Being Evel Page #2

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3:
00 in the morning

and check all the different

establishments.

you'd pay him to be sure

the doors were locked

and everything,

and if you didn't pay him,

you might be robbed

within a month or so.

he broke into my place.

he might have got 40 or $50,

something like that,

but not that--

nothing big.

yeah, he was-- he ran a racket.

no question about it.

the police called me up

and told me

that there was a known

safecracker in town.

now i knew they were talking

about evel.

he was a crook.

a con-man,

i guess you'd call him.

knoxville:

at the age of 19,

he starts a semi-pro hockey team

and convinces

the czechoslovakian

national team

to come to butte

to play them.

( laughs )

and the czechs kill 'em.

like, smoke 'em 22 to 3.

but i don't think evel

was that upset about the score.

pavlovich:

i think he left

in the middle

of the second period,

and the money disappeared.

there was no more money

to pay 'em.

so, you know,

draw your own conclusions.

where did the money go?

( laughs )

williams:
well,

butte likes people

who bounce up against

the edges of the envelope.

they're forgiving

about some criminal activity,

but they don't

particularly like criminals.

tonning:

he had three kids at the time.

he threw all of his

burglar bags in the river

and decided to go straight.

so knievel gets this job

selling insurance

for combined

insurance company,

and it was run by this guy,

w. clement stone,

who wrote a book called

"success through a positive

mental attitude."

i feel healthy.

i feel happy. i feel terrific.

jay tamburina:

i think it really changed

his thinking drastically.

i mean, he was that way

to begin with,

and it just intensified it.

he was a legendary salesman.

when he was selling insurance,

he was selling insurance,

and he was selling

a lot of it.

tamburina:
i remember he went

to the mental hospital

in-- in--

i believe it was deer lodge.

and he wrote 271 policies

in this hospital,

mental hospital.

this was a super record,

nobody had ever written

that many policies

in a week ever.

and he talked to the president

of the company at that time

and said, "i'll break

every record in the company,

"every single one

that exists,

and you make me a vice president

after i do that."

and mr. stawn says, "sorry,

that isn't gonna happen."

well,

knievel didn't like that.

knoxville:

so he picks up his family

and moves

to moses lake, washington,

where he gets a job

selling honda motorcycles.

gunn:
he was making

a good living at it,

but it wasn't

good enough for him.

he says, "i think i need

to do something weird,

"some kind of a stunt

so it'll get people

to come down here

and see the motorcycles."

so he had this crazy idea

about doing this jump.

he says, "i'm gonna jump over

cougars and rattlesnakes"

i said,

"you gotta be kidding me."

gunn:
my part in

that mountain lion jump

was i wore a white coat

like a doctor,

and evel introduced me

as the veterinarian,

which was a crock of bull,

but...

so he brings 'em down

and put the cougars underneath.

and they're scared to death.

they won't come out.

they were like kitty cats.

but the snakes,

holy -- !

we put them

in a big refrigerator carton,

and they were pissed off.

so he goes around the track,

and then he goes up the ramp.

and, well, the minute

he went up in the air

i could see

he wasn't gonna make it.

by god, he was about

three feet short.

his back tire hits

the refrigerator carton.

and the snakes

go flipping into the crowd.

talk about people running

and getting out of there.

-- !

( laughs )

the poor guy from vantage wants

us to help catch his snakes!

( laughs ) i said, "you gotta be

kidding me!"

and he just rode back

on his motorcycle,

went up the jump,

and waved at the crowd.

he didn't-- he didn't care about

the snakes.

people started talking to him,

you know, "what--

you know,

what can you do next?"

and he started thinking about

that kind of stuff.

that's when he come up

with the idea

of starting a stunt show.

i told him, i said,

"they're gonna eat you up, boy.

you'll never make it."

tim perior:

i was a bartender

at marty's bar

in orange, california,

and this fella comes in,

sits at the end of the bar,

and we start talking.

well,

he's a motorcycle daredevil,

and he had

jumped rattlesnakes,

and he wants to do a big

ramp-to-ramp jump.

he said,

"people will go wild,"

and he just convinced me.

somehow i was able

to get two pickups,

a tractor,

and 40-foot trailer.

the logo on the side

was "evel knievel

and his motorcycle

daredevils."

well, the name evel came

from his wild years in butte.

he was given that name

by the cops.

he was in jail

with a guy named "knawful."

and they said, "well,

better lock up the doors

pretty good tonight.

we got an awful knawful

and evil knievel in here."

blackenship:
he heard that,

and he liked that.

perior:

he changed it to e-v-e-l

because he didn't

want to sound too evil.

what he did is get a bunch

of people working with him.

good guys like sweet savage

and eddie mulder

and klesh fargo.

gunn:

so he started thinking up

different stunts to do.

perior:

the flaming boards,

we'd soak 'em in gasoline

and light it on fire.

leeuwen:
and he'd hit that

first board and just go boom!

and the sparks,

the stuff would fly in the air!

and then, boom!

hit the second one!

sparks would fly!

and, boom, hit the third one!

hit the fourth one,

and the fifth one...

somehow, bob got this midget

called butch willhelm,

and talked him

into joining the show.

bob said, "he will do

everything i do in miniature."

and he would crash

on every single one.

so then it looked like when bob

was going to make his jump,

something terrible

is going to happen.

he was such

a crazy son of a b*tch.

he'd do these stunts,

and he never tried 'em before.

one time he had a motorcycle

run at him

about 60 miles an hour,

and he jumped up,

but he didn't jump

high enough.

perior:
and the motorcycle

hit him and flipped him over.

he was sprained

from his waist to his ankles.

man:
i think at that

point is when he decided

he was just gonna stick

to jumping the motorcycles.

robbie knievel:

the equipment my dad jumped on,

compared to what's

going on today--

unbelievable.

leeuwen:

the thing weighed 500 pounds.

it'd be like jumping a dump

truck over all those cars,

but he'd do it anyway.

i was the speedometer

for evel.

i had stand there

and watch him and say

you're going fast enough

or you're not going fast enough.

i guess you'd call it

guesswork.

perior:
bob jumped further

and further with each show.

the only thing is

those stands were not full.

not by any means.

how do you convince people

to come to a sport

they had never heard of?

we were $52,000 in debt.

bob kept spending money

we didn't have.

and that's when i decided

i had to leave.

well, of course, then he saw

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