Bart Conner won fame at the 1984 Olympics. He has spent decades calling gymnastics on ESPN, and the sport's international Hall of Fame has his name. Yet the strangers who stop him on the street mostly know him from something else. It's a BMX movie from 40 years ago that flopped. Rad fans spot him just about every week.
Dan Scheraga tells the story in Monday's Journal A-hed, from Calgary, Alberta, where the film was shot. Rad opened in 1986 to empty theaters. It never earned back its $3 million budget. Theaters pulled it, and it all but disappeared for 30 years. Leonard Maltin's one-word rating was “BOMB.” Roger Ebert didn't review it at all. A 2013 Guardian study of 10,000 titles on Rotten Tomatoes found no movie with a bigger gap between critics and viewers.
Rocky on bikes
The plot is simple. A big BMX race called Helltrack comes to a small town. A paperboy named Cru Jones races the sport's top rider, played by Conner, and a crooked bike executive. Cru wins. The screenwriter called it Rocky on bikes. Kids loved it. It became a surprise hit on VHS. For many BMX fans, it was the first time they saw certain tricks on screen. It also holds the first bicycle backflip ever filmed. Bike shops carried it. One Phoenix-area fan waited three or four months on his video store's list for the one copy. Then VHS died, the film never came out on DVD, and fans hunted bootlegs. A 2020 Blu-ray crashed the distributor's website more than once.
Now the love shows up in numbers. Earlier this year, Fathom Entertainment put Rad on about 800 screens. Fans brought their bikes and did doughnuts in theater parking lots. A graphic-novel sequel, with Cru coaching his grandson, raised more than $20,000 on Kickstarter against a $5,000 goal. In July a Calgary-area Realtor, Percy Connolly, hosted Rad Ride 40, a two-day tour of the filming sites. About 80 people came. Miles Hawks, a New Jersey lawyer, drove 7,500 miles round trip with his 10-year-old daughter, Kitt. The film, he says, “had a really special place in our hearts.” Connolly's verdict is shorter. “It's one of those guilty pleasures.”
Our read
Our read, Behavioral. Nobody in this story is being foolish with money. A Kickstarter that raised four times its goal and a 7,500-mile road trip are what meaning costs, and people pay it gladly. That's worth noticing for two reasons. First, a budget that leaves no room for the Rad trip gets broken by the Rad trip. Second, the same pull that gets you to Calgary also shows up in a portfolio. The stock you've loved since you were a kid gets held past its merits. Critics and fans can disagree about a movie forever. Markets don't care what you loved.
Here's where it touches your plan. It's the fun money, for the hobby or the trip you'd drive 7,500 miles to take. Check this week that it has its own named line, filled a little each month. Then the trip comes out of that line, not the retirement account or a credit card. And if one stock in your account is there for the memories, grade it on the same numbers as the rest. We're glad to look at both lines with you at your next review. Then go ride.