If every person has their 15 minutes in the spotlight, then every county must surely have an equal brush with the same fame. While the term doesn’t match the silvery smoothness of “Hollywood,” or “Bollywood,” “CoCo Countywood” does recognize a two-week period in 1960 when Contra Costa County was in the film industry’s circle of light.

“The Wild Ride,” Jack Nicholson’s second movie, produced by Roger Corman and directed by Harvey Berman, was shot locally. The 60-minute film is all about tough kids cruising pell-mell down Pine Hollow Road and Concord Boulevard. Nicholson, who leads the dragster gang as the rough hunk Johnny, runs motorcycle cops off the road, disparages women who love it and rolls his eyes at authority in the way only Nicholson can. If the movie is thin on character development (more about that later), it’s worth watching for the scenery. It’s fun to see Nicholson saunter into the Pioneer Inn or zoom well over the speed limit past a sign announcing the new homes at DANA ESTATES. And for former students from Mount Diablo High School’s theater department, some of whom had roles in the film, it’s a chance to see themselves up on the big screen.

Carol Bigby, now Hampton, found out about the movie from Gary Espinoza, a fellow graduate of Mount Diablo High. “Get over there and see if you can get a part,” she remembers him telling her. Discovering that Berman, her former high school drama teacher, was directing the film, Hampton hustled over to his classroom. “I threw the door open, leaned on the door frame and seductively said, ‘Harvey, dahhling….’” She got the part of Joyce with no audition. “The movie opens on my rear end – dancing!” she says, delighted with the memory.

Dancing was one thing Nicholson did not know how to do when filming began. Hampton had to teach him the jitterbug. “Everyone thought, who is this guy?” she recalls.

But no one had to tell the future star how to act, or how to send the cast reeling with laughter. In one scene, Johnny is out of sight behind a log and the other characters are supposed to be sad, shocked. Nicholson kept up such a steady patter of jokes and funny faces from his hiding place that keeping a straight face was impossible. “We had to shoot over and over again,” Hampton says.

Movie draws in locals

Local kids who weren’t in the movie still managed to get involved with the filming. Rob Cavanaugh recalls riding on horseback into Clayton and noticing movie cameras. He and a friend watched the shoot at Chubby Humble’s Pioneer Inn, now the offices for Clayton Community Church. “They were holding up 4 by 6 foot pieces of aluminum,” he says, “to shine more light on the actors.” No fancy generators on this set; instead, the crew was reliant on the sun. When Cavanaugh saw the final film, he was surprised. “In the movie, even with all that aluminum, the scenes were still somewhat dark!”

Making “The Wild Ride” was a community event, with local policemen from the Concord Police Department recruited for the cast. Hampton remembers Chuck Evans preparing for his scene. “The wind was blowing 100 miles an hour and he was so nervous, he just sat there clutching his hairbrush and shaking,” she says. Another time, while shooting at the Pacheco speedway, unreliable machinery played a major role.

Nicholson leapt into the Ford convertible for a quick getaway, cranked the engine, and it wouldn’t start, causing another hilarious cut. It happened on each subsequent take. Eventually, the film had to be spliced at that point.

One person not entertained by the production process was Berman. His description of making “The Wild Ride” is delivered in blunt, black-and-white language, like the film’s format. Of the producer, Berman says, “Corman tells me, ‘I’ll give you 15,000 dollars and two weeks.’” Berman’s face pinches as if he’s bit into a lemon, “I had no time to rehearse, or anything else!” With the time constraints, handling Nicholson was also tough: “He thought everything had to be analyzed,” Berman remembers. “I had two weeks to shoot and he’d ask me, ‘What do you think about this? What do you think about that?’” The experience turned him off of moviemaking, and explains why he’s credited with just two films.

When the film debuted at the Paramount in Oakland and at the Fox in San Francisco, it was paired with Butterfield Eight and GI Blues, two larger films with well-known stars. Even so, Hampton remembers feeling uncomfortable. “A man near me turned and said, ‘Boy, if I was in that film, I’d really be embarrassed.’” The beatnik language was passé and the movie wasn’t old enough to be respected as a cult film. Despite the disappointing stature of “The Wild Ride,” the movie provides a satisfying glimpse of 1960 Concord and Clayton. The memories of Hampton, Cavanaugh, and Berman – not to mention Nicholson, slender and slouchingly handsome – remind us not to take ourselves too seriously, to have fun, to wipe up the Hersheys, (used for blood in old black and white films like this one,) and move on.