Girl Skateboard’s Mouse

Girl’s second full-length video and the one that cemented their place in skate history. Directed by Spike Jonze and Rick Howard, Mouse raised the standard for production, style, and overall vision in a skate video. It remains one of the most beloved and rewatched videos of the decade.

Company: Girl Skateboards

Released: 1996

Era: Mid-90s / The Golden Era of Style

Featured Skaters: Mike Carroll, Rick Howard, Eric Koston, Guy Mariano, Gino Iannucci, Keenan Milton, Sean Sheffey, Jeron Wilson, Rudy Johnson, Chico Brenes, Mike York, Tim Gavin, and more.


By 1996, skateboarding needed someone to define what the next era was going to look like. Girl Skateboards — and Mouse — answered that question definitively.

Directed by Spike Jonze and Rick Howard, Mouse was Girl’s second full-length video and it announced to the world exactly what the company stood for. This wasn’t about being the gnarliest or the most technical. It was about doing everything with an unshakeable sense of style. The filming was crisp, the editing was tight, and the overall vibe was cool without being cold. Spike Jonze brought the same eye he was developing in music videos — playful, precise, and willing to let a moment breathe.

Rick Howard and Mike Carroll were already considered among the best in the world, and their shared section is exactly what you’d expect: clean, elegant, and loaded with quiet confidence. Carroll’s pop is a marvel. Howard’s lines feel like they were choreographed. But Mouse is also notable for what it revealed about the rest of the team.

Eric Koston’s part is a landmark. It’s the segment that announced him as something special — technically inventive, buttery smooth, and shot with the kind of coverage that made every trick feel like it belonged in a film. Gino Iannucci and Keenan Milton deliver one of the most stylish shared sections in video history, and Guy Mariano closes the video with a part that showed a maturity and grace beyond his years. The entire cast, including Sean Sheffey and Jeron Wilson, contributes to a video where there isn’t a weak link.

Mouse endures because it captured something that can’t be manufactured: a team of people at the top of their game, all pointing in the same direction, with a filmmaker talented enough to translate it onto tape. It was the video that defined the mid-90s aesthetic, and it still holds up completely.