The Man Who Rented Santa Rosa Its DVDs Now Does the Unthinkable

Growing up in Santa Rosa, everyone my age either worked at Bradley Video, knew someone who worked at Bradley Video or rented movies from Bradley Video. During the height of home video rentals, its six stores in town outnumbered the corporate behemoths (Blockbuster, Hollywood Video) and the beloved niche store (Video Droid, still missed).

I’ve known extras from the famous video store scene in Scream, which was filmed at a Bradley Video. I’ve heard stories of unsavory after-hours activities involving adult DVDs and brazen employees.

And, yes, I’d heard that the guy who owned Bradley Video has now lost his mind.

By which I mean that Bill Bradley, who declared bankruptcy and closed all 11 Bradley Video stores as his industry cratered in 2005, now climbs mountains. And runs ultra-marathons. And heaves his body across freezing temperatures, blistering heat, numbing sea water and dizzying altitudes, regularly, over and over.

Why? That’s the central question posited by the hour-long documentary Epic Bill, about Bill Bradley’s quest to push himself as much as humanly possible, and then a little more, too. The film premieres on KQED 9 on Friday, Sept. 13 at 8p.m.

Now in his mid-60s, Bradley runs hundreds of miles through Death Valley for fun. He’s completed a “Badwater Quad,” racing between the lowest point in Death Valley to Mt. Whitney and back for a total of 584 miles. He’s broken the world record for most consecutive rim-to-rim runs in the Grand Canyon.

And he’s not about to stop. He’s attempted to swim the English Channel five times. He’s made six attempts at summiting Mt. Denali.

But… why? Epic Bill addresses that persistent question in various ways. Being worth $5 million and then going bankrupt at age 45 “royally screwed my mind up,” Bradley says. After a period of self-doubt, he took up a friend’s offer to run a 50-mile race and hasn’t looked back since.

Filmed while Bradley attempts the snowy 135-mile Arrowhead race in Minnesota and the 22,837-ft. Mt. Aconcagua in Argentina, the documentary digs into the grisly details of Bradley’s pursuits, and the effect extreme conditions have on his body. (Those queasy at the sight of gnarled, blistered feet: be warned.)

“At his core, he’s an excessive personality type,” says his daughter. That’s evident at one point when, against all advice of race officials who’ve evaluated his condition, he continues the Arrowhead anyway. The only time he stops is when he physically can’t go on; in a self-filmed scene on Mt. Aconcagua, just 600 feet from the top, he painfully explains that he can no longer stand up, let alone hike, due to the altitude.

Again… why? Why continue to chase your improbable dreams when everyone is telling you to stop, and when people are literally dying on the mountain around you?

If you don’t care about the answer, the documentary might start to drag. But for anyone who knows the monomaniacal quest to finish something, no matter how much pain to your body, no matter how much your brain is telling you no, Epic Bill will feel very familiar.

As Bradley himself says, in the best explanation for his pursuits: “You feel alive because you’re pushing the boundaries of what a human can do.”

‘Epic Bill’ premieres premieres on KQED 9 on Friday, Sept. 13 at 8 p.m. Details here.