ON ANY SUNDAY
The stars of the film are at Stafford! Here’s the story.
Forty-five years ago the film On Any Sunday was released and today it’s as ‘must-watch’ a flick as ever. The premise behind On Any Sunday is simple: on any Sunday around the world, you’ll find someone racing a motorcycle in one discipline or another. Film-maker Bruce Brown did just that, getting under the skin of the subject with a documentary style that shows both the beauty of motorcycle racing and the toughness of the competitors. In the course of 1970, Bruce shot more than 150 hours of film over disciplines as diverse as dirt-track, road-racing, desert racing, motocross, trials, hill-climbing and ice racing and Brown – with his laconic Californian drawl – narrates the entire film, saying it like it is and sometimes saying nothing to let his amazing footage tell the story for itself. The film loosely follows two main characters – AMA champ Mert Lawwill, Fim-gold-medal winner Malcolm Smith and there’s also a bit-part for Hollywood legend Steve Mcqueen. Others are included, such as Dave Aldana, Don Emde, Gene Romero, Dave Castro, Dick ‘Bugsy’ Mann, Frank Gillespe, Cal Rayborn and many others, covering all disciplines of the sport. If you head to the 23rd Carole Nash Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show over the weekend of October 15-16, you’ll have the opportunity to meet some of the legends who took part in the film: Mert Lawwill, Dave Aldana, Don Emde and Gene Romero! From the opening credits where a bunch of kids race ‘bicycle motocross’ to the slow-mo shots of a Harley XR750 going sideways at 100mph, to the aerial shots of a desert race and the head-camera shots where you really get a feel for the speed and closeness of dirt-track racing or off-road, no film has ever come close to recreating the sheer excitement of racing on two wheels. Bruce Brown was born in San Francisco, California in 1937 and grew up on the beaches, becoming a bit of a surf dude. With a keen interest in still and motion photography, he made his name in the 1960s with a series of surfing films, the most popular being the 1964 flick The Endless Summer, a documentary released in 1966 that followed a group of surfers chasing the best waves in California. Bruce says: “I’d made surfing films, but I’d never made a film about anything else. I came into biking late in my life but when I did I met people who I admired very much, so pretty soon I figured that it would be fun to try something different and make a movie about these people. I went to Ascot Park and saw these guys ride. They were going faster than I thought. I saw a big crash and the race was red flagged. I figured this guy was dead but he got straight back up. I went to the pits afterward and expected to see big guys with square jaws and muscles, but it amazed me it was these small little guys and I admired
them all the more. I thought, well, it’d be neat to make a movie about these people.” But first he had to get a budget: enter Steve Mcqueen. Brown recalls: “I went to Steve because I thought if I could get him involved in financing it, he may be in it! He’d seen Endless Summer and I told him it was his fault I was into bikes, after watching The Great Escape so the least he could do was pay. He said: ‘Hey man, I make movies, I don’t pay for them.’ I told him if that was the case, he wouldn’t be in the movie, but he did say he’d call me the next day – which he did – and it went from there.” Made with a budget of just over $300,000, the box office, video and DVD sales have seen a return of more than $25 million on that initial outlay! Mcqueen was already a silver-screen star – and notable petrol head – owning a number of bikes, beginning with a 1946 Indian Chief that he bought in 1951. He’d made 1963’s The Great Escape under the proviso that he could get a bit of motorcycle action in the finale. He always had a passion for motorcycles, but in around 1960/61 he got into off-road in a big way, thanks to his stunt-man friend Bud Ekins getting him into desert racing. With his passion for racing, Brown knew this was a soft-spot for Mcqueen to get him involved, but the big Hollywood star wouldn’t be top billing – that would go to Mert and Malcolm. Steve wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. “Steve admired them and they admired him. They were all just good friends,” says Bruce.” In fact, the camaraderie of biking shone through in the film. Bruce recalls: “We all became friends and it was kinda like a mutual admiration society.” Mcqueen too, was ‘one of the guys’ and a friend to all, up until his death in 1980 from cancer and one story shows this more than any other. Mert broke his arm badly in 1972 and the prognosis wasn’t good. He says: “I hit a rider and my right hand slipped off the bar and was trapped between the fork tube and the frame and it mangled my arm. They said it was too badly broken up to do anything with: the doctors were going to fuse it together and give me what was effectively a club. Steve heard about it sent me a plane ticket and booked me into a clinic.
Five operations and seven pins later I had a working wrist. The bottom line was that with Steve being insistent he saved my career and my livelihood for the next 25-30 years.” Some of the most memorable shots – aside from the amazing crashes – are the head-camera shots and Brown says he didn’t always have many volunteers to help out. He says: “This was a regular helmet, but with a camera on one side and a four-pound counterweight on the other side. We had five or six stocking caps to fit underneath the helmet, but it was still awkward for the riders. Eventually we paid them to wear it, as they weren’t too keen at first.” It was this use of head-cams – and the helicopter cameras that make the desert racing chase scenes so amazing – that make the film far ahead of its time: little wonder that it was nominated for an Academy Award in 1972. It didn’t win, instead the AMA gave an award to Bruce and – rather than go to the Academy Awards – Mcqueen turned up there with Brown instead. In many ways On Any Sunday hasn’t aged. Aside from the differences in motorcycles, hair-styles and the music, it shows what biking and bike racing is all about: enjoyment and passion. Like many iconic films, it was a tough act to follow. In 1981, On Any Sunday II was released, but this wasn’t filmed by Brown (the title was leased from Brown’s company) and it wasn’t the same, but it featured Kenny Roberts alongside speedway ace Bruce Penhall. In 2000 On Any Sunday: Revisited was released, featuring large excerpts of the original footage with a new soundtrack and directed by Brown’s oldest son, Dana. ‘Revisited’ focuses on a 1999 event which saw the stars of On Any Sunday reunited and discussing their roles in it, including an in-depth interview with Brown himself. Today the legacy of this film is still with us. People of an age remember it and like all great works of art, it’s ageless and it sums up the heady days of the early 1970s. Dave Aldana explains: “I was just a jerk kid riding bikes for the fun of it, trying to make a date with someone after the races or trying to go to a party afterwards. It’s only later you think – gosh – what a great time to be 18! It was the 1970s and if you remember them – you weren’t there.” Bruce Brown is proud of the legacy that he’s provided with On Any Sunday. “It’s great that people still love it after all these years. It’s great to have people come up to you and say what an effect the film had on them, or it got them into motorcycles and racing. I really wanted the general public to think about the sport the way I did. Surfers and motorcyclists are similar, we’re a minority but I wanted to show it as it really was.”