Wild Hogs
William H. Macy on Wild Hogs
"I had a bike the first time I moved to L.A.," recalled Macy. "I had a Honda, and I got around on that, but I'd never ridden Harleys, so I went to Harley school. Not really, but we learned how to ride Harleys for about a week, a couple of weeks, before we went there. And I dropped the bike once. Just because we had to pull in and put the kickstand down, and climb off very quickly, and I did all of that except the part about putting the kickstand up. The bike fell. They roll if you don't put the kickstand down."
The road trip in Wild Hogs turns into a successful romantic experience for Macy's character. No real life road trips were ever that cathartic. "I'd been on a road trip right out of college, with a buddy of mine. It was uneventful. We didn't get laid. Although one time, it was about 800 degrees, and we were in Texas, and we had shorts on and nothing else, and somehow, a motorcycle cop pulls up beside me, and says, 'Come on, get on it, get on, go, go, go!' So I speeded up, and it turns out we're in a huge state funeral. There are about forty black Cadillac's in a row, and then a green van called Mr. Greenjeans, with two guys with no clothes in it, and we went right out of town onto the freeway, I waved goodbye to them, and isn't that a good story?"
While his costars discussed the relatability of the film's mid-life crisis themes, Macy provided an alternate understanding of the story. "I don't think the film's about four guys having a mid-life crisis as much as four guys who are trying to regain something. One of the things that I love about it, what I love about it is that these guys adore each other, but they don't know how to say it. They don't know how to express it. And because they face this danger together, it never has to be stated, but it's more palpable at the end of the film. And secondly, I think it's four guys who are tired of being afraid, just afraid all the time, they're afraid of saying the wrong thing, of not being there when they're needed. They're afraid in their jobs, the whole thing, they're just afraid."
And what better way to overcome their fear than riding motorcycles. "One of the things about the whole Harley motorcycle culture is that it's a little bit renegade, and it's a little bit dangerous, and then it gets intensified when they run afoul of this other motorcycle gang, and they stand up for once in their lives. So it's not about the midlife crisis as much as four guys who need to sort of plant their flag."
Wild Hogs is out in theatres now.
For the trailer, clips, poster, movie stills and more movie info, go to the Wild
Hogs Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
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