Announcer: The following program is brought to you
in living color.
( Theme music playing )
Carson: Tonight we have evel knievel.
He's probably the only man in history
who's become really wealthy by trying to kill himself.
It's true. He is somewhat of a legend.
He does incredible stunts with motorcycles,
and he has broken, I guess, more bones
than anybody in history, and yet he keeps at this.
So let us meet the gentlemen. Here is evel knievel.
( Lively music plays, applause )
Johnny Knoxville: I grew up in the '70s.
And evel knievel was the '70s.
He captured my imagination like no one else.
Some of you may have seen this film before.
This is a jump that you made at Caesars Palace.
What happened?
Knievel: The motorcycle landed short,
ripped the handlebars out of my hands,
and I bounced for 60 yards into the dunes parking lot.
Carson: God.
You're an incredible man.
Knoxville: I didn't think of him as a daredevil.
I thought of him as a superhero.
No one ever went for it like that before.
He invented that.
Since then, it has taken off in a major way.
That's such a large part of our culture now.
He inspired all that.
But there'll never be another evel.
I know I've been called a lot of things by a lot of people,
- a crazy man or a con man... - Carson: Mm-hmm.
But when you head down that long white line,
you better have had made your peace with God,
and you better know what you're doing
because a con man ain't gonna get there.
I didn't know the story of the man.
And it was, you know, pretty complex.
California judge has ordered motorcycle stuntman evel knievel
to serve out the rest of a jail sentence behind bars.
I'm a grown-ass man,
and some of the stuff is tough to reconcile.
It's a crazy story.
It's just fast, faster, and disaster.
( T. Rex's "20th century boy" plays )
¶ Friends say it's fine, friends say it's good ¶
¶ everybody says it's just like rock n' roll ¶
¶ I move like a cat, charge like a ram ¶
¶ sting like a bee ¶
¶ babe, I wanna be your man ¶
¶ hey ¶
¶ well, it's plain to see you were meant for me ¶
¶ yeah, I'm your boy, the 20th century toy ¶
¶ yeah ¶
¶ 20th century toy ¶
¶ I wanna be your boy ¶
¶ 20th century toy ¶
¶ I wanna be your boy ¶
( music fades )
I was a member of the sportscasters association
of Los Angeles,
and we used to have monthly meetings
on a Thursday at a place called red tractors.
Anybody who was anybody came...
Tommy lasorda.
Billie Jean king was there.
Muhammad Ali when he was Cassius Clay,
first made his appearance here.
They were legitimate athletes in their chosen professions.
Saltman: All of a sudden, there was this this commotion
on ventura boulevard.
There was this nutcase
going up and down doing wheelies.
I didn't even know what a wheelie was
until they explained it to me.
People didn't do wheelies up and down the road.
I mean, that was crazy,
on a rear wheel on a motorcycle going 80 Miles per hour?
( Imitates motorcycle engine )
Everybody stopped and would go, "oh, look at that."
Kelly: Even the hard-bitten sports announcers
of that day and age were taken aback by this guy,
who of course turned out to be evel knievel.
If you told me
that he was gonna be world famous,
I would say you're nuts.
If you're going to try to understand evel,
you gotta go back to his childhood.
His parents split up and left town,
and he was basically raised by his grandparents.
Bob rowling: Grandma and grandpa did the best they could do,
and he was just rambunctious, I guess.
Maybe he didn't have that attention as a young boy
when he needed it. ( Chuckles )
Truth is, I think, that Bobby was kind of angry
with his father because he didn't get to stay with him.
That's what I think.
He wanted to be with his father.
Pat Williams: We were up at my grandma's house,
and he and I were wrestling around,
and I punched him in the mouth.
And he lit on the back of his head.
And I said, "Bobby?" And nothing.
I thought, oh, my God, I killed him.
And instantly, he had these wild eyes
'cause he knew what had happened.
And across the kitchen, there was a door
that was slightly open, the pantry door,
and he ran at that door
and slammed it shut with his head.
And that half-stunned him again.
And he turned around sitting down,
and he pointed at me, and he said, "did you see that?
Nobody can hurt me.
You can't hurt me. Nobody can hurt me."
Jim blankenship: I think growing up in butte, Montana,
without a father would...
would be hard to handle, I would think.
Knoxville: Butte, Montana,
was just a tough-ass mining town.
When the mines were going full, the bars were open 24 hours.
There was a lot of prostitution.
Man: There was about 3,000 whores at that time.
Man: It was just miners drinkin' and fightin'.
Williams: You had to learn to cope in butte.
Sometimes coping meant with your fists.
You fought. You stood up like a man.
You fought, and you were taught that.
And that's part of the butte credo
is you just don't back down.
Knievel was a fighter from the get-go,
even during grade school.
He'd get a little obnoxious at times.
You know, you'd have to settle him down.
Well, you couldn't dare him.
If you'd dare him, he'd do it.
I remember when Bob got his first motorcycle.
I don't know why he had two tires.
He always rode around on the back one.
You never knew what he was gonna do with that motorcycle in town.
I mean, he'd be riding it all over raising...
raising hell with everybody.
Pat burns: He liked to have the cops chase him.
You just couldn't catch him on a bike
when you were in a patrol car.
( Rock 'n' roll music playing )
Linda bork knievel: One day I go run up to the store,
and who's up there, but big bad knievel, you know?
He was a character. ( Laughs )
I was scared,
but I was kind of flattered, you know?
Gee, he's paying attention to me,
and then one day he just said,
"you're gonna marry me."
( Laughs )
The story is that he kidnapped her.
Rowling: Well, I don't know if he kidnapped her or not.
You know, that might have been... that might have been something
that they were planning together anyhow, who knows?
Yeah, I guess I was kidnapped.
I think I was just walking home from school that day
when he said, "get in the car," you know?
( Laughs ) I don't know, I was just...
something just almost like overtook me,
and he drove me down to Dillon and, uh,
danged if we didn't get married there.
He had some weird ideas about how life should be lived.
And he...
he thought that he should be at the top of the heap, you know?
I figure that's why he did the stuff he did to make money.
He'd run 'em, there'll be a shady side to it.
He was happier if there was something a little shady about it.
Linda knievel: He made up his own job.
Actually, he started working as a security officer at night.
He had a route where he used to go around
at 2:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning
and check all the different establishments.
You'd pay him to be sure the doors were locked
and everything, and if you didn't pay him,
you might be robbed within a month or so.
He broke into my place.
He might have got 40 or $50, something like that,
but not that... nothing big.
Yeah, he was... he ran a racket. No question about it.
The police called me up and told me
that there was a known safecracker in town.
Now I knew they were talking about evel.
He was a crook.
A con-man, I guess you'd call him.
Knoxville: At the age of 19,
he starts a semi-pro hockey team and convinces
the czechoslovakian national team
to come to butte to play them.
( Laughs ) And the Czechs kill 'em.
Like, smoke 'em 22 to 3.
But I don't think evel was that upset about the score.
Pavlovich: I think he left
in the middle of the second period,
and the money disappeared.
There was no more money to pay 'em.
So, you know, draw your own conclusions.
Where did the money go? ( Laughs )
Williams: Well, butte likes people
who bounce up against the edges of the envelope.
They're forgiving about some criminal activity,
but they don't particularly like criminals.
Tonning: He had three kids at the time.
He threw all of his burglar bags in the river
and decided to go straight.
So knievel gets this job selling insurance
for combined insurance company,
and it was run by this guy, w. Clement stone,
who wrote a book called
"success through a positive mental attitude."
I feel healthy. I feel happy. I feel terrific.
Jay tamburina: I think it really changed his thinking drastically.
I mean, he was that way to begin with,
and it just intensified it.
He was a legendary salesman.
When he was selling insurance, he was selling insurance,
and he was selling a lot of it.
Tamburina: I remember he went to the mental hospital
in... in... I believe it was deer lodge.
And he wrote 271 policies
in this hospital, mental hospital.
This was a super record, nobody had ever written
that many policies in a week ever.
And he talked to the president of the company at that time
and said, "I'll break every record in the company,
"every single one that exists,
and you make me a vice president after I do that."
And Mr. stawn says, "sorry, that isn't gonna happen."
Well, knievel didn't like that.
Knoxville: So he picks up his family
and moves to Moses lake, Washington,
where he gets a job selling Honda motorcycles.
Gunn: He was making a good living at it,
but it wasn't good enough for him.
He says, "I think I need to do something weird,
"some kind of a stunt so it'll get people
to come down here and see the motorcycles."
So he had this crazy idea about doing this jump.
He says, "I'm gonna jump over cougars and rattlesnakes"
I said, "you gotta be kidding me."
Gunn: My part in that Mountain lion jump
was I wore a white coat like a doctor,
and evel introduced me as the veterinarian,
which was a crock of bull, but...
So he brings 'em down and put the cougars underneath.
And they're scared to death. They won't come out.
They were like kitty cats.
But the snakes, holy...!
We put them in a big refrigerator carton,
and they were pissed off.
So he goes around the track, and then he goes up the ramp.
And, well, the minute he went up in the air
I could see he wasn't gonna make it.
By God, he was about three feet short.
His back tire hits the refrigerator carton.
And the snakes go flipping into the crowd.
Talk about people running and getting out of there.
- -! ( Laughs )
The poor guy from vantage wants us to help catch his snakes!
( Laughs ) I said, "you gotta be kidding me!"
And he just rode back on his motorcycle,
went up the jump, and waved at the crowd.
He didn't... he didn't care about the snakes.
People started talking to him, you know, "what...
you know, what can you do next?"
And he started thinking about that kind of stuff.
That's when he come up with the idea
of starting a stunt show.
I told him, I said, "they're gonna eat you up, boy.
You'll never make it."
Tim perior: I was a bartender at Marty's bar
in orange, California, and this fella comes in,
sits at the end of the bar, and we start talking.
Well, he's a motorcycle daredevil,
and he had jumped rattlesnakes,
and he wants to do a big ramp-to-ramp jump.
He said, "people will go wild,"
and he just convinced me.
Somehow I was able to get two pickups,
a tractor, and 40-foot trailer.
The logo on the side was "evel knievel
and his motorcycle daredevils."
Well, the name evel came from his wild years in butte.
He was given that name by the cops.
He was in jail with a guy named "knawful."
And they said, "well,
better lock up the doors pretty good tonight.
We got an awful knawful and evil knievel in here."
Blackenship: He heard that, and he liked that.
Perior: He changed it to e-v-e-l
because he didn't want to sound too evil.
What he did is get a bunch of people working with him.
Good guys like sweet savage and Eddie mulder
and klesh Fargo.
Gunn: So he started thinking up
different stunts to do.
Perior: The flaming boards,
we'd soak 'em in gasoline and light it on fire.
Leeuwen: And he'd hit that first board and just go boom!
And the sparks, the stuff would fly in the air!
And then, boom! Hit the second one!
Sparks would fly! And, boom, hit the third one!
Hit the fourth one, and the fifth one...
Somehow, Bob got this midget called butch Wilhelm,
and talked him into joining the show.
Bob said, "he will do everything I do in miniature."
And he would crash on every single one.
So then it looked like when Bob was going to make his jump,
something terrible is going to happen.
He was such a crazy son of a bitch.
He'd do these stunts, and he never tried 'em before.
One time he had a motorcycle run at him
about 60 Miles an hour, and he jumped up,
but he didn't jump high enough.
Perior: And the motorcycle hit him and flipped him over.
He was sprained from his waist to his ankles.
Man: I think at that point is when he decided
he was just gonna stick to jumping the motorcycles.
Robbie knievel: The equipment my dad jumped on,
compared to what's going on today...
unbelievable.
Leeuwen: The thing weighed 500 pounds.
It'd be like jumping a dump truck over all those cars,
but he'd do it anyway.
I was the speedometer for evel.
I had stand there and watch him and say
you're going fast enough or you're not going fast enough.
I guess you'd call it guesswork.
Perior: Bob jumped further and further with each show.
The only thing is those stands were not full.
Not by any means.
How do you convince people to come to a sport
they had never heard of?
We were $52,000 in debt.
Bob kept spending money we didn't have.
And that's when I decided I had to leave.
Well, of course, then he saw that he didn't need the team.
He went on his own.
Now it would just be him looking for his big break.
- ( Dramatic music plays ) - Announcer: Spanning the globe...
Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport.
Few years, I was singing it in my sleep.
The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
Announcer: And the agony of defeat.
Knoxville: The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat,
and they always showed that skier,
where you never knew... the word was he died.
Tony hawk: The crash, like, that's what you remember from "wide world of sports."
Announcer: The human drama of athletic competition.
I remember, like, the crazy stuff that they would show once and a while.
Skateboarding was on "wide world of sports." I remember that.
Announcer: Abc's "wide world of sports..."
We were in the business of sports theater.
Sports was drama. Sports was a story.
Announcer: The trill of victory.
I loved it.
Like I covered some of the weirdest things myself.
As long brought in an audience. America loved it.
Announcer: The human drama of athletic competition.
Leeuwen: Everybody'd rush home from church
and watch abc "wide world of sports" at 1:00,
and that was the biggest show on TV.
Announcer: This is abc's "wide world of sports."
Knoxville: Evel knows that the motorcycle race
at ascot speedway is featured on "wide world of sports."
So he fast-talks the owner into letting him do his thing.
Before we get back to racing, I'd like to introduce to you
a most unusual young man.
This is evel knievel, and his specialty in sports
is to take a motorcycle up over a ramp
and leap through the air some 90 feet.
That's what he's gonna try to do today over 15 automobiles.
- You're trying 15 today? - Well, the parachute's ready.
Motorcycle's ready and I'm ready.
And I'm not gonna miss today.
Reporter: And he's set to go.
He'll build up speed as quickly as he can.
And here he goes!
He makes it!
A beautiful leap as evel knievel
gets the roar approval from the crowd.
Leeuwen: Here here we are at "wide world of sports."
Biggest race of the year.
Biggest dirt track race of the year.
And I won it. I won the race.
And you think anybody'd remember it? No.
They know knievel.
They remember knievel out of that whole deal, not me.
And I won 100 laps. Road my ass off.
So evel got his foot in the door,
and now he's going to knock it down.
If you was to think of the most outrageous thing you could do,
what would it be?
It'd be jump those fountains at Caesar's palace.
Robbie: I don't know where it came from,
how a guy would go down Caesar's palace strip,
look at the fountains... what was he thinking?
Where did that come from?
Knoxville: So evel wants to do this stunt in Vegas,
but no one knows who the hell he is.
So he switches into hustler mode.
Kelly: This guy called every news outlet,
told them that evel knievel, famed stunt motorcyclist,
was going to jump Caesar's palace
come Saturday morning, be there.
Knoxville: So then he calls Jay Sarno.
The guy who runs caesars,
and each time he would call as a different person,
and each time, he would mispronounce his own name.
Evel knievel: I told him my name was Larson.
I was with sports illustrated.
I said, "you ever heard of 'evel neevel'?"
He said, "who the hell's this 'evel neevel'?"
So I waited two more days and I called him back up,
and I said, "this is Dennis lewin from 'wide world of sports, '
do you know evel knievel?" He says, "'avel navel.
Evel neevel. Evel knievel.' Who is this crazy guy?"
He said, "everybody's calling me up about him.
He said, I think we got a deal with him. I don't know. Call back."
( Laughter )
Knoxville: Like a lot of his stunts,
Caesar's palace was one of those
that he dreamed up and sold
before he even knew it was possible.
And then on the day, he's got the crowds there,
and he doesn't know if he can make it.
He's just got to go for it.
Robin knievel-dick: I talked with him for a while before he jumped,
and he was very unsettled about the jump.
You could tell he was nervous.
He was making runs at the ramp and,
you know, we could hear the motorcycle.
And we could hear the crowd,
and then the doorman...
the doorman got on the phone and told us what went on.
( Woman screams )
Tonning: My God. That was horrible.
I thought he was gonna... I thought he was dead.
I was horrified to watch my friend look like a rag doll.
Linda knievel: I don't think he was unconscious.
But he was hurting.
So off to the hospital we went.
Knoxville: He had a broken wrist,
two broken ankles, crushed his pelvis.
And then somehow,
word gets out that he's in a coma
and might not make it.
He told that story, but he wasn't in a coma.
In fact, I flew down there,
and it hadn't been but like two days
since he'd had the wreck, and he was awake
when I walked in the hospital room.
( Laughs )
He had the press come in there and play it up.
"Oh, I'm about to die. Don't know if I'll make it."
Well, this was knievel. That's what he did.
He played it up right to the end.
Knoxville: Pretty soon, the crash footage was everywhere.
Geraldo Rivera: We saw him jump Caesar's palace.
We saw that fall and his body flopping
and his head hitting, and, you know,
all of the agony of that and the broken bones.
That piece of film was amazing, to see him go over and over
and then roll all the way up to the wall and it...
that's one of the great pieces of footage of all time.
Boy, he was national news all over the place.
( Cheers and applause )
Gunn: He became instantly famous.
This guy somehow had captured what America needed.
He came along at the right time.
There was a certain cynicism throughout the country.
Society was changing.
Man: You had corruption in government.
Well, I'm not a crook.
¶ When I look out my window... ¶
man: The country had been battered by many years of war.
Hamilton: America was coming apart at the seams.
¶ Must be the season of the witch ¶
¶ must be the season of the witch. ¶
Williams: We were a little down on ourselves,
and along comes this kid from butte, Montana,
who showed us who we were and wanted to be again.
¶ He wears red, white, and blue ¶
¶ stars and stripes, too... ¶
earle castine: I guess we were looking for some sort of a hero.
We had superman and Batman and...
but this guy was the real thing.
¶ Evel knievel's for God and country, too... ¶
Sullivan: Most motorcycle people wore black.
That was what evel wanted to change,
and that's where the red, white, and blue leathers came from.
He wore red, white, and blue because he was patriotic.
He loved his country,
but he also saw that that would
give him a boost to his image,
and people were respecting him more.
Wilson: And he came out of those mountains
in his star-spangled suit, with his cane, and he said,
"I am gonna face death."
He opened the door and invited people
to buy a ticket to watch truth.
Rivera: For that disenchanted, disillusioned generation,
where you didn't trust anybody, because even the president lied,
here's a guy, he's gonna risk everything.
Man: He did it! He did it!
Knoxville: You know, there was three TV stations back then,
and when evel was on abc, everyone knew it.
That's what you did that night is watch,
and that's what you talked about
for the next few weeks afterwards.
Wilson: He was so popular that out of
the top-ten-rated "wide world of sports" shows
in the 37 years of the show,
he holds seven of them.
Announcer: Motorcycle daredevil evel knievel!
Hoffman: He was the talk of the world.
He was the greatest reality show before reality shows existed.
Are you ever scared before a stunt?
- Do you have fear? - I am not scared.
When I go off that jump, I will say I have some concern,
but I don't think I've ever been afraid of anything.
If I know something's going to happen,
I try and train myself to where I have complete control
over my mind and my body.
I relax when I hit instead of freezing up and being scared.
Williams: He said to me one time,
"you know what I was really good at...
Was the take off.
You know what I was bad at was the landing."
But he said, "it was the bad landings,
that's what brought the crowds out."
You know, Bobby used to say, "nobody wants to see me die,
but they don't want to miss it if I do."
Announcer: And just to go up that ramp
and take a look at the distance that he's got to, in effect,
hurdle aboard his harley Davidson machine.
Gifford: He knew if he wasn't just perfect when he left that ramp,
something awful was going to happen
between the time he left there and came down way over here.
If he told ya he was gonna do something, he would do it,
I mean, even if he knew it was gonna kill him.
Linda: You know, you were always...
the question of whether or not he might not make it alive.
I would think my dad would die every time he jumped.
It was stressful. It was hard on us.
Pavlovich: If he crashed, you know, and got hurt,
then he'd go out, he's gonna do it again.
And everybody says he's nuts. He got hurt the last time.
Evel knievel: Doctors, especially surgeons,
have been amazed at how I can keep going.
He had... Recuperative powers
that were beyond normal people.
Knievel-dick: They would say,
"you'll have this cast for eight weeks,"
and he would take it off in three.
Man: This may look like just some abstract plumbing,
but this is actually the right hip
and right femur of evel knievel.
Evel knievel: I think I've probably become immune to pain.
I've learned to live with pain for so long that I think, uh,
what would hurt an average person doesn't hurt me so much.
Kelly knievel: When we were growing up
and my dad broke bones, and he was in pain,
he never bitched about it.
He never complained about it.
No, no, I'll be all right. I'm gonna jump some more.
It was just he accepted that that's what he had chosen to do
and it's something he just had to deal with,
and that's the way he dealt with it.
To be something a little extra special,
no matter what I want to do if I like to do it.
To be a champion or to be the best.
Even though I've been hurt so many times,
and live like a lot of people do that live in a...
A gray twilight world...
these kind of people, they don't even know victory
or defeat because they've never tried anything,
and this is something that I feel compelled to do,
and I am going to do it.
Hamilton: I had sort of been brought along the way of a teen idol.
Mm-mmm.
I had enough star power going,
but I kept trying to toughen up my act.
I thought, God, if I could get
a really good Western or I get good action movie...
And I was looking for sort of a modern day Western character.
Who would that be?
I remember seeing the footage from Caesar's palace,
and I thought, yeah, that's the movie.
In my mind there was only one guy that could do this right.
John milius, he'd written "dirty Harry,"
"Jeremiah Johnson,"
and of course later "apocalypse now."
Milius just wrote it as though he was writing it for patton.
It had this sort of mythic sound to it, you know?
And it's got this man who thinks he's a gladiator.
And I was excited to show evel this.
So he tells me to come meet him in Hollywood
at the saharan hotel that was up on sunset.
He's been up all night.
Got another huge wound. Kotex pads all there.
And he's lying there like a posh in a bad motel.
And that's when it all got crazy.
He took a bottle of the wild Turkey,
and I heard the snap of the Turkey,
and he drank half that thing down and he'd sit down.
I said, "well, I wanna tell you that we've got a great script,
and I just brought it to you, and I want you to read it."
He said, "you read it," and I said,
"well, I have read it, and I really love it.
I think it's great."
He said, "no, I want you to read it to me."
And I just I didn't want to read the script.
I mean, it was just crazy,
the idea of me reading the script to him.
But he was dead serious, and I saw this gun.
And he put it right to my head.
And I thought, he means this.
You know, this is really real stuff.
My performance on reading that script
was the best I've ever given,
and I probably should have gotten an academy award.
Ladies and gentlemen, you have no idea
how good it makes me feel to be here today.
It is truly an honor to risk my life before you.
An honor.
Before I jump my motorcycle over these 19 cars...
and I want you to note, there's not a volkswagen
or a Datsun in the row.
( Motor revving )
Ron wichman: Evel was not happy with it, I don't believe,
from what I understand talking to him.
I don't believe he was at all happy
with George Hamilton in that.
Hamilton: I don't think evel appreciated me
climbing into his leathers and getting on his motorcycle,
but what happened is, by osmosis,
when he went to see it in the theater,
when he came out, he was saying these things,
and they were extraordinary words
coming out of his mouth that John had written for him.
They told the Wright brothers to fly was impossible,
and they probably told Neil Armstrong
the walk on the moon was impossible.
They said that Shepard and Glenn would never get around the world,
and they said that Armstrong wouldn't step on the moon.
You know, he was using a writer's words.
And this is the evel he's become.
I'm all alone when I jump those ramps.
There's only two things that keep the rest of 'em from doing it,
and that's fear and the big hole in the middle,
and as long as I can stand alone and be the best
at what I am doing, I'm gonna continue to do it.
Wilson: He created a character named evel knievel,
and then tried to live the part.
He never broke character.
He had the evel knievel persona,
and that's what he presented to the world.
We don't want guys in gray hats.
We want black and white. Evel represented that.
He definitely thought of himself
as the guy in the white hat, the good guy.
If I look like I'm rigging up for a trip into outer space,
you're right.
Nobody should ever ride a motorcycle without a helmet.
I never do.
He was somebody
who was seeking what many of us do in our own way,
and that's recognition,
and if you get into his background,
you can understand that.
He wanted identity. He needed that.
He just wanted to be loved.
( Peter frampton's "show me the way" plays )
¶ I wonder how you're feeling ¶
¶ there's ringing in my ears... ¶
thank you very much.
Believe me, it's a pleasure
to be back here in Portland, Oregon,
and on behalf of my sponsors,
the mack truck company,
the harley Davidson motor company,
and the bucyrus-erie train and steam shovel company in Milwaukee...
Kelly knievel: My dad, he invented the licensing business.
I mean, how many people can you think of
that had their names on products before evel kn...
I mean, there was a few, but he really elevated the art
of the licensing business.
Knoxville: Yeah, he had a deal with everyone...
mack truck, harley Davidson,
but that's not the one I remember.
Announcer: This is evel knievel and his stunt cycle.
He's the only rider to do so many stunts,
mid-air summersaults...
Evel knievel has become a legend in his own lifetime.
Zeke rose: When 'ideal' came out with the evel knievel toy,
the president of 'ideal' called me aside and said,
"this is gonna be a really big item for us."
Boy: It's an evel knievel rally!
For me, there was only one action figure
when I was growing up, and that was evel knievel.
It was as cool as you could possibly get at the time.
It came with a motorcycle you could wind up.
When you wind it up and you stop and it takes off...
you just wind it up, and if you're building the suspense,
you don't know what's gonna happen,
but you know it's gonna blow up, and it's not gonna be pretty,
but you're lucky that this toy's evel knievel,
- 'cause he can take it. - That's awesome.
Wow. Go evel!
Announcer: The evel knievel stunt cycle comes with figure,
winder, gt wheelie stand, and front flip bar.
New from ideal.
Rose: The toy sold out.
Pavlovich: I would say he made more money off of ideal toy
then he did on any of his jumps.
I was with him one time, he showed me two royalty checks,
and both of them at that time
were half a million dollars each.
Both of 'em. Two checks.
I told him, "well, you made it. You're on the pinnacle.
"You said you were gonna be a millionaire.
You are a millionaire."
Wilson: It was an amazing time.
The money was rolling in by the millions.
Kelly knievel: Everywhere he went, he went first-class.
Yeah, my dad liked to spend money.
Robbie knievel: All of a sudden, there's five ferraris,
two lear jets, five other airplanes.
Linda knievel: He'd get a boat, oh, he needed a bigger boat
oh, how about a yacht? How about another yacht?
Tracey McCloud: With helicopters on top.
Leeuwen: He's got "evel eye I" painted on the side of it.
Reporter: He's no easy rider.
He's proud of the material things his money can buy...
his Cadillac's, his $140,000 luxury-appointed van.
Wilson: He took me into his office,
opened up a huge safe he had,
and there was a gold-platted, full-sized motorcycle.
But you know what?
You could hardly see it
because it was covered in cash,
like it had been thrown in there like confetti.
Tonning: He built a big, beautiful home
on the 18th green
with this huge iron gate with a great big "e. K."
Right in the middle of it was the actual handle.
You know, for butte, Montana, that was... that was the stuff.
If I'm risking my life for it.
I'm gonna spend every damn dime of it!
Kelly knievel: Yeah, my dad had an affinity for clothes.
He liked to dress with flair.
He'd walk into a store and see a sweater he liked,
and he'd just buy one in 20 colors.
Come on with me and I'll take you on a little tour
of my office and dressing room and show you what you can buy
with a few dollars if you're willing
to jump a motorcycle over 19 cars.
Man: Evel was very flashy.
Walked with a cane with diamonds in his cane,
and his jewelry had diamonds, and he had gold all over.
Robbie knievel: He always loved Elvis.
And they traded the belt buckle and the cape.
My dad was a big fan of liberace for being a showman.
Evel knievel: All the money in the world
can't buy your way into heaven.
It can't buy your way out of hell.
It was made to be spent right here,
and I'm gonna have the best clothes,
best boots, best diamonds, best cars, trucks, motorcycles,
booze, and women on the face of this earth
just as long as I can keep going.
Gene Sullivan: When he came into money and fame and fortune,
it's like the women became
almost an equal part of his...
Thrust from day to day.
Part of it was that women
were extraordinarily attracted to him.
I know because he and I'd go out drinking once in a while,
and, hell, they'd line up.
And he'd pick the prettiest one.
He's unbelievable.
He's got more fire in him. He's unbelievable.
Leeuwen: He'd turn the hat trick half the time,
because I'd see him do three a night for a about week when I was there.
Hang on.
Bobbie knievel: Come on, I mean, back in the '70s,
every woman wanted somebody like that.
I was always mad 'cause he was maybe cheating on my mom.
¶ I'm the other woman... ¶
Linda was aces... aces.
I mean, she was the nicest woman
that he could have ever married.
Tamburina: You know, she stood by him,
and a lot of times, he didn't treat her right.
Hi, good-lookin'. You going swimming again?
Linda bork knievel: He didn't hide anything,
and that's probably where I'd get a little upset with him.
He'd come home with a little lipstick on his collar,
and I'd get a little ticked off.
I'd like to take you out to dinner somewhere
in a real nice quiet little spot,
get you swacked and take you home someplace.
I'd think, I married this guy.
I don't know, I just...
you don't leave that man unless he wants you to.
Let's say I died and landed in heaven.
Bang, I'm there, okay?
Here I'm sitting there in a white robe on a hard marble slab
next to jfk, Martin Luther King, and some pope.
Now, what the hell would evel knievel have to say to any of those three guys?
I couldn't carry on an intelligent conversation
with 'em.
I want to go to my own kind of heaven.
Uh... it's got draft beer that doesn't make you fat.
It's got a lot of beautiful girls like you running around,
and my wife won't get mad if I go out with any of them.
He was okay before he became evel knievel,
and then, you know, it's...
people just can't handle that fame, some of 'em.
He's was small-town guy from a small town in...
really... in the span of seven years,
became one of the most famous people in the world.
I think that he...
he forgot how to be Bob.
And when he became evel,
it's like the world took him away from us.
If you wanna be in this business
and you wanna be the best in the world and you wanna wear
a red, white, and blue number one on your back,
you have to be man enough to handle the consequences.
Announcer: King of the daredevil,
number one, evel knievel!
Knoxville: Evel was on top of the world,
but he was starting to lose his grip a little,
and that thing with the hell's angels didn't help.
Sullivan: Evel was at odds against the hell's angels
and the biker image.
He used to talk about the hell's angels a lot, always putting 'em down.
Evel knievel: They're murderers, thieves, or drug dealers,
I mean, these guys are dogs.
They belong in penitentiaries.
Gunn: Must of got through to 'em.
You know, they got pissed off.
And San Francisco was one of their main areas.
Sullivan: The announcer was the guy
that started the whole thing.
When he introduced knievel, he says,
"if knievel makes this jump tonight,
he's gonna set the hell's angels back 100 years."
Wrong thing to say.
He barely made that jump, came back around,
and I notice a couple of hell's angels
had come out onto the floor.
And this hell's angel grabbed him.
Well, I'm... I'm hoofing it.
The hell's angel threw him down just when I got there,
and I give this guy a body check.
And he folded like... just went out.
Well, then the war started, you know?
Hell's angels come bowling in over there
and the people come out of the stands
and started beating on 'em.
They put two of those hell's angels in the hospital.
Sullivan: After the cow palace incident,
evel got a little bit paranoid.
He said, "do you have a gun?"
I said, "yeah, I got a couple of 'em."
Well, he says, "those hell's angel's, you never know,
they're gonna walk in here with a shotgun," and he says,
"I gotta be ready for 'em."
Knoxville: The man had crashed numerous times,
of course it's gonna add up
mentally and emotionally in your head.
It has to.
Announcer: Watch that right shoulder.
Broken, right there, the right collarbone.
Woman: Are you ever afraid?
If I am, I'm not gonna tell you about it.
- Woman: Why? - I've been concerned.
I'm evel knievel, honey. I'm not supposed to be afraid.
Sullivan: He was constantly being tormented
with the thought of,
you know, you're not gonna make this one.
You're gonna die at this one.
And so he's doing everything he can through alcohol,
through being flamboyant, through, being, you know,
crude or whatever to get these thoughts out of his head,
but they were eating his lunch.
You know, evel, you're shaking a little bit.
Well, if you did what I did, you'd be shaking, too.
I could see it in his eyes sometimes when he'd come back by
to ask me if he was going fast enough,
I could see the fear in his eyes.
I knew he was scared, but he would never...
he would never say no.
You know, he'd go ahead and do it.
The medicine that he was taking, the drugs he was taking
for his pain... plus he was drinking...
he became just schitzo...
I mean, paranoid.
Gunn: He got paranoid about protecting his stuff,
paranoid about who he let in and...
Williams: We'd be talking, and almost as if
he was schizophrenic,
he'd flip and become ugly about things.
I had to stand two guys down who wanted a piece of him,
and they wanted a piece of him
because he was being an...
He was being a jerk.
I'm the guy who just, you know, is trying to keep the peace.
I'm the guy protecting the troublemaker
from the good guys.
You know, and I thought, I can't do this.
Hamilton: It's really interesting when you...
you are a man like evel knievel,
and you've created this myth, and once you're defined,
it's hard to live up to it.
He was always reselling what he had already sold.
How do you get any better than that?
How do you get any bigger?
Williams: Throughout his life,
he was insatiable.
Even when he was the most famous daredevil
that ever lived, he wasn't satisfied.
He had to make another half a million dollars on a jump.
He had to find one more woman prettier than the last.
He couldn't satisfy himself. He had to do something else.
He had a friend that, uh... they were at the bar talking,
and this fella just made a comment,
"what's your next thing?"
I think he said, "the grand canyon?"
Well, of course that started wheels a-turnin'.
Kelly knievel: One of the favorite pictures of my dad
is he is on the rim of the grand canyon
and there's these two navajo chiefs there.
And my dad's pointing
at the other side of the grand canyon,
and they're just looking at him like this man is crazy.
Evel knievel: My dream was to jump the grand canyon.
The secretary of interior told me that I could.
I took his word for it. Then he changed his mind.
So I told him to go get hosed, and I bought my own canyon,
the snake river canyon in the state of Idaho.
And the only way they'll get me out of the air
is to shoot me out with an anti-aircraft gun,
because I am gonna go, believe me.
The jump across the canyon will be approximately a mile.
It's somewhere between 1,000 and 1500 feet to the bottom.
As you can see, Pete, this motorcycle
is unlike any motorcycle you've ever seen in the world.
These rockets put out about 90 pounds of thrust apiece.
Knievel's original concept was take a motorcycle,
put a rocket on it...
and that's impossible.
And so the necessity just required
that he make a rocket vehicle.
Our partner was Bob treaux,
and he was known as the father of steam rocketry.
And that was our answer
for getting evel knievel over the canyon...
basically building a hot-water tank
and uncorking it and let it go.
This machine is powered by steam.
Steam is the most reliable source of power
we have in the world.
And it'll go from zero to 350 Miles an hour
from a dead stop in eight seconds flat.
Reporter: The super stunt,
billed as the death-defying event of the century
will be viewed by almost two million people,
most of them watching on closed-circuit movie screens.
I'd like to say to you what evel knievel says
wherever he goes, whatever he signs...
if he were talking to you right now, he'd say,
"hey, Jim, happy landings."
When there was an event of any magnitude during that period,
I'd probably get the first call to do the promotion.
Remember,
the first time I saw evel knievel,
he showed up on ventura boulevard
doing wheelies on his motorcycle.
That's when I first met him, but I really didn't know him
till we did the snake river canyon jump
when I had control of the publicity and promotion.
For a brief moment in our dull, mundane life,
here is a man who, vicariously, we can live through.
I thought what he was doing was exciting.
So it's never hard to sell something you believed in.
And I believed in it.
We did a 30-day tour, which was my idea,
to do press conferences at, like, literally 90 airports.
How are you?
Reporter: When knievel flies into town each day
in his two lear jets, his pilot, whacha macullum,
and his co-pilot wear crimson crushed-velvet dinner jackets.
You ought to see our socks and underwear.
Every day was a party.
There were close to 2500 press credentials given out.
It was bigger than any Ali fight,
and I did them all.
Bigger, bigger than a presidential entourage.
Don e. Branker was in charge of all the logistics.
Don e. Branker: I was a concert promoter.
I did acts like the stones, the doors, the who,
and then evel comes along with a pay-per-view
closed-circuit...
you know, and this was the biggest event of its kind
in the history of entertainment.
The unknowns were magnificent.
This Sunday a daredevil hustler named evel knievel
will try to cross a canyon in Idaho
riding a rocket.
If he makes it, he'll be many times a millionaire.
If he doesn't, he'll be dead.
( Laughs )
Rivera: He was a hero of mine in many ways.
I was a little crazy. He was a whole lot crazy.
And you just had to dig his courage.
It just didn't seem to me that courage would be enough.
( Chuckles ) I'm tellin' ya,
that looks a lot further than I thought a mile would look.
It was the kind of stunt where you would actually see,
probably, a guy kill himself.
It was so audacious. It was so daring.
It was so almost impossible in many ways
but for his confidence.
What about the g-forces?
I mean, when you start something that's gonna be going
350 Miles an hour, aren't you gonna be knocked out almost?
Yes, I'll wake up,
see the other side of the ground way over there,
wherever the hell I'm at, and I'll pull a rip cord
and open a parachute behind that sky cycle.
Are you saying that you're gonna be unconscious when you're up in the air?
To 2,000 feet, I probably will be, yes.
So that means you have to regain your consciousness.
That's right, but I can do that. I'll do it.
Doug malewicki: Evel had no training.
He had no training for pulling gs
like a centrifuge or even in an airplane,
zero parachute experience.
Sprow: He had a dead stick kind of thing
where it was spring-loaded, and if he passed out
and let go of the handle, the parachute would come out.
Go!
Rivera: There were actually three of the steam-powered
sky cycles built. The original,
called the x1, was tested without a pilot
about three weeks ago.
It ended up at the bottom of the canyon.
Evel knievel: That was a test shot. We made some mistakes.
If I'd have been in it, I'd have ended up dead,
but I don't think that's gonna happen.
Campoy: What the press did not know
is that the first one was designed to fail.
We purposefully underpowered the rocket
so it wouldn't make it to the other side.
He wanted it as a promotional thing.
He wanted it to crash in the water
and let people see that.
Campoy: Eventually, we did convince evel
to do a real test, but he'd only do it
if it was done in secret so the press
wouldn't get any pictures of it or anything.
We thought it would make it.
But there was a problem with the parachute.
It deployed early...
And it also landed right in the middle of the river.
Saltman: Knievel was there to see that.
I saw it, and I was wondering at that time
what was going through his mind.
I was thinking to myself
that he was really looking at his mortality,
and thinking, you know,
this might not be such a good idea.
However, give him credit, he was going through with it.
Branker: At this point, we're batting zero for two,
and the world is watching us. I mean, I... I felt that.
Man: You'll make it!
You will! You will!
Saltman: He became more and more surly,
screeching orders at everybody that he could,
belittling... he belittled little people.
He was just mean.
Branker: About a week out
is when we started sensing things
not going our way with the press,
'cause the press is up here living now,
an the press started to see the real evel.
Do one thing for me.
I do not ask for your respect, I demand it.
Shelly gathered everybody around evel's trailer and says,
"why don't you just have him stand up so we can see him?"
'Cause there was a big crowd of people there.
And evel heard that and came out, and, uh...
- I said have a smile on your face. - I don't smile at anybody.
All right, get him out. Get him out. Out.
Go on, get out of here.
Watt: That's when he came down the stairs with his cane,
and he grabbed my camera, and he's a pretty strong guy.
And grabbed my camera and started pushing me back
and whacking me and the camera with his cane.
Man: Are you going to apologize to that cameraman
for roughing him up?
I wouldn't apologize,
and if I see the little son of a bitch again,
I'll throw him out of here, how's that?
Saltman: As hard as we tried,
a lot of evel's true temperament came out to the press.
Man: I think you should apologize.
Well, I wanna straighten you out right now.
Number one, I was in the sky cycle all day.
Number two, you are a guest of mine in my press area.
Do you understand that? And so was he.
Number three, when I've been up there all day
and all the blood's come out of my legs and my feet
and gone to my head, and I come down
to want to get some rest and get along with you people,
you don't tell me to come out and stand up and smile!
If I want to come out and try and get along with you,
you should at least allow me to sit down and smile!
So tell him I said to kiss my ass!
Kazikas: There was a point where we were all
kind of sitting around and saying, "the guy's a jerk.
He's just a jerk. He's a bully.
He's a bore. What are we doing here?
The rest of the press can now thank you
because I am going to leave. How's that, boys?
Sayonara.
Man: People started coming in, and it started getting crazy.
Every biker in the United States
that didn't have a job was there.
Branker: You have umpteen different motorcycling groups,
none of which you'd invite to your house for dinner.
They gonna have a good time. Everyone gets loose around here.
High: You could say it was like a Woodstock,
but the evil twin of Woodstock.
It was like not a happy flower children
sitting around in the rain.
Those guys were... I mean, they were really rough.
Tonning: Wackos with tattoos all over their bodies
drinking beer and screwing in public
and all kinds of... yeah, it was... it was bedlam.
( Whistle blows ) Roach clips! Papers!
Hash pipes! Come get them while they're hot!
Rundle: They had a marching band from butte high school
that was there.
It was not a place for a butte high marching band
to be that day, I'd have to say.
Right when we pulled in,
there was a man and woman naked, uh...
you know, having sex right there under a tree.
I saw all the people that were drinking
and smoking pot, and they were pretty wild.
( Band playing "the stars and stripes forever" )
We fired up the band.
It's like the whole place arose.
Oh, they... the crowd went wild, yeah.
Absolutely, they were totally prepared for a celebration.
Lisac: The crowd just started mingling
and just wanted to play our instruments.
They tugged and pulled, and next thing we know
we're separated a good 100 yards away from the rest of the band.
So we were basically fighting for our lives,
as far as I was concerned.
At that point, they just stuffed my tuba
full of everything...
beer bottles, popcorn,
peanuts, rocks.
I pulled a bra out of there.
I never played a note.
We also had with us the drill team,
and the drill team, their name was the purple bees,
and a good friend of mine, they tore her dress right off.
Totally tore her dress off.
I guess we all thought of this
as something different than what it was really gonna be.
John hood: The crowd were given oh, beer,
and when the beer was closed up,
that's when it got kind of rowdy.
Rundle: They actually rolled the beer trucks over...
the semis, over on their side, shot the locks off,
and everybody was walking through the camps
with cases of beer.
Next thing you know, they took the outhouses,
and they took 'em down, and they started
just dumping them over, and they lit them on fire.
The place was absolutely out of control at that point.
Things got as bad as it could get bad without somebody dying.
That's as simple as that... just as bad as it could be.
I could hear out in the darkness,
I can hear the girls being raped.
I can hear fights going on.
You know, I can hear gunshots going off, you know,
but there's nothing I could do.
And finally I reached the point where I said,
"you know what? I'm gonna call the national guard in."
So I called them up, and he says, "don, I'm sorry,
"but our men are split up,
"and I just can't come out there to help you.
You're on your own, son."
And I hung up that phone, and I felt like crying.
Reporter: There were more than 33,000 paid admissions.
As you can see, they needed control.
They were perilously close to the edge of the canyon
some 600 feet straight down.
What I was concerned about is that there was this canyon.
There's this killer canyon in front of you,
and they put up a standard cyclone fence.
I mean, just push it, and it'd fall over.
And I thought to myself,
everybody's gonna rush to that edge of the canyon
to see what happens.
And then you're gonna have people pushing from behind,
and like the lemmings in the sea,
they're gonna go right over the edge.
Campoy: You know, I thought it was pretty ironic
how don e. Solved the security problem.
He went down to where the hell's angels were camped
and hired them to come up
and provide security for us there.
I went there and I explained to them what I'll do.
"Here's what I'll do... I got $1,000 in cash,
"and I want you to guard the fence
and keep the people on that side of the fence."
And the guy said, "are you bullshitting me?"
I said, "am I gonna bullshit with you guys here?"
"Okay, you got a deal, mister."
( Laughs )
( Band playing "the star spangled banner" )
Saltman: On the morning of the jump,
I looked at him and I saw a very pensive,
very reflective, very quiet man.
He didn't look comfortable.
I don't know why he would look comfortable,
climbing into a tin can to fly over a canyon.
Reporter: There is Bob treaux himself,
the chief engineer testing the wind.
Sprow: The 15-mile-an-hour wind was not the right direction.
We recommended to knievel he delay the launch.
Pavlovich: I just said, "you know, Bob, I don't think you ought to do it.
"I think this is crazy.
I think this thing isn't gonna make it."
He says, "I can't back out now. Too much has been said.
They'd call me a coward." He says he's not gonna do that.
"I'm going and that's it."
I've got a team behind me with Mr. treuax
and all of those boys are 100%, and... I think we'll do it.
I wish the wind wasn't blowing so hard,
but I think we'll do it.
Saltman: There was no braggadocio.
There was no bravado.
As the time counted off,
he'd said to his family, "let's pray."
Robbie knievel: Yeah, I remember my dad
brought me in the trailer and that...
Truck... ( Sniffles )
The whole family.
And he hugged me and says, "I love you."
And he didn't know what was gonna happen.
He was like, "God, take care of me."
Linda and the children were crying,
especially the little girl.
Yeah, that was a very sobering moment.
You know, suddenly I realized...
Have I had a hand in getting a man killed?
Reporter: There he goes up the ramp
toward the launch site
and towards the vehicle.
And he's being introduced to the crowd now.
I've never been afraid in my life of dying.
I think that a man was put here on earth to live,
not just to exist.
And today is the proudest day of my life.
I'm living a dream
that they thought could never be done, but it'll be done.
Saltman: And then instead of a roar, a silence...
like an eerie silence fell over the crowd
because this guy truly might be going to his death.
Branker: Evel got out of the crane
and into the sky cycle, and the whole time,
patriotic music is being played,
and at that time,
even I got emotional a bit.
Sprow: Fecundo and I strapped him in,
and got a couple of pictures of him in the cockpit.
Campoy: He looked a lot different than he did
when we started this project.
His hair was gray, and he was really serious.
Saltman: We had a big clock...
10 seconds, nine seconds.
Branker: Eight, seven... you look at the audience,
no one's even breathing.
Five... four...
Announcer: Three, two, one.
Saltman: Immediately, something failed.
It fizzled. It went down like a bullet.
Reporter: The parachute is out. The main chute is out.
There she goes.
Reporter: It's going to crash.
Just missed the rocks!
David, I can't see anything.
Berg: I had my camera.
I'm taking... click click click click.
( Whooshes ) Right into the canyon.
I turn around, and the first fence just goes flat.
Just, shwoop.
Man: It was a stampede, that's exactly what it was.
Branker: I saw bikers pluck people out of the sky.
It was right out of a movie, you know?
Reporter: Robert Craig knievel appears to have landed
in the snake river.
Evel definitely tried to get out, but he couldn't.
Reporter: Even I am very scared.
Pavlovich: I thought he's gone.
They're not gonna get to him in time.
He's gonna drown.
Tonning: There was people running up
looking over the edge, and Linda was scared,
and the boys were scared.
Robbie knievel: I thought my dad was dead.
I was screaming, crying.
Saltman: I got into my helicopter,
got over the canyon, and there from the muddy banks
on the side of the river...
Was evel waving.
And I said this...
thank God that son of a bitch is alive.
Reporter: Evel knievel is standing
in the boat and waving.
He is alive and well.
( Reporters overlapping )
I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened.
Just... I think... I don't know. I just can't say.
I'll have to let Bob and the fellas examine it.
Bob, what happened?
Well, this right here is the cover
to the parachute canister.
It obviously came loose much too soon, right on the pad.
Campoy: What had happened is it went up.
I knew immediately that the chute had been deployed.
Malewicki: It came off
because of a mechanical problem with the design.
You didn't do a damn thing wrong.
The can is wrong on the thing.
It blew up right there on the launch.
- Blew up by accident? - Yeah, it was our fault.
It's not your fault. These things happen.
Yes, we should have run one more test.
Campoy: It was clear to me, or to us,
that it was a mechanical failure,
but there was another story being banded about
back at the press tent that perhaps
evel had released the chute early.
I told people that that's what happened.
When I went to the press tent after the jump,
the press was asking for me to come and make a statement.
I told the press that he... his hand came off of the bar.
I really liked the rocket crew.
They're just a bunch of nice guys.
I just knew that the m.O. Of how he treated people
nothing was ever his fault.
I told people that that's what happened.
And if by chance that took a little bit of the pressure
off of the rocket team, then so be it.
Campoy: So it got out that it was evel's fault.
Reporter: But the nagging question remains...
was this the legitimate attempt of a brave man,
or was it the great rip-off of 1974?
Wilson: Then the press tore him up.
'Cause they think that he, along with me,
had perpetrated a fraud.
Hero or hustler?
Or for Americans, are those the same thing?
Reporter: It was evel knievel against the snake river canyon,
and the canyon was the sentimental favorite.
Evel would have liked his jump
to have been huge front-page news,
but it was overwhelmingly squashed
by the big news of the day,
which was the pardon of Nixon by president Ford.
That was a major transition in the country.
Maybe he had outlived his novelty
because I think people just might of got tired
of listening to it.
And that's when he came back to butte and...
an he was... I don't know if he was depressed or what.
He just, uh...
I thought sure he'd just give up after that,
say, "well, you know, I'm done."
( Roger Miller's "england swings" plays )
¶ England swings like a pendulum do... ¶
gunn: He had never been to england before.
He thought a new crowd, new group.
I can snow them a little more than I can the Americans.
Rose: Well, they hadn't heard the Teddy Roosevelt speech,
be good to your parents, wear a helmet.
¶ Two by two ¶
¶ westminster abbey, the tower, big Ben... ¶
reporter: Evel knievel is alive, well,
and back in action in famed old wembley stadium,
London, england, for a jump that will be made
over 13 London buses.
Wilson: When he arrived in London,
he had only sold 3,000 seats for a 100,000-seat stadium,
and he was in trouble.
There was some press there to meet him.
He looks at the press, and what did he do?
"I'm so glad to be here in england
where we came and won the war for you."
Holy... oh? And they start writing.
He knew his job,
which was to get people in wembley stadium.
We drove around London, just making friends.
How you doing? What's your name?
Stephen.
Reporter: So the yankee pied Piper
collected the young and the old and led them all
to wembley stadium.
80,000 people showed up to watch the man do it.
Gifford: So we walked into the arena of wembley
where the buses were lined up,
and he said, "I can't do that."
I said, "what do you mean you can't do that?"
I said, "pull a few buses out of there.
Come on, it won't hurt a thing to do that."
Now I go over and grab our producer,
I said, "Doug," I said, "evel says he can't do that."
He really didn't think he was gonna make it.
Gifford: So I went over to talk to evel,
and talk him out of it, and he was in a trailer.
We knocked on the door, and he said, "oh, no.
I'll give it a go. I'll give it a go."
It was always, "I'll give it a go."
And he was right. He couldn't make it.
Announcer: Here is evel knievel!
Gifford: You know, evel, one has to wonder after the snake river,
one has to wonder why you continue?
Well, I sometimes think that maybe I should quit,
but you always want to keep going,
and I'm kind of proud of that red, white, and blue number one
I wear on my shoulder, and I want to keep it on there.
I'm glad you're here today.
You know, I've never had an accident when you're around.
- Good luck. - Thanks.
Gifford: He told me earlier that outside of the jump
at Caesar's palace where he was severely injured,
that this will probably be the most difficult jump
he has ever made.
He hurt himself in indio 1967 Caesars Palace.
Here he goes. And he will go.
Wilson: It was almost eerie, though.
The motorcycle was ghostly.
It was tumbling after him, sort of.
Then eventually, it landed on him.
Gifford: He's down and he is hurt.
Oh, my God.
( Motorcycle revs )
The man you see now leaning over evel is John hood.
That's his chief mechanic.
Hood: I knew, well, he's gotta be hurt on this one.
And I kneeled down and said, "are you okay?"
I got his helmet off and he said, "help me up."
And he wanted the microphone.
I wanna stand up and walk. Now, help me up.
He wants to talk. He's gonna talk.
Ladies and gentlemen...
Of this wonderful country...
I've got to tell you
that you...
Are the last people in the world
who will ever see me jump.
Because I will never ever, ever jump again.
I am through.
Knoxville: That crash was one of the worst
as far as injuries would go.
He broke his hand, back, re-broke his pelvis.
After wembley, I went home to edit.
Phone rang. "Hello, Doug? Evel."
He's calling me from his hospital room in London.
"Doug, you can't use that quote."
"What do you mean, evel?"
"You can't use that quote,
that quote where I said I wouldn't jump again."
And I said, "well, why?" "'Cause I may jump again."
When the jump was over in London,
I said that I'd never jump again.
That was the pain in my body overpowering the brains
that I'm supposed to have in my head.
I will jump again,
but 13 is an unlucky number.
This time I'm gonna jump 14 buses.
Somehow he gets the idea...
I am not gonna go out with a crash.
I'm gonna go back to the United States,
and I'm gonna jump 14 buses.
That's just who he was.
You can't do it and say you're the best in the world
and then fall off and get up and say, I quit.
Not if you're an evel knievel you can't.
Reporter: The king's island family entertainment center,
located just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio,
is jam-packed with people who have come to watch
evel knievel out of retirement,
and here he comes right now, Robert Craig knievel, evel.
Knoxville: A lot was riding on this jump.
Uh, it was a different evel.
I mean, he actually did practice jumps.
I'm gonna go, Frank.
There's no wind gonna stop me, not even a hurricane.
Wilson: It was a very gutsy jump.
The doctors told him just don't ever do that again.
You know, one little slip, wrong thing,
and he'd probably have been paralyzed.
Reporter: Everything is go.
And the total concentration now is getting that bike
off the approach ramp and on to the landing ramp.
And he's not hesitating. He'll go.
( Cheers and applause )
Boy, busted the motorcycle right in half, Frank.
Boy, it did come apart, didn't it?
- Boy, did I hit hard. - Yeah, I know.
Thank you.
This motorcycle is the finest machine in the world,
as far as I am concerned.
It broke in half, but it held me up,
and all I can say is thanks to number one,
thanks to harley Davidson.
You've been so good to me through the years.
I would like to tell all of you something, though,
that... that as far as I am concerned,
I have jumped far enough.
Today I'm gonna walk away from here with you,
and I feel that's being a professional.
That's what I'm gonna do.
Knoxville: King's island was the longest jump of his career.
It was the biggest television audience he ever had,
and it was the highest-rated episode
of "wide world of sports" ever.
He did some small jumps after that,
but he never went that big again.
King's island was...
The gunfighter putting away his pistols.
If you were on a bike, you'd do stupid shit,
but you would do stupid shit in the name of evel knievel.
Hoffman: I thought that's why you had a bike.
I didn't know you just rode bikes around. I thought the whole purpose
of bikes were to hit things and fly off of 'em.
Seth enslow: We'd line up the neighbor kids
and see who could jump more neighbors
without landing on 'em and things like that,
but we just dreamed of having a motor between our legs.
I loved just going down steps,
and I crashed all the time.
You're like, yeah, I'm gonna be just like evel knievel
only not as good.
There's no way that a youngster
is not going to not want to try to do what his hero does.
I don't think there's anything wrong with a kid
wanting to be an evel knievel
any more than he'd wanna be an o.J. Simpson or Frank gifford
or be any kind of a professional athlete.
- Reporter: Do you view him as a hero? - Yeah.
- Do you really? - Yeah.
He's one of the greatest heroes.
Robbie knievel: He was a hero to so many kids,
but his own son was his biggest fan.
Reporter: This is Robbie. Look at this little guy go.
Wouldn't you know it would be the young one who would steal it.
He's the one that's got to have the longest wheelie.
Robbie knievel: He totally saw me and him,
and it was like, "I'm gonna be you, dad."
And the legend continues.
I'm gonna jump the fountains at Caesar's palace
before I end my career.
( Cheers and applause )
That was for you, dad.
Knoxville: Yeah, Robbie broke all of his dad's records.
I mean, hell, he could jump fourteen buses with no hands.
But Robbie was jumping on lighter,
more powerful bikes that were designed for jumping.
Leeuwen: He could jump farther and longer than evel
and all that stuff, but it didn't matter.
Robbie couldn't tell a story.
You know, he was not a showman.
Knievel is the ultimate showman.
A guy could sing
longer and louder than Elvis Presley,
but who gave a damn?
He was Elvis Presley. My dad was evel knievel.
( Laughter )
( Applause )
Williams: Even when Bobbie wasn't jumping anymore
he still wanted to be in the spotlight,
and he had to find other things to do
to get himself attention.
Yeah, one of his projects was Hollywood.
- ¶ Viva ¶ - ¶ Viva ¶
¶ viva knievel ¶
Hamilton: In the end, there was one guy
meant to be evel knievel, and that was evel.
Evel had a movie-star quality about him.
There's no doubt about it. Uh, not when he tried to act.
Look at you, you're trying to destroy yourself.
If you don't believe me, here's the proof.
I'm not gonna let you commit suicide around me.
He performed for the audience,
but when it came to the acting part,
I guess there's a difference.
- That was too far! - Stop it!
- All right... - Stop it!
- Any way you want it, man! - Stop it, stop it!
Hood: Once it came out,
it was a movie that wasn't really well-received.
¶ Viva ¶
I guess the exciting part's is the jump, huh?
You know, we've got the wallendas on the highwire,
and the mentalist on the edge of the canyon on a motorcycle...
Saltman: When I knew I was gonna take on
the snake river canyon event,
I decided something very important...
that I would write a book,
a legacy, that people could read
about the evel knievel promotion of the snake river canyon.
And knievel, he was my 50/50 partner, and he says,
"don't forget, just tell the truth."
So with permission,
I carried an audio-cassette recorder
during the evel knievel tour.
If you listen to the tape, you can form your own opinion.
And so when I wrote my book, I kept out a lot of things,
stuff I would never write about,
'cause remember, when the book was coming out,
I was still protecting his image.
Evel's attorney, he checked everything,
told me that it had evel's approval in writing,
and then the book was published.
Little: I was at evel's compound one day,
and he throws me this book,
and he says, "here, keep this.
It'll be worth some money someday."
I open it up, here's all his footnotes in there.
The first part of the book... "x-rated evel."
He writes in there, "constitutes adultery."
So right from the get-go, you could tell he was mad.
It just starts, and you can tell by the...
the farther it gets in the book, the madder he got.
"This is a lie and not accurate."
( Laughs )
"Lies, lies, lies."
I read the book, and you know what?
I said, yeah, what's the problem?
He could of said a lot more worse stuff. ( Laughs )
I read the book a couple times.
I didn't see anything in it bad. Nothing.
It was very factual. Very, very, very factual.
I think that Shelly, that wrote it,
was, uh, accurate.
And...
It made him really mad.
Saltman: I was on the 20th century fox lot,
when all of a sudden, I saw evel,
with a big smile coming at me, loping along.
And I was actually glad to see him.
The book was out, and I was like,
maybe I could even talk him into doing some promotion with me.
I said, "hey, evel," and all of a sudden,
my hands, they were held behind my back.
They tell me it was two men. I didn't know them.
It may have been one. It may have been two.
And he, uh... he came at me
with a bat,
an aluminum baseball bat,
he said, "I'm gonna kill you, you son of a bitch."
I did everything I could to defend myself.
And I remember putting my hand up,
I said, "what're you doin'? What're you doin'?"
I was fighting for my life.
And he was wailing on me, and then I passed out.
Reporter: Knievel came to court
accompanied by his wife Linda and his attorney.
The 38-year old daredevil faces charges of felony assault
in the baseball bat attack
on television executive Sheldon saltman.
Tonning: Knievel could've gotten away with it.
He could've if he would've
just stopped being knievel for 10 minutes.
Reporter: It was a very interesting hour at division 91
of municipal court in which evel knievel
fired his attorney and entered a plea of guilty.
He fires them and says to the judge,
"judge, I did it, and I'd do it again.
Do what you will with me."
You know, this old frontier justice thing.
You know, in butte, Montana,
you settle things out in the street.
You don't settle 'em with lawyers.
And evel always settled it with his fists,
or sometimes a tool helped.
Not with a baseball bat.
That's not butte.
I never knew of anybody in butte that did that.
If I did not think there was a much stronger judge someday
that I will stand before called God
than the judge I stood before in that courtroom
in San Monica, California,
I would have killed that lousy little bastard.
I broke his arms with a baseball bat,
and I think that's just what he deserved.
I'll guarantee you one thing...
he doesn't write anything else about me.
- ( Laughter ) - But I mean...
I think I was a sophomore in high school at the time,
and I was not proud of my dad for doing that... At all.
Stuntman evel knievel got a jail sentence yesterday
for beating his former press agent with a baseball bat.
Reporter: The judge told the 39-year-old
motorcycle daredevil that while as a judge
he found knievel's admission of guilt
as refreshing, at the same time,
rafeedie said, "long ago
we abandoned frontier justice in California."
With that, rafeedie sentenced knievel to six months in jail
and three years probation.
Judge is a good judge and he's a fair judge.
Rundle: Course, when he was in jail,
it was like...
I think in his own way,
he played it as a game.
Knoxville: So he's in jail, but he's on work release.
So he's only in there at night.
And he would have his chauffer
pick him up every morning and take him to the bar.
Reporter: Knievel believes in sharing the wealth.
So this morning he hired a dozen limousines
to transport his fellow work release inmates
to their jobs.
You know, putting him in jail,
he got more press than anything else.
There was no end to the shenanigans that guy would pull.
Reporter: The inmates were amazed,
but the authorities were not so enthusiastic.
Knoxville: Well, the judge got pissed,
and he revoked evel's work release privileges.
Tonning: I was pissed off at him.
He started believing the hype, that he was totally impervious,
and he could get away with anything.
I don't think he thought about the public.
Well, maybe if he did, he thought that,
"that's what they expect of me."
The ideal toy company, which manufactures
the evel knievel toys, says it has already lost
$1.6 million since evel knievel went into the county jail.
We had a meeting at ideal the next day or the day after.
And I said, "you know...
you know, we don't... we don't sell toys of murderers
or gangsters or stuff like that,
and so therefore,
we are going to suspend sales in the United States."
Reporter: On the toy front,
it may not be a merry Christmas for daredevil evel knievel.
The contracts were canceled,
and he lost a lot of money, yeah.
It all... it all started coming apart.
¶ Anymore it doesn't matter ¶
reporter: Knievel says his experience in jail
was a good one,
but that it has set him back financially.
I hated to see him lose everything he worked for
in 10 minutes.
When it was falling apart, it fell apart very quickly.
McCloud: The cars, the boats...
Robbie knievel: The lear jets, ferraris,
everything to go down the drain?
That was hard.
The house that we all loved
got repossessed because my dad didn't pay the property taxes.
Bank came and got it and the IRS sold it.
We loaded up all the furniture,
everything of any value, from the saddles to guns,
and we would just bring so much out at a time,
and we'd have a garage sale.
The arc of the sky cycle is like what happened to his career.
He was at the pinnacle,
and then he destroyed his whole life.
Evel knievel: I just dropped out of sight and played golf.
I just completely withdrew from the public.
When I met him,
he was in a bit of a low point.
I mean, he was kinda just getting by.
Hustling golf... he might make a couple hundred here,
a couple hundred here.
He lived day to day at that time.
He didn't keep the fact that he was married
a secret or anything,
and in two weeks I packed up what I wanted to take with me,
and we went on the road.
Linda knievel: And I just let it go.
I thought, the heck with it, you know?
You know, after 38 years
of somebody telling you what to do...
I didn't like him.
( Chuckles )
I didn't like him.
¶ Nobody wins ¶
you could see that his health was declining,
you know, he was getting worse all the time.
He had a hip replacement, a pelvis reconstruction,
a spinal fusion, a liver transplant,
seven or eight bouts of staph infection.
Evel knievel: I have hepatitis c,
and I got it through blood transfusions,
and I've been told by the doctors five years ago
that I didn't have five years to live.
I'm taking it one day at a time.
Yeah, you really felt sorry for him, I did, really.
I said, "you're really hurting."
¶ If you're gonna be dumb, you've gotta be tough ¶
¶ when you get knocked down, you gotta get back up ¶
¶ I ain't the sharpest rig in the 10 pack ¶
¶ but I know enough to know ¶
¶ if you're gonna be dumb, you've gotta be tough ¶
Knoxville: Then the '90s come around
and motorcycle jumping was just one part
of this whole new huge thing called action sports.
Pastrana: It's amazing how quickly the sports progressed.
This multimillion motorcycle
jumping, skateboard riding, surfing industry
as definitely come a long way
from daredevils to professionals.
In 2006, I was able to land the first double back flip
on a dirt bike.
No one ever thought that that was possible.
The bikes have evolved. The riding has evolved.
They have coaches. They have schools.
They have camps,
but the spirit will never die,
and evel was the one that set our foundation for the future.
The thing about the knievels that's really captivating
and inspiring to all of us is the showmanship side of it.
( Cheers and applause )
I stay awake at night, and I dwell on
how to do what I do in the biggest, most grandest way
and to continue this legacy.
Announcer: Matt's definitely... oh!
Hoffman: The extreme sports or action sports,
whatever they're commercially referred to,
is definitely a result
from the way evel dreamed in the '70s
and how he wanted to push the limits.
( "Jackass" theme song plays )
You can do stunts on television?
( Laughs )
( Bull grunts )
( Crowd groans )
( Crash, laugh )
Evel had to make his jumps.
The stunts I do, I know they're gonna fail.
( Laughs )
Mat Hoffman and I did a tribute to evel.
Hello, I'm Johnny Knoxville,
and I'm about to back flip this bike.
Hoffman: I think we should push the limits,
get some of our friends together
and just set some records and just celebrate evel's life.
And, uh, that's what we did.
Ugh!...!
And I broke my... in that tribute.
- Oh! Oh! - Are you gonna okay?
Oh, yeah, I feel great.
No, really, I tore my urethra.
Thanks a lot, evel.
Yeah, I've definitely been compared to evel knievel.
I think that's because of the fact
that I have had some big crashes.
So I figured I'd see how far I can fly the harley Davidson
in honor of evel knievel.
Knoxville: When Seth enslow did that record-breaking
harley Davidson jump, he dedicated it to evel.
And when Robbie maddison set the new world record
for distance by jumping over an entire football field,
he did it on the 40th anniversary
of evel's Caesar's palace jump.
( Cheers and applause )
Evel knievel was always in the back of my mind,
like,... and it wasn't like we had forgotten about him.
We just didn't really know what he was up to,
and I think that people started asking what he was up to.
Announcer: The one and only o.G.!
Evel knievel!
Hawk: It was great to see a new generation
understand how important he was to us.
Somehow we raised his profile again,
but he deserved that all along.
Krystal knievel: He greatly appreciated that the kids
paid their respects to him, and they did,
and he was amazed by that.
Don't ever forget...
you can fall many times in life,
but you will never be a failure as long as you try to get up.
Kelly knievel: I think my dad liked his role
as a elder statesman at the end of his life.
He thought it was really cool, and where he deserved to be,
deservedly so.
I'm looking forward to seeing what happens
in the next 20 years,
if I am so lucky to live that long.
I had to have a hip replacement, a complete hip replacement.
I had to have a...
you guys, I'm really having problems.
Why don't we... please.
Knoxville: After a lifetime of injuries and surgeries,
the thing that really kicked his ass was lung disease.
Williams: If you'd asked him,
"would you rather have lived this long, Bobby,
and be this sick or
died at the end of the ramp?"
I think he would have chosen the end of the ramp.
Wilson: The last couple of years of his life were hell.
He was having trouble breathing,
and being in that living hell,
he put his life in perspective.
I think he probably thought a lot
about the things he'd done
and thought about how badly he treated some people.
Krystal knievel: He was preparing for the end
on every level.
He righted a lot of wrongs with people
because he felt like that was important.
It became important to him.
Frey: He told me that he had led a life that he was ashamed of
in a lot of ways,
and he was just trying
to talk to the people that he truly...
that truly meant something to him
was the way he put it, and put it right.
McCloud: He said to me, "I was so sick."
He said, "I was just a sick person with women.
It was so wrong,"
and I said, "ah, dad,
it's so good to hear you say that."
Knoxville: He tried to make amends with people at the end,
and that's great, but it's kind of tough
to put the toothpaste back in the tube at that point.
He caused a lot of hurt.
Well, first time I ever heard him say "I'm sorry,"
he was pretty much on his death bed.
Yeah, he just said "I'm sorry."
That was it.
You know...
The most important thing in life, uh,
that really counts is your scorecard with God.
The real Bob knievel, the Bobby knievel,
that's the guy I knew, and that's the guy that I loved.
And that's the guy that was emerging back out of the slime.
( Laughs ) And, uh, I was moved by it.
Blackenship: I talked to him the night before he died.
He said, "you gotta do me a favor,"
and I says, "okay, what?"
And he said, "say a prayer for me once and a while."
And I said, "okay, all right, all right."
And he says, "I'm worse than you think."
I was on the phone with evel,
and he started coughing, and the phone dropped,
and he went unconscious.
( Voice breaks ) So that was it.
But it was hard.
I wasn't ready.
He was ready.
And that's what was important.
You just never thought that evel was gonna die.
Knoxville: You know, he was indestructible,
and then...
It... it just reminded you that he was human.
I didn't lose the daredevil.
I lost this little kid who at one time
I thought was my brother.
That's the indelible knievel to me.
Knoxville: I still think he's a superhero.
And, yeah, I know a more complete story now,
and some of the stuff is really heartbreaking, you know?
But to me,
what he did transcends that.
Most of us don't take chances in our lives.
Most of us weren't willing to lay it on the line,
so to speak, like he was.
What my dad did, nobody's ever gonna do again.
But there is a little evel in all of us.
I guess I'd like to have him remembered as, um...
A man who, when he was down,
got back up.
You know, he never quit.
Saltman: I think, in fairness to him,
they should not remember the evil that evel did.
Instead he should be remembered for the good things he did.
In times of stress,
I believe somebody on a white horse
wearing a white hat will arrive.
That's the American way.
Life's pretty tough. ( Laughs )
Life can be pretty... tough.
And, uh...
You need your heroes, man.
( Peter frampton's "show me the way" plays )
Rundle: He used to always say to me,
he says, "that canyon has not moved one inch,
and I do not see a big long line of daredevils
waiting to jump it."
¶ I wonder how you're feeling ¶
¶ there's ringing in my ears ¶
¶ and no one to relate to 'cept the sea ¶
¶ who can I believe in? ¶
¶ I'm kneeling on the floor ¶
¶ there has to be a force ¶
¶ who do I phone? ¶
¶ the stars are out and shining ¶
¶ but all I really want to know ¶
¶ oh, won't you ¶
¶ show me the way, yeah ¶
¶ I want you ¶
¶ to show me the way, yeah ¶
¶ well, I can see no reason ¶
¶ you're living on your nerves ¶
¶ when someone drops a cup and I submerge ¶
¶ I'm swimming in a circle ¶
¶ I feel I'm going down ¶
¶ there has to be a fool to play my part ¶
¶ someone thought of healing ¶
¶ but all I really want to know ¶
¶ I want you ¶
¶ to show me the way ¶
¶ I want you ¶
¶ to show me the way ¶
¶ I want you ¶
¶ day after day. ¶
( song fades )