It's funny how sometimes a film will think it's one thing when actually it's something else entirely. Take, for example, "Just For Kicks." This MTV-affiliated documentary directed by Thibaut de Longeville is under the impression that it's about sneakers, sneaker mania and hip-hop. But anyone who watches this film will walk away with a different impression: This is clearly a document of mental illness.
"How's that?" I hear you say. Well, just take a look at some of the interviewees here. There's Damon Dash (from Rocawear) saying, "I don't like to wear the same thing twice." Regarding sneakers, he says "you got to have at least 365 different pairs." A shoe-store owner in NYC describes how police escorts were necessary for customers buying a certain limited-edition pair of Nike shoes (NYC Pigeons) as gangsters with machetes were lining the streets outside waiting to ambush kids for their shoes. Then there's sneaker collector and otaku Tommy Rebel, who notes how "it just gets crazy when you want everything."
Indeed. And Rebel, a textbook case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, has several hundred pairs of athletic shoes to his name, despite looking like the sort of guy who actively avoids any activity that would make him break into a sweat. His madness is par for the course, though. It's positively scary to see rap unit Cold Crush Brothers explain how "you gotta wash your shoe strings while they're still white." (Thus further demonstrating the inherent idiocy of wearing all white shoes, originally designed for the tennis or basketball court, on grimy urban streets.)