This Saturday, Bobby Kim (Bobby Hundreds) will be premiering his new streetwear documentary, Built to Fail, at the Los Angeles Film Festival. The project, which is directed by Kim alongside Alexis Spraic and Scott Weintrob, takes a look back at when LA's burgeoning surfing and skateboarding scene paved the way for a new must-have realm of fashion that eventually went on to become a billion dollar industry.
Produced by Samantha Laidlaw and Joshua Greenberg, and executive produced by Matti Leshem and Mark Rowen, Built to Fail features interviews from major fashion players such as Tommy Hilfiger, Russell Simmons, A$AP Rocky and Benny Gold, as well as Los Angeles-based designers including Eli Bonerz, “Bobby Tribal” Ruiz and Rick Klotz.
“It’s a subculture that has never really been explored in a documentary, on a subject that was originally meant to stay underground and outside of the mainstream,” Kim insisted. “These first generation designers started off small, and I wanted to see what happened to those original guys.”
“There are valid comparisons to hip hop, where some pioneers made fortunes and others live in the basements of their moms' houses,” he went on to add. “There was always this tussle between art and commerce, and sometimes becoming the biggest wasn’t the best thing. Some of these pioneers made it big, while most didn’t.”
Again, Kim's anticipated Built to Fail film premieres Saturday night at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
