cameron diaz movies
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 Chapter 8 - Motocross Velocity
In addition to the mano-a-mano and martial-arts fighting in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, the action is accelerated with the use of some of the top motocross racers in the world.
"Early on, McG discussed things that no one has ever seen three girls do in a film," says Diaz. "He said motorcycles and surfing had never been shown in a way that was truly dynamic. So that became part of the movie and he made sure that we did it better than anyone."
Of particular interest to McG was motocross because "when you go into a supercross stadium, you feel like you're walking into a video game come to life," he enthuses. "The things these guys manage to do while they're flying a hundred feet out and forty feet above the ground, separating themselves from their bikes and executing these fantastic maneuvers is so exciting and so 'right in the wheel house' of Charlie's Angels. There aren't many women in the world of mo tocross and I wanted to say, Ôwomen can do that too. So I knew we had to get it into the movie."
When McG introduced her to the sport, Barrymore quickly caught the motocross bug. "He took us to a supercross in Anaheim to see what it was all about. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Of course, one wrong move, and I could be decapitated," Barrymore laughs. "But watching them ride was mesmerizing. McG wanted to take that energy and honor it. Turns out he knew all these amazing, radical, champion motocross athletes and got them to be in the movie."
Motocross is "basically taking danger and bottling it," notes Liu. "In the film you see these competitors on their bikes flying up in the air doing these incredible jumps and leaps. Then they're free-falling, letting go of the bikes with their legs and arms."
The moto c ross scenes we re coordinated by McG and vete ran stunt coordinator/2nd unit director Mic Rodgers. "We were able to get professional riders who knew what they were doing," recalls Rodgers, who also designed the track the riders were zooming around - and over - and under. The riders he used were a combination of those who ride freestyle and those who compete for speed.
"Every jump is serious," explains Rodgers, "because you have to attack it perfectly. Before I designed them, I talked with the guys and roughed out the way we wanted the jumps to be on the track. They went over the jumps and made adjustments. Every single shot was prepared months in advance. It's pretty fail-safe, but we were sweating bullets anyway, because at any given time a bike could quit and you could have a major wreck."
Melding the motocross action and the demands of the film's storyline, was a challenge director of photography Russell Carpenter relished. "It wasn't just a matter of taking several cameras out and shooting a group of riders,"
Carpenter explains. "Every beat of the race had to be choreographed and thought out because there are quite a few visual effects shots tied in as well. And, because you're telling a story, we had to weave the narrative in and out. What made it even more difficult was the fact that everyone's wearing helmets, so it's hard to tell who's who or doing what."
To the novice, the names of the maneuvers can be as exciting as the jumps themselves. Among the more well-known are the Superman, the Cliffhanger, Knack-Knack, Indian Air and Mike Metzger's famed Back-Flip No-Footer, which means that at the apex of his jump, when he's fifty feet in the air and both he and his bike are completely upside down, he throws his feet off the "pegs" (pedals) in a "Flying W," and then lands upright on his motorcycle as it roars on down the track.
In addition to the professional motocross riders who appear in the film's competition, the production employed Richard C. Taylor, a well-known but retired competitor, to help figure out a way to mount a camera on a motorbike.
Says Rodgers, "I don't know of anyone who has put a 35mm camera on a motocross bike and actually jumped it fifty feet in the air across seventy-five -foot gaps during a supercross. It was a weight and safety issue, so we had to boil it down to its nth degree."
"Normally," explains Rodgers, "if your bike quits in the middle of a jump, you can probably get away from it. But with a camera and mount on the front or back, the extra weight would mean you wouldn't get clear of it, no matter what you did."
One of the highlights in the motocross sequence is the 360-degree back flip performed by Mike Metzger. Considered to be the holy grail of freestyle motocross, there are probably only three events at which Metzger would execute this particular flip, so on the day that he performed the stunt, the Coal Bowl was filled with fans who had heard the news and had come out to watch. The atmosphere was more like a carnival than a movie set.
The motocross crowd also visited on two other occasions. The first was when seven-time world champion Jeremy McGrath and current world champion Ricky Carmichael, who was named the 2002 AMA Pro Athlete of the Year, made an appearance in the film. The second was the day popular rock star Pink and her boyfriend, motocross superstar Carey Hart, appeared in a scene with Cameron Diaz.
Among the other recognizable motocross and supercross stars who perform in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle are Ronnie Renner, the 2002 World Freeride Association Step-Up Champion, Nick Wey, a consistent top-ten finisher in supercross known for his "smooth and fluid" riding style; Johnny O'Mara, a champion from the 1980s who recently retired; Trevor Vines, who during the year 2000, performed in front of more than ten million viewers in over sixty different cities; Ryan Hughes, who suffered a serious crash at the end of the 2001 season and is currently planning a return to racing; and Chris Gosselaar, who has been racing motocross since he was nine years old.
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