Lights, Camera, Moto!
LIGHTS, CAMERA, MOTO!
RACE WATCH
Hollywood makes a dirty movie
JIMMY LEWIS
THE MOVIE AND TELEVISION INDUSTRY HAS always had this thing for dirtbikes. And not just to make bad guys badder, good guys gooder or to add some thrills to a chase scene, either. A fair portion of Hollywood goes out and gets dirty on a regular basis for no other reason than the fun of it.
Insurance clauses being what they are, it’s not so much the million-dollar headliners, but rather the people who run the cameras, build the sets and, let’s not forget, the stuntmen, who really get crazy for roosting. They have for a long time, too. In the past, membership in motorcycle clubs such as the Viewfinders (as in cameras) was limited to those working in the film industry. Those clubs put on famous old races such as Hopetown (run on Bob Hope’s property). The late actor Steve McQueen raced here and in the desert, too, often under the nom de moto Harvey Mushman. Stuntman Bud Ekins-or is that motorcycle racer Bud Ekins?-was also a fixture on the Hollywood dirt scene. And remember J.N. Roberts? He was one of the fastest desert racers ever, not to mention also being a movie stuntman in the 1970s.
It was all this Tinsel Town dirt-riding history that led to the first “A Day in the Dirt” at Los Angeles County Raceway four years ago. Director James Cameron, a big-time motorcycle enthusiast and flush with the success of his $200-million epic, Titanic, sponsored the 1998 event. Nearly 1000 people showed up that Thanksgiving weekend. They’d only expected 200!
That set the buzz abuzzing, and the following year Troy Lee of helmetpainting fame got into the act and brought along stars of the motorsports
industry, from Indycar drivers to Supercrossers to Freestylers. Today, “DitD” is technically a race event, with a variety of classes and thousands of participants and spectators, but in reality it’s more about just having a fun, friends-n-family time with dirtbikes. I snuck in under the guise of being in the “entertainment industry’-hopefully you’re being entertained by this magazine right now! What I was after was the coveted Ironman Award, reserved for those riders who compete in five of the GP-format races, totaling some seven hours of racing over the weekend.
Saturday started out with the promise of horrible weather, and the Vintage GP. The rain was yet to come, but first we Ironmen would have to endure 45 minutes on ancient pieces of junk-although as the first race of the day, the track sure was smooth! Remember my “Dirt Cheap” 1976 Suzuki RM370 (CW, October,
2000)? Well, I pulled it out again only to find that in battling for the cause of lay-down shocks, I was cursed to race against guys on monoshocked YZ490s and RM500s-totally sanoed-out ones, to boot! Good thing Freestyle Godfather
Mike Metzger lined up right next to me on a similar-era Yamaha, a few loose bolts worse even than my rig. This race turned out to be the most fun I had all weekend. With the premium track conditions, and no shortage of power from my detonating, fin-ringing sled, I managed to snag third place in the moto, capped off by a few impromptu freestyle moves between Metzger and myself. Never mind I had about eight spokes left in the rear wheel and my carb was falling out of the cracked intake boot! At some point during the race, I almost stuffed J.N. Roberts on his nice Husky, but caught myself milliseconds before making a very big mistake. I don’t belong anywhere near a legend like J.N., and haven’t earned the right to park him. Of course, I almost took out myself in the process!
So, who all was there? Well, take the Stunt GP team event, where there are divisions called Men’s 1 & 2 (for real, card-carrying stuntmen), Stunt/Celebrity, Man/Woman, Father/Son and Special Guests. I was sitting on the line with moto-men Jeremy McGrath, Jeff
Emig, Ron Lechien, Ricky Johnson, Jeff Ward and Mike Bell, as well as roadracer Eric Bostrom, FMX guy Metzger, CART driver Paul Tracy, watercraft gurus Victor Sheldon, Clay Cullen and Larry Rippenkroeger, Steve McQueen’s son Chad and just about every stunt guy who’s worth a cent in Hollywood. Plus all of their no-name friends, like me. My partner Eric Rondell and I got stuck in the fiercely competitive Stunt/Celebrity class. I had nothing for McGrath or even his partner “Mouse” McCoy, a phenom from back when I was racing minis, now a stuntman.
We got blown away.. .no really, the race was cut short by 80-mph winds that made the circus-like atmosphere of the pits look more like Lawrence of Arabia stuck in a sandstorm. The barn even blew over-yes, they set up a prop barn for the race to run through! Unfortunately, af-
ter the wind came a deluge, which cut the races short. Minibike racing in the pits served as entertainment during the impromptu intermission, but Saturday was largely a washout.
Sunday’s conditions couldn’t have been better,
though. A corps of volunteers worked wonders in getting the tents back up, the haybales back in line and the water puddles drained.
Did I mention the crew of 30 on hand to film the race for an upcoming feature-length documentary? The pre-
vious day’s weather had done no less than $20,000 in damage to cameras alone! These guys were shooting with high-definition cameras, the same ones George Lucas used for the latest Star Wars sequels. The DVD is scheduled for
a July 1st release with the possibili ty of big-screen showings in Los Angeles-area theaters. As director Michael Bryant put it, “This is going to show the soul of these riders-you’ll see it on the screen.”
Back to the action, though. Another of the big GPs was the “Film Industry” race. Getting into this industry-only class required meeting the most stringent standards. I got in as a magazine editor, but feeling a bit bad
about weaseling in, I chose to ride my tricked-out BBR minibike in the 125cc Expert class, only to find out that Mike “Too Tall” Bell (film credits, please?) was racing a real 125cc MXer against me. There were even a few Pro motocrossers on the line. Turns out, the rules committee has a pretty liberal interpretation of “industry.” The event, even as big as it has become with more than 3000 people attending, has a certain laid-back attitude where everything just sort of happens. It’s a Zen kind of thing. Anyway, a film guy reigned supreme, beating all the sandbaggers: Mouse McCoy really put the hurt on everyone and took the overall win. Said McCoy, “I really trained for this, just to prove to myself that I could still do it. Dirtbikes are fun for me, a
way to get out and play. If things had gone a bit differently, I might have been a Pro motocrosser, so it is good to come
out here against fast guys and still feel like you have it.”
The next team event, the “Moto-AGo-Go” was a free-for-all, pairing us into groups, such as Motocross/ Motocross, Extreme Sport/Anybody, Film/Anybody, Film/Film. Stuffed in the MX class with friend and frequent CW tester “Big Air” Tod Sciacqua, I eked out a seventh-place finish in the hour-and-a-half, switch-a-wristband-every-lap team race. But there was hardly a guy in front of us who didn’t have some world or national motocross title. Mike Healey and R.J. Thompson won, and Danny LaPorte and Mike Kiedrowski finished right in front of us, with Mike Brownyes, 125cc national MX champ Mike Brown-right behind. Ferocious!
During the course of the weekend there were races for minibikes, the Old Timers MX Association, the Women’s Motocross League and Vets, but the most feared event of all was the “Coup de Grace,” a 2-3-hour, onerider, one-bike survival race. The catch here is that competitors aren’t told how long the race will be. It is the final requirement for the Ironmen, and usually has a few additional surprises packed in along the way just to keep it interesting. In years past, the promoters have spiced things up with rain machines, smoke generators, fires and explosions. They’ve even stopped the race midway, then track backward.
While this year’s Coup de was a bit of a dud in ue added (well, okay, we did manage to bowl over waving the green flag), the racing up front was intense. Suzuki GNCC regular Kiedrowski battled with Honda motocross Team Manager Eric Kehoe until the latter ran his CRF450R out of gas by gambling on pit stops. Out of 139 riders who started the race, only 87 were man enough to finish-well, make that
just plain tough enough, because five women made the cut as well. “Super” Sarah Schilke was entered in the same races I was, and finished them all, making her tough enough to be called an “Ironwoman.” Twenty other guys were just as tough. For all our hard work, we were paraded up onto the
stage as the sun set over the desert to get our empty apple-crate trophy, the word “Ironman” burned into its side.
So, A Day in the Dirt was a huge success. Fun was had by all, famous and not-so-famous alike. Who says nothing good comes out of Hollywood these days?
