It's hard to believe that nearly 25 years into his pioneering career as the world's most influential, ambitious and successful BMX athletes, Mat Hoffman didn't have a film made about him until now. Perhaps harder still to believe: That it would take Jackass partners in crime Johnny Knoxville and Jeff Tremaine to finally get it done.
And yet here they all are at Tribeca 2010, where an audience gathered this evening for the alfresco premiere of The Birth of Big Air. (It's also available on Tribeca VOD and airs in June on ESPN.) Directed by Tremaine (who also co-produced with Knoxville and Spike Jonze), the film recounts Hoffman's rise from being a bike-trick wunderkind in Oklahoma to the sport's preeminent rule- (and record-) breaker and innovator. Either blessed or cursed with a fearlessness that compelled him to do things no one had ever done before on a bicycle -- while breaking almost every bone in his body and literally coming back from the dead after one particularly savage injury -- Hoffman became a daredevil who'd earn a warm endorsement from no less a legend than Evel Knievel himself.
But Hoffman primarily made his name as an artist whose imagination helped spark the growth of an entire generation of extreme athletes. Through interviews and liberal helpings of Hoffman's own, never-before-seen archival footage, Tremaine tells the brisk, bracing story of the birth -- and rebirth -- of a sport that owes seemingly everything to that imagination. In his and Knoxville's second Tribeca appearance in as many years (following 2009's sincerely insane The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia), the pair joined Hoffman to tell Movieline about recapturing the good old days, the culture of extreme living, and how Jackass 3-D is the logical next step. Well, maybe not "logical,"but you know.
How and when did the three of you decide to team up for The Birth of Big Air?
TREMAINE: We always had it in our minds that we were going to make Mat's documentary. We started working on it in 2005 -- well, we really started filming in 2006. That's when we interviewed Evel Knievel for it. But when ESPN got in touch with us about doing it, that's when it put a ticking clock on it and got us to follow through and finish it.
Had you guys followed Mat's career?
TREMAINE: yeah, I was a BMXer. I actually worked in the industry; I was an art director for Freestyling Magazine. So I've followed Mat's whole career. I met Mat in 1987.
KNOXVILLE: You were working at a bike hop, right?
TREMAINE: Yeah, I'd work summers at a bike shop. I'd work the tours when they came in.
KNOXVILLE: And Mat would come to town, and...
HOFFMAN: The bike shop that Jeff worked at was the biggest bike shop for these tours. In 1987-88, we'd always have these summer tours that we'd go on with our bike team. Rockville BMX was always the greatest, biggest show with the most people. It was pretty cool.
TREMAINE: I was just hired help on the days they did the shows.
HOFFMAN: So Jeff worked at that bike shop, and then went on to be the art director at one of the main magazines that represented and documented our sport.
TREMAINE: Spike [Jonze] was really close to the sport.
HOFFMAN: Yeah, he was the photographer.
I'm interested in the archival footage you compiled. Did it occur to you at the time that you were building a historical record, or was it just intended as evidence of what you were accomplishing?
HOFFMAN: I wanted to see it. When somebody said, "Oh, you got this high," I need to see that and figure out how high I went. So that's basically what I was shooting it for -- to cover that and be able to determine how high I really was going.
KNOXVILLE: And to see what you were doing right or wrong?
HOFFMAN: Well, that too.
TREMAINE: And it's part of the culture, you know? Everybody made videos.
HOFFMAN: That one part when I got hurt on that ramp -- that was because ABC came out to shoot it. But before they came out, I knew that this was a day it could kill me. You never know. When you crash from that high, I don't want someone else to exploit something like that. I had to recognize the dangers and respect that. So then I made a deal where I licensed all the footage back to ABC, but I made a deal where I wouldn't license any of the crash back to them. I didn't want that to be exploited. So I kept that. I never thought there was a reason to show anybody that. I just kept it in my archive, but this was the time.
TREMAINE: That crash has never been seen. Just sifting through that raw footage... You see him knocked out in the movie, but if you watch the footage, that tape was rolling the whole time -- and he was knocked out a lot longer than you see there. It's really blood-chilling.
KNOXVILLE: It was like 10 minutes or something.
TREMAINE: I mean, it's shocking. You think he's dead. And all the panic around it...
KNOXVILLE: It would be the second time he died.
The second?
TREMAINE: Well, he flatlined after the spleen injury.
HOFFMAN: Nothing to be proud of!
KNOXVILLE: I don't even know what to say.
I'm fascinated by the idea of Oklahoma being this sort of secluded laboratory for Advanced BMX Studies. Do you think you would have accomplished what you did in a denser, more conspicuous environment?
HOFFMAN: No, because people don't ask questions where I live. You talk to someone about wanting to put a weed-eater [motor] on a bicycle to go 50 miles an hour, they're like, "OK, let's see if we can do that!"
KNOXVILLE: "Sh*t, I got one right here!"
HOFFMAN: They don't go, "Hey, you got insurance for that? I'm not gonna be liable." There's a little more liberty and less paranoia, maybe.
KNOXVILLE: But I think no matter where you were, you were going to find a way to get it done, you know? It's just the spirit.
TREMAINE: But it interesting to think that Mat had to sort of interpret what he would see in the magazines. There weren't videos, there wasn't the Internet. You'd see pictures in a magazine, and you weren't sure if that was shot with a fisheye lens underneath it so it looks twice as high. So Mat is just kind of like, "Whoa, they do that?" So he would just kind of go invent stuff on his own.
KNOXVILLE: He would be like, "Oh, I wanna go that high naturally!" It was like when Hasell Adkins heard Hank Williams on the radio. He heard Hank Williams and all those instruments, and he thought he was a one-man band. So he became a one-man band! He didn't realize there were all those other musicians. Mat saw someone going so high with a fisheye lens, and he said, "I can do that."
Has the Internet compromised the way BMXers or extreme athletes in general have developed?
HOFFMAN: I think it's just a whole new game.
TREMAINE: I think it speeds up the evolution a lot. Just seeing the videos, or seeing it on TV, more kids see it and more kids try stuff. They take something they see is possible and turn it into something else
. It just evolves a lot faster. Mat was the rare one who'd tried things that no one had even thought to try. It takes a visionary like that. I mean, Mat sacrificed himself. It's a lot easier to see someone do something that you think is possible and perfect that and add a tweak here or there. But it takes that first person.
KNOXVILLE: It's like vision and crazy athleticism. Even if someone looked at things the way Mat did -- which they don't -- they don't have the athleticism. He's an insane athlete.
TREMAINE: It's a perfect storm, really.
KNOXVILLE: A perfect storm of heart, will and vision.
HOFFMAN: "Stupidity" is really the best word for it.
KNOXVILLE: [Singing] If you wanna be dumb, you gotta be tough.
All athletes obviously want to compete and win, but few seem to approach their sports with similar mandate to innovate. Guys like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods... Even Greg Maddux revolutionized finesse pitching because he couldn't throw hard. Mat, where do you think you fall on that spectrum?
HOFFMAN: That's what's so great about it. That's what attracted me to BMX: I didn't really see sports as getting on a team with a bunch of people, and a coach tells you what to do and how to do it. I wanted to do something where I could make and break the rules -- where if something went wrong, I could look in the mirror and figure it out. Whatever I wanted to do athletically, it was explored as art. That's how I'd explain it. It's more about redefining a sport. That's why I've done BMX my whole life. It's good to have goals, but there are so many goals when other people are involved.
TREMAINE: Mat's really only competing against himself, you know.
KNOXVILLE: And he's a hell of a competitor.
Johnny and Jeff, what appeals to you about visiting -- and revisiting -- this culture of self-sacrifice, self-abuse and extreme living that we see in this or Jackass or even something like Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia?
KNOXVILLE: I don't know. Well, this is a very personal story with Mat. We're all friends. They all have that same fire of just going for it, that common bond.
TREMAINE: Really, we're blessed to be able to follow what entertains us, you know? That's what entertains us. The Wild Whites came about from those early days when I met Knoxville. It must have been 1995--
KNOXVILLE: It was the day of the Oklahoma City bombing. That was the day I met you.
TREMAINE: Yeah. But you gave me Dancing Outlaw [director Julian Nitzberg's earlier documentary about Jesco White] soon after that. And we would always watch it and watch it. The opportunity came up because Johnny met Julian, and it just became about making a new movie about Jesco. And then with this, it's just an honor to be able to tell Mat's story. Mat's story need to be told, and Mat's not going to tell it himself. He's really humble.
Is there a manner of extreme living that's too extreme for entertainment? A manner that even requires intervention when you're filming?
TREMAINE: Yeah! We did with Steve-O.
KNOXVILLE Yeah, you can go over the line. Steve-O is a perfect example.
TREMAINE: Even in Wild Whites in a lot of ways.
How's Jackass 3-D coming along?
TREMAINE: It's coming along great.
We're hearing all about this "fake 3-D vs. real 3-D." Is Jackass 3-D "real" 3-D? Was it conceived that way?
KNOXVILLE: They had to convince us.
TREMAINE: We didn't want to shoot it in 3-D at first. We thought it would be gimmicky and change the way we do things. It really took us to go out and play with it.
KNOXVILLE: We did some tests and things. And it was fun -- the spirit was there. And once we tested it, we were like, "Oh, we can do this and this! Pontius, take off your pants!"
TREMAINE: We're taking 3-D down to a new low. We're not being precious with the 3-D.
KNOXVILLE: Nor clever!
Well, James Cameron did say that 3-D is what you make it.
TREMAINE: Right. We're just being very lowbrow about it. Whatever James Cameron says is fine by us.