Pure Sweet Hell Reviewed in Issue 7 of Cool Eh
(By: MATTHEW NESTEL) :: Masochistic fun: one of the many euphemisms that can be pegged to Cyclocross. What began in the early 1900s as off-season training for European road and mountain bikers has come into its own as a fringe spectacle. Known as ’cross to insiders, the sport’s rules are drawn by the Union Cycliste International, the governing body enforcing all sanctioned cycling sports including The Tour De France. The women’s race takes 45 minutes; for the men it increases to 60. A full, six-hour race day will deliver six diverse contests. At the starting line 40 to 100 starters are usually divided up by skill level. The course, always a blend of pavement and dirt, usually measures a mile or two. There are 16-inch or taller wooden planks that sit vertically throughout the course to push racers to charge through the air at full speed. A racer’s dream ‘cross conditions are: endless sand pits, kneedeep mud bogs and giant, cambered turns around knobby-rooted trees. The object is for the racer to complete the most laps within the set time frame. And if it’s painful to watch, its even more bruising to do. Today, stateside, the sport is snowballing thanks to a solid base of pedaling diehards feeling the good hurt day after day, making a run at the traditionally dominant Europeans.
A couple of Santa Cruz, California-based insiders, Brian Vernon and Willie K. Buillion, collaborated to shoot a documentary feature with dual agendas. The helmers sought to intrigue those not in the know while embracing the already converted. Their threeyear rendering is titled Pure Sweet Hell.
Anybody who has piqued interest in the bicycle film canon has noted the unrivaled output by Jørgen Leth. His cycling films alone (A Sunday in Hell, Stars and Water Carriers, The Impossible Hour) are bread and truffle butter to the mainstay of the cycling community, only available to riders down with local bike merchants, who stash them in secret. Apropos of this cultish following, the directors’ title paid subtle homage to Leth’s timeless, genre-transcending titles and formats. Says Vernon, “The ‘Hell’ was a nod—a subtle one . . . For us, the three Jørgen Leth films are the measuring ground. His films are made with style, so it wasn’t just bike porn.” The two also took handy esoteric cues from classic surf films, churning out an experimental, music-enriched 58 minutes of visual pungent poetry. Think Rimbaud meets William H. Burroughs.
CHERRY POPPING AND LETH’S TUTELAGE
The first showing of the film was in front of the ‘cross elite in Portland, Oregon directly after Nationals. ’Cross avatar, Barry Deforest Wicks, from Corvalis, Oregon, was a little disconcerted when he began watching the rough cut. “I saw the film directly after racing Nationals and it was almost too much to handle,” he says. “I felt like I was back out there in the pain and ecstasy and was not prepared mentally for that. I just wanted to take my pants off and watch some TV.” Still, the preview of the film came off with big success according to ’cross’s body politic. Bullion suggests, “There was nothing out there that’s been made on Cyclocross so people were stoked. People will still come to us and say thank you.” The true test of the film was how the cyclists themselves reacted to their likenesses as captured by the Super 8. “The people who were [at the screening] were all hardcore ’cross racers. They were the people we wanted most to accept the film. And I think their response was very positive,” claims Vernon. “One of the racers came up to me and said: ‘I always try to tell people what I do and it is really difficult. And now I can show them this.’”
Cycling soothsayer and BIKE Magazine Editor Mike Ferrentino, whose favorite bicycle film is Joël Santoni’s 1974 French classic La Course En Tête, recalls the Nationals sneak preview: “It was a small room of diehard ’cross racers, packed to the gills, back-to-back showings. It definitely hit a good chord with the racers.” Bicycle Film Festival founder/director Brendt Barbur remembers the film’s immediacy. “It [Pure Sweet Hell] is taking the sports film in a new direction and exploring the lives around it. The way they portrayed Cyclocross through the shooting, the music, and the editing is beautiful . . . Doors have been opened by them.”
Pulling few punches, the film transports the viewer into the disastrous pits, onto the endless vertical slopes and through the saw-toothed creeks the ’cross racers are forced to maneuver. And the self-taught filmmakers knew what they were looking for and where they needed to be. Vernon admits, “Every event Willie and I filmed we would have been at anyway. We are either racing or part of a team. We weren’t filmmakers trying to find a story. We just brought the cameras with us. We would film but then I would say I want to race. So we would still race.”
FROZEN MUDCICLES, NO NAPKINS
The carnival atmosphere and cannibal intensity the directors faced—not to mention the elements of weather and jittery equipment— churned out a final product that had a matte rather than slick and polished finish. They chose to use both new and vintage stills, juxtaposing past and present epochs. They also incorporated gritty light leakages as transitions that make it seem as if the sun obscures your view of the next frame. “We broke three cameras, I guess because of rain and jostling, or being dropped,” Vernon says. “The one that stuck with us the longest was a Canon XL 814. It’s the low end of fairly nice cameras that you can do production with. I wouldn’t say we did our homework with our equipment. We just used what was available. The Canon came from a girlfriend. My ex-girlfriend’s grandma may still want her camera back. Am I losing points here?”
One of the defining elements of ’cross is the audience and its shenanigans. The film does a meticulous job of evoking the atmosphere behind the virtually invisible course tape separating spectator and athlete. Wicks withholds little when declaring his love for the amped fans. “The thing with Cyclocross is that spectating is almost as fun as racing; if not more so. The beer runs like water poring out of the sky, so there is always tons of great debauchery occurring at any given time.”
EUROPE VS. U.S.
Cycling scribe and competitor Mike Ferrentino describes how the semi-rambunctious American crowd measures up against the untamed European contingent. “Racing in Europe,” he says, “means there is always a chance of getting errantly sideswiped by the beer can of a drunken and wildly gesticulating Belgian fan who’s swayed a little too far over the course tape.” “The Euros welcome us,” suggests Wicks. “I don’t think they really see us as threats yet. The fans love us and have a great time heckling us and calling us ‘Lance’. I don’t think they like that guy very much.” Co-director Bullion acknowledges that domestic ’cross is a kid’s play version of the no holds barred mindset in Holland, Italy and Germany. “I think the Euro scene is different. In the film, one of the riders mentions how he cannot believe how many riders compete in U.S. races. Euro races are more dedicated to elite racers; it’s a professionals-only event, but they have thousands of screaming, drunk fans. We don’t have that spectator base.” But rancorous, unflinching ’cross enthusiasts unafraid to wild out do exist on both continents. Vernon adds, “[In Europe] it would be like going to a football game in the U.S. and the game would play where the tailgaters are set-up. There is almost no barrier between the competitors and the crowd. And the crowd takes the race very personally.” The footage documents this fervor using point of view shots. As we are carried through the course, feeling its physical demands as we watch, we also become aware of the crowd, growling and spontaneously creating a bizarre and sardonic subset on the periphery. Bunny suits, drag queens, beer tents, and war sirens. You have to wonder how the racers keep from losing their cool. Such is the other side of ’cross; that of social endurance. Bullion mentions a recent incident involving a Belgian racer that was constantly being heckled by a fan. He tore through a barricade and attacked the guy. According to Bullion, “His skin wasn’t thick enough.”
SERENITY
Beauty in the film quietly and patiently unfolds. One action scene begins out-of-focus, as swarms of riders come head-on at you in a slow, cloud-like cadence. And as they close in, they come into crystal focus. The most intimate of action is threaded throughout the film thanks to Buillion and Vernon’s choice of perspective and calculated hand-held photography. Each frame captures both war and celebration, and the central character is Earth’s verticals, its gaping pitfalls, its relentless terrain that turns from soupy pig pen to solid tundra in the twitch of a frozen eye. The film’s quiet roar emanates from it’s images, like the grainy shot of a cyclist pacing behind a motorcycle at high speed, or that of a competitor soaked in a muddy, bloody mixture who refuses to stop and finds a smile through his cringe. The human as a well-engineered machine is at its most here. Says Wicks, “Pure motion, emotion, grace . . . it’s the most beautiful cycling there is.”
A couple of Santa Cruz, California-based insiders, Brian Vernon and Willie K. Buillion, collaborated to shoot a documentary feature with dual agendas. The helmers sought to intrigue those not in the know while embracing the already converted. Their threeyear rendering is titled Pure Sweet Hell.
Anybody who has piqued interest in the bicycle film canon has noted the unrivaled output by Jørgen Leth. His cycling films alone (A Sunday in Hell, Stars and Water Carriers, The Impossible Hour) are bread and truffle butter to the mainstay of the cycling community, only available to riders down with local bike merchants, who stash them in secret. Apropos of this cultish following, the directors’ title paid subtle homage to Leth’s timeless, genre-transcending titles and formats. Says Vernon, “The ‘Hell’ was a nod—a subtle one . . . For us, the three Jørgen Leth films are the measuring ground. His films are made with style, so it wasn’t just bike porn.” The two also took handy esoteric cues from classic surf films, churning out an experimental, music-enriched 58 minutes of visual pungent poetry. Think Rimbaud meets William H. Burroughs.
CHERRY POPPING AND LETH’S TUTELAGE
The first showing of the film was in front of the ‘cross elite in Portland, Oregon directly after Nationals. ’Cross avatar, Barry Deforest Wicks, from Corvalis, Oregon, was a little disconcerted when he began watching the rough cut. “I saw the film directly after racing Nationals and it was almost too much to handle,” he says. “I felt like I was back out there in the pain and ecstasy and was not prepared mentally for that. I just wanted to take my pants off and watch some TV.” Still, the preview of the film came off with big success according to ’cross’s body politic. Bullion suggests, “There was nothing out there that’s been made on Cyclocross so people were stoked. People will still come to us and say thank you.” The true test of the film was how the cyclists themselves reacted to their likenesses as captured by the Super 8. “The people who were [at the screening] were all hardcore ’cross racers. They were the people we wanted most to accept the film. And I think their response was very positive,” claims Vernon. “One of the racers came up to me and said: ‘I always try to tell people what I do and it is really difficult. And now I can show them this.’”
Cycling soothsayer and BIKE Magazine Editor Mike Ferrentino, whose favorite bicycle film is Joël Santoni’s 1974 French classic La Course En Tête, recalls the Nationals sneak preview: “It was a small room of diehard ’cross racers, packed to the gills, back-to-back showings. It definitely hit a good chord with the racers.” Bicycle Film Festival founder/director Brendt Barbur remembers the film’s immediacy. “It [Pure Sweet Hell] is taking the sports film in a new direction and exploring the lives around it. The way they portrayed Cyclocross through the shooting, the music, and the editing is beautiful . . . Doors have been opened by them.”
Pulling few punches, the film transports the viewer into the disastrous pits, onto the endless vertical slopes and through the saw-toothed creeks the ’cross racers are forced to maneuver. And the self-taught filmmakers knew what they were looking for and where they needed to be. Vernon admits, “Every event Willie and I filmed we would have been at anyway. We are either racing or part of a team. We weren’t filmmakers trying to find a story. We just brought the cameras with us. We would film but then I would say I want to race. So we would still race.”
FROZEN MUDCICLES, NO NAPKINS
The carnival atmosphere and cannibal intensity the directors faced—not to mention the elements of weather and jittery equipment— churned out a final product that had a matte rather than slick and polished finish. They chose to use both new and vintage stills, juxtaposing past and present epochs. They also incorporated gritty light leakages as transitions that make it seem as if the sun obscures your view of the next frame. “We broke three cameras, I guess because of rain and jostling, or being dropped,” Vernon says. “The one that stuck with us the longest was a Canon XL 814. It’s the low end of fairly nice cameras that you can do production with. I wouldn’t say we did our homework with our equipment. We just used what was available. The Canon came from a girlfriend. My ex-girlfriend’s grandma may still want her camera back. Am I losing points here?”
One of the defining elements of ’cross is the audience and its shenanigans. The film does a meticulous job of evoking the atmosphere behind the virtually invisible course tape separating spectator and athlete. Wicks withholds little when declaring his love for the amped fans. “The thing with Cyclocross is that spectating is almost as fun as racing; if not more so. The beer runs like water poring out of the sky, so there is always tons of great debauchery occurring at any given time.”
EUROPE VS. U.S.
Cycling scribe and competitor Mike Ferrentino describes how the semi-rambunctious American crowd measures up against the untamed European contingent. “Racing in Europe,” he says, “means there is always a chance of getting errantly sideswiped by the beer can of a drunken and wildly gesticulating Belgian fan who’s swayed a little too far over the course tape.” “The Euros welcome us,” suggests Wicks. “I don’t think they really see us as threats yet. The fans love us and have a great time heckling us and calling us ‘Lance’. I don’t think they like that guy very much.” Co-director Bullion acknowledges that domestic ’cross is a kid’s play version of the no holds barred mindset in Holland, Italy and Germany. “I think the Euro scene is different. In the film, one of the riders mentions how he cannot believe how many riders compete in U.S. races. Euro races are more dedicated to elite racers; it’s a professionals-only event, but they have thousands of screaming, drunk fans. We don’t have that spectator base.” But rancorous, unflinching ’cross enthusiasts unafraid to wild out do exist on both continents. Vernon adds, “[In Europe] it would be like going to a football game in the U.S. and the game would play where the tailgaters are set-up. There is almost no barrier between the competitors and the crowd. And the crowd takes the race very personally.” The footage documents this fervor using point of view shots. As we are carried through the course, feeling its physical demands as we watch, we also become aware of the crowd, growling and spontaneously creating a bizarre and sardonic subset on the periphery. Bunny suits, drag queens, beer tents, and war sirens. You have to wonder how the racers keep from losing their cool. Such is the other side of ’cross; that of social endurance. Bullion mentions a recent incident involving a Belgian racer that was constantly being heckled by a fan. He tore through a barricade and attacked the guy. According to Bullion, “His skin wasn’t thick enough.”
SERENITY
Beauty in the film quietly and patiently unfolds. One action scene begins out-of-focus, as swarms of riders come head-on at you in a slow, cloud-like cadence. And as they close in, they come into crystal focus. The most intimate of action is threaded throughout the film thanks to Buillion and Vernon’s choice of perspective and calculated hand-held photography. Each frame captures both war and celebration, and the central character is Earth’s verticals, its gaping pitfalls, its relentless terrain that turns from soupy pig pen to solid tundra in the twitch of a frozen eye. The film’s quiet roar emanates from it’s images, like the grainy shot of a cyclist pacing behind a motorcycle at high speed, or that of a competitor soaked in a muddy, bloody mixture who refuses to stop and finds a smile through his cringe. The human as a well-engineered machine is at its most here. Says Wicks, “Pure motion, emotion, grace . . . it’s the most beautiful cycling there is.”
posted by Ryan Amirault at Monday, February 20, 2006
