Let’s Go - American Flyers

By: Mark Thompson, Attorney at Law

Have you seriously not seen the 1985 cycling classic American Flyers? I
first saw it on HBO as a kid and remembered it as a strongly accurate
portrayal of bike racing and training. I was only a little off in that
assessment. I also got really hungry for some french fries. More on that
later.

Now what’s the first thing you notice about the poster? Probably
Costner’s sweet mustache. Yes, it’s Prefontaine quality, but neatly
trimmed to look like our dads in the age when we were growing up,
fighting over which candy bar was the best and how the gas station was
gouging us by raising the price from $0.30 to $0.35 for a Kit Kat. This
was back in the days when baseball cards came with crunchy pink gum
sticks, no foil packaging, and the only place you could find Donruss cards
was in the price guide. By the way, the best candy bar was, and is, a
Caramel Twix, unless you can go back to the late 80’s version of
Hershey’s Bar None, before they changed it and gave it the yellow
wrapper. Then it sucked. So aside from that Caramel Twix is the winner.

What’s one of the next things you notice? I’ll bet it’s the hot girl with the
bandanna and the headphones. She’s a hippie that can’t cut the
vegetarian lifestyle, so she abandons her wandering pals and orders a
Quarter Pounder at McDonald’s. She meets Costner’s little brother, Davy,
at the counter and later that night we get to see her topless by a nice little
creek in a campground.

The opening scene shows the Mississippi River, a paddle boat chuffing
along, and then Davy bursts onto the scene, racing along the river near
the St. Louis Arch. Davy is wearing a cowboy hat. Davy races through
town, has a Mentos moment with a businessman and a rain puddle, then
rides his bike into his apartment building. He gathers the mail, takes the
elevator, checks his messages, drinks some OJ from the carton, all while
riding his bike.

OK, we get it, it’s a biking movie.

All the while, the sweet American Flyers theme song is playing, getting
you ready for some serious bike racing.

Do they make movies anymore where they sing the title of the movie in
the theme song? And if they do, does it sound like Journey?

Then just when you’re really pumped for some 80’s style bike racing, Davy
drops his pants and you see a little gratuitous guy ass on the way to the
shower. It’s like Road House. Oh well.

Don’t worry guys, we’ll get to the campground soon enough.

Davy’s brother, Marcus (Costner) is a doctor in Madison. He drives down
to visit. Yes, he’s a doctor, but for the trip from Madison to St. Louis he
drives his old Specialized team van. I guess Marcus hasn’t earned
enough money as a doctor to afford a nice car.

Davy goes back to Madison with Marcus, and you start to notice
something about these guys. They say “son of a bitch” as much as the
guys that work for the Texas Rangers on that episode of Seinfeld. Marcus
and Davy call each other ’son of a bitch’ so much that you have trouble
remembering their real names. At one point they say something like:

Marcus, “Wait ’til you meet him, he’s a real son of a bitch.”
Davy, “What, oh, you son of a bitch, you son of bitch!”
Marcus, “I told you he was a son of a bitch.”
Davy, “You son of a bitch.”

This happens when Marcus tricks Davy into “working on some sprints”
with his training partner, which turns out to be a vicious dog that chases
Davy down a country road. The “training partner” is a literal son of a bitch,
so everybody gets some extra laughs. The son of a bitch gets Davy’s
shoe, but he somehow manages to complete the ride.

Later smooth Marcus invites pre-nosejob Jennifer Grey (Ferris Bueller’s
sister) over for a night with Davy. It’s a totally solid hook up. My brother

never hooked me up with Jennifer Grey. They have some wine, Jennifer
is nervous, Davy is all set to score. But then he calls Marcus a son of a
bitch and they fight, Jennifer is forced to leave and we do not see her
naked.

Despite their differences, Marcus and Davy decide to enter into the Hell
of the West bicycle race in Colorado. They load up the Specialized van
and head out, with Marcus’ pretty Apache girlfriend driving.

Let’s see, the race is only a few days away, but that’s not too late for some
serious training. Davy and Marcus ride bikes for significant portions of
the way from Madison to Colorado. They work on their “shake and break”
technique and squirt water bottles at each other. Apache girlfriend drives
the van along behind, as the boys shift gears with the funny shifters that
are connected to the lower part of the bike frame. The guys selling bikes
today make a big deal out of the Shimano Sora shifters that can only be
operated when you have your hands on the top side of the drop bar,
meanwhile Marcus and Davy are reaching down to where their water
bottles are with their red Specialized Allez 80’s edition bikes.

Now on the way they pick up the girl with the bandanna. Like a lot of 80’s
flicks, there is some serious product placement. (E.g., Stallone’s Over the
Top). In this case the product is McDonald’s. Yes, to prepare for a
serious multi-day racing event, these guys ride across the Midwest and
chow at McDonald’s. And they don’t just eat there, they take the goods to
go and talk about McDonald’s for some plot development involving
Quarter Pounders. I like the old food, with the Styrofoam containers and
bags with the little brown and yellow arches.

They even try to make a sexy moment out of some ketchup that Davy
spills on the girl’s leg. It’s a long shot, I’ll admit.

So the boys get to the event, and little Davy now has a sweet bike and
jersey just like Marcus. But this is the 80’s, and we need a real villain.
Introduce the Russians. I doubt that the Russians were a biking
superpower in the 80’s, or ever, but that doesn’t stop them from showing
up at the Hell of the West. These guys are typical 80’s Russians, with
hairy beards and inability to speak English. They also have ridiculous
huge white helmets, and their leader has huge arms.

Then Eddie Merckx shows up and starts the race.

Even though the Russians look vicious, the real enemy is some character
loosely based on Eddie Merckx named Muzzin. Everybody thinks he’s a
prick (and he used to bang the Apache girlfriend), but later on we realize
that he’s just pissed due to the 1980’s USA boycott of the Moscow
Olympic games. Muzzin was in the best shape of his life, then for politics,
he could not compete for gold. What a rip off. You’ll only start to hate him
again when he tries to kill Davy by running him off the mountain.

The Russians are largely irrelevant in the race, Muzzin does most of the
trickery.

The three days of racing are awesome, with extras accidentally falling off
the mountain in real life (watch for it), backhand punches, and serious
medical ailments.

When Marcus has to drop out, Davy starts to cry, and actually says how
can this happen to Marcus, “with your mustache and everything.” And
there, just as I was thinking, how can Marcus not win when he has such a
killer ’stache? Oh, and Marcus is a son of a bitch.

Now Davy is poised to take Muzzin on the final day of the event, the
Russians are not close behind, but how will it end? Remember, it’s the
80’s and movies are anything put predictable. Can the son of a bitch
really pull it off? Now go rent it and watch it (again).

But wait until spring, because you’ll want to grab your bike and go ride.

Now maybe somebody can tell me of a great swimming movie so I can
get motivated to hit the pool.

Mark Thompson is a lawyer located in
Iowa City, Iowa, practicing primarily in
Criminal Law / Criminal Defense.