idea we did, but it was also like, fuck, dude, that was our song. Everyone’s gonna see this and no one’s gonna see our video from four years ago. So using a different piano song from Leftover Crack was kind of a nod to that happening. There was another section, one of the many friends montages, that’s a shot of the camera glitching. It happens a lot when you use such an old camera. A video in the middle of the screen pops up with Ryan Dunn punching Bam Margera in the head. And he says, “Oh you’re punching me?” and just socks him. That’s from CKY2K. That’s like a nod to my childhood nostalgia, but also the only way I know of to get the camera to stop glitching like that is to fucking hit it as hard as you can like on the bottom of it. You can actually hear it like in the clip. You can hear me hitting the camera. In the middle of my part, I do this kind of long line in this parking lot where there’s no flat-ground trick in the middle. I don’t know how many people noticed it, but a little guy pops up in the corner, peeing in his own mouth. That guy was me. I don’t know how everyone felt about it. I think some people still don’t believe it’s me. I didn’t want the video to be, like, piss themed or anything. There’s not a whole lot of meaning behind the title. I thought it would be something people would remember and something no one’s done before.

What else is on the horizon?

I think we might start the process all over again with filming because now I have like a whole crew of dudes. It’s all dependent on people’s individual lives. People get new jobs, new girlfriends, new boyfriends. Life is constantly changing for everybody. So you can’t always just go skateboard all the time, even if you want to.

You got any writing projects you’re working on that you can talk about yet?

Before I started the full-time editing process on the video, all my time that wasn’t spent skating or at work I was working on this short novel/memoir kind of thing. It’s about some mishaps, miscommunications, and misadventures I experienced doing graffiti in 2019-2020. It’s kind of loosely stitched together right now. I’m about to start diving back into that. The thought of starting up again and blowing the dust off is kind of daunting. Because when I’m into a project, I really fucking stick my nose in it and don’t take it out until its fucking done. I just have to prepare myself for that to consume my life, just like the video did.

You’re gonna have to wait for the statute of limitations to be up before you can publish it.

I think it’s almost up. It’s getting close anyway.

You got anything else you want to say?

The only thing I was gonna say that I didn’t was that when I first bought the camera and started to fully engage in this project, my mindset was one and done. I was just gonna make one video. I didn’t think I’d be spending three years on it. I thought it was gonna be a year, and then afterwards, I was like, I’m done. I didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a fucking filmer. I’m a skateboarder, you know? I don’t want to just be fucking filming all the time. I want to be skateboarding as much as my friends are. But, like I said earlier, I have a whole fucking crew of good friends now who want to go out and fucking skate, and keep doing it, keep the fucking dream alive, especially for dudes like me and my friends who are in our 30s that haven’t felt this stoked on skateboarding in years. I don’t want to say I’m being forced, because I want to do it, keep it rolling. Keep going with it.