DeadCenter Film Festival/The Birth of Big Air

Wednesday evening last the Tenth Annual DeadCenter Film Festival kicked off in OKC with an outdoor showing of the documentary on BMX legend (and Edmond native) Mat Hoffman The Birth of Big Air. I was there with 2500 locals to watch the ESPN Films production’s Oklahoma premiere (it premiered at The Tribeca Film Festival, article from the New York Times here), along with a Q and A afterwards with producer Spike Jonze (!) and Mat himself. More on that following the review.

The documentary (B) ran 52 minutes, I’m sure cut to fit a one-hour time-slot on ESPN, and focused almost exclusively on Mat’s BMX career. While the doc itself was fairly by-the-numbers (archive footage, old photos, interviews with friends and competitors as well as with Mat) that did nothing to detract from Mat himself. A true innovator of BMX, he laid the blueprint for the riders making the big bucks today in the X-Games. He was the dominant biker for 10 years, winning his first amateur contest and seemingly winning every event thereafter. More than a story about a BMX great, though—admittedly a story with a limited audience—this film captures a man’s obsession and his greatness within a category he largely defined and which no one at the time cared about. While it seems foolish in a way to break your body (and, oh-my-word, the wrecks) for limited money and fame, there I is no Faustian-deal. He isn’t trading his body for wealth, he’s deciding what he wants to do with the machine he’s been given and is comfortable with the ramifications with those decisions, with no apparent bitterness towards those that are now making a killing in a sport he single-handedly kept alive.

As interesting as the film is the story behind it. Directed by Jeff Tremaine (Jackass) and produced by Johnny Knoxville and Spike Jonze (Adaptation), it is a project of love. Spike and Jeff were BMX’ers themselves and met Mat when they were all 15 or so in 1987. They traveled together across Europe doing shows, with Spike taking some of his earliest acclaimed photos of Mat’s riding. Knoxville met Mat in 1997 doing a bit for MTV. Mat was at the end of his dominance at that point, but still considered the greatest, and there was an immediate connection.

This relationship and love were evident in the Q and A following the film. Basically all the questions were aimed at Mat, not Spike, but when Jonze did get a question, he steered it back towards Mat and his exploits. At first that was frustrating for me, since Spike was who I really wanted to hear from, but soon it was refreshing to see an honest friendship. Spike seemed to get that this was something of a homecoming for Mat and one of the few times going forward that Mat would overshadow him at an event.

Jonze continued to impress afterwards, sticking around to talk to people and sign autographs (see picture above). When we approached there were only 6 to 8 people around, and he seemed honestly interested in conversing with them, even pausing after signing an autograph for us as if to see if there was anything we wanted to ask.