Lathan McKay

Biography

McKay grew up in Austin, Texas. He started skateboarding as a child, and became a sponsored skateboarder at 14. Inspired by "the father of extreme sports," Evel Knievel, he spent a decade on the road as a professional skateboarder, breaking for a year to attend college at the University of Texas, Austin. McKay was also interested in film, such as '70s-era existential movies like Thunderbolt and Lightfoot,Cisco Pike, Night Moves, Some Came Running, and particularly Monte Hellman's Two Lane Blacktop.

In 2003, McKay was cast in Levelland, a film about coming of age in the flatlands of Texas. Several of its fictional characters were skateboarders, and director Clark Lee Walker cast avid skateboarders to act in the film. McKay co-starred in Levelland, which premiered at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival. Because another actor used the named Erik McKay, he chose Lathan as his first name.

In 2004, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as an actor. As he looked for a place to live, he was introduced to Monte Hellman by a friend, Nicky Katt. Hellman had a spare room in his Laurel Canyon home, and McKay moved in. He performed in several films, and in 2006, he was cast to portray Layne Staley in Layne Staley: Get Born Again, a biographical film which was never completed. McKay continued to act, but became more interested in filmmaking, and in 2008 joined Hellman's production company. In addition to other projects, he worked as Hellman's assistant on the 2010 film Road to Nowhere, in which he also performed. McKay played a significant role in the re-release of Two Lane Blacktop through Criterian Collection.

Long enamored of Evel Knievel's daredevil philosophy, McKay began his collection of memorabilia in 2012. After months of research and a lengthy negotiation, he acquired a set of Evel Knievel's 1974 jump leathers. Soon after, he traveled to Knievel's hometown of Butte, Montana for the annual Knievel Days celebration. "None of his memorabilia was there," McKay said in a 2014 interview. "His ramps were rotting, sitting in the fields, and that really motivated us even more to get his legacy intact."

With the blessing of Knievel's family and widow, Krystal, McKay and friends Robby Hull, Scott Wiley and Marilyn Stemp resurrected Evel Knievel Enterprises and began a worldwide hunt for Knievel memorabilia, which McKay termed "Evel Archaelogy." By 2015, McKay owned "the largest Evel Knievel collection ever assembled, a collection of such massive proportions it’s more complete than the daredevil himself ever amassed in one place." McKay has exhibited the collection throughout the United States consistently since it was first displayed in 2013. It includes five jump bikes, X-rays of Evel’s broken bones, Knievel's performance leathers and most iconic helmets and personal effects.

After it was featured on the television series American Trucker, McKay purchased Big Red, the Mack truck Knievel used as living quarters and bike trailer. Badly weather-damaged, McKay and Mike Patterson, a restoration expert at Historic Harley-Davidson in Topeka Kansas, refurbished Big Red. A bolt-by-bolt restoration which took 22 months, 96 people and $300,000, the truck's interior and exterior were restored to its exact condition in the 70s when Knievel, at the height of his popularity, travelled in it. It was debuted at Evel Knievel Days in Butte in 2015. Driven by Mike Draper, who began driving for Knievel in the early 1970s, Big Red was displayed at events throughout the United States and featured prominently in the Being Evel, a documentary in which McKay appeared and served as a consulting producer. Big Red will be permanently housed at the Evel Knievel Museum, which is scheduled to open in Topeka, Kansas in 2016. McKay refers to it as the "mothership" of his collection.

McKay was also a consulting producer for Johnny Knoxville’s film Being Evel. He appeared in the documentary I Am Evel Knievel, for which he also provided rare content, and executive-produced feature-length documentary Chasing Evel: The Life of Robbie Knievel, scheduled for release in 2017.

McKay partnered with Hellmen's daughter, Melissa, to form Melhell Productions. As of 2016, they were in pre-production on a movie they wrote with Jared Hellman titled Falling Forward. The film depicts people who are "finding a way to live fully immersed, surviving the whole fucked-up swirl of life on the edge, rather than finding a way to merely exist on the safe side."