film review: One Chance to Win

This sounded too good to be true: A filmmaker had made a documentary
of the 1975 500cc AMA Motocross championships, but the film was never
released and was lost in a storage warehouse; now over 30 years later
it had been miraculously discovered and was available for all to see.

The "too good" part was that if the film had been a winner, why was it
shoved into the back in the corner in the dark, and forgotten about?
Films like that don't just get "forgotten" unless there's no one that
wants to pay the admission price. As I popped it into the dvd player,
I was dogged by the thought that despite all the superlatives heaped
on this film by the new distributor <http://www.onechancetowin.com/> ,
despite the fact that I REALLY wanted to enjoy this film, perhaps it
wasn't going to be very good. Please, DON'T let this be another "On
Any Sunday 2."

Apparently, some of the backstory of this film, at least as presented
by Pipeline Digital Media, is not quite true. As the filmmaker Charles
Bush says in the dvd extras himself, the film was released in a few
theaters, but then not much more was done with the film. In other
words, nobody saw a snowball's chance in hell of getting their money
out of it, so everyone gave up on it and went on with their lives.

The filmmakers who did the televised "Motocross Files" a year or two
back came across the film while interviewing some of the participants
of the 1975 series, the result is this dvd version of the 1975 film.

The film is interesting to watch mostly for the nostalgia, and it is
flawed enough that I can see why it gathered dust for 30 years. It was
obviously aimed at riding the coattails of Bruce Brown's "On Any
Sunday," a superbly crafted film that was fascinating to enthusiasts
and non-enthusiasts alike. Unfortunately, Bush imitated the style of
Brown without understanding the substance that Brown painstakingly
packed into the film.

OCTW opens with the same kind of abstract color image that eventually
morphs into a recognizable scene (mirroring the closing footage of
Brown's Endless Summer) but instead of sharpening the viewers sense of
anticipation only serves to irritate--what the hell is this? the
viewer asks. And it goes downhill from there.

The biggest problem I have with this movie is that it doesn't tell its
story very well. For a film that is about the 5 race 1975 500cc AMA
Championship, there is precious little film of the first 4 races.
There are the obligatory behind the scenes shots of the pits, some
interviews, and race action, but it isn't until the final race that
Bush finally decides to show the building tension of who is going to
win that should have been the heart of the film from the beginning.

He tries to simulate OAS's cornucopia of motorcycling when what he
should have been doing is telling the story of a championship season,
a story that needed telling. Instead we have closeups of 2-stroke
exhaust pipes dripping spooge, and a cutesy music background that I
can imagine Bush asking the musicians to "make it sound like On Any
Sunday..."

Despite these flaws, the last race of the film--"The Battle of New
Orleans" as dubbed by Rick Siemans in Dirt Bike magazine that year
makes it all worthwhile. Without spoiling anything, suffice it to say
that Brad Lackey is my new hero now. Unfortunately, in 1975 I had sold
my dirt bike and was buried in freshman calculus and chemistry at
UCSB. I had left my dirt biking roots and wouldn't get on another dirt
bike for over 25 years, so the results of this race were as unknown to
me as if I had been watching it in person in 1975. While gathering
dust in a warehouse waiting to become a success as nostalgia was
probably the best thing for "One Chance to Win," my own dust gathering
was a mistake that I've been trying to correct as best I can ever
since my son earned himself a dirt bike about 7 years ago.

Go ahead and spend some heartbeats on this flawed but worthwhile film.
And be sure to watch the extra feature where they interview most of
the participants--in many ways these interviews tell the story far
better than the film.

--
Charles
'99 YZ250

On Sun, 24 Feb 2008 15:04:04 -0800, HardWorkingDog
<harvey.RemoveThis@mush.man> wrote:

>Go ahead and spend some heartbeats on this flawed but worthwhile film.
>And be sure to watch the extra feature where they interview most of
>the participants--in many ways these interviews tell the story far
>better than the film.

Thanks for the review.

I *do* want to own a copy of Dust to Glory though. I was one of
the fortunate few that got to see it in a theater on the east
coast.


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Go fast and aim for where the trees aren't.
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