Bike lover and film critic Steven Rea has long been the Web’s foremost collector of celebrities on bikes on his Tumbler blog.
Rea has a new book coming out, Hollywood Rides a Bike, which you can pre-order here.
Yup, it's true: Rides a Bike is soon to be a real hold-in-your-hands, stow-in-your-messenger-bag, position-in-an-honored-spot-on-your-coffee-table tome. Hard cover, 160 pages, 125 images, from Angel City Press. Your favorite cycling movie star shots from the Rides a Bike archive, but also scores of new pics that haven't appeared on the Tumblr blog.
This looks like it will be a must-buy for anyone who, (a) loves cycling, (b) loves celebrities, and (c) has a coffee table.
I hit two out of three of those criteria — although, technically, I think the coffee table criterion is optional.
I believe entertainers deserve no more veneration or attention than any other occupation. However, a year ago I wrote and open letter to celebrities, asking them — at least one of them — A-list, B-list, any list — please bike to the Oscars.
And did anyone? No.
(I crossed my fingers hoping that Jesse Eisenberg would be our guy.)
So I thought Rea’s book might offer some prospects for this year.
The book features (among others) photos of Robert Mitchum (dead), Steve McQueen (dead), Lauren Bacall (87 years old and unlikely), Humphrey Bogart (dead), Fred Astaire (dead), Ginger Rogers (dead), Natalie Wood (dead), Jean Harlow (dead), Julie Christie (in a bad movie in 2011), Tom Hanks (also in a 2011 stinker), Paul Newman (dead), Brigitte Bardot (77 and a recluse), Clark Gable (dead), Shirley Temple (83 and retired from both film and politics), W.C. Fields (dead), Kim Novak (retired), Gary Cooper (dead), and Audrey Hepburn (dead).
So I turned today to Rea, to see if he had any idea who, if anyone, might take up the idea. He immediately suggested Ewan McGregor and Zach Galifianakis as possibilities, being that they are both alive and were both in movies in 2011 — and they are cyclists.
Rea offered to help me recruit a celebrity to show up to the Oscars on a bike. (How he would “help” was left rather ambiguous, but we are going to follow up on that). He told me that nominations for the Academy Awards come out tomorrow (1/24/12). I didn’t even know that. (I am very much the wrong person to lead this cause.)
So when the nominees are announced, we will have our prospects.
Stay tuned. Strategy to follow.
If any readers have any ideas or connections, I’d love to hear them.
Thanks to Cyclelicio.us for bringing this to my attention.