Evel Knievel (1971)

Curiosidades

Evel Knievel is a 1971 American biographical film starring George Hamilton as motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel.

Production

George Hamilton was writing a screenplay about a bronco rider who became a motorcycle rider. While preparing to film it, he interviewed various stunt men for the lead role and learned about Knievel. Hamilton visited Knievel in a San Francisco hospital and found Knievel's story more fascinating than what he was writing. In December 1969 he announced he was working on a film about Knievel. In February 1970, Hamilton stated that:

In America we've long had a theory that all men have an equal right to become everything they want. But there's a new theory being pushed on us – that every man has to be something whether he wants to or not. That's what the theory of Evil Knievel is about. He's an individual who doesn't care about establishment or hippie, both have their phony sides. I'm not sure why Evil does what he does on a motorcycle.

The screenplay was originally written by Alan Caillou who had written the screenplay for Jack Starrett's The Losers also for Joe Solomon's Fanfare Films. However George Hamilton was not happy with it. He offered to pay John Milius $5,000 to write some lines in the script. Milius says he went to Hamilton's home at Palm Springs to read the script "and it was terrible. So I threw the script in the pool and beat on it with an oar.

Milius says Knievel "saw himself as the new gladiator of the new Rome, something larger than a daredevil. He saw the whole spectacle of civilization and the absurdity of what it's turned into, and he fit into that."

Milius later called Hamilton "a wonderful guy, totally underrated. A great con-man, that's what he really is. He always said, 'I'll be remembered as a third-rate actor when in fact, I'm a first-rate con man'."

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