A new Evel Knievel documentary premiering at Sundance

Dope poster! with Matt hoffman on board as well as Johnny Knoxville, i've got high hopes for this one.

from EW:



Sundance exclusive: Johnny Knoxville promises 'big revelations' in Evel Knievel doc

Evel Knievel is synonymous with daredevil, but unless you saw him at his heights in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it’s difficult to imagine how he built that reputation into something millions of people actually cared about. Beginning with Knievel’s disastrous attempt to jump the fountains at Caesar’s Palace in 1967—which made him a star once it aired on ABC’s Wide World of Sports—millions tuned into his stunts to see if he could defy death one more time.

In Being Evel, the documentary that debuts on Jan. 25 at the Sundance Film Festival, director Daniel Junge (They Killed Sister Dorothy) tells the real story of Robert Craig Knievel, the charismatic showman who discovered the most lucrative way to support his family was to risk life and limb in highly orchestrated and heavily promoted motorcycle leaps.

If it sounds hokey in hindsight, it wasn’t so at the time—and a generation of kids eagerly inhaled the danger and the glamour. One of those was Johnny Knoxville, who brought Knievel’s rebellious and thrill-seeking spirit to the Jackass stunts that made his crew famous. “I think we’re hovering right somewhere in between bravery and stupidity,” Knoxville admits, describing the thin line that he and his idol straddled. “Possibly more on the stupidity side.”

Knoxville teamed up with Junge, and producer pals Jeff Tremaine and Mat Hoffman to reexamine Knievel’s life—not just the showstopping highlights everyone remembers, but the tough behind-the-scenes events and relationships that were kept mostly out of the spotlight. “We take a very honest look back on his life,” says Knoxville. “He lived a certain way and we talk about that. We worked a lot with [Evel’s son] Kelly Knievel and the family and couldn’t have made it without the family being involved.”

Knoxville, who’s currently playing Elvis’s bodyguard Sonny West in Elvis & Nixon, with Kevin Spacey and Michael Shannon, spoke to EW about his hero in advance of the doc’s Sundance premiere. And EW also has the exclusive poster for Being Evel, which demonstrates how he liked to live close to the edge.

EW: When I was a kid, I had this awesome Evel Knievel crank-up motorcycle doll that would rev up and fly across the wooden floors in my house. It was the best. I didn’t really understand who or what he was in real life, but he was this super-sized personality—almost this indestructible human doll because of the things he did.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: He was a superhero, a real living superhero. That doll is probably my favorite toy of all time. I think a lot of guys who grew up in the time we did feel the same exact way about it. I bought a couple—one for my son when he got old enough and another for me last year. I got the vintage one, still in the original box. My kid loves it, and I love it as much as I did when I was little.

EW: The great thing about it was that it wasn’t perfect; it would go for only so far before wiping out. But hey, that’s exactly what Evel did too.

JK: Exactly. Evel didn’t land it every time. [Laughs]

EW: It’s not difficult to see how Evel’s DNA is sprinkled into what you’ve done with the Jackass crew over the years.

JK: [Evel’s] spirit hangs over Jackass and inspired all of us, and we teamed up with Mat Hoffman, who’s our generation’s Evel Knievel and who has a friendship with the Knievel family. So we all did this together out of our love for Evel. The doc focuses on all of his immense accomplishments, but also what his life has spawned. You know, there would not be an X Games without Evel. No one ever went for it, laid it all on the line, like Evel Knievel. You watch the X Games, and they are laying it all on the line. And that spirit came from Evel, I believe.

read the rest of the interview HERE.

here's a short talk with the director

No Doubt Looking Forward to this!!

"No-No A Dock-umentary" premiering at Sundance Film Festival this week

For those of you who have been following me or this blog for a while you should be familiar with my connection to the one and only, Dock Ellis. If not you can go back and read some of my previous Dock related posts.



So the film I have been consulting on finally went public night before last and is playing a few more times this week out at The 2014 Sundance Film Festival. The 1st review that came in gave it a 9 out of 10! Also got a nice mention in Esquire magazine as one of the top films to see at Sundance this year, as well as a nod in Entertainment Weekly... So it's off to a good start. A cool film that does some justice to the story of an old friend who inspired me greatly before I was even a teenager. Check it out if you can and let us know what you think.

- GEF

please download these images and spread 'em around (art by Ernesto Yerena)

The story of the pitcher who threw a no-hitter while tripping on acid—known by fans and nonfans alike—has become emblematic of professional baseball’s excess in the 1970s. However, that pitcher, Dock Ellis, had a career and a life that transcended one use of LSD.

During a time when the insular world of baseball was clashing with the world outside, Ellis was widely known as one of the most unabashedly black baseball players ever. Nearly suspended for wearing curlers in his hair and refusing to apologize for or moderate his aggressive behavior, Ellis used drugs to hide his crippling fear of failure.

No No: A Dockumentary provides the backstory to an outrageous anecdote by presenting the full life—warts and all—of a unique baseball player and human being. From Jackie Robinson to Donald Hall, Ron Howard, and others, Dock Ellis touched the lives of many people, as told in this surprising story of redemption.

Cast and Credits
Director: Jeffrey Radice
Producers: Mike Blizzard, Christopher Cortez, Jeffrey Radice
Cinematographer: John Fiege
Editor: Sam Wainwright Douglas
Music Supervisor: Randall Poster
Composer: Adam Horovitz [YES! our boy AdRock!]
Animators: Jen Piper, Jake Mendez, Scott Calonico
Contact: Sara Sampson / Sara Sampson PR / sarasampsonpr@gmail.com

For Dock Ellis On His 67th Birthday: LSD Memories, Celluloid Dreams

from The Classical:

Given that his Baseball Reference comparables include Mike Boddicker and Charlie Leibrandt, Dock Ellis has enjoyed a good deal more staying power in baseball lore than would seem reasonable. He had some very good seasons during his long career, with his best coming as co-ace of the 1971 World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates. But that was the only season in which Ellis made an All-Star team, and one of just a handful of seasons in his career that even made basic statistical sense—when he went 17-8 with the Yankees five years later, Ellis struck out 65 batters in 211 2/3 innings. Which was 11 fewer than he walked.

And there was, of course, the ineffable and irreducible Dock-iness of the guy. If his K/BB ratio was somewhat mindbending, it could be argued that this was also the least surprising thing about a dude otherwise given to rocking curlers in the locker room, free-associating his way through interviews, and building with future Poet Laureate Donald Hall. And there was, of course, the no-hitter that Ellis threw on June 12, 1970, against San Diego, in which Ellis walked eight, plonked one, and was frying royally on acid throughout.

You have probably heard about this, because it is is amazing. You might have read A.J. Daulerio's attempt at a pharmaceutically accurate re-enactment of the feat, or enjoyed the fact that Vice has turned the doing-something-incongruous-while-on-acid genre into a very amusing web series. There is a brilliant video about the experience, narrated by Ellis, directed by James Blagden, and godfathered by the good people at No Mas. You have almost certainly seen this video, but it couldn't really hurt to watch it again, right? Because of how great it is, I mean, and because it's Dock Ellis's birthday, and it's surely what he would want.

But while all of this is indeed very awesome, there was more to Dock Ellis than this unique Legacy of Acid Curveball Visionz and his varied on-field feats. It's that other, broader, actual-human-person Ellis who has lost ground to the tripping-balls one—the former being the one who was regarded, somewhat ridiculously and certainly ignorantly, as a black militant during his playing days; the one who mentored kids in the California correctional system; the one who, to reiterate this in case it didn't resonate enough before, collaborated on a book with a future United States poet laureate. All of whom, of course, were very much the person who would wind up pitching a no-hitter while tripping balls. It's that guy—the one who is also all of those Dock Ellis-es—that fascinates and animates the people behind No No: The Dockumentary, a new documentary about Ellis and his various lives.

The project, which co-producer Chris Cortez expects will be finished within the year, is already some ways along—Cortez estimates that the team has shot over 50 hours of footage, with interviewees ranging from former teammates Dave Cash, Al Oliver and Steve Blass to the Ellis family in Southern California and the kids Dock worked with in the correctional system. "We became interested in Dock the same way as everyone else," Cortez says. "I mean, this is the guy who pitched a no-hitter on LSD." What animated the film, though, and what has been revealed during the 50-plus hours of interview coverage, is that Ellis was significantly more than the sum of that one deathless lysergic landmark and other quantifiable achievements.

Which is also true of just about every human, but especially so in the case of Ellis, who was so very publicly his contradictory, confounding, relentlessly Dock-ish self to stand out even in an era when players could afford to be weird—"Something about making $9,000 instead of $9 million let these guys be different," Cortez says. "And Dock had no fear with the tongue."

"He was born into a middle class life, and was in many respects a regular middle-class California kid," Cortez says. "But he was always drawn in these strange directions." Mapping those directions, and the tides that carried Ellis from one strange port to another, is a necessarily complicated task, but one that Cortez says is in the home stretch—editing has begun on the footage, although the film will likely launch a Kickstarter campaign in order to fund some animation and other last-minute needs.

Offering guidance during the process is an "advisory committee" that seems both appropriately and implausibly all over the map—it includes Ellis's former big league contemporary Scipio Spinks, South By Southwest founder Louis Black, and legendary punk photographer Glen E. Friedman, whom Ellis befriended at a ballgame when Friedman was a kid (there's a picture of them together on Friedman's website). It's a diverse group, all of whom Cortez says have offered input on matters ranging from verisimilitude to budgeting. There's the sense that, given who Dock Ellis was—how many things and how many people simultaneously, and how joyously he embodied those different identities—only a group this diverse could come close to capturing him.

We'll have a longer Q&A with Cortez about the film sometime soon, but for now, celebrate Dock Ellis Day—responsibly, please: LSD is pretty bad for you—secure in the knowledge that more Dock-related good times are coming. We may not see his like again, but we won't have reason to forget him anytime soon.

A Bit More From the Sundance Film Festival

Here's a short clip of the panel I moderated, as well as a great clip of Peralta and some of the Bones Brigade talking about thier film.





Rodney and Lance are fucking HEROES!

Saturday at Sundance - Not to Miss!

This Saturday at 9:30am I will be moderating a panel at the "Cinema Cafe" in Park City Utah with old friends Stacy Peralta and Ice-T.

As part of the Sundance Film festival. Stacy will be premiering his new BONES BRIGADE: A Biography and Ice-T will be making his directorial debut with Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap - I'll be at both of these premiere screenings later the same day. Should be cool.

check the current very rough trailer clips:
(neither of which do the films any justice at all, but at least you get a taste)

Robert Redford on His Life, His Activism and the Importance of Independent Films

This is from earlier in the year, but still cool.

Democracy Now! broadcasts from Park City, Utah, home of the Sundance Film Festival, the nation’s largest festival for independent cinema. Today, we spend the hour with Robert Redford. He’s well known as an actor, but part and parcel of who he is is an activist. He took his success and leveraged it to promote his real passions: environmental justice, Native American rights and independent filmmaking. Since 1980, through the Sundance Film Festival and the Sundance Institute, Robert Redford has helped independent voices develop their craft—in film, theater and music—and reach new audiences. Redford joins us for a wide-ranging interview about these many roles in his life, on and off screen.