Lights, camera... the real action begins when the stunt
man comes in
by Anne Van Beveren
Setting a world speed record on the Bonneville Salt
Flats sounds like a glamorous gig. And what could be better than having
the whole thing documented in a movie that will put your record-setting
ride up on the big screen for everyone to see?
How about having all that fun and getting handed a
paycheck at the end of it?
The movie is called “The World’s Fastest Indian,” and if
you haven't seen it yet, you should. It’s the must-see,
grit-brings-glory tale of Burt Munro, a humble man from New Zealand who
bought a 1920 Indian and, over the course of 47 years of tinkering that
included casting parts in old tin cans and redesigning and refabricating
everything from flywheels to pistons, got it running well enough to set
a world speed record that still stands today, 38 years after the fact.
The movie is about Burt Munro, so it’s a natural that he
is in the spotlight. And it stars Sir Anthony Hopkins, who turns in a
portrayal of Munro’s determination, creativity and eccentric charm that
pitches him fair and square into the spotlight, too.
 But
what about Myke Schwartz (left), one of the guys who made those
spotlights possible? He’s the man who was actually mounted on the flying
Indian as it went through its paces on the salt during the movie. You’ll
have to stay late and wait until the credits have scrolled almost all
the way through to catch his name. It will be listed down the bottom,
under the heading “Stuntmen.” But that’s exactly where Schwartz wants it
to be, because, he says, that’s where the action really is.
“Picture this. You’re going down the salt and you know
you’re going 120, maybe 130. You don’t have a speedometer or a tach, so
it’s impossible to know what you’re really doing,” said Schwartz. “There
is no sense of speed out on the Bonneville Salt Flats. It’s so wide
open. You know you’re going fast but you don’t have the sense of speed
because you’re not going past any fixed objects, so there’s no
relativity. Your hands are so far in front of you that you can’t turn
around to see what’s happening behind you and you can’t take your hand
off the bar. You just have to hope for the best, and hope you’re not
outrunning the vehicles behind that are supposed to be filming you.”
Couple that with the fact that the replica of Burt
Munro’s Indian that was used in the Salt Flat scenes wasn’t exactly the
easiest of bikes to ride—even for a been-there, ridden-that motorcycle
fanatic like Schwartz.
“It was one of the most difficult vehicles—two wheels,
three wheels, four wheels—that I’ve ever ridden,” said Schwartz, shaking
his head at the memory. “You don’t just throw a leg over it. Because of
the fairing, it’s like getting into a sleeping bag. Once you’re in, you
are lying down on top of the engine, which gets very hot. You’ve got one
cylinder in your chest, and one in your abdomen, and there are two hot
straight pipes coming off the cylinders. Your footpegs and gear shift
are back where the rear axle is, and your leg’s on the exhaust. I have a
great scar from that, even though it was wrapped in a lot of welding
blankets.”
Things were also challenging out front.
“The handlebars are true clip-ons that are almost
positioned near the front axle, and, when you’re going down the salt
flats, there’s a little hole in the nose and under the windscreen that
all the salt liked to fly into, so it’s hard to see and you’re getting
blasted by salt.”
 Safety gear? Not really. Sure Schwartz was wearing a
three-layer Nomex suit on the inside, but on the outside, in keeping
with the standards of the time when the original record was set, he rode
in a leather jacket, wearing an open-face Bell helmet.
And there were mental challenges to go along with the
physical. The safety crews that were pacing the bike were aboard period
vehicles from the 1950s and ’60s, so they were far from top-speed equal
with the motorcycle, and Schwartz knew he was at the mercy of his
support crew if anything went awry and he laid the bike down. To add a
little extra thrill, the carb would leak when the bike was on its side.
“They were in the movie but they were really stunt guys
in there with fire extinguishers and extricating gear to get me
out—cutting devices and things like that, because when you’re in that
thing if it falls over onto its side, it’s very, very difficult to get
out,” said Schwartz. “And if you had a fire, you’d be in a lot of
trouble. I did have an emergency fire extinguisher system inside but you
can’t always reach those because of the tightness of the cockpit. It’s
so tight it’s amazing.”
Sound a little less glamorous now? Maybe, but Schwartz
wouldn’t swap the experience for anything. His voice warms when he talks
about his experiences on the movie, and he describes his role in the
making of “World’s Fastest Indian” as one of the highlights of his stunt
career.
And it’s a career that’s been going for some time.
Schwartz discovered motorcycles while he was in
elementary school, thanks to a college student who helped out at his
school during lunch and recess.
“We called them Noon Aids, and this one in particular
rode motorcycles. Dirt bikes,” said Schwartz. “He took me out to Bouquet
Canyon and Indian Dunes, and that’s how I got into it. I had the flavor
as soon as I threw a leg over a bike and it’s been with me ever since.”
Schwartz had a bike of his own by the time he was 10 or
11 and, when his family moved from Van Nuys to Encino when he was in
junior high, he amused himself riding in the hills, taking a shortcut
through a golf course or two to get there.
“My dad was a physician. The motorcycle didn’t go down
big with him,” said Schwartz, with a grin. “I would come home from
school, go straight home to get my motorcycle to go riding in the hills,
and there would be a note on the bike saying don’t even think about
touching this bike until your homework’s done.”
Schwartz continued motorcycling through a stint in the
army, then worked for a while at a motorcycle dealership. But his
burning ambition had always been to work as a stunt man.
“A friend’s dad was one. I knew he got paid to do fun
and exciting things like ride motorcycles and it was just something I
said I wanted to do that. I wanted to be paid to do something I enjoy
doing,” said Schwartz.
But wanting to be a stunt man and getting the break
needed to get into the business are two completely different things.
“A lot of people have a background in gymnastics, which
I didn’t have. A lot of people have relatives in the business, which I
didn’t have either. It’s a hugely difficult business to get into,” said
Schwartz.
Concentrating on what he did have, rather than what he
didn’t, Schwartz put his military skills to work. His days with the 82nd
Airborne Division had turned him into an expert in hurling himself out
of helicopters and airplanes, so he supported himself parachuting into
Fourth of July and Homecoming events until he got drafted into the stunt
crew for a movie called Navy Seals. That was in 1989 and, since then,
his career has been jumping (and fighting and scuba diving, and doing
just about every other type of stunt work) in movies that include Master
and Commander, Spiderman, Jar Head, and Barb Wire, and on TV where he’s
stunt doubled in shows like Ally McBeal, The King of Queens, and Nash
Bridges.
Schwartz’s role in The World’s Fastest Indian came
about—literally—by accident.
“A friend of mine, Pat Statam, was the stunt coordinator
on the movie. I’ve worked with him before and he asked me to come out to
the Bonneville Salt Flats with my camera bike to film the shots on the
salt flats. Another good friend who I’ve worked with before, Erik
Stabenau, had hired on to ride the Indian at Bonneville speed,” Schwartz
explained. “The first week of shooting, one of the first shots was
Anthony Hopkins getting into a high-speed wobble and the motorcycle
crashing. Erik had to do that. Well, instead of just sliding, the bike
ended up catching one of the little wheels you lower with a lever when
you come to a stop. Erik was probably doing about 80 miles and hour and
it flipped over and he broke his shoulder.”
That put Schwartz in the rider’s seat and, for the next
month and a half, he powered the Bonneville Indian up and down the salt,
and, when the script called for it, out onto the highway.
 “There’s a scene in there where Sir Anthony… he’s a
really nice guy; he always says ‘Call me Tony,’… so Tony is supposed to
be testing out the motorcycle on a highway in Utah. He is doing about
100 miles an hour down a two-lane highway and he goes whizzing past a
police officer. Of course, the cop turns around to chase him down the
road,” said Schwartz.
A hundred miles an hour on pavement. No big deal, you
might be thinking.
“It doesn’t sound like much in these days of modern
suspension and brakes, but keep in mind I was riding something with no
suspension, no working rear brake and tires that didn’t have any tread
on them because they were salt flat tires and in the movie Munro shaves
the tires off with a knife he borrowed from his neighbor’s Mom.”
Schwartz laid the bike down on the highway just once. It
was slow-speed accident just before he came to a complete stop.
“If we knew we were going to stop, they would put four
or five people out there to catch it because the wheels didn’t always
come out. It was always stopped with people to catch it and this time
they didn’t, but it wasn’t a big deal,” said Schwartz.
But that wasn’t his only scare on the pavement. He had
one other that involved almost going head-on with a van at a combined
speed of about 160 miles per hour.
 Schwartz’s job was to race wide open down a rural
highway, just in front of a helicopter that was filming him from about
50 feet of the ground.
“I was going about eight to ten miles but it was wide
open so I was probably doing 120, 130 miles per hour. It was the last
day we could get the shot and it was right after it stopped raining.
Remember I have no tread on the tires, too,” said Schwartz.
To complicate matters, Schwartz was supposed to ride on
the left-hand side of the road, which is against traffic in America, and
go over the crest of a small hill.
“We did the highway sequence on a road near the border
of Nevada and Utah, up by Wendover,” said Schwartz. “When we’re filming
like that, we have what we call a lock up. There’s supposed to be a
human standing in the road saying, 'No, you can’t go through there,' but
I wasn’t happy about that hill. So I told the helicopter pilot, seeing
as I can’t see over the top of it, I’m going to veer back into my lane
when I get there.
“I did that and as soon as I did, a van came over the
crest of the hill towards me. He was probably doing 60 or 70. I was
doing over 120. If I hadn’t moved over, I would’ve hit him on the bumper
and gone right under the van. There’s no doubt about it. I would’ve been
killed.”
Even racing supposedly solo on the salt can have its
moments. There are camera vehicles running right alongside you, dangling
camera booms over your head. There are helicopters flying low,
struggling to keep up, and special to-dos like creating a high-speed
wobble that, in the movie leads to a crash. In real life, the idea was
to pull out of the wobble and not sacrifice the bike or the stuntman.
 “We had to establish a shot of the motorcycle going
pretty fast and the front end wobbling,” said Schwartz. “It was very
hard to make that wobble, but I got it to wobble really good to where I
almost lost it a couple of times doing about 70 with a camera truck
right next to me. It was tricky because I had to go under the crane that
was right next to me, and I couldn’t look up. I had to keep my head down
so you can’t see my face.”
Schwartz’s wobble was so realistic even the film crew
was believing it.
“They were so impressed—the director, everyone. They
kept asking, ‘How could you possibly do that? We thought you were going
down. We were sure you were going to crash.’ All I could tell them was I
guess all those years with a flat tire running from the police after I
got caught going through the golf courses as a kid finally paid off.”
Working on “The World's Fastest Indian” was, simply put,
a blast, says Schwartz. The family-like atmosphere created by the small
cast and crew, the great story line, Munro’s son and the fans that
traveled all the way from New Zealand to watch the filming.
While Munro’s record has never been touched, his story
can be. In a theater near you.
© 2006, American Motorcyclist Association
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