Klunkerz Kronicles
By Billy Savage

The Beginning of a Dream

The Filmmaker tries out Russ Mahon's 1940s Cleveland Welding Klunker up near Oregon during the Klunkerz Morrow Dirt Club interviews. Now that's a StumpJumper!

Editor’s Note: MBT is proud to have brought film producer Billy Savage on staff with a new feature spot designed to provide some insight into Billy’s whereabouts/ history with the sport. In the event that you haven’t yet watched his incredible film, Klunkerz, we strongly recommend it! A more thorough documentation of our sport (or any sport for that matter) simply cannot be found. Welcome aboard Billy, we look forward to following along on your future endeavors right here in Klunkerz Kronicles. For more information on Billy or his film head over to: http://www.klunkerz.com

The Beginning of A Dream

An acquaintance of mine gave me a call back in 2001 and said he'd just screened his film at Sundance and it was a big hit. I already knew about it because it was all over The Hollywood Reporter and The Daily Variety trade magazines and just about every newspaper around. It was the big news coming out of Sundance that year because they won both the audience award and best documentary award. He said he was going to have another screening at the Director's Guild of America's theater in Hollywood and I asked if I might like to come along. He knew I'd jump at the chance because I was an old skater. His film, Dogtown and Z-Boys, was a new kind of action sports film and it totally blew me away. Lots of the guys in the film were there and I'd met some of them back in the late 1970s. I didn't know it at the time, but one of the guys in that movie would make a significant impact on the development of Klunkerz. My research on the history of the mountain bike would eventually lead me right back into the heart of Dogtown.

At the time I had been working on a script about growing up in the 1970s in Marin and it had bicycles in it, but bikes really weren’t the focal point. After seeing Dogtown I thought it might be possible to do a similar documentary about the pioneers of mountain biking. I did some investigating and found that no one had done it... yet. I stuck the idea in a drawer and went on about my business. I was riding mountain bikes quite a bit at the time and it seemed like every time I'd be out on the trails, the idea for the documentary resurfaced. Naturally, I watched some 'bike porn' videos and slowly realized that making Klunkerz is simply what I needed to do. I would do something about mountain bikes but do it differently from what was already out there. I started to put an outline together and a list of resources that would be required. By late 2003 I had gathered enough material to start pitching the idea and see if I could find any investors.

I knew I couldn't hit up the bike companies because they'd want to make it a commercial for their respective companies. All of the Hollywood investors I talked to wanted to market it as The Dogtown and Z-Boys of mountain biking and they wanted to know who the Jay Adams character was going to be. The money people wanted it all about conflict and the ugliness of what happens when businesses grow into industries, etc. Nobody cared for my pitch about the drama of the piece being derived from the accomplishments of the subjects. They liked the idea about a small group of people creating and entire industry, but it wasn't enough. To be honest, it was getting depressing. I finally came to the conclusion that it was going to be a personal film and it was going to take personal money to get it done.

I've heard a lot of whiny filmmakers talk about how difficult it was, how they struggled to make their film, etc. I guess there's some truth to that and it's something you can’t fully understand until you actually do it. Making a movie is pretty complicated, of that there's no doubt! Things tend to get even more complicated when you borrow the cash from your family. I didn't want to make some Mini-DV home movie, so I allotted a budget in the six-figure range. Like many filmmakers before me, I ended up going way over the original budget by the time I was done. Investing in a movie is very risky. There's always a pretty good likelihood that no one will ever get a dime of their investment back. When it's your family, it can definitely be a bit of a struggle. You've just got to be honest, as in "how'd you like to lose a lot of money?" or something along those lines. It worked for me.

Looking back I realize that the actual nuts and bolts of making the film was fairly easy. It was dealing with what was going on in my personal life during the production that made things so difficult. All the technical and financial considerations can be figured out but the human condition presents an entirely different set of problems with no simple answers. There was a lot of tragedy associated with Klunkerz that I had never considered. It's simply not stuff you can plan for. There were deaths, Black Widow bites, car crashes, a broken neck, even a murder of one of the subjects. Those were the most difficult hurdles to overcome. Trying not to let that stuff interfere with making the light-hearted documentary I had envisioned wasn't so easy.

Here's Billy riding the 12" Dogtown BigFoot from Ray Flores, the cinematographer from DogTown and Z-Boys who captured Gary Fisher, Charlie Kelly, Joe Breeze, and the rest of the guys with his super-8 camera back in 1976.

Probably the most difficult thing for me, personally, was that both of my parents died while I was making the film. They lived in Marin and I had been living in L.A., so it was really great that I got to spend some time with them while shooting the film. My Dad went first and that really threw me for a loop. There were a lot of things I needed to deal with. One night, when he was laying in the hospital near the end, I left his bedside and went back down to Fairfax where I was staying. I didn't have a mountain bike at the house, but I had my old, rusty '53 Schwinn Phantom. It was late and I couldn't sleep so I took the old bike for spin to work some stuff out.

The streets of Fairfax were empty and the bars had all closed. It was a full moon and I just kept pedaling. I found myself going up near Deer Park by Jacquie Phelan's house. I kept going. I rode through the schoolyard and up the fire road. When I couldn't pedal that beast anymore I started to push. When I got to 5 corners I just kept pushing. Before I knew it I was way up on the side of Mt. Tam. I sat there for a while and watched the fog dance with the moonlight. When I'd had enough I bombed that bike back down in the pitch dark. There was just little glimmers moonlight coming down through the trees. It was insane. My eyes played tricks on me. The coaster brake faded into nothingness. I heard the pinging of bolts popping off the fenders and God-knows what else. It was one of the hairiest rides of my life! I'm amazed I didn't kill myself. By the time I got back to the house I had two flat tires and it was nearly dawn. When my head hit the pillow I knew that I had to finish the film, no matter what. I had to do it for my family and for all the people the trusted me to tell their story. My Dad died a few days later.

It would be nearly two years later that KLUNKERZ would have it's first screening.