Robert Brink - Writer

Paul Rodriguez X Games 11 Interview

May 3, 2006 | Skip To The Comments (8)

Ok, here's the deal. At a large event like the X Games, before they can even catch their breath from skating the contest, all the medal winners get shuffled into press room and sit at a table waiting for reporters to swarm in, acting all frantic and asking gay questions, as if they are interviewing Tiger Woods or Kobe Bryant after some huge tournament or game or something.

At Summer X Games 11, I was providing the skate coverage for EXPN.com. Most of the time I just put my recorder down on the table and let the other reporters do all the work. But sometimes the questions got lame, so I had to chime ask my own too. So here's a never-before-seen Paul Rodriguez mini interview from after he won the gold medal in Street. I pressed "record" in the middle of him answering a question from another reporter dude...

P. Rod: …Aside from contests, skateboarding, to me, it really relies on video parts and magazine coverage and stuff like that. So I am just going to try and be the best skater I can be personally. I just want to skate as long as physically possible—as long as God will let me. Anything else that happens is just an extra blessing to me, so I'm happy to be here.

Reporter: Your dad said you might be interested in becoming an actor someday?

P. Rod: Ya, that's definitely something I would be interested in doing. Growing up, since he was in the industry, my father used to say to me “Son, I can help you out with this and that.” But growing up, I didn't want to be 30 or 40 years old and realizing my whole career was made from someone else doing it for me. So I am happy that I made it in skateboarding on my own. Well, obviously God made it for me in skateboarding, but without, you know, someone else connecting it for me or hookin' it up for me. But now that I know made it and I could support myself, acting is something that I have always been interested in. I have done a little bit of it here and there, so if it so happens that I should act, then yea, I'd love to.

Reporter: Have you always been confident that you would make it as a skateboarder? I mean you stopped going to school despite saying you didn't have any guarantees…

P. Rod: Not fully. I didn't start knowing I could make it until I was about 15 or 16. I started getting good sponsors and realized “Okay, I got this, I can't mess it up!” So I just kept skating hard. Thank God I didn't get hurt. But yea, when I was like 15 or 16 I realized this is what I wanted to do. When I was younger I used to play the guitar a lot—like as much as I skate. I wanted to be a musician. If you asked me 10 or 11 years ago what I wanted to do, I would have been like “I want to be a musician! I want to be musician!” I would have never saw this happening, so this is crazy.

Reporter: Where did you grow up?

P. Rod: I grew up in the San Fernando Valley.

Rob Brink: You are the first person to win Street twice in a row right?

I don't know but its awesome man. I don't even know what words to tell you, man. It's just the best feeling. Like any dream you ever had, if you accomplish it, it's almost like you don't know how to react to it. You would think that beforehand you plan it out like “If I win I'm gonna cheer and run up and down the street like rah!” but when it happens I am like, stuck…frozen. Like “Is this real?” It's still just kinda sinking in right now. I'm just psyched. I know I keep saying that but I can't say it enough.

Rob Brink: How about skating against Chris Cole, it being his first time here and all? He's the type of dude who will just show up and kill it.

P. Rod: That dude is amazing. He's an amazing skater. It's funny because yesterday when I got here to practice, he was the first guy out there on the course. I saw him and I was like “Oh God no! That's it, there's no way!” but its crazy how things work out. God really helped me out today and I couldn't do it without him.