Butler's Cinema Scene

Robert “Evel” Knievel

“BEING EVEL” My rating: B

99 minutes | No MPAA rating

Motorcycle daredevil Robert “Evel” Knieval has been gone for a decade but his influence is everywhere, from our current fascination with extreme sports, to his pioneering of what we’d now call reality TV, to a talent for self-marketing that at the time seemed goofy grandstanding but which now is standard operating procedure. (You could argue that Donald Trump has taken it all the way to presidential politics).

In “Being Evel” — a title with a double meaning, given Knieval’s late career transformation into bully/jerk/boor — Oscar-winning director Daniel Junge (for the 2012 documentary short
“Saving Face””) chronicles the man’s life and lasting influence through a plethora of hair-raising news footage and the memories of those who knew him, hated him, and still revere him.

Reared by relatives in Butte, Montana, after being abandoned by his parents, Robert Knieval became a full-fledged juvenile delinquent and wild kid (“If you dared him he’d do it”) who used his beloved motorcycle to torment the local cops.

His wife Linda — who after years of his flagrant infidelities has few good words for her late hubby — describes Robert ordering her into his car in what might have been either a kidnapping or an elopement: “Danged if we didn’t get married.”

As a young husband and father Robert decided to go for the American dream — by selling life insurance.  His powers of persuasion were legendary. In one week he sold 271 policies…to the inmates and staff of a mental institution.

He then turned to selling Harleys, and from that it was a short step to creating a cycle stunt team.  One of his first challenges was an attempt to fly his bike over a field of rattlesnakes.  He landed in their reptilian midst, sending angry diamondbacks scattering through the panicked crowd of spectators.

Throughout his career Knievel (he was given the nickname “Evil” by a jail guard, then changed the spelling in a rare display of subtlety) tended to announce outrageous stunts without ever looking into whether he could possibly pull them off.

But he quickly learned all about marketing, adopting an Elvis swagger and the King’s penchant for caped leather outfits in patriotic motifs.

Another Knievel wipeout

His well-documented wrecks (he appears to have had the recuperative powers of Marvel’s Wolverine) only stoked the publicity fire: “Nobody wants to see me die, but they don’t want to miss it if I do.”

He packed stadiums and sold tickets to closed-circuit screenings of his attempts.

In 1971  actor George Hamilton played Evel in a wildly fictional biopic.  Knievel  disliked the film but fell in love with the dialogue written for his character and thereafter recycled key phrases in his public statements and press interviews.  With a bit of help from Hollywood he was building an indelible persona.

Ideal’s Evel Knievel stunt doll and motorcycle was one of the most popular toys of the era.  Royalties from the action figure made him more money than the actual stunts.

His failures were epic, like the 1973 attempt to jump Idaho’s Snake River Canyon on what was essentially a one-man rocket ship (the parachute deployed early) or his near fatal attempt in 1975 to clear 13 London busses in Wembley Stadium.

As he grew older, though, Knievel gave into to paranoia and megalomania.  He was bedding three women a night and getting into angry confrontations with journalists. When his long-time publicist wrote an Evel Knievel biography, the daredevil beat him with a baseball bat, earning a jail sentence.

Bastard or not, Knievel was a compelling figure. Among those who here share their memories and obsessions with the man are broadcasters like (the now late) Frank Gifford and Geraldo Rivera, members of his family (including son Robbie, who had his own daredevil career but lacked his father’s showmanship), extreme sports icon Tony Hawk, and Johnnie Knoxville, a producer of this documentary whose masochistic “Jackass” franchise basically follows the Knievel template (with the exception that Knoxville and his bruised colleagues always fail).

| Robert W. Butler