The World of Biker Boyz

Thanks to black widow for sending this in:

Found this interview with the cast members of ‘Biker Boyz’ on comingsoon.net — towards the end, it has a quote from Brendan. The film opens this Friday, January 31st.

INTERVIEWS: The World of Biker Boyz

Tuesday, January 28, 2003 9:06 CST

The cast of Biker Boyz got close to the world of motorcycle clubs through their work on the film. There were advisors on the film and some real bikers as extras who the cast got to know. And some were already motorcycle enthusiasts, like Laurence Fishburne. He owns seven bikes and offered his perspective on the love of riding.

“The Art of the Motorcycle show was a show that the Guggenheim Museum put on” Fishburne said. “They brought 100 of the most beautiful motorcycles ever made into the museum, showcased them as pieces of art, as works of art, and the museum had the highest attendance that it’s ever had in its history. It says that there’s something about motorcycles that trucks across all kinds of cultural, racial, economic lines, educational lines. For the Guggenheim Museum to have its greatest amount of attendance because people came to look at bikes says something, says a lot about bikes. I love them because I love them. You know, I got introduced to them the right way maybe. Maybe it was when I was on the track at Road Atlanta on the back stretch doing 105 miles an hour and looking down and hearing the wind.! I don’t know. Maybe it was riding through like St. Petersburg with my club, like 30 bikes deep with a police escort in the front, a police escort in the back, blowing by a statue of Lenin, in the afternoon sunset with the world’s greatest architect on the back of the bike playing Beatles music. There’s something about them that is really exhilarating.”

Lisa Bonet felt the passion for motorcycles from the bikers on set. “They made the set very real,” Bonet said. “It made the whole feeling and the whole energy of what that lifestyle is really like. Them being around really made it real and we saw that the way that they were depicted to us as being very violent or having drugs or being violent or crazy or whatever, is not true. It’s actually very different than that and it’s very exaggerated in a lot of the movies that I’ve seen.”

Orlando Jones was surprised that the group was so mellow. “You go to a clubhouse and you expect 200 bikes lined up and down the street, people are hanging out, the cops are up and down, you’re waiting for a fight to break out,” Jones said. “And you go in, you figure there’s going to be a problem. But it was just a lot more of a mellow experience than I expected. I expected guns, problems, I’d get killed in here. But that was a real surprise to me, that the world of the biker club is really a club and not a gang. They got their kids, their wife, the kids want to ride a bike.”

Derek Luke was also surprised. “I learned that there is a whole culture of people that we don’t understand,” Luke said. “Meaning, many people, especially me, I would see a biker and be like ‘Oh, there may be a fight’. But you have these big, huge guys and they have honor within their club. We were shooting a particular scene and this guy was drunk and the next thing you know, there was a motorcycle club president and most of us were like ‘No he’s from Sing-Sing or something like that’. One of the guys, the President, went over to him and said, ‘Listen, we’re filming. You need to cut it out’ and it just stopped. There’s honor and integrity within their [group] and they deal with a lot of stuff.”

Brendan Fehr appreciated the opportunity to ask questions from the specialists and learn firsthand. “Every time you had a question, you could basically turn around and ask the guy next to you because he was most likely part of the club,” Fehr said. “As soon as you get on a bike, you realize why they like it so much. Because there’s not a league, you don’t wake up on Saturday mornings at seven o’clock and drive your kid to go ride a motorcycle. People have a particular preconceived notion about what the motorcycle clubs are all about, and that includes generally a lot of negative stuff, but it’s not. I mean, joining a club would be the equivalent of joining a hockey or a football or baseball team or the bowling team or the debate team. It’s a bunch of guys getting together because they all hav! e something in common and that’s love for the motorcycle. And then, obviously, there are rules and regulations to follow, and there is a certain attire to wear and all of that stuff, but beyond that, it’s just a bunch of guys who have some friends and they all share that one thing.”

Biker Boyz opens Friday