Nigel Roebuck על מרוצי מכוניות וסרטים.

[דובי מילר]

מי מכם לא קרא, שמע או ראה כוונה כלשהי של מפיק כזה או אחר להסריט סרט על מרוצי מכוניות או על נהג מרוצים.

פעם בכמה חודשים יוצא מישהו מהעולם ההוליבודי בהכרזה כי הוא עומד לעשות סרט על איירטון סנה-ז'יל ווילנייב או כל גיבור אחר ואז כמה שההכרזה היתה גדולה יותר ככה היא נקברת עמוק יותר.

לפעמים המפיק זוכה לחסד וברני אקלסטון לוקח אותו לסיבוב של לחיצות ידיים לפני גראן-פרי כזה או אחר, להתחכך בנהגים ובדוגמניות.

את הסרטים הטובים באמת אפשר לספור על אצבעות יד אחת ועדיין נראה לי שישאר לכם מקום להחזיק סיגרייה.

 

Nigel Roebuck ידידנו נשאל על כך השבוע והנה התייחסותו -

 

[דובי מילר]

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When I saw 'Across The Lake', at the time of its original broadcast, I thought everything about the production pretty well perfect - not least, as I said in the column, the performance of Anthony Hopkins. I now have it on DVD (bought on eBay), but unfortunately it is merely a straightforward recording 'from the box'. More convenient than my original VHS tape, of course, but still I wish the BBC would re-master it, and put it out on an 'official' DVD.

 

Difficult to know what would be my favourite 'motorsport topic' for a movie. In the late '80s there was talk of a film about the life of Gilles Villeneuve (with Michael J. Fox then spoken of for the role of Villeneuve), but although there were serious discussions about such a project, ultimately they came to nothing.

 

As I mentioned in the column, there were also plans for a movie about Enzo Ferrari, with Robert de Niro playing the Commendatore, but again nothing came of them. That said, an American friend recently told me he'd heard the project was 'on ice', rather than dead and buried, so here's hoping.

 

Ayrton Senna was the other possible subject for a feature film, but after a time - again - everything went quiet.

 

For the first time in many years, I recently saw 'Grand Prix' again, and although it isn't perfect, you'd have to say John Frankenheimer came as close to making a good movie about motor racing as probably it's possible to get. Forty years ago, when the film was made, everything was much more loose and informal, and it would be impossible for a modern movie maker to get the sort of access and cooperation necessary without shelling out so much money as to make the project unrealistic.

 

A few years ago there was a great hue and cry about a new Formula 1 movie, to be made by - and to star - Sylvester Stallone (presumably as the world's oldest Grand Prix driver). At Monza Stallone and Bernie Ecclestone gave a press conference, and it looked like all systems go. In the end, though, Stallone found sundry problems insurmountable in F1, and turned to CART (as was), going on to make one of the worst motion pictures in recorded history. F1, it may be said, had a lucky escape - although one doubts that Bernie & Co would have given the green light to such a palpably absurd script.

 

If 'Grand Prix' remains unquestionably the best racing movie to date, the film most true to its subject has to be Steve McQueen's 'Le Mans'. Although the film is almost entirely devoid of plot (and dialogue, for that matter), as an evocation of a great race, it's a remarkable piece of work - more like a documentary than a feature film. Despite the presence of McQueen, it didn't do great business at the box office - unless you like motor racing, it will send you to sleep, as the critics said at the time - but we should always be grateful for what stands as a record of perhaps the greatest era of sports car racing.

 

As a footnote - in the 'not many people know this' category - McQueen's original plan was to compete in the race itself, and he was due to share a Porsche 917 with none other than Jackie Stewart! Gives you an idea of the budget that was available, doesn't it? In the end, the plan was scotched by the film's insurers, horrified by the potential risk to the Hollywood superstar (and perhaps by JYS's fee...)

 

As we know, there is now to be a film about the life of Bruce McLaren, who came through serious childhood illness to become a Grand Prix driver, and then to found McLaren Cars, which ultimately begat McLaren International, etc. It seems to me there is a greater likelihood of a movie appealing to a mass audience if there is something more to it than 'just' motor racing. I can envisage a film about Enzo Ferrari, because he was such a complex individual, with so much going on his life at any given time, but I'm not sure today's relatively homogenised F1 would particularly lend itself to the movies.

 

Some years ago I recall a project for a film (or it may have been a TV drama, along the lines of 'Across The Lake') about Richard Seaman, the great British driver of the 1930s. Again, that came to nothing, but a friend of mine did a preliminary script, and I thought it had great possibilities. This, after all, was a Englishman driving for Mercedes during the years building up to the Second World War.

 

He was also married to a German girl, and his extremely wealthy widowed mother was so agin' the idea that she refused to attend their wedding. There were all kinds of conflicts and dramas in his life, as you can imagine, and the whole thing ended in tragedy: leading the 1939 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, he crashed in the rain, and was burned to death. Three months later Britain declared war on Germany.

 

My friend Joe Saward has recently written, and published, a book called 'Grand Prix Saboteurs'. I'm in the middle of reading it at the moment, and hugely enjoying it. Essentially, it's the story of three pre-war Grand Prix drivers - William Grover (who, under the name of 'W Williams' was the winner of the first Monaco Grand Prix, in 1929), Robert Benoist and Jean-Pierre Wimille - and the very significant 'covert' work they did in the war.

 

Both Grover and Benoist were ultimately executed by the Germans, and although Wimille survived the war, and resumed racing, he was killed in Argentina in 1949. It all makes for a wonderful read - and would, I'm sure, make for a marvellous movie

 

 

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