The snow stayed pretty hard for the 1st part of the day. I was able to jump across what was the equivalent of 30ft doubles. So fun! And scary! I was going SO fast at the bottom. They filmed from all different angles. I staged some crashes, but crashed plenty of times on accident. Some crashes hurt! At the end of the day, they filmed me talking & doing a bunch of goofy stuff. They had a snowmobile take me back to the top after every run. At the end of the day, I went with the production crew out to eat. We got back to the hotel & I packed up & crashed. Man, today was SO FUN! I am glad I got to do it. And I am getting paid a bunch of money!
Looking Back Now:
I remember this being a really, really fun day. I had done other commercials in the past where I was “just one of the other riders” in the shoot. But for this commercial, it was just me being filmed for the entire commercial. I was treated a bit more like the “star of the show.” And the riding was so incredibly fun. I couldn’t believe that I was getting paid to have fun bombing down the mountain in the snow & jumping these big snow doubles on my mountain bike.
The funniest part of the filming was the crashes that I would have way down the hill after I had already passed the cameras. The rollers that they had made went on forever way down the hill. So after I would do a jump in front of the cameras, then I had zillion huge rollers to navigate while I was trying to stop. And this usually ended in carnage. Luckily, they had a snow mobile waiting for me at the bottom every time for my ride back up.
This commercial ended up being a 30 second commercial with only me in it & I even had a speaking part. The commercial went straight to Europe though & never aired in the USA. Later that summer I spent some time in England & I saw the commercial on TV. So that was cool to actually see myself on a commercial while walking by the TV. They paid me a one-time “Buy Out” fee of over $6,000 because it was to never air in the USA. So I never got “residual” payments each time it aired. The day of filming was a blast & I got paid a bunch of money. How cool was that?
A funny thing to note is that on the next day (a Saturday), I flew out of Reno at 7am, got to LAX at 8:30am & drove an hour & a half up to Bakersfield, CA for an ABA National race. I got there at 10:45am & just caught the end of practice & then raced at 11am. Man, I just couldn’t ride enough back in these days!
Photo: You should’ve have seen my trying to stop after each of these jumps. I was basically a rag doll tumbling down the mountain.
Days of the Wildman. Another story, another episode. By Todd Lyons.
Apr 03, 2008
Read 3318 times
April 12, 1996: Filming for British Knights Commercial Actual Journal Entry:
I woke up at 4:30AM & I went to the North Star ski resort (near Reno, Nevada). I went up there with the production crew to film me on my mountain bike for the British Knights shoes commercial. We went straight up to the top of the mountain. They made all of these giant rollers (with snow) on one ski run. About 40 rollers in a row & four across. They were all staggered & all were about 10ft wide.
After doing a BMX 'zine for ten years (1987 - 1996) FATBMX made it on the internet. The year was 1998. Here to stay.