Evel Dead
Day breaks upon Vegas as we gaze upon the splendor of the fountains in front of Caesars Palace. I choke back a sob upon realizing that even the Extras I write for this site will open with a shot of this blasted desert city and pay attention to the caption: it's apparently January 1,1968. Well, that explains why everyone's standing in front of a backdrop of Caesars Palace -- nobody's invented special effects yet.
The crowd murmurs, and we see Evel Knievel kitted out in his white leather riding gear, setting a new fashion benchmark for the most obnoxious use of patriotic colors ever. His helmet has his name on it -- helpful for those post-crash moments when the blow to the head kicks in and he's having a hard time remembering his name, I suppose. Evel revs up his bike and commands his currently-silent friend, "Zip it!"
This, my friends, is what we call "character development." The friend protests that he's done nothing wrong and Evel protests, "Yeah, well, you think too damn loud, Phil." Ah, more "character development." In other words, this is not a man who personifies grace under pressure.
Phil walks off so he can go be alone with his presumably clamorous thoughts, and Evel makes a preliminary run. Since we still have the rest of the credits to get through, he'll be making that run in slow motion. Evel then heads to the top of the ramp from which he'll be launching himself, poses dramatically, and basks in the applause. The mob shuffles, and then we get a close-up of Evel looking all intent. Or going into flashback. Take your pick.
The screen goes white, and when it comes up, some jukebox is playing one of those 1950s songs that makes people wonder how long it's going to be before the British Invasion, and we see a lit movie marquee against a night sky. The Wild One is playing. As some giant automotive monstrosity requiring the decimation of an entire species, its fossilization, and its subsequent transformation into crude oil just to turn over in the mornings pulls up to the theatre and honks, a hoody-looking little kid darts out and furtively strips the hubcaps off its wheels.
Wait a minute. Evel Knievel is about to go flying over the Caesars Palace fountains and he's spending the pre-jump moments flashing back to a life of juvenile delinquency? Shouldn't he maybe be focusing on how to go hurtling through the air with the fewest broken bones possible?
"Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On" plays, just in case the car, the clothing, and the marquee have you confused over what year it is. Perhaps the set decorator will haul out a bust of Senator Joe McCarthy , as one of those subtle background cues. As the driver leans on the horn, the kid hustles to get the hubcaps off. Two women come out and get in the car just as young Bobby Knievel pries off the last hubcap.
The car takes off in one direction, Bobby Knievel takes off in another, and then a police officer chases him around town in a sequence designed to show...I have no idea what. That young Bobby is on the fast track to the FBI's Most Wanted list? That law-enforcement officials in his town were hard up for entertainment? Whatever the point, the chase ends as Bobby ends up on the street in front of the car he's just ripped off. He's plucky, however, and protests, "Can't you see kids are riding here?" The driver refrains from pointing out that any kid running around unsupervised on a dark street at 10 PM is asking to become Exhibit A in the Discovery channel show Natural Selection: How Mother Nature Practices Retroactive Birth Control.
The cop comes over and there's some clumsy badinage between these two adversaries. In the shot, Bobby is lying on his back in a jail cell, looking up at the ceiling and thanking God he's forty years and several cable channels away from Oz. The cop gives him some lip about the hubcaps, Bobby slings some tough-guy attitude lifted straight from a 1950s hygiene film (Manners: Making Communist-Free America Pleasant!) back, and the cop clumsily exposits, "Why in the hell your grandparents haven't thrown you out in the streets! I'm seeing your nasty little face with entirely too much regularity!" before stomping off. So the takeaway from this scene is that people in the 1950s didn't worry about children's self-esteem.
Just then, Lance Henrikson enters stage left, burping. He's playing "Knoffel," pronounced "Kuh-noffle." Knievel! Knoffel! Hassenpfeffer Incorporated! Doing it their way...
Sorry. I drifted off for a moment. Not a good sign three minutes into a two-hour movie, I'm afraid. The cop gloats, "Tonight, we're hosting Billy 'Awful' Knoffel and Bobby 'Evil' Knievel." Hassenpfeffer Incorporated!
Well, really. You try saying "Knoffle, Knievel" and see how you end up. Anyway, the two jailhouse dogs end up bonding with young Evel saying, "I've got to get out of this town -- I'm just going to wither and die!" Ah, another 1950s stereotype raises its pomaded head. Knoffel passes on his wisdom: "Let me tell you something: 'The man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or that the doer of deeds could have done better. The real credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust, sweat and blood, who strives valiantly and who, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.'" Wow, is that a pre-emptive "fuck you" to the critics or what?
Knoffel schools Evel on the source of yon quote (Teddy Roosevelt), harasses the guards some more, and passes out of the scene as the no-good-nik who steers young Evel toward his métier. Bobby leaves jail the day with about as much panache as anyone can have when they're pedaling a Schwinn away from the pokey, and then we transition to...George Eads straddling a motorcycle! Wearing a truly hellacious wig and a costume left over from The Outsiders, even. This is an egregious case of miscasting: George Eads is the modern-day answer to Ralph Bellamy, and is made to play the part of upstanding, yet not at all dangerous, man every girl's mother wishes her daughter would date. He is about as convincing as a hood from the wrong side of the tracks as...well, as Rob Lowe would be. Now.
George as Evel attempts to look all bad-ass as he leaves the pokey, and he does manage to top the kid, so that's something.
We then go to a shot of a mining site, with the attendant...things doing their...things. The sole purpose of this scene is to establish that it's 1958, Evel is bored with the day job, and all too conscious of how his pals are all getting black lung. You know, Stewart Copeland did the music for this made-for-TV mess. It's too bad he couldn't ring up his old pal Sting and borrow "We Work The Black Seam Together." It would have gotten the point across in about half the time this scene did.
Cut to Evel sulking on his porch and drinking many beers. This is what we like to call "foreshadowing."
And now we're visiting Knoffel again. He's looking considerably the worse for wear, or maybe that's just Lance Henrikson's haunted expression as he realizes he's actually in this movie. Knoffel's just fixed Evel's motorcycle, and souped it up with a heaping helping of "get yourself a real job." Evel replies that he likes his lungs pink and healthy, thank you. It's his liver he won't mind turning into a hard black nodule. He then predicts, "My life may be short, but it's going to be anything but dull." Would that the writers of this movie had followed that creed.
Then Evel revs up the bike and exchanges macho high fives with everyone while everyone laughs. It's really not the paean to machismo it sounds like from that description.
In the scene, Phil is busy collecting money from curious bystanders as Evel -- still in hoodlum gear but now wearing sunglasses and gloves for no apparent reason -- revs up his bike. Across the street, the Pink Ladies exit a boutique, hissing with gossip about the stuck-up new Australian exchange student who won't stop caterwauling about summer love and hopeless devotion.
Evel then revs up the bike, scoots down Main Street, and picks up a half-empty glass of beer that's been sitting in the middle of the road without spilling a drop. The townspeople in his small Montana burg are duly impressed. Clearly, when fun was invented, it took a while to make its way to the Rockies. One of the Pink Ladies has noticed what's going on, and she bids the rest of the gang to stop so she and Evel can exchange long, burning glances. Oh, look, it's Jaime Pressley, a.k.a. the poor man's Amy Smart. Smooth-talking Evel woos the fair maiden with "Hey! Hold on to this [beer glass] for me, wouldja?" He then tells her to come back so he can finish drinking all the beer first.
Man, I can't believe he's flashing back to all of this before his big jump at Caesars.
Anyway, one of the Pink Ladies drawls in a really generic hick accent, "Don't pay attinshun to hay-yum!" "Wah nyot, Charmaine?" Linda (née Jamie Pressley) basks. "'Cause it's whut he wah-unts," Charmaine diagnoses. And so on. I'm not transcribing the accents from here on out, but you can imagine them, can't you? Charrmaine decides that Evel is cute, and Charmaine doesn't think that discounts the hell-raising. Evel then rides over someone's VW and the townspeople all cheer, apparently under the impression that watching someone ride a motorcycle over a car represents a good value for your 1958-era dollar's worth of entertainment.
Following his little stunt and triumphal ride down the quaint streets so he can reflect on what a bad-ass he is, Evel finds himself crossing paths with the Pink Ladies again. Three of the group cackle in mock-outrage and scatter like the no-line extras they are, but Linda is intrigued. She asks, "Am I supposed to be scared?" Evel replies, "Wow! Where were girls like you when I was in high school?' Probably helping with the war effort -- George Eads is not unattractive, even in that awful wig, but he's nowhere near convincing as someone who's seen the inside of a high school in a remotely educational capacity in the last fifteen years. Also, he doesn't exactly sound as though he was looking very hard for those girls, if you know what I mean.
Nevertheless, the narrative carries us forward inexorably with Linda agreeing to let Evel give her a ride home on his motorcycle. She calls him "Bobby," of course. Charmaine carries on, "He's a liar and a thief and God knows what else!," and in the one genuinely appealing moment of this movie, Evel smirks, "Why don't you drop the bodyguard? I'm unarmed." Well, it does it for Linda anyway. Hence her ending up on the bike. Linda asks Evel not to pop any wheelies while she's on board. Evel -- fearing that honoring her request now will only lead to the unreasonable expectation that he'll listen to her in the future -- promptly tears down the street with one wheel in the air and Linda shrieking in the back.
When they pull up at the Bork bungalow, Beau Bridges is busy with the begonias. He's none too pleased to see his daughter's legs wrapped around the town hoodlum (and his bike), and Linda's attempt to throw Daddums off the trail by hopping off the bike early does not work. Evel waves at Papa Bork, who merely puffs his cigar. Linda's darted inside, but Bork says, "Linda, get out here! I know you're looking out that window." Linda gets. Bork tells her to get a good look at Evel while he leaves, 'cause that's the last she'll be seeing of him. Showing his usual mix of good judgment and showmanship, Evel peels out with a rowdy whoop.
And then, he shows up at an ice-skating rink and kidnaps Linda. Somehow she finds this charming. Well, I suppose once you've fallen for a man whose hair makes the coifs in The Outsiders look underdone, the little things like him physically carrying you out to his car don't really matter.
Linda and Evel drive around in the rain. Evel announces that the general destination is "anywhere but Butte, Montana." He eventually pulls over to take a leak beside the road in the middle of a pouring rainstorm, all without missing a beat in his conversation with Linda. Ah, young courtship. They then neck in the car until Evel's police nemesis swings by to arrest Evel for kidnapping.
Once everyone's at the police station, Linda heads off her father and breaks the news that she wasn't really kidnapped because she loves Evel. Bork responds by manhandling Evel and asking, "You love my daughter?" "Like a miner loves his son," Evel replies. That makes no sense, y'all. Anyway, Evel swears he does love Linda and Bork's all, "You call the house tomorrow for a proper date." And that's that.
Seven years elapse and we see that Evel now owns a motorcycle dealership. Business is not booming, despite his generous offer to give a free bike to anyone who bests him at arm-wrestling. Linda pulls up in another truly massive automobile and Evel hollers, "Hi! It's the Daredevil station wagon!" Oh, don't tell me he's made that pop wheelies too. Evel and Linda's two sons get out and tear around so we can ponder the new and newly awful wigs Linda and Evel wear to connote time's passing.
Because we're still in a flashback and this eventually has to lead back up to how a failed motorcycle dealer came to be leaping fountains at Caesars, our good buddy Phil, he of the loud thoughts, swings by to nudge the plot along. Linda's game for Evel riding his bike over cages of cougars and snakes. Ah, dangerous predators. Where would we be without their systematic subjugation and annihilation for our cheap amusement? It is kind of funny to watch Evel back up while saying of a puma, "Yeah, she is a big kitty," but during scenes like these, I'm always hoping against hope the chain breaks and the animal savages its human tormentors.
The animal handler has the good sense not to assume that Evel and his motorcycle will actually make it over the ramp and leave the cat unscathed, so they agree to have the rattlesnake cage there instead. Phil and Evel promptly break into a wrestling bout that has absolutely no unintentionally loaded subtext whatsoever. Not even the part where they sink below camera sight and all we hear is the grunting.
Once again, boredom has proven hard to kill in Butte, so people are flinging dollar bills at it to see if that helps. People are coming out with lawn chairs and gaping and generally acting like Hollywood's idea of slack-jawed yokels. And then, Linda comes by, dragging the two chidren she's ostensibly borne. There's a completely unconvincing scene where Linda discusses the odds of Daddy's dying during his latest jackass stunt, and the boys are generally annoying in that child-on-TV way, and let me just say, Jaime Pressley is not going to be putting this on her clip reel and marketing herself as the go-to actress for mother-of-two roles. At least, not if she has an ounce of self-awareness, she's not.
So the cougar/puma/big, grouchy kitty paces around in its cage, and then Evel makes his appearance as Paul hypes him. Evel flashes a grin and is all, "Evel Knievel-style?" Phil replies, "Evel Knievel-style!" Oh, then you mean "the style where Evel takes a belt of whiskey before hopping on a motorcycle and endangering some species."
And then Evel zooms around and does wheelies while Linda tells the kids to "wave at Daddy." We get it -- she's supportive. Now please stop straining our credulity. After enough buildup to cause the spectators to confuse this with the pre-Super Bowl show and make this the longest flashback ever (twenty-two minutes and counting!), Evel finally takes the jump. Naturally, he muffs it and knocks over the cage full of snakes. The hardy rural denizens of Montana, many of whom presumably work close to the land, all run shrieking at the sight of a few snakes slithering loose. Linda tells one boy to look after the other and goes running to help Evel, who's lying there sporting an idiot grin and a snake or five.
Presumably, nobody's seriously wounded, because the shot is a total Patton ripoff with a huge American flag and Evel standing in front of it wearing a shiny white bike leathers. His hair is just...it's Patrick Swayze hair, with the poofy sculpted top and the shaggy ur-mullet back. It's so wrong. Cheesy marching band music plays as Evel introduces himself as a professional daredevil and hips us that we're about to see a montage flashing back to some "highlights and lowlights from my very own spectacle, Evel Knievel's daredevil show." That's right -- we're about to see a flashback within a flashback. Maybe we'll get another flashback within that, and so on, until it turns out the whole point of this movie is to show to one instance where Evel is gazing raptly at his navel.
After Evel sells the "God bless America" line, the montage-within-the-flashback ensues. The head cheese at Caesars is irritated that he's even wasting his valuable 1967 time on this, and some Caesar flunky yammers on about how they've been getting calls about Evel all week, and yea, verily, he is a daredevil. The head cheese is all, "And he wants to jump my fountains?" It sounds dirty when you put it that way. The flunky confirms that Evel does. The head cheese is all, "Must be a city block from end to end. He got a death wish?" No. He's just averse to temp work.
And then there's a scene where Evel calls the head cheese using the worst fake accent ever, 'cause he's never going to let a little thing like lack of talent get in the way of relentless self-promotion. Linda hangs out outside the phone booth, mildly amused that her husband is lying (badly) to the head of Caesars. Linda is what we might call an enabler. Evel's hair has reached even more fantastically Swayzean dimensions --it's now frosted, with carefully sculpted curls amid the mullets and wings. And he's heading up to talk to the Caesars head cheese. Linda's all, "You may not want to go dressed like Ponyboy from The Outsiders," and they run off so he can show up for his meeting in a dove-gray suit.
Head Cheese and Evel meet. Evel sells the deal using a metaphor that makes my blood run cold: "The jump's like your orgasm. Then you got your foreplay and your afterplay. It's all part of the whole Evel Knievel experience." The Head Cheese is still hung up on the orgasm part. Understandable, what with those fountains thrusting up like that. Evel explains, "Well, the jump only lasts a couple of seconds, so I gotta build them up." Well, that's generous of him. It may also explain why Linda hangs around. To make a long and not entirely compelling metaphor short, Evel posits that children want to be him, women want to sleep with him, and men want to watch him wipe out. Evel also promises to promote the importance of keeping one's word.
In the scene, we learn that "keeping one's word" is not the same thing as "honoring one's marital vows" as Evel makes a clumsy attempt to pick up Linda Evans while her husband John Derek is standing right there. John is ostensibly directing a film about Evel; Linda's his photographer. What could be an awkward situation is...not because John's all, "Linda's destined for great things." No, she's destined for Nolan Miller dresses and Yanni as an ex-boyfriend. Not quite analogous, you know?
And now, we're almost out of the flashback, as the crowd is assembled and Evel's in his trailer belting back a bottle of Wild Turkey before he jumps. He's running around shirtless, which is not at all a bad thing, but the overall effect is still mitigated by the hideous coif. Phil comes into the trailer to ply Evel with more booze, and Evel assesses the crowd thusly: "Five percent came to see me die. Forty-five percent don't care if I die, but if it happens, they don't want to miss it." Phil points out that it still leaves 50% of the crowd, but Evel's similarly complimentary, pointing out that they're only there because they lack the inner resources with which to amuse themselves. Or something to that effect. Evel then wrecks the scene by putting his shirt on.
Evel heads out --we're getting closer to the end of the flashback, I can feel it -- and we see people killing time before we're finally synched up with the beginning of the movie thirty-five minutes ago. Linda shows up, of course. Crowds mingle in front of the painted backdrop. And then -- O! Magical moment! Evel mounts his bike and tells Phil he's thinking too loudly.
We go through the slow-motion footage again, and then cut to the suits at Caesars chortling that people will leave the event and gamble no matter the outcome. Linda looks worried. She should: Evel's about to deliver a little monologue: "This is it. Are you man enough. Heh, heh, heh. Damn right I am!"
Then Evel heads on down the ramp and fails to clear the entire fountain. There's a hilarious shot of George Eads's helmeted head and he's looking all worried as he pretends he's riding the bike against an obviously fake backdrop. Linda Evans operates the camera, and as Evel lands and goes flying off his bike, landing and rolling with a series of unhealthy-seeming crunching noises, she's looking pretty disgusted by the spectacle. Incidentally, that was the look I was wearing when I checked out her work in Mitchell.
Everyone in the crowd loses their head and riots somewhat, save for John and Linda E., who are all concerned about the footage, and Evel, who's too busy twitching spastically to notice much else. Linda K. shows up and the medical crew blows her off. She settles for bellowing at his departing ambulance, "Bobby! I'm coming, Bobby!"
Once everyone's at the hospital, Evel is off getting the finest medical treatment 1968 has to offer while Linda K. loses her shit on the unhelpful nurse at the ER admissions desk. This nets her a visit from a doctor who explains that Evel managed to crush his pelvis, and that "his femur was pushed up into his pelvis and we have steel rods in there holding it all together. He's also fractured half of his ribs and he's broken his right arm and his right hand. And he has internal injuries to his spleen and his kidney." Add myriad contusions, abrasions and lacerations and he's a hurtin' frog, as my dad would say. ["This reminds me of a Corky and the Juice Pigs song called 'Evel Knievel' that ends, 'Broke every bone in his body once/ What a stupid arsehole.' And, really." -- Wing Chun] The doctor also says that Evel suffered brain trauma, a diagnosis they made only after shrinking down a team of doctors to microscopic size and injecting them into Evel's body to go on an expedition to find said brain and apprise its condition. Evel's in a coma. The doctor's not terribly positive that Evel will either walk or ride a motorcycle again.
Linda sobs hysterically through all of this, but eventually calms down enough to set up camp and keep her comatose husband company. Eventually, Evel wakes up. Linda gets all emotional again and Evel tells her, "Nothing could kill me. I'm Evel Knievel." And years from now, after the nuclear holocaust when it's just Evel and the roaches, he'll pull out that line and they'll respond just like I am now: Shut up, Evel. Anyway, Linda tells him he was out for twenty-nine days, and Evel gets a look like, "So that explains why my mouth tastes like something died in it." He is, however, impressed that Linda "never gave up on [him]. [Linda] never let go." Linda affirms that she did not. She does not add, "Incidentally, your girlfriend Linda Evans threw it in after ten minutes."
In the scene, Evel's recovered enough to see his erstwhile girlfriend Linda E., her old man John, and the footage they shot. It's a Knievel family movie event until Daddy makes with the crunchety-crunch on the pavement and then Linda K. is hiding her daughter's eyes. When did they have the daughter? Why was she not around in the earlier 1960s flashback? She looks old enough. Anyway, Evel can't stand to watch the footage and slings some attitude until John and Linda E. put it away. Or maybe he's just in morphine withdrawal. The nurses seem to think so anyway.
Then Linda K.'s wheeling Evel out of his room because they're going home. A candy striper waylays them to ask Evel for an autograph. She then turns to Linda and asks, "Can I give him a kiss, Mrs. Knievel?" Linda replies, "Have at it, honey. Everybody else does." Burn! But at least she knew what he was doing for twenty-nine days. That might have been some kind of record for them. The candy striper plants one on Evel and the nurses look disgusted. As Linda wheels Evel toward the exit doors in the lobby, they catch sight of the crowd gathered to cheer at Evel.
A hefty, balding guy with a beard and scraggly long hair asks Evel if that was his last jump -- "Are you done?" Evel faces the reporter and uses two canes to stand up. Inside the building, a phalanx of medical professionals groan as they realize that weeks of medical attention and therapy just went out the door. Anyway, Evel's all, "Does it look like I'm done?" Only if "done" is a synonym for "still looking Swayzerrific," my friend. More reporters ask about Evel's future career plans and we establish that the long-haired hefty guy is officially on the Evel Knievel beat. Damn those reporters and their refusal to take alcoholic daredevils at their word!
Evel returns to Butte, and gets a parade in his honor. Knoffel's there, looking like hell. Evel grins at the only father figure he's had.
And then, he promptly leaves Butte again. We see him on a big rig, patently lying to one reporter and antagonizing his reporter nemesis, whom I've named Jack McGee in honor of David Banner's nemesis. (And by the way, exactly whose genius idea was it to establish either a Hulk beat or an Evel beat?) Jack McGee snickers, "You just grab the handlebars and stare death in the face?" and Evel replies, "Tell you what, big boy. You think it's easy? Try it! Try! It!" He's supposed to be intimidating, but since this is George Eads, the effect is not unlike watching someone threaten you with their attack kittens. I tell you -- born to play the amiable nice-guy roles.
More tiresome exposition-through-interviewing, with Evel responding to a question about pandering with, "I think of General Patton when he said, 'It's not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles. The credit belongs to the man in the arena who, if he fails, fails while daring greatly." The reporter then suggests that maybe Evel meant to say that Teddy Roosevelt said that, and Evel's all, "And Patton heard it from him." And thus does Evel demonstrate his grasp of how to conduct the typical internet discussion twenty years early. ["They must have cut the scene before he started comparing his detractors to Hitler, then." -- Wing Chun]
Then Evel takes a break from turning reporters into the hard-drinking, cynical embittered wrecks we...I mean, they can be and dons an emphatically hideous yellow short-sleeved mock turtleneck sweater so that he can go golfing with his other father figure -- Bork. Bork, fortunately, is handling the golf cart so that Evel can drink. Bork fishes for information as to whether or not Evel's going back on the road, and Evel allows that he is. Then he asks Bork why he didn't come after Evel with a posse and a noose. Bork says that Linda's always taken in strays: "Girl's got a soft heart and a hard head." "I noticed," Evel says between beers. Bork also mentions that he likes Evel's gumption.
Bork may not be so crazy about the ostentatious estate Evel's just set up for Linda. "It's so...big," Linda says upon first viewing, having correctly determined that filling in that blank with "tacky," "very indicative of nouveau riche," or "sadly stereotypical for a parvenu" wouldn't be too productive. As Evel gives Linda the tour of Castle Knievel, she mentions that she'd rather have less house and more husband around the house, and he's all, "We've already discussed this, and I'm going on the road." Linda more or less tells him that he must have imagined the discussion, and Evel's all, "Cut the crap! I do what makes me happy! Those fans need me as much as I need them!" Linda does not point out that she and the kids have yet to make an appearance in his calculus of obligation. Instead, she asks, "You think they actually give a damn about what happens to you? You think those people would lay [sic] by your bedside for twenty-nine days while you're dead to the world?" Evel tries to change the subject, but Linda's having none of it and effectively tells him that the fans won't love him like she does, ending with, "You've got all the love you need right here, all the love in the world. I see you hurting all the time and it's breaking my heart." Evel effectively tells her she's on her own there because he's born to do jackass stunts, so she and her love can stay home while he runs around.
Now it's 1970, and Ideal Toy Company is busy brainstorming an Evel Knievel toy. They should save their effort and just exploit the time-traveling technology they're using: there's a giant Rubik's Cube in the corner, which is a nifty trick in that the toy was invented in 1974 by Erno Rubik and Ideal didn't get the rights until 1979. Oh, and there's also a story in here about how Evel's fans beat the crap out of some bikers who were harassing him at a San Francisco show. Or maybe they were just getting some licks in as retribution for Altamont.
Evel's mighty truck is thundering on the roads again. He stops to introduce the new toy, show off the most Swayzerian coif of them all (red this time, with a spit-curl in the middle!), get a cheap crowd pop by talking about America the indestructible, then pick up the woman he's about to sleep with. All in two minutes. Amazing!
Phil has the unpleasant task of interrupting Evel mid-national anthem. I mean that both literally and figuratively. A naked Evel comes to the door -- George Eads must be a workout machine, I swear -- and Phil tells them they've got to get a move on for Toledo. Evel says, "We're not going to Toledo anymore," and Phil's all, "Damn! I mean, 'Why not?'" and Evel replies, "We're going home." Patriotism + adultery = renewed interest in the family!
Then Evel goes to kick the girl out: "The party's over. Had a good time and a lot of fun. Now you have something to tell your grandkids." What, when trying to explain how that congenital syphilis worked its way into the family tree?
That tender road romance concluded, Evel heads back to his favorite bar in Butte to check in with his Goofus and Gallant father figures. Knoffel gives him static by playing "The Ballad of Evel Knievel" on the jukebox while Bork sets up a weekend fishing trip with Evel and the kids. Bork also asks if Evel's still mulling the Grand Canyon jump, and before he can answer, Charmaine sashays on over. She's apparently gotten over her distaste for her best friend's boyfriend. And how. Evel registers this with approval, and no small amount of idiocy as he's busy flirting with Charmaine in front of his wife's father. Then he explains to Bork that he can't make a deal on the Grand Canyon because the U.S. government is apparently distracted by other things, like a land war in Asia.
Bork mentions that maybe it would be nice if Evel stuck around for a bit, but Evel would rather listen to Charmaine, who suggests that he bag the Grand Canyon idea and jump Snake River canyon over in Idaho. Bork's not too thrilled about that. I imagine he'd be less thrilled if he knew Evel and Charmaine were about to head out to Snake River canyon together after hitting the sheets.
Once they're out at Snake River -- still accompanied by the interminable "Ballad of Evel Knievel" -- Evel gets out of the car at sunrise and beholds the canyon while taking what appears to be the mother of all outdoor pees. This somewhat spoils the whole "pristine nature" effect of the shot.
Having made the decision to jump that canyon, Evel, Bork, and the boys are busy rafting along a rather nice river and hitting afew intermittent rapids. The rapids get rougher and Bork's all, "I think we better get to shore!" Naturally, Evel thinks this is a bad idea, so he pushes them along further into the danger. Bork's moderately concerned about the rocks. He should be -- the raft hits one, everyone goes flying, and in the ensuing watery drama, Bork drowns while saving the boys.
Cut to Bork's funeral. Post-service, Linda and Evel sit by the coffin and Linda launches her nomination for sainthood by telling Evel that nobody blames him for Bork's death. Evel tells her his grief is so intense, he may just cancel his latest tour, and the woman who until recently wanted him home more says, "You can't. You need to go. Jump over the moon, Bobby. We'll all come see you." Linda, it would appear, is bucking for sainthood.
Well, Evel's not aiming for the moon, but he does procure a rocket scientist to help design the sky-cycle he wants to launch over Snake River canyon. Linda and the kids come out to watch the first test launch, along with a lot of other people with abundant free time on their hands. It's a spectacular failure.
And then we have another scene where it's proven that George Eads can't carry off pettish, self-centered, and oblivious characters. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in the case of this movie, it does work against making Evel's latest temper tantrum over the sky-cycle's lack of progress look believable. Jaime Pressley, who's long since abandoned believability in favor of simply getting through her lines without noticeably rolling her eyes, points out that Evel doesn't have to go broke funding this nonsense if he can gull ABC's Wide World of Sports into doing it for him to the tune of $6 million.
The giant check is presented at a conference, and the talking head presenting it says they're calling the venture "The Evel Knievel Says Goodbye" tour. Journalist-slash-nemesis Jack McGee asks if that means Evel and friends suspect he's about to take that Final Jump, but Evel's all, "No, it means I'm saying goodbye to you all, taking my $6 million, and riding off into the sunset." Evel then walks us through the background on this jump: "I'll be accelerating from 0 to 200 in two and a half seconds. By the time I reach that launch pad, I'll be going 394 miles per hour. Chances are, I'll black out. That's what 5 Gs will do to you. Fifteen seconds later, I'll reach my apex of 3000 feet, where I'll slow down to 200 miles per hour. It's at that point that a parachute will deploy. I will more than likely red out -- that is, I will lose blood in my ears, nose, and mouth as it rushes back into my head. I'll be descending slower and slower until I touch nose first, climb out, and flip the bird to y'all who said it couldn't be done. You know who you are." Jack McGee rolls his eyes and wonders if there's any way someone can school Evel on Icarus before the projected September 8 launch date. Since that's unlikely, he asks what Evel thinks of kids getting seriously hurt trying to replicate Evel's stunts. Evel replies, "As far as I'm concerned, I'm a great role model. If I was [sic] a parent, I would want my kid taking chances, living in the sunlight." If he were a parent? How does he think the three extremely short people in his house got there?
Then again, maybe there's something Linda's not telling him -- she does seem to have to fill a lot of free time when Evel's out. Tonight, he's at a disco, diving into a woman's cleavage because that's so much more efficient than making with the small talk. The morning, Evel heads home and wanders into the kitchen. It's not clear whether he's wandering around with his shirt unbuttoned because he's disoriented from the evening's debauchery, or because he's putting on some "Oh, it was late and I slept on the couch" charade. He and Linda have a strained conversation: Evel tries to pick a fight and Linda snaps back, "I'm your wife, Bobby, not your jailer." He figures that means he can whisk the kids up to Toronto for the weekend. Linda shoots and scores: "Since when have you ever given a damn about my opinion on anything that you do?" As she stomps on out, she stops and orders him, "Don't you dare whore around in front of those boys!" Evel looks nonplussed, like he's wondering, "What ever will I do with them now?"
And now we're at the Canadian National Exhibition, a few days later on August 20, 1974. Evel's introducing his kids to the crowd "with great pride and extreme pleasure." They ride on our on their own bikes, popping wheelies. And that's how Evel invented Take Your Kid to Work Day about fifteen years before the Ms. Foundation thought of it.
Evel takes a moment to watch the rocket-bike-thingy prototype blow up during its second trial, and then it's off to dangle a model airplane in front of a blue screen where -- oh. I get it. He's supposed to be on that airplane. For reasons known only to the screenwriter, Evel's taken his accountant flying. The accountant breaks the news that the IRS is going after Evel for taxes, and Evel displaces his anger by going off on the accountant. To make himself feel better, Evel hops into the cockpit with the pilot and tells him to scoot over. The accountant's all, "I didn't know you knew how to fly," and Phil and Evel are all, "Ha-ha! I don't!" The accountant wonders, "He can do that?" and Phil's all, "It's his very own plane." I imagine that defense would be received in good humor if someone were to take out Evel's plane with their very own anti-aircraft weapon.
Evel manages not to kill anyone on the way down -- I'm inferring this from the lack of subsequent funeral scenes -- and spends some time floating on a raft in his pool. Hello, darkness, my old friend/ I've come to talk with you again... Linda comes down and sits by the edge of the pool. She says, "I've got one word for you: plastics." Oh, who am I kidding? They have a heart-to-heart over the impending Snake River canyon jump. Evel knows he's not going to make it. Linda slices through the knotty dilemma and suggests that he simply not do it. They seamlessly transition to their bedroom, where Evel is explaining that withdrawing ain't an option: "I gave my word, that's why." Linda refrains from pointing out that he also took marital vows with "forsaking all others" in there, and he's had no problem breaking his word there, so backing out of a suicide stunt shouldn't be so hard. In any event, Evel and Linda argue to a draw on the issue in a scene that's clearly meant to show that although Evel wouldn't be able to pick up couth if it were on sale at Wal-Mart and he's got no survival instinct whatsoever, he's not going into this ill-fated venture without serious misgivings.
The subsequent scene underscores that: as Linda loads the kids into the car, Evel surreptitiously waves his oldest son back into the house so the boy can prop up a framed photo of the canyon with a loving inscription from the suicidal man of the house -- just in case Evel doesn't get a chance to come back alive and subsequently leave his wife and kids as he travels for long stretches of time. Evel's dread increases as they fly to Snake River.
The screen tells us it's September 8, 1974, and the site is a mob scene. Evel, Linda and the kids drive through in a convertible, and people stop drinking, debauching and committing mayhem to whoop it up and cheer. We flash to people trooping into public spaces across the country to watch Evel on closed-circuit TV broadcasts. Evel preps for this whole spectacle in his usual fashion, i.e. by drinking a lot and talking to himself. Today's monologue: "Are you man enough to do this? Are you man enough to make this jump? Are you man enough to walk away?" We all know the answers (no, no, and no), or else there wouldn't be another twenty minutes of this film left.
Evel burns up a few of those minutes by giving a speech filled with a lot of false bravado, and just as he's getting into his groove, Jack McGee shows up to pee in the cornflakes: "People are saying all you're serving up the American public is some high-octane crap." Evel's all, "Shut up! I'm about to jump a canyon-- let's see you do it, or sit your fat ass down!" You know, his indignation would be a lot less ridiculous if this whole jumping-a-canyon thing weren't a purely voluntary venture he's been hurtling toward despite many obvious opportunities to make a face-saving exit. Jack McGee refuses to back down, and Evel jumps off the stage to open a can of whoop-ass on him. After Evel's flunkies hustle Jack out, Evel retakes the stage to bark, "I don't ask for you respect. I demand it! I'm the last gladiator in the new Rome!" Wow, that's just asking for karmic comeuppance. Or big, Greek tragedy-style irony, where a chorus of reporters can intone, "His hamartia was hubris."
Alas, because this is the Evel Knievel biopic, we're expected to empathize when Evel takes off and the sky-cycle malfunctions with a parachute opening during its ascent. The descent is ugly. The mob's mood is even uglier. And Evel's odds of surviving? Nearly as ugly as the patently fake shots where Evel is pretending to try to bust out of the sky-cycle. Will he make it in time? Oh, will he? The tension, it's...nonexistent. Evel lands the thing on the banks, thus averting death by drowning, and wriggles out of the sky-cycle to the boos of a pissed-off crowd. Style yourself a gladiator, and the crowd will root for the lion to get you; they don't want a forfeit.
Evel's helped back to the car, and he cordially invites members of the press to kiss his abraded ass. Then he and his family pull the roof over the car -- no waving to the crowds on this go-round -- and get the hell out of Dodge. That's going to be a fun ride back to Montana.
And now, enough time has lapsed for Evel to drink his way through a case of Olympia as he watches America clasp Richard Petty to their thrill-starved breast. Linda comes in and asks if Evel's planning on becoming one with the Barcalounger. Evel replies, "Did you see what they're writing about me?" Linda looks like she's wondering which one of Evel's whores taught him to read. Evel reads off headlines at the top of his lungs, then flings the publications at her one by one. Because Linda's already beatified and therefore can spend all her time ministering to Evel on Earth, she just stands there and lets him use her for target practice. Linda then asks when Evel adding quitting to his list of character flaws, and Evel rebuts that he's actually angry that people are calling him a fake and a liar. He spirals down into self-pity, then chugs another beer while Linda asks "whatever happened to the man who refused to lay [sic] down and die, the man who always gets back up on his feet?" He's gone, along with the Swayze hair magic. Linda finally snaps and tells Evel that if he wants his fans back, he should go get them. Evel sits there and does not ask what happened to the woman who argued that she was all he needed. Linda urging Evel to go to the fans is probably meant to signal how she finally gets him and wants to support him, but honestly, it seems like she's resigned herself to his never being happy with just her, and she's pushing him out of the house so she can finally stop sneaking around to meet the gardener.
In October 1975, Evel finally got off his ass and went for the fans; by the looks of him, Linda pried him off the recliner with a crowbar and sent him off with a smack to the back of the head. Evel's setting up for a thirteen-bus jump at Kings Island in Cincinnati, and he tells Phil he wants to change the number of buses because thirteen is an unlucky number. Phil says he'll change it to twelve, and Evel's all,"Nah, make it fourteen." Because when he makes his big reappearance, it's going to be in a big way, you see. As a warm-up, he slings some attitude at Phil. The other man takes it, and the only reason I can think of for Phil to take two decades of unremitting verbal abuse is that he's actually been embezzling all along.
The bus jump day finally arrives and Evel closes out this wretched biopic by asking yet again if he's man enough. Well, let's examine: you're a rotten husband. We have insufficient data on your role as a father, which is a sort of indictment unto itself. Your actions led to your father-in-law's death. You use your best friend as a punching bag. You're hardly a paragon of either dignity or comportment. And you're relentlessly self-centered. So the answer would have to...no. I'm afraid you're not even a good human within the context of this movie.
And yet, Evel concludes, "Damn right I am!" and makes his jump. As he lands, the caption tells us that 276 of Evel's 300 jumps were successful. Evel is all happy because he's back, baby, and then the caption tells us fourteen of Evel's crashes required major surgery and he holds the Guiness Book record for the number of bones broken at once: thirty-five. As the crowd cheers and Evel waves, we also learn that he retired from jumping in 1980, and he and Linda split after thirty-eight years together. I can't help wondering what on Earth finally prompted the split. And finally, Evel still rides.
As we go to the credits, George Eads as Evel babbles what I sincerely hope aren't actual quotes about how Evel regarded himself as a one-man cure for American malaise and how "if a guy's married and he has a little sex with another woman, he can compare her to his wife. And I've done that for fourteen years. And I've got the same wife. That means she's pretty good," and how the only thing he's never been able to do is kill someone. Well, that's something. And frankly, after sitting through two hours of this egregiously miscast dreck, I'll take whatever small victories I can get.