There’s no arguing the impact that “BLESSED”  has had on skateboarding. It’s all anyone has been talking about since it dropped, and we’re expecting that to continue well into 2019. Dylan Rieder’s influence on the film is obvious. Bill Strobeck goes on the record about it, and reflects on his relationship with Rieder in a new interview published by Vice’s i-D this afternoon.

There’s a tribute in there to him [Dylan], as well.

There is, there is, there’s a bit for him, and there’s a lot of stuff in there that, if you know him, you’d recognise. He was involved with this film even if he wasn’t around. He was in my brain, I was thinking of him. I really wanted him to be proud of it –– I want him to be like ‘Fuck yeah you did it’.

The film is dedicated to Dylan. You realise, all you have is time, people come and go in your life, to this day it doesn’t feel real that Dylan is gone. I still don’t get it. It just happened. This guy was the top of the food chain in skating, he was the dude. Within a small amount of time he was just gone, but in a way I just felt blessed to have the time I had with him. You get to meet certain people in your life, and then life is over. I feel blessed to be doing this now, in 10 years we might not even know each other. We don’t know what’s going to happen. I think it’s a blessing in itself that we can all work together and created something that very special together.

Head over to i-D to read the entire piece.

Image Via Ryan Allen