Going whole hog

IN the new comedy “Wild Hogs,” Tim Allen, John Travolta, William H. Macy and Martin Lawrence play weekend warrior buddies from Cincinnati who jump on their Harleys and take a road trip to the Pacific in hopes of pepping up their humdrum suburban lives.

Though filled with slapstick and more than a few off-color jokes, the movie’s underlying theme is how many baby boomers feel that they have compromised their values while losing the idealism of their youth.

“We thought we could change the world and, to be fair, we did change the world,” said Macy. “We stopped the war. We got rid of the president and we changed everything. But life overtook us. And there are hundreds of thousands of Harley riders who are trying to regain that feeling.”

“The revolutionary ... becomes the establishment,” said Allen. “We would have burned down a stage had it been sponsored by Pepsi Cola. The new generation of musicians, the first thing they do is attach themselves to the corporation. We were anti-establishment, and we became a bigger more powerful establishment. We became what we hated.”

In the film, which opens Friday, Allen’s Doug is happily married with a young son but is bored with his mundane job as a dentist; Travolta’s fast-talking Woody has lost his swimsuit model wife, his fortune and his job; Macy’s Dudley is a computer nerd who is too shy to talk to women; and Lawrence’s Bobby is a henpecked plumber.

Director Walt Becker -- who at 38 is too young to be a true boomer -- said that every generation goes through crisis points. “I had one after college. I just took a year and a half off to travel and thought, What do I want to do in my life? I think what was neat about the movie is that the [characters] are asking themselves that question: Where is my life going and should I make a change?”

But the actors admitted that because of their careers, they haven’t confronted the same types of problems as their characters.

“I got more than I dealt for,” said Travolta, 53. “I loved how my life turned out.”

“Actors live such a fantasy life anyway,” said Macy, 56. “We are blessed. It would be unseemly for us to have a midlife crisis. But I think everyone shares this -- you wake up one morning and for some reason your leg hurts. You think, When did I hurt my back? Why are my feet so stiff? It just dawns on you there is more behind you than there is in front of you. I think everybody, actors included, think, Crikey, have I peaked? “

ALL three actors, as well as Becker, had a history with motorcycles.

“I financed my college education by buying and selling Harleys with my father,” said Becker. “We would buy mainly, like, mid-’70s Shovelheads and fix them up here and ship them over to Europe in parts. I had a cousin there who was a mechanic and he would reassemble them. Once we got there we would ride these bikes around with a bunch of friends and sell them for, like, four or five times what we paid for them.”

His father, he added, was a weekend warrior biker just like the Hogs.

“He’s a psychologist and a Baptist minister,” said Becker, who was born and raised in Pasadena. “When he was, like, in his mid- to late 40s, his friend had this idea -- we’re getting 40 guys together, we are going to fly to Wisconsin, buy Harleys and drive them across the U.S. for two weeks. My dad got his ear pierced and bought skull bandanas. I said, ‘Dad, I hope you don’t get killed. You are such a poseur.’ ”

Travolta has been riding motorcycles since he was a struggling young actor in Los Angeles in the early 1970s.

“It was economical transportation in California,” he said. “I would run around to my auditions in a motorcycle. You would store it easily when you left town.

He still borrows friends’ Harleys to ride. “For years I had a Honda 450, which is a moderate-sized bike,” said Travolta. “I am looking forward to owning a Harley again.”

Travolta is passionate about bikes because there’s a certain sensation to riding a bike. “Your body gets exhilarated and you get excited physically. There’s a mental freedom from imagined barriers that you have.”

Just like Travolta, Macy tooled around Los Angeles on a motorcycle in the 1970s. But because he was rusty and had never ridden a Harley, Macy took lessons from the film’s stunt coordinator, Jack Gill. It was love at first sight for Macy and his machine.

“Macy took to it like a fish to water,” recalled Becker.

“There is nothing like it, man,” enthused Macy. “It is as close to flying as you get on the ground. It feels fantastic. It has a little bit of the patina of the outlaw about it, and there is the nature aspect of it.

“If you want to really see a place, get on a motorcycle.”

susan.king@latimes.com