burbankbiker

I don't want to be totally negative. And, in contrast to the 'headline' of my post, MASH is a very enjoyable 60 minute music video compilation of some sick fixed gear riding... but it wasn't what I expected it to be at all.

Fixed gear riding and bike messenger culture is still very much a mystery to large swaths of the public. In San Francisco, these riders are ignored by public officials who fail to provide adequate bike paths, resented by drivers who feel entitlement to the roads by virtue of their car ownership, imitated by hipster poseurs who spend money on components they don't understand just to get 'the look', and otherwise completely unknown to countless more people around the world.

So with that in mind, when one sets out to make the definitive documentary on the subject... one which is set to tour festivals and introduce the world to fixed gear riding... I would have expected some narrative. But narrative never comes.

You think it's going to in the beginning. You see a messenger and he's talking about how he still has to deal with paper manifests instead of pagers for his schedule. And then with a killer music cue, he's off riding. What follows is an amazingly well edited collage of riding footage.

And what follows that is another amazingly well edited collage of riding footage with another guy.
And what follows that is another amazingly well edited collage of riding footage with another guy.
And what follows that is another amazingly well edited collage of riding footage with another guy.

And so on...

But I couldn't help but realize that if I didn't know what a fixed gear bike was, I wouldn't have any appreciation for what they were doing. They never say something introductory like "hey a fixed gear bike only has one gear and the pedals are hooked up in such a way that you can never stop pedaling... oh and we all ride with no brakes through traffic in one of the hilliest cities in the world." Imagine if you didn't get that... and you were watching those scenes where people are bombing down hills at an insane cadence... you wouldn't understand that they CAN'T STOP moving their legs... you wouldn't get that the skill is their ability to keep up with the bike as much as it is the bike's ability to keep up with them.

One simple declaration of that thesis would earn any non-enthusiast immediate respect and draw them in.

Plus I wanted to know (as a viewer of the film, not as someone who actually knows the answer) WHY fixed gear culture came to be synonymous with messenger culture. In the film, one older messenger mentions that when he started there was one guy on a fixed gear bike in SF. So what happened? How'd it take over?

His mention of this guy is one of about 5 spoken lines in the film. And it begs for explanation. Another one is a guy who shows his teeth and says he crashed. His teeth are all wired and messed up. Again, I'm dying to know more. And related to that, the credits are full of thank-yous that include names followed by (RIP). Are these fixed gear riders that didn't make it?

And I know fixed gear riding is a very macho domain but living in San Francisco I see my fair share of female riders but not a single one made it into the film. Not even in the background riding with some of the guys featured in the film.

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When I sat down to watch MASH, I was very excited. I thought the filmmakers had hit upon a gold-mine. They had set out to capture the story, much like the legendary Dog Town and Z Boys doc which tells of the formation of skate culture. But they actually had an even more amazing chance to document it in the moment... not in the nostalgic 20/20 hindsight style that makes Dogtown a safe bet. By that I mean that now we ALL know that kids skating in pools was a culture-shifting event. To tell that in a retrospective doc is obvious. But to have a chance to document a similar culture in-the-moment as its happening is an incredible chance.

And to be able to turn on thousands or millions of people to this culture is a filmmaker's dream.

But instead, MASH seemed to fall short as a really well done hour-long video of some guys in San Francisco who do bike tricks.

Again it's a really well done video for people who already fully understand the scene and just want to ooh and ahh at cool moves and close calls, but I was surprised that this movie - the definitive fixed gear story - is no story at all.

peabodypride

To be honest I don't think we're ready for a hindsight-like overview of the beginning of skater culture like Dogtown. I know the fixed gear/messenger culture has been around for a few decades but it's never been hot as it is now. We need to wait for the big dogs of this culture to grow up and grow out for a decade or two before they can give good hindsight. The culture needs to be well established and at least universally known on a very basic scale before there can be a Dogtown of fixed gear.

I don't think MASH aimed to be this movie. It's still to young for such a thing.

ahand

i thoroughly enjoyed MASH.

carail

your discription of what you expected sounds alot like Pedal
ever watch that:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0380622/

jdms mvp

i don't think it's supposed to be a story... nor is it really a documentary

hudsong

Good for what it was, but yeah, a good film needs to be done about the history and the people as well.

homEsick

not belittling your review by any means, but i guess i knew what i was getting into when i bought it. after the first time i watched it, i actually skip all the few talking parts in both the main film and the outakes. lol

gehrkead

I agree either Pedal or Red Light Go are both movies that go more into the culture of the fixed gear/messenger world that you seem to be looking for.

Aeroplane

I would be a lot more interested in this post if it weren't 6 months late.

Have you ever seen a skate video? BMX video? Anything like that? Very similar idea with MASH. Complaining about lack of story is just boggling.

bionnaki

mash is just a skate video that has bicycles as its subject instead of skateboards.

skate videos never have narratives nor do they intend to be some sort of academy award winning documentary that opens the public eyes and hearts.

skate video, man. that's all mash is. enjoy the film for what it is and stop over-thinking the media - intro to film 101 ended last semester.

pazzmore

i don't think the video was ever intended to be a doc. it is very much like a modern skate video in that its target audience is the subculture itself. a "those who know-don't tell, those who tell-don't know" type thing..

that being said, my film production classes (high school) watched several segments together and everyone totally enjoyed it for entertainment/production value alone. and when the kids found out there were no brakes and that Gabe was filming a lot of it on a skateboard... the stoke factor went through the roof.

doczein

there aren't even that many bike tricks in mash. just a bunch of riding through traffic.
i bought it when i was at my cousin's in la, and we were all sitting around the tv and i asked if i could pop the dvd in. they sat awkwardly blank-faced and bored to death for about a half-hour until someone built up the confidence to say to me, "...this is just people riding bikes."

Withnil

Interested in watching Pedal after seeing Mash. Anyone have it? All the torrent sites I can find that have it need registration, which is closed.

burbankbiker

Yeah, don't get me wrong. It's an awesome fixed gear version of the old "Bones Brigade" skate videos of the late 80s.

I was just very empathetic to someone watching this film with no idea what it was about. It's like if that movie "Trekies" was reduced to just clips of people in costumes speaking clingon with no explanation that they're fans of Star Trek and this is what they do at conventions, etc. It'd be a GREAT film for trekies to watch and admire the clingon fluency... but probably not worthy of film festival accolades or the interest of a wider audience.

I guess you're right. I was probably expecting a film and instead saw a killer trick reel.

1fluffhead

If MASH had hit the scene when it was first supposed to, before youtube and not months late, it would have had a bigger impact. It still made a huge splash, but not as big as it could have.

burbankbiker

Yeah, I get that. But the hype surrounding Mash... the viral marketing of it, even... is more about it being a documentary film. It goes on festival tours. It has LA Premieres, etc. In general, BMX and Skate videos are released straight to DVD for those subcultures to enjoy.

So when this one was rolled out with a more filmic reputation, I guess I had a more filmic expectation. That's all.

marcusprice

i dont think mash was meant to introduce people to fixed gear riding or explain to them what it is. thats what google is for.

40 dollars is alot to drop...especially if its for something you know nothing about. but it becomes easier when you know youre supporting people like yourself.

deadforkinglast

MASH would have been cooler if it had cut about half the guys in it an used the rest of the time to put the video clips in context. Who are these people? How did they get into this kind of riding and these kinds of bikes? **** like that. It would have been interesting to hear Richie Ditta talk more. He seems to have been around almost from the start of the current SF scene.

jay rott

Yeah the plot was just unbelievable and the character development was weak. Also the cgi was overdone.

toldey

after only viewing the mash trailors, all that comes to my mind atleast is the format of a skate or bmx video. each rider having their own section with a song that matches the riding style, etc but with fixed gear bikes. i guess coming from a bmx background, i don't have much interest to watching people do barspins in wheelies and skids down hills for an hour. however, pedal and red light go are more of what i would like to see coming from this culture, documentary type films, the hardships of being a messenger, etc. just my 2 cents..

tx_what_it_do

the trailer made me think it was gonna be about alot of stuff. the trailer had like an alleycat, and a velodrome, and sprint races along with the mash guys bombing hills. i thought there would be more of everything else but i guess not

still good i mean the production value was good and it wasn't crappy. i wont go as far as saying it sucked but it's def. not for everyone.

even though the mash trailer got me the most interested in fixed gear bikes

Aeroplane

Skate, BMX, skiing, snowboard, etc. movies all have premieres too. The new Collective film "Seasons" just had a premiere in NYC a couple weeks ago. Same type of promotion, same type of production. Same type of film.

Calling it "viral marketing" is wrong. It is a film directed at a small demographic, and it was marketed to that demographic. At no point did anybody think the advertising was for anything other than a movie.

I don't understand why you would think it was a documentary. I mean, the trailer was people riding bikes and a lot of music (basically what the movie was). All the promo stuff was licensed hubs, shirts, etc (atypical promotion stuff for a documentary). ?

andre nickatina

You didn't actually buy MASH, did you? The book that came with the video covers a lot of the rider background stuff, they have interviews for each of the guys on their views and how they came into the scene and stuff. Interesting fun filled side factoid: I think more than half of the guys are vegetarian. But don't complain if you just downloaded the torrent...

themanmachine

I've never seen mash, but I bet it would set my stoke factor at about a 0.4.

tx_what_it_do

macaframa looks pretty neat