We're In A Rush

For the last few weeks I have repeatedly been seeing a commercial for the movie "Premium Rush" which opens today. It stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and in it he plays a bike messenger who got his hands on the wrong package, but is determined to deliver it no matter what. The movie looks fine enough and while I'm not going to see it in theaters, don't be surprised a year from now when I'm reviewing the film because it was on one of the cable channels. My quarrel isn't with the picture, it is Gordon-Levitt's profession in the movie. I feel like bike messengers are another one of those professions where Hollywood keeps using them even though their cultural importance stopped in the mid-1990s. (Their lasting legacy appears to be the messenger bag, which is mostly used by guys in their mid-20s who work in finance but refuse to buy a briefcase because it would confirm this is their career path and instead use the messenger bag as a way of fooling themselves into thinking they are really going to quit this job and become a professional poker player soon.) I'm sure there are still plenty of people who make it their living, it just seems to me that there are an inordinate amount of bike messenger movies when contrasted to the actual number of bike messengers in the world.

You can understand when you see a preview for yet another "teacher goes to the rough neighborhood and tries to turn things around" movie, because there are hundreds of thousands of teachers in this country and that may actually be happening. But, as near as I can tell there are only about 25 cities which would need to employ bike messengers in the country, meaning only about 2,000 positions and yet the movie about the street-start and morally upright bike messenger comes out every three years or so. Sure, most go straight to video, but they still get made. Hell, there was even a short-lived series about it. (1995's "Double Rush", because apparently you can't have be associated with bike messengers unless you use the word 'rush'. As further proof, I just found out there is a reality series about bike messengers called "Triple Rush.") Bike messenger is hardly the only profession to get this kind of treatment. I feel like Hollywood makes a lot of surfer movies despite the fact that the only two people in history have gotten famous enough through surfing to make the leap into mainstream sports consciousness - Kelly Slater and that teenager who got her arm bitten off by a shark. But at least with surfing movies you can understand the visual attraction. You can capture some amazing footage within the wave and with slow-motion wipeouts. You don't get that with bike messengers. With them is it just a lot of weaving in and out of traffic while everyone honks at them in annoyance because they refuse to stay in the bike lane even though they can't pedal as fast as even the slowest car rolls.

Even worse the movies seem to portray it as some kind of noble profession, which I find hard to stay with because I have seen a few bike messengers around the city and noble is not the word I would use to describe them. My informal poll shows it to be a lot of white guys with dreadlocks. Also, they don't think of it as a calling, as much as a job. Lastly, I'm suspicious towards people who are that comfortable wearing bike shorts in public. The reality is that it seems like the kind of job you take for a short while just to make ends meet but really shouldn't still be doing once you get over 30, like bartending or being a bouncer. (Yes, movies have been made about those jobs as well. And while "Cocktail" and "Road House" were fine, those professions also produced "Coyote Ugly" and "Road House 2". This is what happens when you try and stretch a thin amount of material.) My other problem is that the bike messengers in movies are always seen as some kind of genius who is wasting their talents, while the reality is that the majority of the bike messengers I have met would love to be doing something else but are unable to apply for any other jobs because they know there is no chance in hell they will pass the drug test.

Look, I'm not saying I don't see the appeal of the bike messenger as a symbol. They get a lot of exercise, help the environment by not using cars and people general like to get mail. There are a lot of directions you could take a character like that if you wanted to make a movie. However, the simple truth is that in today's society people have more options for delivering a package which don't include handing an important legal document to a guy who may or not be high and is about to pedal into traffic on his Huffy. And that is if they need to send the physical documents at all - most of the time you can simply attach these things on an email. So, doing a movie about a bike messenger is a little like making a movie about a video store employee - it may have worked a few years ago, but at this point it is a niche market. I'm sure in their little world it'll be a big hit, but the fact is that is an increasingly shrinking world. The sad part is that this movie is only going to inspire the remaining bike messengers to risk their health trying more and more radical maneuvers as they speed around the city. Keep that up and they won't have enough people left to see the sequel.