Sept. 1971
THE WAY WE WERE The editors at AMA News were impressed with OAS when it debuted; “A picture surreal,” they wrote, “larger and more detailed than life.” On Any Sunday, Bruce Brown Productions’ feature-length film on motorcycling in the United States, finally has entered the theaters. Motorcycle enthusiasts and fans of the American Motorcycle Association national championship circuit have known of its coming for nearly two years. Throughout the 1970 season they watched Brown’s crew shoot miles of film at nearly every major race on the circuit, and now that the picture has arrived, motorcyclists are finding it very hard to comment intelligently.
54
AmericanMotorcyclist.com
On Any Sunday possesses such impact, those who know motorcycling well are apt to find themselves disarmed and speechless, emerging from the theater repeating superlatives such as “great” and “fantastic” in an effort to verbalize their awe. Their reaction is charged by a picture surreal, larger and more detailed than life. They are responding to sights they have never seen before, nor will ever see with the naked eye. Large portions of On Any Sunday are in extreme slow motion, revealing mechanical and physical abuse
that spectators have not seen when it was telescoped in time into the frantic action of mile and half-mile racing. From the end of the straight to the apex of the first turn, motorcycles brutally bottom their shocks dozens of times, and the hard thighs and biceps of the riders shake like flab under the force of each impact. Yet in split-second reality we will never see it happen. And those who have caught fleeting moments of the grace of road racing have never seen it the way Brown sees it. From behind his camera the tightest turn of Laconia is a timeless ballet, with heat waves from the pavement softening the scene and turning the streamlined machines into softly vibrating lighterthan-air machines, field flowers providing the setting on the stage. For the uninitiated, On Any Sunday is an overture, an introduction to all aspects of the growing, exciting sport of motorcycling. Practically no aspect
