Gleaming the Cube
1989 film by Graeme Clifford
Gleaming the Cube (also known as A Brother's Justice and Skate or Die; released in the Philippines as Challenge to Win Again) is a 1989 American film directed by Graeme Clifford and starring Christian Slater as Brian Kelly, a 17-year-old skateboarder investigating the death of his adopted Vietnamese brother.
The skating technical advisor for the film was Stacy Peralta of the Z-Boys and Bones Brigade teams. Many other skateboarders made appearances performing stunts, and a few had small acting roles.
The film received a moderate release in the United States from 20th Century Fox (in 469 theaters). Although the film had a relatively low box office turnout and mixed to negative reviews, it garnered a significant cult following after its theatrical release, through basic cable replays on networks such as USA and the burgeoning VHS (and later DVD) market, and was particularly popular among skateboard enthusiasts.
The title of the film refers to the cryptic question "Have you ever gleemed [sic] inside a cube?" that Garry Scott Davis (GSD) asked Neil Blender in an interview in the December 1983 issue of Thrasher magazine. In the film, Christian Slater's character defines "gleaming the cube" as "pushing your limits to the edge". The DVD contains an Easter egg: by highlighting the skateboard on the main menu, viewers can watch a short featurette entitled "What Does Gleaming the Cube Mean?".
Plot
Brian Kelly is an unmotivated high school student in Orange County, California. An avid skateboarder, Brian is frequently at odds with his parents for his increasingly reckless behavior, which has landed him in jail on more than one occasion.
The public source identifies “Gleaming the Cube” as 1989 film by Graeme Clifford. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gleaming, Cube and film.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gleaming the Cube” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.