Movie Spotlight: The Man with the Pink Bicycle

Some people just hop on a bicycle and go. Steve has to be dragged there, inch by inch, through every awkward encounter and near-miss on the Venice Beach bike path. That resistance is the whole movie.

The Man with the Pink Bicycle came from real rides, explains writer-director Keith Soforic. He and co-star Rich Sheldon, who plays Steve, would take long routes down the Santa Monica and Venice bike path while Sheldon was going through a breakup. “A nice long bike-ride was a perfect diversion for the situation,” Soforic says. He didn’t own a bike, so he borrowed Sheldon’s sister Tracey’s. She ended up playing Hot Wheels in the film.

From a five-minute concept to a feature

It started small. Soforic and his friend Mike, who plays Jackson, wanted to shoot something short, just to make something creative. The concept was five pages. Then it became a thirty-page script, and they kept adding scenes while shooting, creating on the fly until the film found its own length.

The characters you only find in Venice

The people in the film are mashups, Soforic says, of people he’s met over the years and a kind of wish-list version of them, dropped into a universe where leather is everyday attire. Venice Beach was the obvious setting. The colorful, unusual cast of real-life characters who populate the boardwalk and bike path made it the right place for Steve to finally break open.

Pink Lightning and the Militant Bike Girl

Anyone who’s ridden a crowded bike path knows the type: the cyclist who shouts “on your left!” at full speed, inches from your ear, absolute certainty they own the lane. Lisa Manero plays that character with perfect conviction. Then there’s the bike itself. Soforic wanted PINK LIGHTNING to carry the same energy as “Greased Lightning” in Grease: a vehicle with a personality and mythology all its own.

Shooting a race on a working path

Filming on the Venice and Santa Monica bike paths meant navigating real traffic throughout production. No injuries, Soforic notes, which given the pace of those scenes counts as a genuine win. For the bike race sequences, he strapped on a GoPro and shot from inside the action, putting viewers in the middle of the twists and turns rather than watching from the side.

The landlord, the leather, and the famous butt scene

The hardest scene to pull off comedically was the first appearance of Lefty and Leather Mama in full leather. Soforic says they stopped traffic multiple times and drew honks from strangers as Lefty walked the alley. The more unexpected production moment: while shooting the butt scene, the landlord walked in through the back gate and didn’t say a word. “What a sport,” Soforic says.

What to know before you press play

“Just sit back and enjoy the ride,” Soforic says. “Don’t expect a heavy plot-driven story. Life isn’t really like that. It’s mostly just a series of moments put together, that we make sense of later. I like to describe it as taking a bike ride, while listening to your favorite tunes.” He’s proud of the musicians who scored the film, and that pride comes through in every scene. This is a movie about being present long enough to let something unexpected happen.

Comedy

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Streaming now on Relay.