I just watched the Wizard of Oz last week.
2011-02-14 16:10:25
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Movies with bikes but not about bikes?
So I recently saw two movies that were not cycling focused where a bicycle figured prominently, almost as a character.
The Living Wake (currently up on hulu, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489212/ ), where the main characters travel via bicycle rickshaw throughout the entire movie. Hilarious if it's your type of funny (dark, ridiculous).
Paper Man ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437405/ ) where the main character hangs out at a vacation rental in the winter and his only form of transportation is a too-small bicycle. I thought this was hilarious also, but darker than the other.
Anybody else see any movies with bicycles in them but that aren't about cycling lately? Or is it just that I watch movies about mentally unbalanced characters, and the bicycle seems to be a way of accessorizing their madness?
2011-02-14 15:59:16
i'd put Flashdance, ET, and of course mark wahlberg's character in I <3 Huckabees on that list
2011-02-14 16:15:16
Rushmore, Juno, and The 40 Year Old Virgin are a few more.
What is it about riding a bike that makes someone a "character?"
2011-02-14 16:35:54
I'd forgotten about I <3 Huckabees and Wizard of Oz. Flashdance is in a category all by itself, ET I've never been able to watch because it scares the bejeezus out of me (but I also think Finding Nemo is too stressful to bear)
2011-02-14 16:40:03
morningsider - it's not the person riding who is a "character", it's that the actual method of transportation itself is almost a character.
Like it almost has its own personality, and when the other characters in the movie interact with it, it has a clear effect on the storyline and the dialog. much more than a generic car or pair of shoes or anything else. like in Paper Man, the wife drives a car - inconsequential. The writer rides that bike around, and it's a main source of his character development.
2011-02-14 16:42:44
This is a little gratuitous but that reminded me of a fantastic line from Pulp Fiction: "Just because you are a character, doesn't mean you have character."
2011-02-14 17:07:09
because of this thread, i will watch pee wee's big adventure in the next few weeks.
2011-02-14 17:41:01
Does Pee Wee's Great Adventure count or is that considered cycling focused? I think about that movie every time I lock up my bike.
2011-02-14 17:41:31
I've never seen PeeWee's Great Adventure... I'm afraid if I say that too loud my husband will make me watch it. I loved that show as a kid and had to sneak it 'cause mom thought it was horrid. So my brief memories of it are like sneaking chocolate cake - the guilty pleasures are always better than the sanctioned ones.
2011-02-14 19:15:16
big adventure is a road trip movie more than anything. the bike is the mcguffin that drives the plot.
2011-02-14 19:27:31
I would call it an epic saga of one man's search for justice.
...I might be the only one, but that's what I would call it.
2011-02-14 19:40:48
Wow, way back when, I had the hots for Dottie.
2011-02-14 19:44:47
How about the "I want my $2" kid from Better Off Dead.
Not so much a character but there is a scene in Toxic Avenger that involves a bicycle that has always stuck with me.....
2011-02-14 20:00:50
oooo that scene from the toxic avenger. it was removed in the "R" rated version. i heard they used a watermelon for that effect
2011-02-14 21:17:24
Forgettable film: Quicksilver. I'm embarrassed to mention it.
2011-02-14 21:23:22
2011-02-14 21:23:37
Muppet Movie - Kermit rides!
2011-02-14 21:25:34
"The man with one red shoe"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089543/
Tom Hanks rides on the C + O towpath in DC and there are a few other bike scenes.
2011-02-14 23:48:41
Life is Beautiful -- the early scenes.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Going for the really obscure, how about Anthony Edwards and Linda Fiorentino riding bikes in Europe, somewhere, in Gotcha!
There might have also been a bike scene in the Burt Lancaster/Peter Reigert film, Local Hero, where someone rides up and leans a bike against a whitewashed building after dismounting. I just can't remember which charater it is.
2011-02-15 01:07:01
The recent film Made in Dagenham (still at the Oaks) shows the female employees of the Ford assembly plant biking to work in 1968 England. Its star Sally Hawkins is interviewed here:
You’re riding a bike again in the opening scene of ‘Made in Dagenham’, like in ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’. You should become an ambassador for the bicycle industry soon.
‘I know! It’s weird, isn’t it? I’ll always start a film like that now. When we filmed it, it wasn’t in sequence, then I found out it was going to be right at the beginning again! It’s actually a better bike this time. I’ll see what I can do next time.’
2011-02-15 01:56:38
napolean dynamite
2011-02-15 03:16:45
"Nowhere Boy"
Alleged to be about John Lennon has him on a cool looking bike at the beginning. Bikes in the US in that era weren't very cool
1:43-2:00 or so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvL3pwdjy4k
(I don't know much about this movie, but the excerpts I've seen show Paul McCartney as "smaller-than-life." Not a good sign.)
2011-02-15 21:06:16
Rolf, the young Nazi telegraph delivery boy in the Sound of Music. Not instrumental to the theme of the movie, but evocative of the time.
2011-02-16 16:27:06