Photos by Sam Muller.

This interview appears in the 20th-anniversary Issue (buy a copy here) and is apart of the Analog To Digital: 20 Years of Culture and Change Podcast Series (listen to it here).

Greg is universally adored.  

I’m not being hyperbolic, nor am I exaggerating. In all my twenty years of skating and ten years in the skateboarding industry, I have not met a single person who didn’t admire, learn from, or fall a little bit in love with Greg at one point or another. When I say, ‘universally,’ I mean universally. Not just in skateboarding, but in the universe, Greg is the man. If an unidentified spacecraft came crashing onto the White House lawn, we should send Greg as our emissary. He can tell them about how he flew in the helicopter while filming Danny Way’s megaramp part for the DC video. He can tell them about how Mindfield is where he thinks he put in the most of himself. He can talk about being one of the most influential skate photographers of all time. Those aliens will be enthralled. They’ll gush. Cry through their armpits or whatever aliens do.

We interviewed Greg at our office in LA. He peed on our walls. That isn’t in the interview, but he did. How do we know? He told us. He was pissing in our office bathroom and started to look at all the boards, and I guess his mind wandered as they tend to when the mind is overcome with impressed sentiment at the sight of our immaculate collection of skateboards and crap, and Greg Hunt pissed on our wall a bit. Then he came out and told us. I asked if I could include that in the interview and he said yes, but we had to redo the interview a week later and that second interview ended up being way longer and lacked piss, so I put it in this intro. Thanks, Greg. It’s a bit of an honor. 

I have to ask all new questions.

No, you don’t. I don’t remember anything we talked about. I was driving home and thinking about some of my answers and was like, ‘I was wrong about half of the stuff I said.’ We can talk about a lot of the same stuff if you want. 

Alright, you were in the helicopter filming the megaramp part of The DC Video. 

Yes, I was. 

What was that like? Did you know that that would be a fucking legendary sequence?

When we talked prior and I didn’t remember being in the helicopter, what triggered the memory of being in the helicopter was the flight there. The whole process leading up to the moment was also crazy. There was a rumor that Danny was building a huge ramp, and coming over the hill and seeing that structure, I literally just started laughing. At first Danny was like, ‘Maybe I’ll jump the gap,’ and every day was him doing something so far past what we thought was conceivable the day before. Then it was the day that he wanted to do the big gap, and he had never gone down that scary roll in. It was a world record big gap, into the world record highest air ever. That was the day we had the helicopter planned, and what I remember most is the flight there. We took off from Carlsbad and just flew over the desert, I was like, ‘film this, this is cool,’ and that became the beginning of the video. 

Oh shit! That’s right!

It starts with that Metallica song and going over the grass and hills, that’s how it felt. That roll in especially was so scary- they’d carved out a hill on each side, I think it’s like a fifty foot drop, fifteen feet wide? The whole thing was very scary, and heading there was intense because we knew that he’d be waiting and ready. 

The last time we spoke, I asked you what your career high and low was, but you didn’t really give me straight answers. Do you think that filming the fucking megaramp on 16mm from a helicopter might have been a career high?

That was up there for sure. 

And that was 2003?

Yeah, 2003.

Not to be disparaging to anyone else, but your answer to the question, ‘where were you in 2003’ that I’ve had to ask everyone for these interviews is probably the best answer. To me at least. 

The crazy thing is, in my brain, I was really worried about the frame rates and things like that. I wanted it to be impactful and beautiful, that’s where my head was. Then after shooting it, I was editing everything in Ken Block’s guest house. I had a couple of weeks left to finish the video and I was staying up all night to finish it. The thing about that was that we were shooting all of it, but it was a secret. There was no social media or anything, no person on earth had ever seen a ramp on earth or had any idea that Danny Way was doing all these things. From what I recall, we finished shooting, rushed the film to processing, it was a month between shooting and the premier. 

What was that like?

The premier was at Mann’s Chinese Theater, which is huge. The energy in the crowd when you first see Danny roll down that roll in and it goes to black, I’ve never been in a premier with energy like that. People were just screaming, ‘what the fuuuuck?!’ Nobody had any preconception that that was something they’d ever see. People were standing up and screaming, it was really special.

It’s just such a massive scale, it’s what Dime Glory Challenge tries to be. 

I think what Danny did is unparalleled in how hard he pushed it, especially in that year, we finished that video and went on this premier tour, then he went straight into skating it more and he added a rainbow rail. He was doing like heelflip lipslides on it. The premier for that video was randomly at a trade show, and I could be wrong, but I remember people were throwing chairs. He had this box across the gap that was probably seven feet tall, and then a rail on top that was probably thirteen feet off, it was so big. The first day he grinded it, we were having dinner and Danny was talking about crooked grinding it and Mike and I were like, ‘I don’t know if that’s possible,’ but then he did back two seventy lip on it, heelflip lip- 2003 was a pretty unbelievable year largely because of Danny and that project. 

What role do you think luck has played in your career? Do you think that you would be as successful if skateboarding hadn’t been a part of this?

That’s an impossible question. It’s a hard thing to put into words, but I do believe in serendipity. If you approach things in life with the best intentions and all of your heart, things come to you. Whatever kind of flow there is in this world with nature or whatever you want to call it- I’ve had several things happen in my life that you could call luck but I wouldn't. It was me being in it and willing to do anything and go anywhere, and I think you meet these people who pick you up and give you these opportunities. It’s not just me, I see it happen with all sorts of people. An attitude or an approach, but I wouldn’t call it luck.

Do you manifest? Do you have a dream board?

I do not, no.

You alluded to Mindfield being very personal, would you say that that’s the video that you are most in?

I mean, yes and no. I would say that Mindfield is the video that I filmed most of. I would say that Mindfield is the video that has the most of me in. From 2000 until after Mindfield, my whole life was that project. My friends were in the video, I was shooting every day, I put everything I had into it.

Have you seen it lately?

No. 

Would you?

I could maybe watch it, but I haven’t watched it since I finished it. I’ve seen parts of it. I’ve seen the intro and I watched Heath’s part, but I’ve never sat through a video that I’ve done once I finish it. It’s just complicated. There are so many memories and the process of making it is so intense. I don’t want to say traumatic, but three months of editing, twenty hours a day, sometimes editing for a few days straight. There’s so much stress. Doing the music licensing, wanting to come through for the riders, really wanting to make sure it’s great, all of that pressure. It’s an unbearable amount of stress sometimes. When I watch a video again it just triggers that. Even old videos, it’s hard for me to sit through it. Or then I still wish I could change this or that. I’m still criticizing it. 

Do you think that they are fair criticisms or is it just because you made it?

It’s just because I made it.

What’s kept you doing this?

I truly love skating. It’s changed a lot. After Workshop I worked for Analog, then I went to Vans, and half way through Propellor I had my first kid. It’s just changed a lot for me. There was a period where I was burnt and I just needed a break from that level of work and travel and commitment, and it didn't take long, maybe a year, until I really missed it. What I learned was that when I wasn’t working in skateboarding, I was doing commercials, and people would send me a picture of a commercial I made on during an NBA game, but I just didn’t care. I was happy that people were seeing it, but I just didn’t care. There’s nothing like making something and putting it out there for skateboarding. A film, a book, a magazine, whatever, because the feedback you get is unlike anything else. There’s something about working on a skate film and putting it out in the world, you get this response that you don’t get anywhere else, and it means so much to the people who are in it. 

When kids talk to you about your legacy, how do you view your influence on skating?

I think the feedback that I get the most from younger skaters- I meet a lot of people who are inspired by the films that I’ve been a part of, and those films inspire them to do creative things themselves, and for me that’s the biggest thing. 

What advice would you give 2003 you?

If I had a crystal ball or something I’d say buy a house in LA or something.

I hear about so many people taking their Supra money or whatever and buying property and now that’s their thing.

I bought a house near my mom in New Mexico, and it was fine, it wasn’t the best choice, and I sold it. 

Did you buy an Arriflex with it?

No, I didn’t buy anything with it, I basically broke even. That’s alright though, that’s how it goes. I think we all think about that- life choices and things. I wouldn’t want to do anything differently in my life, especially now that I have kids. Like, fuck, I am so glad that I did every single little thing I did that led me to having my kids. Now, if I would have been a bit more wise with my money and pragmatic with what I had at the time, but it’s stupid to say in hindsight. What advice would I give myself? I don’t know. My 2003 self might have better advice for my 2023 self. Twenty years ago I might have had a bit more insight. 

You don’t strike me as a Mercedes Benz and fancy dinner guy.

No, I’m a straight shooter. 

You weren’t railing cocaine off of the dash of a Rolls Royce?

No, but I kind of do wish I lived my life a bit more in the 90’s. I was just kind of depressed. From the outside I think I was doing okay, but considering where I lived and what my life was like, I could have lived it up a bit more, but it’s stupid to say because that wasn’t who I was then. I was introverted, I’d hang out alone all the time, unknowingly depressed.

Did you have a moment where you were brought out from that?

This sounds like I’m full of shit, but honestly, I think it was photography. When I think back, I remember things emotionally. I remember a certain apartment that I lived in and I’m like, ‘I don’t have a good feeling about the time that I lived there.’ I wasn’t feeling happy, wasn’t skating a lot, wasn’t very confident. When I started shooting pictures, I started skating a lot more and playing guitar and drawing - I remember clearly that it was a very happy creative time, which is what I think brought me out of it.

Were you commissioned to make the Dylan part? 

I went from Workshop to Analog, and it was mostly the same people, but it became obvious pretty soon that no one there was filming a part any time soon except for Dylan. He was just on his own thing. Sober, and people have talked about it a lot - he just wasn’t happy with his Mindfield part. He felt that he had let a lot of people down, so he was on a tear. I think I was only at Analog for about a year, and it turned into Dylan’s part. 

What was that experience like?

It was great. At that time, we were really close, and we lived like two blocks away from each other. He was getting amazing shit every day, all in our neighborhood, literally two thirds of that part were within a one mile radius of our houses. A lot of those spots weren’t even spots, they were just things that Dylan saw walking to the sandwich place or whatever. Now they are spots, but back then they were just things that he saw. I loved Dylan - I still love Dylan. We had a big brother little brother relationship that was very positive. It was a special time. 

I would argue that that is one of the most impactful or important skate videos of all time as far as how often it is referenced in the culture of skateboarding. Do you ever consider that impact?

Not really. The Dylan part is something that people reference to me when they meet me. It now has a permanent place in skateboarding, so does Dylan. People don’t like to talk about how people talked shit on Dylan prior to that part. When Mindfield came out, there were forums and I would read people talk a lot of shit about how he skated, how he dressed. Quartersnacks re-edited his Mindfield part to ‘Dude Looks Like A Lady’. I think that really affected him. I remember being close to finishing that part and being like, ‘this is going to turn it around, people are going to understand how good he is.’ He was sort of this low hanging fruit for people to call a pretty boy or whatever, but I remember thinking that this video was going to change all that.

That part got released on DVD, and there is a tangible aspect to that.

The part was released on DVD and online. I don’t remember how it was released online, but I know it was because the moment that video dropped, some person re-uploaded it with different music because they wanted it on their page but they were worried about the music. It was basically congas. People were hitting me up being like, ‘congrats on this video’ and the link they’d send was that video. There was a period of time for a few days where people were seeing this conga edit. It must have been Gravis’ Vimeo, and a DVD that came with every copy of The Skateboard Mag, I think. 

I remember me and my friends had a premier with that DVD and having the disc made it more exciting. What do you think the value is of tangibility in media, and print specifically? 

I think there’s so much talk of print being dead and this digital revolution, which has led a lot of young people to appreciate print more. For them to see a print of a film photo or to see magazines and books instead of a computer screen, there’s a romance to that. I think that’s one of the reasons that there’s this resurgence. We live in a digital world, and it’s nice to have an object that doesn't need power and you can look at it for as long as you want. It’s something that you do purposefully and not as a distraction. I notice it now. I’ll be editing a project and I’m constantly looking at my phone. My brain is fucked up. I’ll be having a problem and I can’t make something work, and I’m like, ‘ah what’s going on on my phone.’ and it’s fucked up. That’s what’s nice about print is that you choose to look at it and you can control what you’re looking at and for how long. It’s a totally different experience. 

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