How A Group Of Misfits PISSED OFF An Entire Sport ( Crusty Demons )

foreign December 26th of 1994 a young aspiring stunt man is driving across United States highway 40 from New York to California he has no plan and no money but that's nothing new because his whole entire life up to this point has been nothing but chaos and uncertainty he's been labeled a misfit Outcast and even a rebel and the only thing that he has left at this point in life is a very big dream meanwhile out in California there are two independent filmmakers and a handful of other Misfit Outcast Rebels who've also lived lives of chaos and uncertainty and the only thing that they have left in this life is the same very big dream and that dream that they're all chasing is they want to ride dirt bikes for a living and little do they know in just a few days time either by luck Destiny or a higher power their lives are going to change in the most unlikely way imaginable and together they will Channel those years of rebellion Anarchy and rage and Deliver Us the most Brash Unapologetic motorcycle film that we have ever seen a film that will inspire an entire generation a film that will create a sport out of thin air a film that will make the unknown stunt man the most famous dirt bike rider on the planet and a film that would turn those Misfits into millionaires this is a story of how two Independent filmmakers by the name of John Freeman and Dana Nicholson along with a mutiny of motorcyclists with a very big dream would create the most influential dirt bike film of all time this is the story of Krusty Demons of Dirt to understand the power of Crusty Demons of Dirt we have to understand the context and time in which it took place and what life and motorcycling culture was like throughout the 1990s it was two strokes loud neon riding gear laced with barbed wire and polka dots frosted tips earrings no fear stickers rockabilly shirts Dickies shorts and parties lots and lots of parties it was all about living it up and the factory superstars of the day like Jeremy McGrath and Jeff Emig were just young 20-something males full of hubris and seven-figure bank accounts they would win races on the weekends collect their trophies catch a plane to Lake Havasu collect other types of trophies party for three days on a speedboat race jet skis against one another and show up at races the following weekend I mean that was life back then and nothing was better than a weekend at Jeremy's but they didn't just party hard they rode hard too when the super across and Motocross off season came around every October through December and the weather got chilly out in the southwest they took the party to the Southern California deserts like Glamis Dumont dunes and Ocotillo Wells where they would get on their dirt bikes do pancake whips over 120 foot natural terrain jumps and see who could one-up the other and Riders referred to this as playwriting now playwriting itself was nothing new I remember the magazine pictures back in the 1980s of Danny Magoo Chandler doing silly stuff on his Mako I mean he was way ahead of his time with style and skill and even Rick Johnson doing pre-knacks on his Yamaha motocrossers always got radical but not much film existed of these excursions back then now one of the reasons is because in those days not everybody had a camera in their hands at all times nor did we have this overwhelming desire to film every single thing that we did all day long plus camera technology wasn't very very good at capturing high-speed action shots also the big factories like Honda Yamaha Kawasaki and Suzuki as well as their sponsors that funded the race efforts were not too Keen with letting their very expensive Riders do very expensive things on their very expensive bikes not to mention the liability nightmare it created for them if every young kid in the world was going to buy a dirt bike and Chuck 135 foot Gap but times change and soon the right people would come along at the right time and create the right platform for this to happen and that would begin with two independent filmmakers John Freeman and Dana Nicholson in 1991 John Freeman shot a snowboarding film that was called creatures of habit that featured a behind the scenes look at the professional snowboarding world and how those athletes lived outside of competition it was filled with death defying stuns crazy skits and why wild parties the film became an instant classic because it gave us the outsider a first-hand look of just how skilled these athletes were and how they were wired differently than the average person it gave us some way to connect with them on a different level and sort of justify their method of Madness looking to build on the success of creatures of habit they realized that the plot of showing us this backstage lifestyle of the extreme athlete is a winning formula as Harry Houdini once said if you ever want to draw a crowd let everyone know that somebody's going to attempt something that in the event of failure would mean sudden death and who epitomizes walking the thin line between life and death more than the motorcycle jumper or Daredevil I mean this goes way back to the days of our obsession with Evil Knievel we watched evil because we knew that every stunt he tried might end in his demise and we wanted to know if he was going to live or die our penchant for being able to experience Danger from a safe location is why we like things like True Crime dramas ghost shows and Daredevils in general so the goal of Krusty was to give the people what they haven't seen before and what they really want they wanted to make a film that had the most insane jumps and stunts as well as embody the Southern California playwriting culture that very few people knew existed you see prior to the release of Krusty the Pinnacle of cinematic achievement within the sport of motorcycle off-roading was the Oscar nominated On Any Sunday that featured Steve McQueen Malcolm Smith mert Lowell and many others while the film itself was great it was done in a diplomatic way and of course it needed to be done that way because that's how the times were it wasn't until Fox Racing released the first Terra Firma in 1994 did we see an edgier side of the motorcycling industry it was packed with cool racing footage natural terrain Sand Dune jumps whips a Doug Henry Montage with some Alice in Chains music and a now very Infamous clip of three Young Unknown innocent kids named Ricky Carmichael James Stewart and Travis Pastrana talking about how much they hated Las Vegas and Las Vegas dirt this backstage intimate look at the motorcycling scene made Terra Firma an instant classic but Terra Firma wasn't wildly over the top and it couldn't be because Fox Racing being the largest motorcycling clothing brand and a frequent sponsor of the racing series had to be image conscious and the goal of Terra Firma was not to produce a video of Mayhem but to promote their brand and their contracted Riders and to Fox's credit they did a good job with that but team Krusty has no image to protect in fact they want to go the opposite direction they are specifically looking to upset the establishment and fill the void that no one else has the balls to fill so in 1994 they start accumulating footage of top professional Riders like Jeremy McGrath Jeff Emig Ryan Hughes and Phil Lawrence jumping these natural terrain jumps and showing off their incredible skills but they knew that those Factory Stars had limitations on what they wanted the public to see Jeremy McGrath and Jeff Emig were the most popular writers at the time and they were making a fortune off their Factory and sponsorship deals so they don't want anything too crazy out there in the public that may cost them their Factory ride and millions and millions of dollars which ultimately happened to Jeff Emig but that's another story but they also knew there were a bunch of privateers and ex-racers out there with a ridiculous amount of skill that don't have any Factory rides to protect and since many of these Riders have devoted their entire lives and money to chasing a dream and the major manufacturers won't even give them the slightest amount of respect and acknowledge that they even exist they just might have a chip on their shoulder not only that they know these guys will do anything imaginable to one-up each other and fight for air time they're riding for food and that's a whole different ball game so John Freeman and Dana Nicholson get their Pros their group of Misfits and the aspiring stunt man with his ratty dirt bike fire up their cameras and start filming anything and everything and what they would come up with would change the dirt biking culture for the next 25 years when you first put Crusty Demons of Dirt in your VCR it just comes out swinging like a jacked up Mike Tyson with some Rob Zombie devil man music playing in a bunch of huge jumps just one after the other now up to this point most of us have never seen anybody hit anything this big maybe on a purpose-built ramp at a stunt show but nothing on natural terrain and there's just something unique and special about natural terrain jumps and in between each one of these death-defying jump scenes they're filling in the space with everything a rebellious teenager with an unlimited checking account would desire in life girls bonfires parties dirt bikes homemade sand rails with turbo engines and sandboarding behind three-wheelers it's absolutely nuts and then we're introduced to a whole new slew of riders like Mike Metzger a purple-haired Brian Deegan Chad smajak Brian Manley Joe Albrecht buddy Antonis Mike Healy Rich Taylor Jeff matasevich Denny Stevens and Tommy Clowers it's just sensory overload and just when you think that this film cannot get any more radical it does because they've been setting us up this whole time for what the filming industry calls a set piece or a key scene it's a scene that people cannot stop talking about a scene that is either so scary or so action-packed that it becomes the most memorable part of a film and Krusty has the biggest key scene in motorcycling cinematic history Midway through the film we were introduced to an unknown writer by the name of Seth inslow now earlier in the film they teased us with a shot of this very huge Dune jump but the clip was so brief we didn't know what happened it was just enough to spark our curiosity and the film has been so intense up to this point most of us probably forgot about that scene but what we've picked up during this Seth enslow montage is that he doesn't appear to be on the skill level of the professionals but what he lacks in Talent he more than makes up for in balls this guy does not appear to show any signs of discretion or fear and I mean who doesn't like that so they start playing this song Ragdoll I mean you know how it goes right you're gonna die you're gonna rag doll you're gonna die you're going to Ragdoll Ragdoll then when you switch to the scene where he approaches this Sand Dune at blistering speed so when he comes off the Dune he doesn't just go straight off of it or kind of drop down he shoots straight up in the air kind of like he's shot out of a cannon and when you look to the left of the screen you're like where is he going what's on the other side is there a ramp is this a mound what is this and as the film progresses you realize there isn't anything on the left side just some deep Abyss hole I can vividly remember standing up from the couch and trying to look down on the television set to get a glimpse of where this Landing might be so somewhere in all of this you think for sure this guy's gonna die the question is are they going to show it to us or not then when Seth hits the ground he's shrouded in this Atomic sand cloud and you think okay that's it he's dead at best permanently injured but no I mean he's shaking but he's still alive and you say to yourself in that moment no talking way did he survive this so you rewind the tape and you watch it again you rewind it you watch it again and again and again until practically the VCR tape goes bad but then we switch to the next scene where Seth looks like he's gotten into a fight with a gorilla but but it's alert and he's refusing to be taken to the hospital which then leads to one of the most infamous motorcycling lines of all time when Dana Nicholson looks at him and says you got some serious problems you need to work out with yourself the film continues on from there with just more big jumps and more punk rock and it never stops until the end and in a fitting close to the film the final scene is Seth on a bike with his pants pulled down and his naked butt pointed right at our faces while silly and childish it is sort of the perfect kiss my ass establishment exclamation point ending that this film deserved and that right there that is how Crusty Demons of Dirt hooked all of us you see the beauty of Crusty Demons of Dirt is that it captured this outrageous motorcycle riding with this outrageous California lifestyle much like skateboarding Kings and dog town and sea boys did was skateboarding back in the day unfortunately this is probably the last time California was cool Krusty Demons of Dirt became the national anthem hype reel for the aspiring dirt biker it became a part of our routine before every ride we popped in Crusty Demons of Dirt had a tough week at work we came home put in Crusty Demons of Dirt every Saturday you got up you made a bowl of sugary cereal and you watched Crusty Demons of Dirt it just became ingrained into our lives Crusty Demons of Dirt part one is such a huge success they come right back at us with a part two for part two all of our favorites are back and they're going bigger and badder than ever before and yet again Seth fins low backs up his Savages with another key scene set piece when he comes up short on a massive Dune jump and lands on Jeremy McGrath's high dollar practice bike I bet Honda of Japan must have loved seeing that and again Seth enslow walks away from disaster like it's nothing after the release of Krusty one and two John Freeman and Dana Nicholson wanted to up the ante for part three and look for more freestylers to add to the mix and again by either luck Destiny or some other higher power they would stumble into two future Legends of the sport that would become some of the most recognizable athletes on the planet and Spark a WWE type rivalry that is worthy of its own Hollywood script one that would shape the future of freestyle Motocross over over the next two decades and take it into a direction that nobody thought was possible the first legend that Crusty Demons of Dirt 3 would introduce us to would be Carrie Hart who was practically living out of the van at the time he would become one of the most successful freestylers of his era but also the pioneer of what I personally believe is the greatest Trick In freestyle Motocross history the backflip and the second would be a 13 year old racing Prodigy who would arguably become the greatest action sports athlete the world has ever seen Travis Pastrana Krusty 3 would also give birth to the greatest feud in freestyle Motocross history between Travis Pastrana and probably the smartest Action Sports businessman of all time Brian Deegan during the filming of Krusty 3 in 1996 they met a young up-and-coming racing Phenom named Travis Pastrana and unlike the current crop of freestyle motocrossers that were rebellious chip on their shoulder tattooed Daredevils Pastrana was just a 13 year old clean-cut kid and while he looked innocent on the outside he was every bit as radical and rebellious on the inside Pastrana had no problem sending it and it was hard to believe at the time that this kid was so young and was this good on a dirt bike and this Fearless out in the Southern California Canyons there's this Infamous jump that's called the diving board and I believe it's still there it's Infamous because word has it that Jeremy McGrath wanted to hit this jump at one time but backed out because it was too sketchy now only McGrath knows if this is true but that's how Legend has it when the crew gets to the diving board nobody wants to hit this jump they realize McGrath was right this thing is too sketchy but when Travis Pastrana is told that McGrath backed out of doing this jump it's game on for him it's his chance to shine in the eyes of the other freestylers and make a name for himself so against the advice of the entire crew and most of the Riders Pastrana goes for it and he pulls it off now of course Brian Deegan is there and he didn't want to hit the jump at first either but now that he sees Travis Pastrana hitting it he's like there ain't no way I'm gonna let this kid upstage me so he goes for it and he lands it and they keep going back and forth on this diving board until Pastrana eventually breaks his wrist and his day is over somewhere in all of this upstaging one another thing a light bulb goes off in deegan's head he realizes that Travis Pastrana is the real deal and he's also a marketer's dream he's all golly gee whiz and apple pie he also realizes that every superhero needs a villain and Brian Deegan will become everything that Travis Pastrana is not he will be the darkness to his light the evil to his good and thus the idea of the Metal Militia brand is born and what a brilliant idea this became because the Metal Militia has made Brian Deegan a millionaire 50 times over Krusty Demons of Dirt part 3 aerial assault is released to a Hollywood style Premiere that actually ended up in a riot that they featured on the Nightly News and let me tell you something making the Nightly News in the 1990s was a big deal so this added even more Mystique to the free riding culture with the huge success of all three crusty films as we enter the latter part of the 1990s freestyle Motocross is blowing up its writers are now Mega superstars passing the popularity of some professional Racers and every kid in America who has a dirt bike is wearing some sort of Flesh gear Metal Militia LBZ SMP or skin clothes we're all running around dressed like Guy Fieri and because of the wild success of the freestyle Movement we start to see other tapes popping up everywhere Fox produced a Terra Firma part two that would be known for having one of the most iconic opening scenes ever when Jeremy McGrath was freestyling his Honda to the song Face to Face by the band disconnected I mean that scene was straight magical so magical and memorable that Red Bull recently reenacted that scene with Ken roxen and there were other videos like wrath's child steel roots and children of a metal god that became iconic hits following in the footsteps of Crusty Demons of Dirt and even the clothing brands got in on the ACT with SMP releasing disturbing the piece and LBC releasing Chrome and at this point in time FreeStyle Motocross is 4 throttle and and with the fame of crusty and its Riders the idea would come along to package this into a stadium event like Supercross where you could see your favorites on a tour and this would give birth to the freestyle contest Now history is a little jaded here but the first official recording of a freestyle event was in late 1996 at Castaic Lake California that was put on by freestyle Pioneer Shane tritler this contest was featured on the cover of Racer X magazine where they show Larry the wombatling coggle doing a no-footed can can unfortunately little exists in a way of film and photographs of the event but not everybody had a camera in their hand back then but the event that would springboard freestyle Motocross into a legitimate sport would come in 1998 when Austin Hurst and Paul talblieb approached ESPN about putting on a freestyle Motocross contest now ESPN claims that the AMA told them that this was dangerous and they shouldn't do it but he ESPN decides to go for it anyway and place the event on ESPN2 at like three o'clock in the morning now ESPN was probably thinking all we got going on at that time of the day is swamp buggy racing so let's go ahead and see how this freestyling thing works out the contest was filled with all the big tricks at the time can cans Knack next candy bars Supermans and whips and while those tricks today wouldn't get you a round of applause at the Mannington fair in West Virginia those were awesome tricks at the time Mad Mike Jones would win the contest and Clifford the Flying Hawaiian adeptante would come in second but in a surprise to ESPN the event turns out to be a major success and again by either a stroke of luck Destiny or a higher power ESPN thinks that freestyle Motocross is good enough to place in their Premier action sports events the X Games and they decide to feature it in 19 1999 and little did they know that their X Games would change in the most unlikely way imaginable by the time the X Games come around the tricks have gotten bigger and better and all the big names are there Travis Pastrana Mike sink Mars Chris Roark Mad Mike Jones and Brian Deegan all decked out in his slayer-esque Metal Militia Gear with spikes on his chest protector and I mean the crowd's just eating this up now during this event at one point Mad Mike Jones puts this dark cloth over his helmet and hits a jump blindfolded and The Crowd Goes Nuts this is like the wildest thing they have ever seen and it appears for just a very brief moment that that is going to be the showstopper of the X game contest that's what people are going to be talking about until Travis Pastrana says hold my Sobe after wrapping up the gold medal Pastrana comes out for his final run and he looks like he's gained about 40 pounds over the last 30 minutes I guess they they thought he was wearing a big chest protector under his shirt but he's not he's actually wearing a life preserver so Pastrana goes out there warms up the crowd for a second or two points his bike directly up this large berm and shoots off of it straight into the San Francisco Bay now obviously this incident pissed off ESPN and the environmentalist it also caused Pastrana his ten thousand dollar prize money but the crowd loves it and freestyle was hands down the biggest event that year at X Games and if we thought freestyle Motocross was big before X Games after Pastrana's bay jump it's in the stratosphere now and with the wild success and popularity of the X Games we start to see other Premier Action Sports contests like the gravity games and we start to meet the new era of freestylers like Jeremy twitch Steinberg and Nate Adams now the popularity of freestyle Motocross is so huge that individual Riders start producing their their own videos Brian Deegan did a Deegan says Travis Pastrana did Revelation 199 Mike sink Mars did my trip and even Seth inslow did the hard way and they just kept coming and while freestyle Motocross was taking over the world not everyone was so enthusiastic its meteoric rise in popularity was seen as a direct threat to the long-standing Motocross and Supercross racing series and its sponsors and this began with the Japanese factories like Honda Yamaha Kawasaki and Suzuki if they didn't like the videos they certainly don't like live TV coverage of dirt bikers launching their motorcycles into the water that's not something they want to show on any of their sales literature in fact Suzuki NX corporate sponsors were outraged by Travis Pastrana's participation in freestyle they threatened to fire him several times but to Travis's credit he stayed true to the sport and eventually Suzuki let him do it also the American motorcyclist Association didn't want anything to do with freestylers they didn't want them anywhere near Supercross and Motocross because they felt they did not represent motorcyclist dwell and they were nothing more than dirt bikes version of the Hell's Angels they even went as far as finding you if you pulled any freestyle trick over a Supercross or Motocross jump and even if you showed up to the Nationals wearing any Metal Militia flesh Gear S P or LBZ clothing also the motorcycling media at the time was split over freestyle some Publications jumped on board and supported the sport While others refused to cover it at all because they felt it was a gimmick but none of this mattered to the sport of freestyle Motocross because these guys have thrived on controversy and Rebellion their whole life to them you're just adding fuel to an already Raging Fire but all that would change when a freestyler would deliver a trick that would be so ballsy and bold even the haters would have to shut up and that trick would be the backflip and the writer to do it would be Carrie Hart and in my opinion this is hands down the greatest freestyle Motocross trick of all time because of the context at this time in history the backflip was considered to be the impossible trick not just by the naysayers but the writers themselves thought that the backflip was too difficult and dangerous and if a freestyler thinks that a trick was too dangerous that should tell you how sketchy it is but just because something is impossible or sketchy doesn't mean somebody's not going to try it so in 1999 Carrie Hart works out with BMX Superstar TJ Lavin doing backflips on a BMX bike into a foam pit just to see what a backflip felt like and if it was even possible and after doing several hundred back flips Gary Hart is still not sure if it's possible on a dirt bike now back then foam pits weren't widely used for practice so there wasn't really a way for him to safely do this trick I mean you pretty much had to go go dirt to dirt with it back then so when the gravity games rolls around in 2000 the talk is that Kerry Hart is going to attempt this backflip now mind you Carey Hart has only done a flip on a BMX bike he's never attempted this on a dirt bike and since nobody's ever done a backflip before they have no idea how high the ramp should be what pitch it should be or how fast he should be going when he hits the jump so it's not only one of the most dangerous tricks ever it's one of the most poorly thought out as well but in spite of the unknown and his possible demise Carey Hart's gonna go for it anyway and you literally could feel the tension in the stadium and as a spectator I'm both excited and scared for him at the same time I can't imagine what he's going through then he points his bike to the ramp and gradually accelerates towards it and as soon as he hits the lipid speed the crowd collectively holds their breath [Applause] all right [Applause] holy Carrie Hart just did a backflip that is impressive now as bold as this trick was it didn't come without controversy to this day 23 years later many people still debate if Carrie Hart should be given credit as the first person to do a backflip on a dirt bike because he crashed The Landing now some say if he didn't land it it doesn't count but in my opinion oh it counted it counted big time because what it let everyone know in the world that the backflip was possible he did a full rotation on a full-size dirt bike and he should be given credit for doing so not to mention every other freestyler in attendance saw that this trick was no longer a joke it was going to be the future and just two years later Mike Metzger would nail the backflip not once but twice even shifting his motorcycle in mid-air and not only did he do the backflip but he made it look easy and that was it because if you wanted to be relevant and stay in the game now you had to do a backflip at every contest and this drew the line for many of the OG writers as they simply refused to do a backflip and from that moment on there was never a limit to what was possible on a dirt bike and from there the chicks just kept getting bigger gnarlier and more death-defying at the 2003 X Games Brian Deegan and Travis Pastrana would introduce us to the 360 and at the 2006 X game six years after Carey Hart's impossible backflip Travis Pastrana would do the double backflip over the next 16 years freestyle Motocross would continue to push the boundaries of what is possible on a dirt bike over that time we've seen things like front flips body varials and even triple backflips today freestyle Motocross has evolved into a billion dollar Empire that 30 years ago no one could have ever predicted but all of this started from the basic idea of filming dirt bikes hitting big jumps while capturing the culture and lifestyle of those behind the movement and everything that freestyle Motocross is today and everything that it will be come tomorrow is all because of that videotape and all of us who were directly impacted by the freestyle movement oh a debt of gratitude to the Crusty Demons of Dirt series its Founders and its writers myself included you see crusty inspired me to move to California in 1998 and take a swing at freestyle myself now back in the day I had a pretty mean no footer but honestly I was more of a poser than anything else so I did the next best thing and I started the first exclusive freestyle motorcycle store in San Diego California called Sherpa Motorsports I sold nothing but LBZ skin SMP flesh gear and Metal Militia and I can remember that the sport was still so small at that time that you would call up Metal Militia to order hats and t-shirts and Brian Deegan Larry Lincoln or Ronnie Feist would pick up the phone and take the order then BS with you for a while I mean this was a dirt bike fan stream what a time to be alive I'm sure you've heard the phrase lightning in a bottle it's a phrase that we use to define a moment of Brilliance or being able to capture the UN capturable lightning in a bottle moments are special because they are rare everything has to be perfect the right people need to come along at the right time in history with the right idea or it doesn't work and that's why for those of us who were riding dirt bikes back then try to hold on to these memories of Krusty and everyone involved in the freestyle movement as much as we possibly can because we know that we will never see a moment like that again with the inundation of social media our attention spans have become shorter and shorter we are now just zombified Muppets endlessly scrolling through garbage all day long and there seems to be no more nostalgia in anything and that's what was so special about the 1990s it was the last decade before technology and social media took over our lives and Crusty Demons of Dirt was a true lightning in a bottle moment the right people came together at the right time with the right idea and captured what we thought was uncapturable so goons and gals that's going to do it for today's video you've heard my crusty story but the comment section is open because I want to hear about your crusty story I want to hear how Crusty Demons of Dirt in the era of freestyle changed you as a writer or even impacted you as a writer and in closing all I'm going to say is to all of those who ever took part of this movement both large and small we thank you so right on krustees ride on [Music] thank you

Channel: Born A Goon

Views: 339,238

Keywords: crusty demons of dirt, metal mulisha, nitro circus, xgames, freestyle motocross, travis pastrana, brian deegan, pat casey, mike cinqmars, moto xxx

Id: 90jIvtvaUW8

Length: 34min 29sec (2069 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 13 2023