Watch: Let It Kill You

Let It Kill You is the new docuseries by skateboarder and tattoo artist Ben McQueen.

The series originated as a book that was released last year by Ben McQueen under the same name, that explored the intersection between skateboarding and tattooing.

The book featured interviews from an all-star line-up that included the likes of Jamie Thomas, Tyler Bledsoe, Eric Dressen, and Andrew Allen, among many more. After releasing the book Ben decided to open the scope of the project, turning to watchable thirty-minute episodes that go beyond tattooing and into the intersection between skateboarding and art. Each episode is a deep dive into the careers and contributions to skateboarding of an individual artist and the series is set to feature some of skateboarding’s best artists and creatives.

The first three episodes of Let It Kill You are done and feature Mike Gigliotti, Michael Sieben and Ryan Townley. These episodes will be premiering in San Francisco on the 18th of December, in Los Angeles on the 12th of January and in Austin, Texas on the 20th of January. If you’re around any for any of the premieres I would highly recommend checking it out!

What is the story behind the name Let It Kill You?

I pulled the name from the [Charles] Bukowski quote, ‘Find what you love and let it kill you’. I have always thought that was such a heavy thing to say, it’s such a powerful and impactful quote. I had been sitting on it for a while and knew I wanted to use it at some point for a project. When I started mulling the idea around for the book, I thought that might be the perfect time to use it. It felt like it fit what I was trying to say.

Is that how you feel about skateboarding and tattooing?

Yeah, a hundred per cent. It is tough to explain to someone who doesn’t have a thing like skateboarding or tattooing, how much you love and care about it and how much you are willing to do for that thing. Admittedly it makes up almost my entire personality, it is the only thing that is going on in my brain when I’m not talking, even when I am talking sometimes [laughs]. I am always thinking about looking for skate spots or looking at stuff from that point of view as a skateboarder and if it’s not that then I’m looking at references for drawings for tattooing or art. It is hard to turn that noise off and it’s always on, you find a way to just live with that. That’s a reason that skateboarders and tattooers tend to click up together because we are all on that same wavelength to an extent.

Let It Kill You originally started as a book, how did it end up turning into a show?

I had initially thought I was going to start with volume one and make more books. I still might revisit making more books, it was a really fun and fulfilling process. While I was doing the book, I recorded the interviews like I was doing a podcast. I would travel to these people and meet up with them in their zone, I’d be set up with Jamie Thomas in the Zero office. While we were doing that, there was so much visual stuff going on and I was like I wish we had a camera rolling. With both skateboarding and tattooing so much of it is visual and it felt like a missed opportunity to not have something more than photography – we had a lot of great photography and archival photography in the book – but I wanted to watch the thing back after it was done. I started considering it and I had a few people mention to me if I’d ever consider doing a podcast or doing a series and it felt really overwhelming. Doing the book alone was already a lot, the thought of snowballing it into a show felt pretty farfetched. I started reaching out to people, I reached out to Patrick O’Dell who did Epicly Later’d and Chris Grosso who did Tattoo Age, Epicly Later’d and a lot of great stuff for Viceland. I was going back and forth with them on whether it was a good idea and what to expect, everything put me in the direction to do it. The book felt like such a leap but when it was done, I was so happy I did it, so I just took the chance with the series too and started shooting.

It all came together pretty quickly; the book came out around a year ago. How long was that process of going from book to show?

I already had people in mind that I wanted to work with in some capacity. When the book was done and I got the crew together, the people who were going to shoot it, the photographers and everything fell into place. I was like let’s just go and start now. I knew with filmmaking the postproduction side of things is pretty gruelling. It is a snail of a process getting it done. So, I wanted to get started as soon as possible. We shot the Ryan Townley and Mike Gigliotti episodes within the same trip to LA, we stayed there for a couple of weeks, then went home for a week, and then went to Austin to film the Michael Sieben episode. It was all within the same month. Everyone I worked with was great to work with which has made the whole experience easier. Trevar Cushing who is a producer, shot the whole thing, he had done so much work on other stuff. He not only had a great list of accolades through filmmaking to begin with but skateboarding specific stuff too so that was helpful, he knew exactly what to shoot and what to ask. Andy Eclov, who shot all the photography and was like a second man on set to me, was one of the photographers and the creative designer on the book, so we had a working relationship already, surrounding myself with people who were efficient made everything easier.

The book was based on tattooing, now for the show you’re straying away from tattooing and focusing on artists. Why did you make that decision?

Yeah, I think to some point I didn’t want to do it to death where it was solely tattooing and skating. Not to pat myself on the back but I feel like the book covered a lot of that stuff, so I didn’t want to have the same source material to put out again, even though people’s stories are always different. I thought if I opened it up to art within the world of skateboarding, then we could talk about the art of board graphics, the art of shoe design, the art of the skate video or whatever. Not to give too much away we have a lot of stuff lined up that explores art within skateboarding a little bit more.

For sure. Right now you’ve finished the first three episodes. How did you come up with the original line-up?

I wanted to start with Mike Lottie, he is a good friend of mine. I mentioned doing an episode with him and he seemed open to it. It is a lot to ask of someone to talk about themselves on camera, so my thought was how do I combine a deep dive into them as a human being but also highlight their achievements within art and skateboarding. So, I thought why don’t we do it in the way in the style of like a documentary where we bring in five or six friends of Mike to help tell his story, so he can just highlight the stuff he’s done and what he is working on, then his friends can help tell his story. It is like a hybrid of an Epicly Later’d, which I did take a lot of inspiration from naturally and a ‘day in a life’ style homage to an old 411 style video. I had ideas for what I wanted to touch on for the Mike episode, his skateshop, Lotties was such a big deal while it was around and when it closed that was huge. As a fan of Mike’s and the shop, I wanted to give people some closure to that situation and respect his wishes on whether he would want to talk about it or not. I reached out to him, and he said, ‘We are friends I saw what you did with the book, I’m down’. That catapulted everything further along to where I was like I have a cool thing to now sort of base this around and I didn’t take it lightly.

Then with Michael Sieben, he wrote the foreword for the book, and I have been such a massive fan of him for a long time. He just celebrated his twenty years at Thrasher this past October, so I wanted to do a look back on him and his work. For people who live in Austin, Texas or are familiar with Thrasher Sieben has a massive name but I always felt like I wanted to know more about him, you know. Telling his story was a very important thing.

Ryan Townley is a good friend of mine, and he is on the come up. His art is incredible, his skateboarding is incredible and he’s a great person, I really wanted to highlight him too.

Are you thinking of doing sets of three episodes a year or doing six at a time?

I’ve been calling this season one, part one, my goal was to do six. We are planning a Nora Vasconcellos episode and we’ve also got a few more in the works.

Something I really like about the concept is the emphasis on highlighting skateboarders’ interests outside of skateboarding I feel like it’s so important to do. What drew you to doing this?

Up until the time I started tattooing my entire identity was all skateboarding. I had this weird notion since I was a kid that I couldn’t be a skateboarder and play basketball or do something else. I felt like I had to put all of myself into one box because with skateboarding it seemed like you weren’t authentic enough if you had other interests. As a child I think you develop these ideas that skateboarding must define you front to back otherwise it isn’t as real for you. When I started tattooing, I put skateboarding on the backburner for a while because it took over my life – I am by no means a pro skateboarder or anything, it was just something I always loved to do. When I got back around to skateboarding, I had that same moment where tattooing was asking so much of me that if I wasn’t always drawing or painting or trying to learn and push myself, I felt I wasn’t being authentic in that same way.

I came to this realisation that I wanted to showcase that it is fine to have multiple facets of yourself. It’s fine to be interested in more than one thing, it’s fine to be whoever you want. I think people are interesting, often skateboarders put people on a pedestal where we expect how they are and what they are like. I’ve always gotten really excited whenever a video where I could see the behind-the-scenes of someone’s day-to-day. It’s not like they are showing up to a spot and doing tricks first try, it’s fun to see the struggle, see them be human and hear people’s stories. For me, it was a pretty easy thing to land on because I wanted to do a deeper dive into where these people found skateboarding, and where tattooing and art fit into the mix, I was just really interested in hearing more about these people.

One of the most interesting things I’ve found doing these interviews was that when we were kids, we were all just so similar. What skateboarding meant to me didn’t mean anything different from Tony Hawk, we just love this thing in a way we don’t really know how to explain it takes over our lives, our brains, our personalities, everything. It is cool to know there is this one universal thing that feels and means the same thing to all of us in different ways.

Thanks for this Ben, it’s been great to talk! Where and when will people be able to watch the series?

They will be available online eventually, we are currently trying to work out where and when. Right now, we have a screening in San Francisco on Monday the 18th of December another screening in Los Angeles on the 12th of January and a third screening in Austin, Texas on the 20th of January.