Long Way Round By Ewan Macgregor and Charley Boorman
Let me say right from the start that I may not be the best person to review Ewan and Charley’s book, ‘cause we have different ideas of what world motorcycling traveling is all about.They took just three months to circumnavigate the world. From Britain, across Europe, into Russia, a plane flight to the USA and then across the USA and back to Old Blighty.It took me four months just to do Britain, Germany and Poland.
Hell, it took me seven days just to do the east and south coast of Eire and Northern Ireland!Going around the world in three months is akin to riding from Key West to Montana in a week. Sure you could do it, but what would you really see?
And don’t believe the guff about it being just the two of them. That was the intel on the Net when they first started off, but it quickly became apparent they actually had about ten people with them.They came clean on this point as the journey progressed and more and more people began to wonder who was doing the filming and who was taking all the photos of them riding together.
They had a back-up rider/photographer. They had a road crew/film crew. They had interpreturs. They had a guy who arranged their border crossings. This was much more than two mates riding solo on a road trip! Now check the following; I thought it was just me, but my mate Valorie has also read this book and she is female, American and a rider herself and she put into words exactly what I had thought…
Ewan and Charlie whinge a lot, (that’s whining to USA folks), they complain about bloody everything, the condition of the roads, the time and hassle it takes to cross borders, how windy it is, how long they have to ride each day, once they even complain they’ve had the same clothes on for twelve hours.
I got annoyed with these two real quick. They miss their families; they can’t wait to see them again. It just goes on and on.
The laughable bits; they had an ex SAS soldier instruct them in hand to hand combat and how to use modern firearms before they left the UK. Women have ridden around many foreign countries in the world alone and these two blokes are taking combat courses?
If you think you need to learn how to use an AK 47 why would you even bother riding to that country? It’s all beyond me.An indication of how Aussie riders and Aussie motorcycle magazines viewed Ewan and Charley’s trip; I spoke to the editor of one of our two biggest bike magazines to get his opinion…
“Months before the book was published and the DVD came out we were besieged with unasked for information about Long Way Round.Did we want to publish excerpts, did we want to do telephone or Internet interviews? Well frankly ‘no we didn’t,’ because we all know many Aussie’s who have ridden around the world and not made such a huge fucking deal about it! Ewan and Charley really don’t understand the average Aussie riders contempt for them at all. They did nothing special, they just happened to have a film crew with them and a lot more money than guys like you and me.
“I’d interview guys like Heldge Pedersen or Ted Simon in a second. You know Peter Thoeming (editor of Australian Road rider magazine) rode solo around the world in the early seventies yeah? On a Honda XL 250. And he went around the world; he didn’t just cross it from one side to the other. Let’s be honest, riding across western and Eastern Europe is a piece of piss, you’ve done it yourself, you know this.”
“So we weren’t really interested in Ewan and Charley’s exploits at all. We’ve just done a story about Chris Scott, the UK desert biker; he’s done thousands of kays all over the Sahara on his own. Now that’s adventure biking. And let’s not forget the mad Aussie bloke who rode a postie bike (Honda 110 semi auto) across Australia a couple of years ago.”
So that about sums up many Aussie adventure riders thoughts about Long Way Round. For armchair adventurers it’s probably a good read.For blokes (and blokesses) who actually get out there and do it themselves the book’s a bit of a waste of space.
I do admire one thing about Ewan and Charley however; few Hollywood type people have ever done anything like it. If they had only done it by themselves, without entourage in tow I would have been much more impressed!
You can buy the hardback, the paperback, the pictorial coffee table book, and the DVD from www.amazon.com
Next review: Walter and James (who really were on their own, no Hollywood production this) riding their bikes across the eastern side of the world from Japan through China, Mongolia, Siberia and Kazakhstan, on their way to Europe and London. They had a few problems along the way as you will see.
This is real motorcycling adventuring and you can read it all for free at the website below:http://www.tokyotolondon.com/
Movie: Stone
Stone is the iconic Aussie motorcycle movie. For those in the USA the motorcycle movie was Easyrider, for those of us who grew up in Australia in the 70’s it was Stone.
By modern standards of movie making it’s obviously dated in content and style. But it shows a great slice of biking life in Sydney and other Aussie cities at the time.
Be warned; there ain’t no Harleys in this movie.The bike of choice is the Kawasaki Z900. At the time one of the fastest road bikes you could buy. This is also the film that started the continuing cult of the black full-face motorcycle helmet, complete with dark tinted visor. Even today I would venture that 50% of the riders you see on the roads of Sydney have this kind of helmet.
All of the stunts in the movie were performed by real people, no computer generated crap here.
I understand he was actually on a 250, however. And it’s still down at the bottom of the ocean somewhere.
I also heard Sandy Harbutt the director, producer, writer and one of the lead characters in the movie asked the stuntman (who might have been Grant Page?) if he could do the stunt again for a second take.The request was politely refused.
Ken Shorter plays Stone, an unconventional (at the time) copper who is asked to infiltrate the bikie gang. (We don’t call one percenter club members bikers in Oz. Well the club members themselves do, but the general public does not.)
Several members of the Gravediggers bikie gang have been killed and more seem set to follow. Ken Shorters acting in the film is bloody awful. One wonders if he wanted to be there at all. However this is overpowered by the acting of the bikies themselves, most of whom were riding friends of the Director Sandy Harbutt.
Harbutt plays the Undertaker, the President of the Gravediggers, most of whom are all Vietnam Veterans. Hugh Keays-Byrne is superb as Toad. This actor later went on to play the Toecutter in the first Mad Max movie.
Many Aussies will recognize other actors who were around at the time, like Rebecca Gilling and Helen Morse (Wife of Harbutt when the movie was made.)
Filmed around scenic Sydney places the movie has pace and speed.The opening part of the movie features a huge motorcycle funeral procession down the Newcastle motorway towards Sydney. All of the people in those scenes were real riders; the sidecar coffin outfit was actually designed by a leading speedway sidecar racer of the time.
It’s true to say that Stone started a huge interest in motorcycles and the biking lifestyle around Australia. Some critics claimed the film was a complete flop but in actual fact cinemas across the country were packed out by hundreds of riders dressed in black leather. I think it’s true to say that without Stone we would not have had Mad Max some years later.
A few years ago we had a rally from Sydney up north to celebrate the 20 year anniversary of the movie. Even that was not without incident.A car coming off a down ramp collided with several bikes, Angry Andersen from Rose Tattoo was injured, I believe someone even died.
The Australian Vietnam Veterans Motorcycle Club now uses the design of the Gravediggers patch for their own badge. (With Harbutt’s permission.) A grinning skull beneath an Aussie soldiers slouch hat.
EXTRA: Here is a link to the Aussie Vietnam veterans Motorcycle Club. I just had a quick look at it and I see they have just released a book about themselves. I’ll try and get hold of a copy to review it in the near future.http://www.geocities.com/veteransmc_australia/vvmc.html
NOTE:American readers should be aware that some years ago an American movie came out which was obviously based on Stone. Called Stone Cold it had the same scenario of a cop riding undercover with a motorcycle gang. I thought it was OK, until the typical Rambo like ending.
Stone may be available in the USA from the Amazon website, but I was not going to search thru the 1070 entries that my search brought up.A huge website that contains everything one needs to know about the movie can be found here:http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/Reviews/Reviews.asp?ReviewID=236&SID=2&PID=2918
Ran out of space, here is some more info where readers might be able to order Stone DVD.
Bottom half of page has a link to the DVD in PAL formatt and USA dollars.
