Most Popular Books by Bill Allen

My RAD Career
By Bill Allen
If you were a teenager in the 1980s, odds are you ended up in an emergency room somewhere, with a broken arm or collar bone, trying to reenact the bike stunts performed in a little sleeper movie that became a home rental sensation, called RAD.

This wholesome, sweet story about a “local boy who makes good” set a generation of kids on fire for BMX… but, amazingly, its star had never owned a bicycle.

Bill Allen shares what it was like to play Cru Jones alongside Lori Loughlin, Olympic Gold Medalist Bart Conner, and Talia Shire, as well as the thrill of witnessing the inventors and first stars of BMX, and the history-making filming techniques of director and Oscar-Winner, Hal Needham.

Discover what it was like to be “an up and comer” in the '80s alongside his close friends, among them George Clooney and Brad Pitt, as well as his best friend, Brandon Lee (son of Bruce Lee), and his firsthand view of the dark side of movie making through his near-death beside Tom Cruise while in Marine jungle training for Born and the Fourth of July, and Brandon's tragic death on the film, The Crow.

Covering Bill's work in film and television as well as his decade as a musician with a rhythm and blues band, The Pipefitters with Lou Diamond Phillips, touring stadiums with Billy Ray Cyrus, and playing in front of 100,000 people at Farm Aid.

The story travels from his childhood in Richardson, Texas, through the heady years in Hollywood, to his escape after Brandon's death to a spiritual community in New Mexico. Over time the amazing impact of RAD and the many athletes, bike companies, and grown men who credit the film for their careers or happiest childhood memories, becomes more and more clear to him.

Leading Bill to where he is today: back in the 'burbs of Los Angeles, a grateful accidental icon from the birth of BMX.

Told with humor and honesty, this insider's view of the making of RAD to life as a working actor and musician will take the reader on a wild, exciting ride – one they might just want to wear a helmet for.