Stoked is Helen Stickler's documentary feature about Mark "Gator" Rogowski, one of the skateboarding world's first celebrities. Adopted by the skateboard/clothing company Vision while still a teenager, he became one of the most visible stars for a generation of skate punks, and brought the skateboard to a larger public in a big way. On the ramps he was explosive, and off he was wild and charismatic, a true rock star. In what's become almost a cliche for celebrity biographers, he grew very rich and very famous very fast, and when his star began to dim, he snapped. Gator was a troubled kid, with undiagnosed bipolar disorder, and once his fame started to slip, he fell hard. A vertical skater comically undereqipped for shifts within the skating world, he was left behind. Desperate and angry, he found a new life in religion. However, his efforts at extreme personal reinvention served only to mask increasingly frantic, often self-destructive, behavior. When his longtime girlfriend left, he snapped. Now the stuff of urban legend, Gator brutally raped and killed one of her friends, dumping her body in the California desert. He's now in prison, serving 31 years to life. "Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator," Helen Stickler's engaging new documentary, deals unflinchingly with its troubled subject. With balance and insight, the film sifts through the myths that surround his early days of tacky celebrity glory and his eventual violent loss of control. Stickler has managed to portray Gator with all his charisma and humor without letting it begin to excuse the darker side of his history. He does speak in the film, but only through a telephone: California does not allow filmed interviews with its inmates. Thoroughly researched and intimately familiar with the milieu it depicts, "Stoked" is a great skateboarding doc, full of amusing characters and fascinating details. More than that, it's a clever look at pop culture's fickle, frivolous nature. It's a study of a superficial, seductive figure who thrived in a superficial, seductive era, and then got left behind when his act was no longer cool. Full interview over at indieWIRE.