Around this time five years ago, I began receiving enquiries from a movie company about the possibility of hiring my motorbike to “star” in a movie.

Coming across a photo of my bike in the film today, reminded me of this and I decided to find the notes I posted in another place at that time and republish them here.

So here are some excerpts from my forum posts before and after the event:

Mon 27 Dec 2010 – 11:24  : I am about to be without my bike for the whole of January as it is being used to make a film about Nazi soldiers in WWII.  My bike is earning more per month than I am!!!!
Fri 31 Dec 2010 – 08:26  : Graham wrote: Are they going to paint the bike ???

The bike will be covered with a special tough plastic film and then painted Wehrmacht Grey. After the filming is completed the grey-coated plastic will be peeled off to reveal the original colour unharmed underneath. This process has been demonstrated to me by technicians from the company. They will also finish a couple of half-finished projects of mine for which I don’t have the requisite tools and paint them to match my bike:

The bike is being picked up on Monday morning 3rd January.

Sat 25 Jun 2011 – 12:47  : karen wrote: Phil, I seem to have lost track ….the last I read was your sidecar was to be used in a movie….what happened there, do you have another bike? I just can’t remember…the old age is setting in

Yes I was without my bike for the whole month of January while it “starred” in the movie Iron Sky which will be released to cinemas in 2012.
When it returned home at the end of January there were a few minor scratches on the paintwork, so they took it away again to one of Queensland’s top hot rod restoring shops for a fortnight and it came back looking like it had rolled off the factory production line that week.
Now I am enjoying riding it at least once per week, even when the temperature is below 4 degrees.

Sun 26 Jun 2011 – 12:21  : [referring to forum comments about my bike having been painted after the filming] It was a perfect match with the original People’s Liberation Army green paint too.
You can’t see where it has been painted or where those scratches were – It just looks perfect.

Sat 07 Apr 2012 – 15:41  : The movie is called “Iron Sky”.
http://www.ironsky.net/ [note, 9 Jun 2015: this is now the site for the next movie in the series which is now under production]
In Australia it is to be released by Hoyts, but the release date has not yet been determined.
My bike appears briefly in this edition of Director’s Diary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvRcrV87t7o&list=PLFD7317FE4B7290B6&index=52&feature=plpp_video

Sat 14 Apr 2012 – 15:53  : The movie will be released in Australia at Hoyts cinemas on 10th May.

Sun 13 May 2012 – 10:24  : Four more days to see “Iron Sky” – the movie “starring” my bike.

It is showing at Hoyts cinemas across Australia from 10th May until Wednesday 17th May.

Well as I mentioned in another post, I went to watch my bike making its movie début in “Iron Sky” on Friday night.

It was a pretty good, but not exceptional, comedy filmed in Queensland, Finland, Germany and New York.
Most of the appearances of my bike were in the first ten or fifteen minutes.
I must say it was great to see my bike being manoeuvred around by the stunt riders; because I am always the one riding it, I never get to see it out on the road.
It was good also to see the pre-war Volkswagen Beetle, which was also hired from an enthusiast in Brisbane, which appeared in the same scene as my bike.

For those who don’t know about the film’s story line, it is set mainly on the back side of the moon where the Nazis had landed in 1945 and perfected space travel and nuclear armaments. Their top secret fuel was called “Helium 3”.
They capture a black American astronaut, who knows the President of the USA.
I won’t write any spoilers here now, but the US President is a hilarious (yet quite possible) caricature that will give you a big laugh.

When you consider the comedic possibilities presented by a mid-twentieth century computer scientist that has never encountered a computer smaller than a house suddenly encountering iPhones and iPads in the twenty-first century, you will understand where many of the laughs are found.

Later in the film there is an all-out war as the Nazis attack New York. The President is very pleased at this, as it guarantees re-election!
Space weapons are launched by many nations (including Australia!) and there is an all-out space dogfight.

I found myself guffawing out loud many times in the movie, so if you really enjoy comedy mixed with some way-out science-fiction and a very unlikely story line, you should go and see it this week while it is still showing.

Fri 25 May 2012 – 20:35  : While I was half-way through fitting my new gearbox last weekend on Sunday morning, the stunt man who rode it during the filming happened to roll up and immediately recognised the bike. We had a good yarn about it and he told us how enjoyable it was to be riding it during the many, many takes that had to be done to get the perfect shots for the movie. The various people standing around admiring the bike were amazed to learn that my bike was a “movie star”!

Sat 20 Oct 2012 – 19:24  : [Following posts to pages where criticism was levelled at the film producers for using a post-war Chinese bike to represent a war-time German bike] Guz wrote: That’s not a mistake, it’s creative license. It’s only a mistake if the producers didn’t realise what the bike was.

Of course the producers knew what bike it was!
They searched all over the world for a suitable machine which looked like a WWII German bike. With the paint job and appropriate fake accessories it looked sufficiently alike to do the job – who cares where it was actually manufactured. Whoever wrote that criticism needs to get real – most of what we see in movies is faked to look like the real thing.
When my bike, an appropriate VW and an existing fake moon surface were all found within the space of 80 km, it made sense for the producers to use what was already available at a reasonable price.

So there are a few snippets of posts about the time my bike “starred” in a movie.