Kilian Heuberger, web exclusive Interview.

January 28, 2008 @ 4:55 PM

Kickflip

Kilian Heuberger is 23, hails from Munich, Germany, and he’s been all over quite a few magazines during the last two years. I won’t go into any depths as to why he has earned every single bit of coverage he gets by laying down some of the most amazing technical bigness, I’ll just be honest with you: We simply have way too much amazing stuff sitting here, and we don’t want it to become too old. Still, there’s other skaters who deserve the limited space there is in a printed magazine as well, and we want to spice things up a bit on this very website, so Kilian was the perfect candidate for a nice, exclusive chat for this online gem on the sidelines of the t-mobile playground in Berlin in October.
—David Luther

Kilian, you’ve been on the road like a homeless person during the last two years, and I think you broke the world record in producing footage during that time. There actually was a period when magazines turned down pretty amazing photos, because they were already sitting on heaps of your stuff. How do you handle such a situation?

Yeah, people were actually laughed at for offering photos, amazing. Didn’t go too well, did it? Maybe I should take a long holiday. It became pretty annoying at some point, like: “We can’t take that photo, sorry, we’re already running this, and this, and this, and it’s been only six months since your last interview,” and so on. As a skateboarder, I’d rather have magazines use newer, harder stuff, but print is kinda slow that way, they’re not into quick changes at all. Some of the pictures you see in magazines are two years old—and that’s not only mine! But that’s just how it is. I do what I can, that’s what I’m used to do. Why should I stop? There’s no reason.

Someone told me that you’ve come up to a spot, and shot three different tricks there, each with another magazine in mind—you directed the photographer, too. True or untrue?
Oh, that happened?
Could you maybe tell me the spot? Any more infos on this?
No? I can’t recall this, no. What I do remember, however, is getting two sequences on one roll of film once. Before digi.

Anyway, do you ever , when you go out shooting photos with photographers...uhm…
...haha, yeah, not with filmers, ha!

...do you take a dentist, too? No, I mean, do you ever give media folks your thoughts on their angles?
Yes, I do, but it depends on the photographer. You obviously don’t have to talk to Deeli about that, he’ll probably laugh at you. He’ll listen, but a quick sideglance at your proposal is probably the best you could get. If you have a photographer with less experience, then that’s absolutely necessary. I don’t want the stuff to come out crappy.

Has your eye ever betrayed you?
Not to my knowledge. Up until here, I like everything that I wanted. That’s probably why I wanted it in the first place.

Flip transfer

I understand you’re hurt right now, so you’re forced to slow down.
Yeah, twisted my foot forward, somehow. Some ligaments torn, some slightly ripped. Doesn’t really get better, but I don’t really give it any time to rest either. Party, alcohol, “Hey, where’s the pain? Whopee, let’s dance!” I went to a Chinese doc the other day and had it acupunctured. He gave me some weird pills, too. It was kinda crazy, because I had been partying quite a bit in the weeks before I went to see him, and the first thing he said was: “Your liver seems to be cold, it’s damaged.” Usually I would have laughed at that, but after six weeks of drinking, I was more like: “Well...He probably has a point, there.” And then he put the needles in my leg, to get the energy running again. If you don’t give your body the rest it needs to heal for six weeks, but instead keep on putting pressure on it, it’ll just stop healing at some point.

Ollie

(Kevin Cavael (14) walks past, greets David and offers to bring some drink, but ignores Kilian, then strolls off.)
Hello! The youth of today has no manners. He simply ignored me! Whatever, it was amazing, he put some needles in really deep, others just slightly, and explained their functions. “Here, this is good for [international handsign for sexual intercourse]”… Oh, really? Great.

Did it work?
Problem was, he gave me these pills for my liver, and told me I had to take ten in the morning, right after waking up, and ten at night, right before going to sleep. Empty stomach, and all that. This was rather impossible, because those pills were huge, and usually I got sick after the fifth one. Ten! Oh, and then there was the party of a friend, of course, right after the needle session. Not quite part of the healing plan. Hey! Kevin! How about greeting? He doesn’t get it.

Frontside Feeble

Amazing. Kevin! Can’t you greet Kilian?
Kevin: I could.
Oh, you could? But you don’t? Damn, Kev doesn’t talk to people over 20, so it seems. Oh, and he rather goes skating, there he goes.

You’ve just been to China for a week, and it was your first time there. Impressions, please. Culture shock?
I went to Shenzen, the fastest growing city of the world. 12 million inhabitants, not too far away from Hong Kong. It looks like the west, pretty much, but the people are way different. Hardly any individualists, doing your own little gig seems to be absolutely out of the frame for most of the population. Most of them just go with the flow and serve the big communist whatever…

Nollie Heelflip

Since this is for the internet, I might as well ask you if you spend a lot of time online?
I use it for communication, mostly. MySpace is a good way to keep in touch with folks abroad, and to get updates on their lives. I’m in there quite a lot, actually. Well, emails, obviously. Okay, I might be signed up at some more pages, FaceBook and whatever, but I hardly ever go there, because it’s just a waste of time. Checking emails and MySpace—there go two hours, just like that. That should be more than enough.

Yeah, there’s no such thing as “quickly checking emails”...
Exactly. Well, if you checked them ten minutes ago, you might get lucky.

Nollie

Winter’s coming up anyway. Where do you hibernate?
Florida and Brazil, I hope. Florida with Marco Lambertucci, the Italian Globe teamrider, maybe a quick stint to Cali, and then down south. Seems like flights from the US to South America are really cheap right now.

Cool, thanks for your time, and have a good one!
Cheers!

Kilian rides for Trap skateboards, Globe shoes, Reell clothing, Ogio, Unitedskateboardartists