Taking a flying leap in Evel Knievel role

By Judith S. Gillies
Washington Post

Actor George Eads, playing Evel Knievel, used a snap of a rubber band to share the daredevil's pain. Turner Network Television On TV "Evel Knievel" 5 and 7 p.m. tomorrow 6 p.m. Saturday TNT ''Live From New York, Robbie Knievel Jumps the USS Intrepid' 5 p.m. Saturday TNT

"To get to the mental place I had to go in the scenes — he had broken 35 bones and had steel plates in his body — I had to imagine what it would be like to be in constant pain," Eads said.

To prepare for the role, Eads read about Knievel and watched films about the daredevil's life, especially "The Last of the Gladiators," a documentary that Eads said he used as a road map.

"Evel Knievel" debuts at 5 and 7 p.m. tomorrow on cable's TNT. It follows the life of the Montana motorcycle rider who performed stunts across the United States from the mid-1960s through the 1970s.

A repeat showing at 6 p.m. Saturday will follow a 5 p.m. live jump by Evel's son Robbie over aircraft aboard the USS Intrepid.

Although he has ridden motorcycles for most of his life, Eads went to motorcycle school to prepare for the movie, said John Badham, who directed the TNT production, which was filmed in the Toronto area.

"Some amazing Canadian stuntmen did the jumps, although they wouldn't attempt to go as far as Evel," Badham said.

Some of the scenes required two stuntmen on motorcycles, he said. One would take off, followed immediately by another with a camera mounted on his helmet.

"It would scare me to death," Badham said. "I couldn't look at it" while it was happening. Computer technology was used to make the jumps seem longer.

The movie includes footage owned by the Knievels of original jumps, Badham said. "There's one scene where people in the town of Butte are watching an event in a bar, so we put a spectacular (original) jump in there."

Among the events covered in the movie are Knievel's jump of more than 150 feet over the fountains by Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas in 1968, and his attempt to rocket over Snake River Canyon in Idaho in 1974.

The movie covers Robert Craig Knievel's brush with the law as a teenager, and his meeting with his future wife.

"Evel Knievel" also is a period movie, Badham said, that required the re-creation of places that no longer exist.

"We remodeled and refiddled with so much," Badham said. "So this is a tribute to the skill of computers and ... what they are able to create literally out of nothing."

The real Evel Knievel, now 65, retired from jumping stunts about 25 years ago. He was not involved with making the movie.

There were times, Badham said, when Knievel "knew for a fact that he wasn't going to make a jump — but he would do it anyway because he had promised people he would."