Daniel Castillo is an original member of the Chocolate Skateboards squad and has been a part of the Crailtap brand from the start. He’s seen the company and its family of skate brands evolve and has loads of sick clips and video parts in their projects. So we had to ask him about his favourite videos that have been released by and feature skaters in the Crailtap camp.
We were hyped to find out who had his favourite part in Mouse, what it was like keeping it rolling and ripping with Guy Mariano in the 90s, making The Chocolate Tour, his VR Skit, acting in Paco, his behind the scenes stories on unreleased crailtap visual gems, his perspectives on working and hanging out with Spike Jonze, the reason why Girl and DVS were connected back in the day, the secret meaning behind the DVS brand name, and his thoughts on Fully Flared, Ty Evans, Jereme Rogers, Tim Gavin and more.
Read Daniel’s Crailtap Favourites interview below to find them out for yourself and discover all of the videos he selected along the way and more.
Who had your favourite section in Mouse?
In Mouse? I would say Guy Mariano. I mean, obviously, Guy. It was rad because we were skating together a lot. But then he and Tim Dowling would do their own little missions too. I’d see the footage and I’d be like, what Guy!?
Because at that time, you know, I would be at Tim Dowling‘s house every other day. His house was the place to kick it, and Tim would tell me what Guy did, you know, and it was fucking crazy.
The tricks, the fits, the music, there’s so much sick stuff in Guy’s part. Even his Switch Front Shuv Crook down that rail in the credits is still gnarly!
I’m gonna tell you a story. Okay, Guy has a line where he does a Switch Back 180 at a bank, right? He’s skating Air Max’s. Straight up Nike Air Max’s and he does the Switch Back 180 to Nosegrind and comes out 180 on a bank to bench. A fucked up bank to bench, that by the way, no one ever skated – and he does a Switch Back 180 and then Nosegrind on another bank to bench.
Dude, we were so high! I remember we took like 90 bong rips. I don’t know how many mad bong rips. Then he’s like, dude, I want to go skate the school. So we go hop the fence, and he does that in two tries. I was like, what the fuck!?
He didn’t even change his shoes. You know what I mean? Dude, back in the day, we would have our fresh shoes take them off, put our skate shoes on. You know what I mean? I was like, damn, he didn’t even take off his good shoes. That’s crazy.
That’s dope. There are a lot of comparisons to be made between Tom Penny and Guy Mariano. As kids, they were both next-level skaters. Both disappeared but came back and killed it, like Penny did in Sorry and Guy did in Fully Flared.
Yeah. Guy was going through some shit. But I remember him telling me that he never stopped skating. Even when he was going through it, he would always skate. I was like, no shit! He’s like, yeah, so I think that’s rad. So that’s interesting.
Are there any rarely seen Crailtap video projects you are still stoked on?
Did you ever watch this promo video called The Matinee? We used it in an ASR tradeshow video. Because at the time, I think our booth was a theatre, you know, and then we showed this promo video called The Matinee. So it was like after Goldfish and before Mouse, right?
It’s so hard to find, though. I don’t know if they ever put it online. But dude, I liked that video a lot. In that video, that’s when they showed, in the Mouse video, where Rick Howard is skating logs and stuff, as he’s skating in the woods.
Right, that skit is a classic!
They showed that in the Matinee promo video before Mouse came out. Yeah. Also, it had just random sections; they were only little promo parts. But that video was rad.
Then I really liked The Chocolate Tour, where I’m on the cover. I like that video a lot because I liked that time, that era where we were at. I think it was a good time for everybody in a way. I think we were just partying a lot, so it was fun, you know. That was just a good time. That was when I was 24-ish. Around 23-24 years old. That was a good time.
So, what was the story behind that VR skit that you did in The Chocolate Tour? How did that come about?
So, in a skit in The Chocolate Tour video, I played a computer genius called Danny Mnemonic. I was playing that type of character, I guess, where I could get into other people’s databases and shit…I don’t know. It was all Spike Jonze’s vision, obviously, you know what I mean? At the time, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was like, what the fuck are we doing again!?
Working with Spike Jonze and knowing that you were part of this bigger video concept, even though you didn’t quite know what it was all about, did you think it was going to be a big deal?
Yeah, I did. I was like, man, this is gonna be a big deal, because we did the Chocolate Paco video – Las Nueve Vidas De Paco – You know that video?
Yeah of course
Yeah, so we did Paco, and when we were filming that, I was the same, like, man, this is kinda weird, you know, like the process of filming it, but after seeing the outcome. I was like, oh shit, it was a full movie, you know!
So coming into this video, I was like, okay, this is gonna be a big deal.
I felt like we had a lot more talking lines in The Chocolate Tour, or I did at least. You know, I think for The Chocolate Tour we filmed a lot more days. All those skits took a whole week, I want to say, rather than the cowboy stuff in Paco, that video took like a weekend, but this one took a couple of days more. I was like, wow, this is gonna be a big production!
Did you hang out with Spike Jonze much at the time?
I remember going to Spike’s house at the time, right, and Spike was blowing up. I realised he was a big-time director, almost, you know what I mean? He was getting there.
I was like, damn, Spike is rich, dude. He already had this house in the Hollywood Hills overlooking LA. I was like, dude, this is crazy. I remember thinking, damn, Spike is fucking gnarly now, you know? Yeah. So that comes to mind around that time, we were making that video.
During that time, the Chocolate Tour was coming out, and I was just skating so much.
The Chocolate Tour was released in 1999, just before skateboarding was about to explode in popularity, and Spike would make big budget films and music videos. But what was the vibe like for you in skateboarding at the time?
We were filming for The Chocolate Tour video from 1997-1998, and at that time, skateboarding was still underground, but it started to blow up, I feel like. You know what I mean? You had all these bigger skate shops start coming around, like Active. You know, all these big ol skate shops. So I felt like skateboarding was starting to get a lot more popular.Then obviously with the 900 and with all of that Tony Hawk stuff, it got crazy.
But I think in 97-’98, it was still kind of cool. You still had to be super interested in skateboarding to know what’s up, you know what I mean? It wasn’t so out there.
But with that said, I thought it was cool, man. I liked that era when it wasn’t too popular, you know what I mean? Only a few knew it was a little bit better, I guess.
Just thinking about that era, everything was rad. Music was good, Hip Hop was great back then. Just everything was pre-smartphones. It was still pagers, so everything was different, man. It was a lot more chill.
You’d make plans with people and it’d be like, yo, I’m gonna be here at 12, and they’d just be there.
Yeah, exactly.
Right, what other Crailtap skate videos have you still got on rotation?
I love the Lakai Fully Flared video. I’d watch the shit out of that. Even in my older years. You know what I mean? Because that video was fucked up.
Were you there for the filming of that Fully Flared explosive intro?
Yeah. Ty Evans really killed it with that thing, you know what I mean, but no, I wasn’t there for any of those skits. At the time, we were filming more for Skate More. So, I was doing a lot of that, but when I would hear, “Oh, yeah, Ty blew up some stairs,” I’m like, what the fuck are you talking about? He blew up stairs!? You know, I would just hear, “Yeah, Ty blew up some stairs and Mike Mo Switch Flipped them.
I was like, what? Then you got to see it! I was like, damn. You guys went all out, straight-up big movie production stuff. It’s crazy.
I always knew that there was Girl, Chocolate and Lakai, but then DVS, Matix and Fourstar – I felt like they were an extended part of Crailtap? Were they?
What made DVS part of Crailtap was Tim Gavin.
Tim Gavin was like the man, and then, from him making DVS, he just made that connection.
Yeah, that’s why a lot of people rode for DVS was because of Tim Gavin. When Tim Gavin was with Girl and Chocolate, he was kind of like a leader in a way, you know? He was a charismatic dude, man. A lot of people listened to him. It’s crazy. He’s just one of those dudes, you know what I mean? Even to the point where, at times, just by talking, he could intimidate people, where, even as his homie, you’re like, Tim, chill out! It’s because he has a good mouth, he knows how to talk to people, you know?
So with that said, since Tim started DVS and convinced Rick Howard and Mike Carroll to do Lakai over there, too, he’s always had a solid connection with them.
Just making DVS, I mean, Tim pretty much partnered up with these dudes, the Dunlaps, who owned a skate shop called 118 Board Shop. It was a skate-surf shop. I feel like that’s why DVS was into everything, you know, it had like a surf line, a motocross line, and skate because the Dunlaps are into that stuff, you know, but Tim Gavin was strictly skate.
I never really knew what DVS stood for? Does it stand for the word Devious? What does DVS mean?
Oh, dude, I still don’t know. I always thought, because DVS started in the Valley, I was like, does it stand for ‘Da Valley shoe’? That’s what I would always joke around. You know what I mean?
Right, so they kept it ambiguous, that’s interesting
It’s funny, like, our first shoes were called the Slim, they were named after cigarettes, and Tim smoked cigarettes, so I thought it was kind of funny.
For sure. So which Crailtap tour videos do you still watch nowadays?
Badass versus Dumbass. It was a tour video that Reese Forbes went on, where I saw him skate in person. When that video came out, dude, it was like a little DVD promo, you know? It had a bus on the cover, I believe.
Yeah, it’s just us skating, doing demos. I like that video a lot. I feel like it was the first video, maybe the first tour that Sean Malto went on. In this video, they have a clip of Marc Johnson saying, “We entered the Malto era.”
That video is rad. That whole tour was sick. That tour was the start of the first filming for Pretty Sweet, around that era. So that was rad. I like that video a lot.
I think Jereme Rogers was still on Girl, too. Like, bro, Jereme Rogers was so sick. I love that dude. I know he pissed a lot of people off, but, dude, he was a fun guy to hang out with, you know? Back then, man, that fool would make me laugh so much. Dude, he was such a little weirdo. So it kind of makes sense how he is now, you know? Just out of his mind. But he’s still cool to me, you know?
Yeah, it’s understandable when you’ve known somebody since they were a kid, you see beyond the antics in videos they’re putting out, you know ‘the real’ them
The first time I met Jereme Rogers was on a DVS trip, and Jeron Wilson was like, oh, yeah, this kid’s gonna come on tour with us. I want to get him on Girl. I was like, really?
Where were you?
We were in Boston. I don’t know where exactly we were on the East Coast, somewhere. We see him, you know, we pick him up, and then he’s skating flatground, you know?
I was like, damn, this fool has no pop. You know what I mean? Just little ass tricks. And we took him to some stairs. Then we’re like, holy shit, that’s crazy. You know, Switch Flip down them first try. Just everything was first try. I was like, damn, this kid’s gonna be gnarly, you know?
