Nothing can stop Dexter the bike messenger — not homelessness or even a close encounter with a ten-ton truck.

More About Fast and Reliable from Director, Tom Soper

I was a bike messenger when I first moved to New York. It’s a tough job, not well paid but addictive because of the freedom it gives a person to roam the city as a member of a loose collective of fiercely independent characters, each with their own tall stories to tell. Dexter Benjamin’s story is one of the most amazing. He is, in fact, an urban legend.

Shooting Dexter cycling the streets of New York wasn’t easy, of course, especially with a bulky Sony High Definition camera. When we followed him in a car, he’d get ahead of us in the traffic. When we tried to keep up on bicycles of our own, it was exhausting. If we’d wait at an intersection for him to go past, we’d get a couple of seconds and he was gone. Interviewing him back at the office was altogether easier. Dexter was frank and expansive about his life, and his colleagues, co-workers and friends were welcoming and allowed us to hang around endlessly as they went about the essential task of making a living. We thank them all. When all is said and done, this short film amounts to little more than a portrait of one man, but our hope is that it is an inspiration to many. Our thanks also to MediaRights for taking our film into their festival, we’re hugely proud to be a part of such a worthwhile venture.