You've said that you open with easy or "softball" questions in your interviews. You gave as an example "Where did you grow up?" So I will start with "Where did you grow up?"
I moved around. I was born in St. Louis. Then I moved to Connecticut, then Louisville, Ky., and then Cincinnati, Ohio. Then Hong Kong for two years and then Columbus, Ohio, for high school. The short answer is Columbus. The long answer is we moved around constantly.

My dad worked for a lot of different companies. He worked for a company … I don't want to get into what my dad does, if that's fine. But it was because of his job that we moved around a lot.

Were you popular in high school? An outsider?
Pretty outsider. I was a skater. I think because I moved around a lot I turned weird. There wasn't many other skaters. Two or three. It was a public school by the cornfields. Suburban Columbus. But then from that same school my friend Tom, who I skated with, he just directed a Darkness video. And another girl I went to high school with, Clare Rojas, now does art for RVCA, and she is a big artist. There's another guy who now goes by RJD2. That's three people who are doing cool stuff. We were all friends.

After high school you moved to San Francisco to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. Were you desperate to get out of Ohio?
My parents agreed to support me as long as I went to college. So I moved out there to be a skate photographer. I had already traveled around so much as a kid; it wasn't exactly like Axl Rose getting off the Greyhound. Because Hong Kong is a gigantic city, and that is where I started skating. When I moved to Columbus, Ohio, that was a real culture shock.

I feel like a lot of things that I saw at [the San Francisco Art Institute] influenced the way I work. Kind of being noncommercial. I kind of take the "whatever" approach. Sometimes it's embarrassing how low budget my show is. I am not white-balancing much. I am mashing on buttons. I am just kind of like, "Oh, that's where you're sitting already? OK." I'm kind of into your space, you know what I mean? If I am interviewing some skater for the show I am generally not like, "Maybe you should sit there."

"Epicly Later'd" has really become a phenomenon. Does its popularity surprise you? What accounts for its popularity?
When I talk about people's video parts, I really try to consider it as an art form, something that's serious.

Originally we were going to have skits in it because Bam's thing was popular at the time. One of the first edits had music in the background. When Dustin Dollin was skating there was a punk song playing in the background. I didn't want it. I was like, "We don't need music to tell you how to feel about the skating."

I think people respond to it because I don't condescend to skateboarding.

Why do pro skaters trust you?
I don't know … I think skaters take their skating really seriously, and they take their careers really seriously and their accomplishments really seriously. Even the shyest skaters, or even some good skaters who don't seem like they are that thoughtful or smart, they are really serious about their aesthetic. I think they appreciate somebody who comes along to take what they're doing seriously. I don't think [skaters] have been bummed on what we did. They might be bummed on one or two parts. But I think overall they can walk away knowing that, to an extent, I have their best interests in mind. Sometimes I will have to push them a little bit. I think most of the skaters are stoked on getting someone to take their art seriously.

But what if a skater thinks something is too personal and you think it's essential to the integrity of the show? Have you gotten good at persuading people to keep certain content in?
A lot of times if skaters don't want to talk about a certain thing, I just respect it. I am not trying to put it in. There's been a couple of skaters who had drug and drinking problems and didn't want to be known as that dude. And even though I personally know that drugs were a big part of their story, they don't want to put it in. I just go, "All right. It's cool. We won't put it in."

You generally err on the side of collaborative?
It is collaborative. There's a few things, though, that I can imagine the skater … like, say with Dylan Rieder's [episode]. Dill and Fat Bill are kind of tongue-in-cheek. But they are like, "He's so hot." And it's kind of goofy. I just put it in because it's such a hot-button issue. But also because I did know it would instigate kids', like, comments. I know Dylan was probably, like, "God, what the hell is this stuff?" I would imagine that nobody is ever 100 percent stoked.

Antwuan [Dixon], I think, was not stoked. That was an instance where dude's not stoked. But I just couldn't get any more out of him. It just kind of ended up being what it was. I don't talk to Antwuan at all. So maybe he was stoked. I have no idea. That was one where I was just like, "Well, I can't get a hold of this dude. Let's just put it up and see what happens." That's why that was delayed for six months. But I was like, "This can't go up. This is too crazy." And I was trying to get more out of him, and it never happened. And finally, I was like, "Well, here it is."

Adam SaloMark Gonzales is one skateboarder "Epicly Later'd" is yet to "get."

Your unrequited love is a Mark Gonzales episode. How close have you come to getting him to commit to his own "Epicly Later'd" episode? Were you ever under the delusion that you were going to have a Gonz episode?
No. I just watched this early interview where he talks about how if you talk about skating you destroy it. I think he has some philosophical differences about coming out and doing something like this, which I admire about him. It's such an art form for him. I think maybe I could do an episode where I interview other people about how awesome he is. Where they say, "Gonz is the sickest!" And he's not in it whatsoever.

I think he always questions all the mores of skateboarding and what skateboarding is. I think in his personal life he does the same thing. He questions what a conversation is. It might be over-articulating what goes through his mind.

Mark Gonzales actually prank-called me. He pretended he was some skater who wanted to shoot photos. I had no idea it was him. Then like three months later I saw him and he said, "Did you get my call?"

Something about your show tends to elicit impassioned responses from the online skate community. Do negative reactions ever sting?
At first they did. Now I am pretty, like, whatever. I don't even look. Well, it depends. If I have some free-time and I am bored, I'll say, "Let's go on Slap …." After one of the episodes I started reading and I was like, "I can't read this." I was driving and I was thinking about what someone said. I can't let this pollution … Some younger people who are just starting to do things will get their first Internet hate and they'll tell me about it. And I'll be, like, "Oh, that's cute. Someone is flaming you for the first time."

Now if there weren't comments and everyone was like, "Pretty good. Decent episode" -- I feel like that's kind of a failure. I would be lying to say I never look. But the truth is I look every once in a while. I am not looking to Slap message boards or the Thrasher comments section for my self-worth. I do appreciate that that's all there, because all that arguing drives traffic. But I don't need to go there to find out if I am doing a good job or not.

Do you look back fondly to the days when you knew nothing about pro skaters' personal lives?
I haven't thought about it too much. It's weird. I always imagined them different than they were. People talk about that. I make a living off skaters being willing to share their personal lives.

What's next for "Epicly Later'd"?
The next one is Arto Saari. Then after that it's Elissa Steamer. By slowing down the pace I am going to do it for a really long time. I am not burning myself out. Even 15 years from now I could still be doing them. It's really fulfilling to get to do cool stuff.