How Hollywood Cracked the Motorsport Movie

How Hollywood Cracked the Motorsport Movie

Along with television and film one of the biggest loves that I have in my life has always been motorsport, from catching my first Formula One race on television as a wide eyed six year old I was hooked from an early age, and from Formula One came Touring Cars, then Indycar, Nascar, Moto GP you name it, basically in this day and age if it has an engine in it then more likely then not I am going to watch it race. With it's extremely competitive industry of colourful characters, politics and scandal all set upon a backdrop of glamour, wealth and danger you would think that the sport would be the perfect focus of attention for any Hollywood production, yet for 30 years Hollywood often struggled to successfully be able to translate the appeal of motorsport through a cinematic context, some of this coming from the natural difficulties of translating the excitement of sport on 35mm but most of the time coming from a complete inability of those involve to truly capture what it is that makes us motorsport so enthralled by our sport, an opinion that has only changed following the breakout success of 2009's Senna.

Prior to Senna however motorsport films found themselves split into two key types, each divided primarily through different generations which in some ways cam also be used as a means of defining the changing interpretation of cinema. The first wave came about in the 1960's and 70's where motorsport films included the likes of Steve McQueen's Le Mans as well as the 1969 Paul Newman flick Winning, both were moderate successes in the box office but earned more of a following through a cult status achieved with the rise of video and DVD. Both of these films in many ways could be seen as arguable pet projects of their respective stars, with both Newman and McQueen being keen petrol-heads both in their leisure time as well as both having keen involvements in motorsport itself, Newman would become part owner of an Indycar team during the 1980's whilst McQueen took part in a number of race meetings including a second place finish in the 12 hours of Sebring, and this interest in the sport shines through with their respective films, both Le Mans and Winning are beautifully shot and with a keen eye on the technical side of the sport, letting the imagery and atmosphere of motorsport, rather then dialogue and story-arcs be the catalyst for drawing you into the project, hell, for the first 30 minutes of Le Mans the only meaningful dialogue is a conversation about brake calipers such is the level of technical interest in the film. However in making the film so fixated around the technical side of the sport that it is deterring from a filmic viewpoint, Le Mans has almost no story whatsoever whilst Winning is flimsy to see the least, rendering the whole purpose of the two films as beautifully made but ultimately pointless pet projects. John Frankenheimer's 1966 release Grand Prix manages however to strike the right chords a bit better, whilst still not perfect by any means it's storyline feels a bit more in depth and with characters fleshed out and easy to see based on the real drivers of the day and with camera work and cinematography well ahead of it's time, but still locked away in the realms of the niche to ever truly be welcomed by a modern audience.

Unfortunately though by the 1980's it was the modern audiences which took priority, and the motor racing film entered phase 2; where technicality and aura in the sport was pushed aside to make way for the sport being nothing more then a glorified set-piece for another film genre, and in the process making films that went a long way to hurting the reputation of the sport. In 1990 producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer attempted to recreate the success of their previous work Top Gun by replacing the world of Aerial warfare with that of Nascar for their follow-up Days Of Thunder. But whilst Top Gun was able to do wonders for the outside world's interpretation of the military the same couldn't be said about Days of Thunder with Nascar; as the film is rife with bland characterisation and a very generic attitude to the (literal) nuts and bolts of motorsport's off-track activity, added to that comes the action on track also suffers, blandly shot and with a almost demeaning attitude to racing in general. Nascar doesn't have a large fan-base here in the UK so for a lot of people their view of Nascar is that of reckless nonprofessionals who believe that putting another man's life in danger by deliberately wrecking them is fair game, all because of this film. Honestly I would probably go as far as to consider Will Ferrell's Talladega Nights as a more realistic portrayal of Nascar.

Days of Thunder failed because it failed to understand what it is that motorsport fans look for in following the industry, and it was the same mistake that befell Sylvester Stallone's big money 2001 flop Driven. Whist Days of Thunder came under the impression at times that motorsport aficionados were rather simplistic and uninterested in the backyard workings of the sport Driven seemed to believe that all motorsport fans were 13 year old boys, and what should have been a character driven battle of wills was instead turned into a mess of techno music, lazy character archetypes and some of the worst action set-pieces seen in cinema, the belief being that every bit of contact in the sport must result in a Michael Bay-esque explosion of somersaulting cars. For it's credit Driven does get some of the off-track pressures of the sport right, certainly more-so then Days of Thunder, but the rest of the film feels and acts like a Playstation One game, and whilst Days of Thunder only harmed British perceptions of their sport Driven's failure helped to play a part in the CART series on which it's based going bankrupt and eventually out of business, now that is what you call getting it wrong.


All of the preceding films seemed to have this belief of what it is that we as motorsport fans look for in seeing our sport portrayed, it isn't about catering to the masses, action set-pieces or even the technical side of the sport; it is for me all about the people behind the cars;the drivers, the enigmatic, charismatic figures who elevate themselves to the level of heroes through putting their bodies and lives on the line for the sake of success, and in the process create something of an aura surrounding them and bring into context for the audience the scale of their achievements, and that is more then anything else what Senna managed to do so well. Ayrton Senna was always one of the most charismatic drivers in the sport, and through his tragic passing in 1994 almost seemed to develop something of a mystique surrounding him subsequently for Formula One fans , and in the movie Senna director Asif Kapadia was able to capture that aura and transcribe the Senna myth to both the sport's fans and the wider public. This was done not just through the showcasing of Senna's skills inside the car but also by his personality away from it, the self-belief of the man and at times the enigmatic and competitive side that made him more then just a generic hero who drove around for a living. Furthermore to this the film does well to capture the sport's inner workings, the gritty political side which drives what it is that we as fans see on track, sure Days of Thunder had a generic big bad authority figure briefly in the film but certainly nothing like Jean Marie-Balestre's aggression and arrogance, which played off against the free-spirited nature of Senna and made for a great arc through the film's story, similarly done with Alain Prost who I do feel at times however gets a bit of a bad rap in the film.


Senna surpassed all expectations at the box office, from being a largely niche film limited to art-houses word of mouth spread to the extent that it was awarded a nationwide release, and in the process opened up the gates to other films about motorsport being made, thanks to Senna Hollywood had finally come to understand the appeal of the sport, the people-driven approach that turned ordinary men into extra-ordinary figures, the figureheads of a well oiled and at times controversial system. Senna was followed up by the similarly brilliant films 1 as well as TT: Closer To The Edge which helped to play a part in helping to revive popularity in the Isle Of Man TT Race, showcasing the danger of the sport in it's truest form, but never glorifying that spectacle in the way that films such as Driven did. All of those films however had one thing in common however which helped to propel it I feel was that the films were all classified as documentaries, and the use of archive footage I felt truly helped manage to get over to mainstream audiences a realism in both those involved in the sport as well as truly showcasing the skill, danger and pressures of those in the sport, certainly the Cole Trickle's of Hollywood were a long way from the real world Guy Martin's of TT. What the motorsport movie needed however was for the energy and captured essence of the documentary film to be realised in Hollywood form, and with 2013's Rush we finally got that. Rush did have a lot of benefits coming it's way even before the start of production, the 1976 F1 season ranks up there as one of the very best and in characters such as James Hunt and Niki Lauda two almost polar opposite figures but still with their own unique charisma that both carry, as well as this Ron Howard has always had a knack of bringing these ambiguous real life figures to the big screen and although there were some niggling issues which would harm the Formula One obsessive Howard was able to truly combine the character driven narrative necessary for a modern film audience in the way that Day's of Thunder attempted to do but still have the care and natural interest in the sport to appeal to the true motoring diehards such as the late sixties McQueen and Newman efforts. The film was also particularly smart in not making the same mistakes as those of the past by not making the actual racing side of the film too overtly important, reports said that originally Howard wanted to shoot the film without any racing scenes in the film at all, and to be honest I feel that if he had done that we would have had a film of just a good a quality such is the strength of the rest of the film.

With the release of Rush I would like to believe that Hollywood has finally been able to master the motorsport film, and in the process truly translate to viewers just what it is that draws us to the sport and keeps people like myself viewing for so long. The characters, the men behind the machines, not the technicals, crashes or simplicity but the heart and daring of those involved and the lengths they will go to in an attempt to achieve their goals. It will still be a long way before I ever see a motor racing film getting reward accolades, but if boxing has managed to make that breakthrough then there is nothing to say motor racing can't do the same someday, especially now that Hollywood seems to have finally got it right.