Flipping through the telly, I see Erik Estrade (Ponch) taking and failing a police motorcycle driving exam. This made me wonder if he really rode a bike on the show, or if it was done via creative camera work like stunt doubles (which were for stunt scenes as well no doubt), propping the bikes on trailers and then pulled to look like they are riding, or some other tv magic.
Anyone have the inside dope?
According to this site, Estrada learned to ride a motorcycle for CHiPs from a police academy instructor. In real life, I would guess the CHP test is probably more stringent than the one civilians need to pass in order to obtain a motorcycle license.
If I were casting director for CHiPs. I’d find an actor who could ride a bike. It’s not like it’d be all that difficult. I would probably hire a stuntman for the more difficult scenes. I mean, didn’t they always wear sunglasses anyway?
One of the funniest show biz anecdotes I ever heard came from Larry Wilcox, years after “Chips” went off the air.
He kept making fun of Erik Estrada, and finally said, “Look, I’ll admit, as an actor, I wasn’t exactly Sir Laurence Olivier. But at least, unlike someone I could name, I never had to Scotch tape my lines to the rear view mirror of my motorcycle.”
So, if Wilcox is to be believed, Estrada could ride a motorcycle semi-competently. He just couldn’t remember his lines to save his life!
I grew up in a neighborhood where they filmed this show a LOT (in fact, one of my best friends’s house was used for an episode) and saw that usually both bikes were mounted on a trailer and filmed from the truck pulling it.
As I remember, they originally were filmed actually riding the motorcycles until one of the actors got injured, after which the motorcycles were mounted on a trailer.
I have to admit, this doesn’t strike me as unusual. By strictly fixing the distance between the camera and the ostensibly-bike-riding actor, it saves the hassle of trying to keep him in focus. If the actor was just driving behind the camera truck, it’d be difficult for him to maintain an exact distance, or at least do so while running lines of dialogue, whether he had them memorized or not.