Checked out the 2015 film Being Evel, a documentary (co-produced by Johnny Knoxville) about famed 70s daredevil Evel Knievel. I had his toy crank bike as a kid but I had no real idea his story and this flick covers a lot of interesting ground. This film is available streaming but I caught it on the History Channel the other day so it should be easy to find.
Basically this tells his story via interviews with a lot of his family, his friends, sports reporters (Wide World of Sports!), toy executives, and people that he inspired (like Tony Hawk) and uses a ton of great 70s archival footage.
I was fascinated by the movie and found it a lot of fun since I didn’t know all the ways he created extreme sports (using massively heavy Harley Davidsons), his legal troubles and thug behavior, (he beat someone with a baseball bat), and so forth. The movie does put him on a pedestal as far as his American Hero persona goes but doesn’t hide from his personality flaws in the least.
If you have any familiarity or nostalgia about Knievel or want to see some great 1970s footage, this is a really neat movie. Check it out.
Score: 86