The Making of Silver Dream Racer

Silver Dream Racer remains the biggest movie ever filmed about bike racing. Forty years on from the hugely complex task of filming it, director David Wickes and star David Essex tell the inside story on the making of the film.

Words: Stuart Barker

Pics courtesy of David Wickes Productions and Lisa Tams

It remains the biggest motorcycle racing movie ever made. With a budget equivalent to £20 million in today's money, and one of the biggest pop stars in the world in the lead role, Silver Dream Racer was not only well-funded, it was ambitious. Very ambitious. Because the producers decided that, in the name of realism, they needed to build a one-off motorcycle that was good enough to be entered in the British Motorcycle Grand Prix – something that would be utterly unthinkable now.

            The film's director, David Wickes, was coming straight off the back of a huge box office success with his movie Sweeney! and was in demand. Wickes had also directed episodes of The Sweeney and The Professionals for television and was known for his innovative, guerilla-style film-making. And when the head of production at The Rank Organisation asked him what movie he would like to make next, an idea that had been ruminating in his mind for some time came back to him.

            'It was actually the idea of an actor called Michael Billington' he says. 'He loved the Isle of Man TT races and he said to me “Why don’t you make a movie about the TT?” But I thought that would attract an audience of about nine people! I couldn’t imagine going to Hollywood and pitching that idea but making a movie about the motorcycling world championship seemed to have a broader appeal. So when Tony Williams at Rank asked me what I wanted to make next I mentioned the idea of a bike racing movie. I told him about Silverstone and the 500cc Grand Prix world championship and reminded him that everyone knew who Barry Sheene and Kenny Roberts were and he liked the idea from the start.'

            With a green light from the studio, Wickes turned his attention to who would play the film's hero, privateer racer Nick Freeman. It was an easy choice. 'I had learned that David Essex had a few motorcycles and was a keen rider' says Wickes. 'I arranged to see David in his dressing room while he was playing Che Guevara in the musical Evita. I only had a few minutes with him as he was due to go onstage. I’d never pitched anything in just a few minutes but as soon as I mentioned bikes he stopped applying his make-up, looked up at me in the dressing room mirror and just said “Yes!” We arranged to have a drink afterwards to discuss it, but he really didn’t need any further convincing. He was in.'

            ‘I realised from the outset that the script was hardly Shakespeare' David Essex says of his decision to star in the film, 'but then Shakespeare wouldn’t have given me the chance to power around Silverstone and Brands Hatch on motorcycles!’

            Wickes had his budget (£5 million in 1979) and his star but there was still one crucial element missing – the bike.

            Silver Dream Racer is about a struggling privateer, Nick Freeman, who inherits a revolutionary prototype race bike from his engineering brother after the brother is killed in a motocross crash. He decides to prove the bike's potential by raising the funds to race it in the British Grand Prix (for the purposes of the film, the 500cc world championship was a one-race event held at Silverstone) and given that the movie's producers intended to enter the bike in the actual British Grand Prix, it was going to have to be pretty special, both in terms of performance and looks.

David Essex has nothing but fond memories of his time on set

            Surprisingly, none of the big manufacturers saw a promotional opportunity in supplying a machine so Wickes was forced to look elsewhere. 'We couldn’t get a Suzuki or a Honda or any other bike from one of the major manufacturers' he says. 'They had their own teams and didn’t want to know anything about us and just turned us down flat. We needed a bike that looked different from all the others and it had to be just good enough to go fast round a race track in good company. We weren’t talking about beating the top riders, but it still had to be fast enough to go round with them.

            'It just so happened that a mate of mine knew of an engineering firm in Wales called Barton Motors. I was very sceptical but two people from Barton came to see me and really convinced me. They both had engineering degrees and they started showing me engineering drawings and cost estimates and all sorts. They asked how fast the bike needed to be and I said “Very.” They told me there was no way of beating the likes of Barry Sheene and Kenny Roberts but I explained I knew that and the bike just had to be fast enough, had to handle properly, and had to look right. So I left it to them and boy did they deliver. I asked when they could deliver the actual bike and they said “Two months.” And they were right – they managed to build it in just two months.'

            Barton Motors was based in an abandoned chapel in Pont-rug, Caernarvonshire, and had a good reputation for building large capacity, two-stroke race bikes. Founded by Barry Hart and Tony Ryan with an investment of £15 each, the firm had built a 350cc Suzuki for Barry Sheene and was at that time running Graham Wood on its 497cc Sparton (the basis for the Silver Dream) and they were winning races. But could the tiny outfit build a futuristic-looking race bike that was good enough to run with Sheene and Roberts in the British Grand Prix? It seemed a tall order.

            Graham Dyson, who sadly passed away in 2012, was a former managing director of Barton Motors. ‘Out of the blue we got a phone call from the movie people asking if we could build bikes for a film called Silver Dream Racer’ he said. 'We went down to Pinewood Studios and eventually got a contract to build three bikes, although we only actually ever built two, using our own Phoenix engines in a chassis which we designed ourselves. It was a lovely bike, very futuristic but not very practical for genuine racing. But there again, the film was a fantasy so it had to look the part.'

            The bike first turned up at Brands Hatch (or Silverstone, depending on who's memory you trust) and David Essex grew horns as soon as he saw it. 'I was at Silverstone when the bike first turned up and the crew was filming on the other side of the circuit’ he says. ‘The Barton guys turned up with the 750cc bike – they built a 500cc and a 750cc version - and started putting it together and eventually I was like “Is it ready to go?” and when they said yes I said “Give me a push then!”'

            There was a slight problem, however, As the star of the film, Essex was under strict instructions from the production's insurers not to take any risks and NOT to ride the bike on track. Essex (who had lost his bike licence as soon as receiving it because he had been caught riding his dad's James Captain on the roads when he was 14) clearly didn't care. 'The insurance people said I could only ride at “reasonable speed.” Which is what? That's open to interpretation so I did 160mph down the straight at Silverstone! I had never ridden a bike with that kind of power before. Once you hit the power band you just took off like a rocket. It was a real eye-opener the first time I rode it. And since I was the first to ride it, I was the guinea pig!'

            David Wickes almost had a seizure when he realised what was going on. 'David was allowed to ride the bike into shot and out of shot and that was supposed to be it' he says of his star. 'But he did something I’ll never forget: the bike arrived for the first time when we were at Brands Hatch and David was drooling all over it, saying “Wow! It looks even better than the drawings!”

            'Anyway, I had to get back to the set which was over on the other side of the track. The next thing I knew the bike came howling around the race track. I was like “Who’s on the bike?” and someone said “It’s David” so I shouted “Get him off it! NOW!” We all ran out onto the track, waving our arms to get him to stop. David is so laid back he just took his helmet off and said “What’s the matter?” After that I had to tell everybody not to let him anywhere near the bike!'

David Essex gets animated in his descriptions of riding the Silver Dream

            The serious on-track riding was supposed to have been done top Irish racer Tom Herron but two days before he was due to begin filming, he was tragically killed in a crash at the North West 200. An eleventh-our replacement was found in the shape of multiple British champion, Roger Marshall. 'I was riding a Yamaha OW31 for George Beale at the time' Marshall says 'The producers asked if I'd be interested in doubling for David Essex in a bike racing movie as David was only insured to ride the bike up to 15mph. I asked George and he gave me his blessing so I met with the movie people and that's how it all started.'

            As good as the Silver Dream bike looked, it didn't ride quite so well, according to Marshall. 'It wasn't a very good bike to ride. It had to use a monocoque frame to look futuristic and that didn't help handling-wise.'

            And yet Marshall would have to ride it in the British Grand Prix. And if he didn't qualify, there would be no movie. No pressure then. 'The producer - who lived in a bit of a film dream world - thought I could actually beat Barry Sheene and Kenny Roberts on it!' Marshall says. 'He was distraught when I told him I'd be lucky to even qualify. In the end we slipped a 750cc engine into the bike which helped me qualify about 16^th (Marshall’s memory is playing tricks on him. Official results from the Grand Prix show that he qualified 43^rd out of 46 riders, with a lap of 1m 37.64s compared to Roberts’ pole time of 1m 29.81s).

            Either way, the bike was in the race and the movie had been saved. But there was still the small matter of the race to come and there was every possibility that Marshall could be knocked off or crash out by his own hand before the director had the shots he needed. 'Roger was under strict instructions not to crash' Wickes explains. 'I mean, we had two bikes but we only had one Roger! And only one race! So yes, it was crucial that he didn’t crash. We asked him beforehand what the likelihood of him coming off anywhere was and he said “How the hell do I know what’s going to happen out there?”'

            Before the race even began, the Silver Dream crew set a new world record – for the number of (hugely expensive) Panavision cameras used on one shoot. 'We had 19 of them at Silverstone' Wickes says. 'There weren’t enough cameras in the country to cover what we needed. Eight were being used on a Bond film so we had to get two from France. Siting 19 camera crews at Silverstone was a nightmare – the negotiations went on for ages. The health and safety people, the insurance people, the police – everybody had problems with it. But we took a police chief inspector out for lunch and a few drinks and he was alright by tea time!

            'We had to negotiate every single camera position and when I wanted two cameras in the biggest grandstand it caused an awful fuss. People’s privacy came into play. “What if you film someone picking their nose?” “What if you capture someone with a mistress they’re not supposed to be with?” It was a nightmare.

            'Just getting permission to film during the race weekend was a HUGE task. It went on with faxes, letters and telephone calls and meetings for ages. We brought in lawyers, insurance companies, race organisers, circuit owners – it was unbelievably difficult. “Can we have access to the pits?” Can we shoot on-track in between races?” It went on and on and on.'

            No great surprise really, since Wickes was proposing to rock up at an already crowded event with 120 crew members, from drivers to focus-pullers and clapper-loaders to grips. Shooting a major movie is no small task. 'Yes, we took up an awful lot of parking space' Wickes laughs.

            Wickes also had his hands full during the race itself. He had to direct not only the 19 camera crews but also the on-track action during the race. Incredibly, he was directing Roger Marshall, via an earpiece, on where he needed to be positioned throughout the race to get the required shots. 'I had to coordinate our riders out on track during the race – both Roger and the riders who were playing the villains, trying to box him in. I’d be telling Roger to get closer to the villains or to drop back a bit on the next lap. Or I’d say “Right, on the next lap I need you to be at least 60 feet behind the other group of riders or else we’ll see them in the shot and then it won’t look like you’re out in front alone.” Roger had so much to keep in mind throughout the whole race – and he did it, brilliantly.'

            Things didn't all go quite to plan in the race though, as Marshall explains. 'I was in the points until the bike developed a fuel leak. So I pulled over and explained to the marshals that we really needed to get a shot of me crossing the finish line pretending I'd won the race. They waited for the last lap then flagged me out on track in between groups of riders and we got the shot we needed. You certainly couldn't do that now!'

            By the time Marshall crossed the finish line, the man with the chequered flag had disappeared so Wickes had to improvise yet again. 'If you see the guy waving the chequered flag at the end of the race, that’s me. I’m on the wrong side of the track – on the inside. I had to run out of my van and get the prop supervisor to bring me a chequered flag and he also gave me his white smock. I still had my radio mic on so I called one of the cameramen to move 20 yards closer to me. The reason I had to do that was that, by the time Roger got round the race was over so the crowd was leaving and that’s why I stood on the other side of the track – so you couldn’t see the grandstands emptying!

            The 1979 British Grand Prix is remembered for the epic clash between Sheene and Roberts but David Essex didn't get a chance to see it. 'No, I didn’t see any of it' he says. 'I remember Barry being around quite a lot but I didn’t manage to see anything of the actual race because we were too busy filming.'

            While Essex struck up a friendship with Sheene during filming ('He wasn’t directly involved in the movie' Wickes says. 'There’s no way we could have afforded him!), it was the privateers rather than the factory riders that most impressed him over the filming period. 'It was fascinating' he says. 'The privateers would have rather sold their wives than their bikes! They had bits of bikes in their front rooms and would be working on them and doing them up and everything, you know? Against all the odds. Being a rider for a big team like Suzuki or Yamaha was a very different thing but I was just struck by the dedication of the privateers that we used in the film. I was struck by their loyalty and love for motorbikes. I was more impressed by them than the big factory riders.’

            To supplement the live action footage from the race, Wickes and his crew also shot on-track action at Silverstone, Brands Hatch and Donington in-between real races. 'We had to use quite a lot of innovative camera techniques to shoot the racing sequences' he says. 'I don’t think anybody had filmed bikes in a real race before with real tracks and real crowds. They’d done it with cars but I’m not aware that it had been done with bikes. The problem with filming bikes is not only that they’re very fast but they’re always at an angle too so that complicated things.

            'Tracking shots were difficult because we couldn’t have the camera any more than 40 feet in front of the bikes - but they were going at 120mph! I had many brainstorming sessions with my camera crew to try and figure out ways to do it. We had the most marvellous rally drivers driving the camera vans – they were the real heroes of the film!

Director David Wickes brought along some souvenirs for our interview

            The end of the movie sees Nick Freeman crossing the finish line to take the 500cc world championship, just instants before he suffers a major tankslapper and veers into the trackside hoardings, resulting in a fireball and a grizzly death for the hero. 'Roger held his hands up and got the bike to do a speed wobble and he did that brilliantly' Wickes explains. 'That was the first part of the shot. Then we put a dummy on the bike, put the bike on rails, and fired it into the trackside hoardings with an air cannon. It wasn’t the real bike – it was a just a little 250cc machine with Silver Dream bodywork on it but that gave us the shot we needed to end the film.'

            It's the brutal power and shock of the ending that makes 'Silver Dream Racer' work. Rather than shying away from the dangers of the sport and creating a fairy-tale ending, Wickes was determined to show the risk that top motorcycle racers take.

            But it all proved too much for American audiences who demanded, and got, an alternative ending of Freeman simply crossing the line and winning the race. For years, this version was the only one available on DVD in the UK. Both Wickes and Essex roll their eyes in dismay at the very mention of this edit. 'I’ve never seen it' Wickes says. 'I can’t bring myself to watch it! It misses the whole point of the movie.'

            'I haven’t actually seen that version but I know they changed it because you’ve got to be a winner in America!' Essex says. 'But the whole power of the movie would be lost without the original ending.'

David Wickes hasn’t actually seen his movie for a long time, but he still stands by it as a piece of work. ‘I haven’t seen it in its entirety for about 10 or 15 years but I remember thinking it was rather good’ he says. ‘I’m still proud of it as a piece of work. I was surprised at how real some of the shots looked. We were right in there amongst it. Barry Sheene was right with what he said to me after the premiere – you DO feel like you’re there when you’re watching it. It looked dangerous, which was the whole point of it. That’s why changing the ending was so ridiculous. The most famous play in the world is Hamlet and Hamlet dies in it. That makes you stop and think and that’s why the original ending of Silver Dream was so powerful. It wasn’t a fairy tale ending – it made you realise the risks that motorcycle racers take.

What Happened to the Silver Dream Racer?

Sadly, neither of the two Silver Dream Racer bikes survives. The late managing director of Barton Motors, Graham Dyson, explains why. ‘At the end of filming we still retained ownership of the bikes so we converted them to be a bit more practical and raced them for a bit. Then the recession hit and we sold Barton Motors to Armstrong. Armstrong then later sold the whole project to Eric Buell, who carted the whole lot off to the States. He eventually said the bikes were a load of rubbish and decided to go his own way and build his own thing.’

            David Essex had the opportunity to save at least one of the bikes but turned it down. 'I was offered the bike after filming finished but I thought “What am I going to do with it?” There were two bikes - a 750 and a 500 -  and they asked me if I wanted to buy the 500. But I said “Not really, I can’t go down the road on it.”

            ‘The Silver Dream Racer effectively doesn't exist any longer' Dyson said. 'There's a mock-up one made from a third chassis which we never actually built into a full bike. It was bought by a guy called Trevor Radcliffe who then later sold it to a collector in Germany. But it's not a real Silver Dream Racer - it's not even a runner. There's no real bike to look at anymore - I don't even think the moulds still exist.’