The sensational and sincere story of a controversial cycling activist, muscle car businessman and nature enthusiast is shamelessly revealed in “Biker Fox.”
Directed and produced by Jeremy Lamberton, “Biker Fox” follows the life of Frank DeLarzelere III, 52, owner of the international muscle car parts company Billions and Trillions Inc., as he experiences some of his most joyous and darkest hours as his alter ego, Biker Fox — a humorous and hotheaded cyclist in south Tulsa with the charisma of a motivational speaker and the temper of an angry raccoon.
The film, showing at deadCenter Film Festival at 10 p.m., June 10, at IAO Gallery, 706 W Sheridan, is an obscure, low-budget documentary crafted from hundreds of hours of self-shot footage and one filmmaker's quest to reveal the true character behind Tulsa's most misunderstood cyclist.
“The movie is inside his head,” Lamberton said.
Lamberton's first feature-length documentary, “Biker Fox” took 2½ years to make and is forged from more than 800 hours of film, spanning a turbulent 10-year period of Biker Fox's life. DeLarzelere shot most of the footage himself, adding an unusual and insightful point of view.
This uniquely Oklahoma documentary is a sobering look at DeLarzelere's eccentric business practices, his Zen encounters with nature and his ongoing battle as Biker Fox to “share the road” with angry motor vehicles and disapproving members of the Tulsa Police Department.
Lamberton compares Biker Fox to the motivational speaker and '50s fitness guru Jack LaLanne. However, the film presents the paradox between Biker Fox's message of positive thinking, fitness and the pursuit of happiness, and his day-to-day struggles with his auto parts business and the Tulsa police.
“It's almost like part self-help documentary,” Lamberton said. “But the whole time he's offering all this advice, his life's falling apart, and he's getting arrested, and people are stealing from him.”
During the course of the film, Biker Fox is arrested numerous times and is the victim of several robberies.
“So, it's just an interesting dynamic, that here's this guy that claims that he's so ADHD that his head spins all the time,” Lamberton said. “And he's offering advice on how to better your life, when a lot of times his life is what's spinning out of control.”
The beauty of “Biker Fox” is its sincerity.
“There's just this real raw quality about Biker Fox,” Lamberton said. “I think what the movie has is a lot of really subtle moments of truth and moments of authenticity, moments of depth, where he wears his anger on his sleeve — he just explodes on the screen at times, and he's got this amazing incredible temper — but he also has this subtle depth of spirit and love of nature, of people, humanity and the world, despite all the struggles and what he deals with to be not only Biker Fox but Frank DeLarzelere on a daily basis.”
Lamberton said he is planning a Tulsa premiere of “Biker Fox” later this summer, through the annual Tulsa Overground Film Festival, which he co-founded in 1998.
“I think he (Biker Fox) is truly a very good person, I think he means well, but at the same time he's the most punk-rock person I've ever met in my entire life.”
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This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jordonious.wordpress.com/2021/08/11/film-preview-biker-fox/
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Article originally published on NewOK.com: https://www.oklahoman.com/article/3465551/biker-fox-about-tulsa-cyclist-set-for-deadcenter-film-fest-screening