Do you remember the start of the movie On Any Sunday?

With added dirt bike sounds..

A friend of mine knows the kid who wheelied up the street, and they recreated the shot a few years ago. 

It makes me happy and sad to see anything from the film, they used to play in in my hometown on the weekend of the Post TT roadrace meeting where all the guys on the way back from the Isle of Man would stop off at Mallory Park. 

With that , and the Transatlantic races, i got to see all the American greats in the flesh as a kid, Cal Rayborn,Kenny  Roberts, Dick Mann, Gene Romero, Gary Nixon, and loads of others. 

Met Gene Romero at Watsonville SuperTT in 2003 when i was over at Laguna Seca , he was the event promoter. Lovely guy. 

Happy to have been around to see it, sad that at 61 it all seems to have gone in a flash. 

I watch this movie every few years, still enjoy watching it to this day...
...the start of this movie on the youtube link below shows the BIG guy on the mini-bike at the very beginning...
...and the "bouncing" screen grab below too!

 

RIP Malcolm

Oh man I gotta not get sucked in, I'll sit in watch the whole movie.  If I get to the part where Bruce says "Merts profession ? Motorcycle racer"  it's over lol.

Do you remember the end of On Any Sunday ? Cheeseball instagram video 😄

 https://www.instagram.com/p/CwPVS6YII230Vlt2fxgcEwDd3OkwCUVZUUHRLs0/

My favorite part about that intro has always been when the kid on the left racks his nuts on the banana seat. 😆

It happens right after they freeze frame the shot and the music begins. He's going for a no-footer or his feet just slip off and he instantly regrets it. 

Malcom riding the Husky up the hillclimb, and back down. 

Legend.

So glad I grew up in that "On any Sunday" era.       

Sure, the stunts today are jaw-dropping.  ...but the simplicity of kids just being kids in the OAS intro can't be beat. 

I've never seen it. 

Now thats just sad. But you can watch it and see it for the first time and you will get the old school vibe from back when racing and just riding was new to most of us. I have it on DVD if you want to watch it I will ship it to you. 

I'm serious. It's before my time and I just never came across it anywhere. A lot of people have talked about it on here, but that the extent of my experience/knowledge about the movie. 

Thanks for the offer, but I just found it on YouTube. There's a second one and another one from 2014 as well. 

Mav, I hope you can find it somewhere. 

It's a must see film. It really is. 

My dad sat me down and watched it with me when I was young.  He always said he was just like the kid riding the wheelie when he was young because they could not afford dirtbikes.  

My mom and dad made sure I had a running dirtbike from the time I was 8 to 18.  

I watched the first one. The background music was a little much at times. I wish they would have turned that off for certain parts. 

The POV camera shot were pretty impressive given the era. One shot in particular, when it was being filmed backwards. 

I don't remember the type of bikes, but the speed bikes on the speedway track sounded awesome (2-strokes). 

The simpler times makes me wish time travel was a real thing. More genuine. People living in the moment. Looked more happy. I haven't looked but I wouldn't be surprised if statistics showed less people being depressed back then.

The first guy who leaves his wife at home to go on the road for 8 months looked to have a nice house. He made 50k that year and was left with 20k after expenses. You could live on 20k and in California as well? 

I got to ask. Why were the guys in their early 20s looking like they were in their mid 40s? 😄 

There's also no mistaken the 70s with the amount of sideburns shown. 😄

Mav,
That movie is 55 years old so that music is dated, but if I hear any of that "cheesy" music...
...it brings me back to that time and that movie and my experiences on my motorcycle...
...it is cool that you got a chance to watch On Any Sunday and maybe experience the feelings that...
...so many of us boomers felt and later experienced from that movie...
...now go watch Endless Summer (Surf Film), another classic from Bruce Brown.

Same here. I remember my old man sitting my brother and me down and popping the vhs in for the 3 of us to watch together. Very important movie for him being born in 1950.

Our friendly local Yamaha shop (Yamaha of Doraville) had a movie night. We all sat on the showroom floor and watched OAS. I had already seen it in the theatre, but could not pass up the opportunity to see it again. They had a special copy with Yamaha ads at the end. 
This is the same “Doraville” the Atlanta Rhythm  Section sang about. 

Its the Terrafirma of the 70's

iconic film, the younger members will not realise that Steve McQueen was the biggest box office draw back when it mattered, he was like Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeeves, and Matt Damon, rolled into one. He was beyond huge, and he bankrolled the movie. 

Its a beautiful time , if you didnt live through the 70's , you wont under stand why those who did can see what is happening now for the BS that it is.   

"You could live on 20k and in California as well?"

My parents made less than $20k and did pretty well. In 1972, they bought their first house in suburban San Diego for $27k, and their mortgage payment was $250/month. They had enough left over to have 2 kids, buy dirt bikes and a truck with a cab-over camper, and drive decently nice cars. My dad was 25, and my mom was 26.

Maverick remember for those of us fossils that saw On Any Sunday in theaters that was the first time we saw anything like that. We might have seen MX or the super bikers from Carlsbad on wide world of sports. But that film was an eye opener for most of us. Flat track, road racing, trials, mx, desert racing, Bonneville, drag racing, ice racing, widowmaker hillclimb, Elsinore GP, play riding on trails sand dunes and the beach. We’d never seen or even heard about a lot of those 2 wheel disciplines. I totally see your take (you seem kind of underwhelmed hahaha) which is fine I get it. lol Even though the movie is the same your impression from this era and our impression from that era is apples and oranges. 😎 And I’ll 2nd that you need to watch The Endless Summer.  I’ve seen that movie more than on any Sunday. Do yourself a favor and watch that one. It won’t be “A Gip” lol. 

I think it’s safe to say that what on any Sunday did for motorcycling, the endless summer did for surf exploration and travel. It’s a worthwhile watch. 

Question for you guys that saw it as a kid. 

Were you already riding dirt bikes, already had an interest because you saw some random person riding one or saw it on TV once, or this is what made you say "Mom, Dad, I want to ride a dirt bike?"

My interest in dirt bikes started when I was a kid. We grew up next to a farm and during the summer I'd always see a couple of the workers riding around on old Yamahas. I don't remember what models they were, but do remember going into the shed where they kept them to check them out. White and red Yamaha, LOUD, and looked pretty fast to me when they were coming down the long gravel driveway. If I remember correctly, the other one was sort of baby blue.

It grew from there. I remember the daycare we went to before school had a bunch of old different comic books. We sorted through piles and piles of them and we came across some that featured dirt bikes and sidecar-cross. 

Took me awhile to search and find them online because I didn't remember the name of them or which era they were from. Found out they were from the 70s. 

Julie Wood.

They're from a French cartoonist named Jean Graton. The series has 8 editions.

Julie starts out as a 16-year-old girl growing up in California. She's passionate about motorcycles and develops into a talented competitive racer, taking on male competitors in a sport dominated by men. Her adventures feature realistic racing, family drama, danger, and different forms of motorcycle competition, including motocross, endurance racing, rally raids, and sidecar-cross.

Obsession with dirt bikes just kept growing from there. 

Sorry for the slight derail. 

Mouse on a motorcycle is another one that I remember from a young age.  

We grew up on the edge of a subdivision that had endless miles of open trails and roads. 

It began though, from about the time I was weaned, because my dad always had a dune buggy, and spent lots of time out in the anza borrego desert, or riding around out behind our house. A dirt bike was the inevitable evolution of that. 

I would think that a lot of us that had mini-bikes and dirt-bikes at that time (early seventies)...
...probably lived on the edge of suburbia where you could fill up your motorcycle from your garage...
...and then ride across the street (or down the street a bit) to an open field and be gone for hours...
...like JB, that was my experience, and if we didn't have the gas at home to ride...
...we rode (or walked with a gas can) to the nearest gas station in the ditches to get gas...
...which was probably around 15 to 20 cents a gallon.

Mav,
Yes, I was already on a mini before OAS was released...
...I actually didn't see OAS until a few years after it was released, my Father was transferred to Germany...
...where I raced Maicos in the German MX series, and we got a chance to view OAS while overseas.

On Any Sunday was the first movie I ever saw. My dad took me as a baby - I was three months old and slept through it! 

I didn't quite get the same '60s/'70s dirt bike upbringing that some of these guys did (rode BMX bikes in open lots like the kids in the OAS intro,) but I do remember the following from the early '80s:
-Riding across the street to a dirt road that led to trails, which led to my friend's house and on to the riverbed and eventually our riding spot.
-Scratching together 45 cents so I could buy a half-gallon of gas and semi-fill my RM80. Mixed it with Pennzoil lawnmower premix at 24:1. 
-Had cheap, cobbled-together riding gear: I had an open-faced helmet with a bolt-on chin guard. I was wearing lace-up work boots in my first MX race. Not everyone had new, flashy gear. Only factory riders looked like factory riders back then!