Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Upcoming F1 movie triggers cinematic memories

Director Ron Howard, a.k.a. Richie Cunningham, a.k.a. Opie, announced this week that his movie about the 1976 Formula One Grand Prix season entitled "Rush" will premiere in September of next year.

The movie's focus is the battle during the 1976 season between James Hunt and Niki Lauda for the world driving championship after Lauda was nearly killed in a crash and fire at the Nurburgring. Lauda's amazing will to live and his return to the cockpit, after which he nearly won the title, is the basis of the plot.

Here's a short video about the film, sent to me by my friend, Rick Morris. I'm getting excited already.

 

When I read that the film will be out a year from September, I immediately wondered if it might possibly make its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, as the documentary "Senna" did a few years ago. Naturally, I contacted my Entertainment department colleagues here at the Star, Peter Howell and Linda Barnard, who do a wonderful job reviewing films and know all about TIFF and movies in general.

 

Replied Howell: "I think it unlikely TIFF would have it. Ron Howard isn't a festival guy. I don't think he's ever had a film at TIFF, or any festival for that matter."

 

Added Barnard: "Interesting, but we won’t know until this time next year (sounds like a movie title!)

 

Okay, if not at TIFF, "Rush" will still open in Toronto in September '13 and the first thing that hit me about it was the title: what does "Rush" have to do with car racing?

 

Greater minds than mine make these decisions but movie titles are just like book titles. You would think the title would tell you what the book is about, wouldn't you? I have a friend, Alec Ross, who paddled a canoe across Canada. He wrote a book about it. The title? "Coke Stop At Emo." I don't think it sold a lot. Same thing with "Rush." I can think of a lot of things when I read or hear the word "Rush," but auto racing ain't one of them.

 

Whatever, I wish Howard and the movie luck. It's about time we got a good movie about racing (presuming this one will be good). There hasn't been a good one produced since 1967 when "Grand Prix" came out. That's a lot of time between cinematic pit stops.

 

A few years ago, I wrote a column about racing movies I have at home - the good ones and the turkeys. Here are a few excerpts from that column; turkeys first.

 

"Stroker Ace," (1983) was with Burt Reynolds and Jim Nabors, "Days of Thunder," (1990) starred Tom Cruise and Robert Duvall, and "Driven," (2001) featured Sylvester Stallone and B. Reynolds (yes, him again).

 

All three were truly awful.

 

"Stroker Ace" was based on a hilarious book, Stand On It, by William Neely and Robert Ottum, which was a satire on all things auto racing. Reynolds and Nabors ignored the satire and went for the cheap laughs and the movie was a bomb, as a result.

 

"Days of Thunder" was a wasted opportunity. NASCAR opened itself up to the stars and the producers and what could have been a wonderful movie makes you cringe half the time.

 

And "Driven?" When Stallone couldn't suck Bernie Ecclestone into letting him build a film around F1, he turned to CART and the finished product illustrates perfectly why Bernie is such a genius.

 

I was at the Toronto premiere at the Yonge and Eglinton Silver City and when it got to the part where the hero turns his car around and starts driving the wrong way on the track to go rescue a guy who'd just crashed, I swear that everybody in the theatre wanted to crawl under their seats.

 

Those were the awful ones. Here are a couple close-to-awful:

 

"Heart Like a Wheel" (1983), with Bonnie Bedelia and Beau Bridges, is the story of Shirley Muldowney and her fight to make it in the man's world of drag racing. It's so-so. The song, which wasn't about racing, is still better.

 

"Bobby Deerfield" (1977), with Al Pacino, has its moments but, for the most part, is a boring art film. If you like the camera gazing into Pacino's eyes while he, a) looks at where he's going, b) looks at a woman, c) looks at a menu, then this film's for you. Me? I fell asleep.

 

Okay, I can hear some of you saying it: What about "Le Mans," with Steve McQueen? I'll tell you what turned me against that movie, which was released in 1971. There's a line that McQueen recites that goes something like this:

 

"Racing is life, the rest is just waiting." That's a pretty good line. The problem with it is that it's stolen.

 

The late Karl Wallenda of the Flying Wallendas tightrope act said the same thing, only 10 years earlier: "To be on the wire is life, the rest is just waiting."

 

So I was enjoying "Le Mans" until I heard that line and it just put me right off.

 

Here's why I like the movie "Winning," which leads off my list of pretty good racing movies: It got Paul Newman interested in auto racing.

 

Prior to making that film, he knew next-to-nothing about the sport. But filming it turned him into a fan and then a racer himself and the sport was so much better off because of his involvement.

 

Co-starring Joanne Woodward and Robert Wagner, the story is fun and the racing scenes are excellent. A moment that's magical is when Newman drives his road car around the big speedway at Indianapolis and maintenance people and others at work in the infield wave his way.

 

There's a huge pileup at the start of the Indy 500 (footage from the actual first-lap wreck in 1966 is used) and Newman is shown sitting in his car after the dust settles, eating ice cream while he waits for the restart and we hear his heart beating a million miles an hour.

 

This is poetic licence at work: immediately following the real wreck in '66, TV cameras caught driver Arnie Knepper tucking into a sandwich, moments after a wheel came so close to hitting him in the head that it left a tire mark on his helmet. I suspect Arnie's heart wasn't beating fast. Some of those old timers had ice water in their veins.

 

The special-effects photography plus the gripping musical score are what make "Grand Prix" (1966) a joy. Director John Frankenheimer's masterpiece is best seen in Cinerama in a movie theatre with stereo surround sound - but hey, you can't have everything.

 

The cast is near-perfect and the "race drivers" (James Garner, Yves Montand (left), Antonio Sabato and Brian Bedford) look more like race drivers than real race drivers do (Graham Hill, Richie Ginther, Jo Bonnier, Jochen Rindt and others from that era can be seen lurking in the background).

 

The women (Eva Marie Saint, Jessica Walter and Francoise Hardy) keep the heat turned up, too.

 

An old movie that I love and watch at least twice a year is "To Please a Lady" (1950), with Clark Gable and Barbara Stanwyck. Gable is a post-World War II midget racer; she's a crusading newspaper columnist who attacks racing as a blood sport. It's good stuff and if you've never seen it, it's available on DVD.

 

An incredible moment comes in mid-movie when he confronts her about her columns. When she gives him some lip, he slaps her across the face. You don't see this scene when the film's on TV these days. It's been cut out, probably because Stanwyck doesn't appear to be too put off about it. 

 

Five more to tell you about:

 

"The Crowd Roars" (1932) stars James Cagney and Joan Blondell. Cagney is a successful driver who cavorts with a succession of available women (hey, it's every man's fantasy) but worries that his younger brother will try to follow in his footsteps and wind up in the Marble Orchard (what old-time drivers used to call the cemetery).

 

"The Roar of the Crowd" (1953) stars Howard Duff and is a hoot because it's done in flashbacks while he's driving in the Indy 500. Some of these old racing movies are a stretch at the best of times but when you've got a guy daydreaming at 140 miles an hour, it's too much.

 

"Indianapolis Speedway" (1939) stars Pat O'Brien and Ann Sheridan. All the wives of the drivers wear fur coats. Enough said. 

 

"The Big Wheel" (1949) stars Mickey Rooney and Mary Hatcher. Against his mother's wishes, Mickey wants to go racing to clear his old man's name(too complicated to go into here). Doesn't win the Indy 500 but they give him the Borg-Warner Trophy anyway (you have to be there).

 

I was 7 years old when I first saw it; when I bought the DVD recently, it was pretty much as I remembered it. One surprising nugget: there's a reference in that movie to my Oswego Speedway - famous, even back then.

 

"The Racers" (1955). Kirk Douglas is an American trying to break into the European sports car circuit in the 1950s. His manager (Lee J. Cobb) wears a fedora in Monaco in May (what is with these people?). The death scene starring Gilbert Roland, after he's been thrown out of his car, is priceless.

 

And now you know what I do all winter . . .

Will resignation impact TV coverage of F1?

A couple of weeks ago, shortly after Mark Webber won the Brazilian GP and Britain’s Sky TV announced plans for an HD channel dedicated solely to Formula One starting in 2012, I contacted TSN about their plans for next year.

TSN has been showing F1 races and qualifying rounds for years, most recently by picking up the feed from the BBC. But the Beeb will only televise 10 of next year’s 20 scheduled races live while Sky will have them all (plus all practice sessions, etc.) and, in fact, has hired Martin Brundle to head up its broadcasting crew.

Now, I haven’t heard back from TSN. I suspect there are any number of reasons for this, all of them legitimate. When they have something to say, I’m sure they’ll call. The season doesn’t start till mid-March, so there’s plenty of time.

But I was discussing the situation with a friend of mine yesterday afternoon and, at the end of the chat, he said this: "Maybe TSN won’t have any F1 next year. Maybe we’ll get to watch it on Speed TV."

I agreed with him (although I stressed that I thought it highly unlikely). But then I got an email later in the day that contained some unsettling news.

Hunter Nickell, president of Speed since 2005, has resigned and will leave at the end of the year.

Now, I don’t know Hunter Nickell from Adam, but I do know that in recent years the Speed weekend racing coverage during the season has gone from a one-hour Sunday night wrapup program to pretty much wall-to-wall coverage of the sport during the weekend, starting Friday.

Host Adam Alexander would pop up before the first race of the weekend, usually the Friday night NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race, with an update on that weekend’s racing calendar (sports cars, motocross, Moto GP, Formula One and IndyCar races, as well as NASCAR) and then would update with other pre-race reports and results through Saturday and on into Sunday evening.

Kind of a mini-CNN on wheels.

As well as his work strengthening motorsport news coverage in general, Nickell also beefed up coverage of, and solidified relationships with, F1, Supercross and Grand Am in particular.

Now, on the surface, his resignation might not seem like that big a deal. But every time there’s a change at the top of just about anything, the new guy (or woman) moves to put his or her stamp on things.

For instance (and I bet you didn’t know this), the minute the president of a major film studio is replaced, every movie in production at that time goes straight to digital. They are not released in theatres. Why? Because the new head honcho doesn’t want to have to take the blame for any turkeys in the bunch and he/she sure doesn’t want to have to pass on any praise to the guy who was fired.

It’s the same with TV.

It’s highly unlikely that the new president of Speed is going to leave everything as it is. Maybe he/she won’t be that big a racing fan. So maybe the weekend racing coverage, or some of it, gets whacked.

Maybe the new person loves NASCAR and isn’t much of an F1 fan. Uh-oh, I can hear you say. But it’s possible this change could have an effect on Speed's F1 coverage.

Or maybe not. (It really doesn’t matter to us in Canada now, because Speed’s F1 race coverage has been blacked out in recent years. But if TSN or Sportsnet passes on F1 in 2012, and Speed’s coverage is altered, we could be in a fix . . .)

What I am saying is that Speed TV under the leadership of Hunter Nickell has been a good friend of all motorsports and fingers should be crossed that this across-the-board approach continues.

Now, speaking of Formula One, it’s really interesting to watch how Lotus-Renault CEO Dany Bahar is now speaking out of both sides of his mouth so far as the return of driver Kimi Raikkonen is concerned.

Bahar had some of the world’s motoring press over for lunch in London on Monday and said that he fully expects Raikkonen to have some difficulty adjusting to F1 after being away from the sport for two years (ya think?) but that the team is quite prepared to give him all the time he needs.

Said M. Bahar: "You cannot expect from a driver that was absent for two years to come back and adapt to the new tyres and new regulations from day one, so he needs his time. But whether this time is three days, six races or 20 races, we will see. What is important is to see how his tendency goes towards the performance. If it is always improving, then of course we will give him the time."

All very well and good. But then, he said this:

"He knows he has to deliver. . . He is not the same kid as he was at Sauber and at McLaren. These are different times, he has to deliver and he realises that."

Well, which is it? Is it, "We will give him the time?" or is it, "He knows he has to deliver?"

This guy Bahar won’t last long if Raikkonen doesn’t live up to what’s expected of him. And on top of that, he’s about to record an even bigger loss in the arena of public opinion.

The contract Renault has with Robert Kubica, the popular Polish driver who was nearly killed in a rally accident at the beginning of the year and was unable to return to F1 racing as hoped, is about to expire and Bahar seems content to let him go.

As a good friend of mine noted a few weeks ago, when that happens, Kubica will become a test driver with Ferrari and if he can recapture his old speed, will be a very good bet to replace Felipe Massa in 2013.

And if that happens, Dany Bahar’s career in F1 could come to screeching halt.

Weekend racing preview: Boris Said in jail

No, no.

Boris Said – who was in the news a lot this week after he promised to put a “whuppin’ “ on Greg Biffle after they had a big crash at Watkins Glen (you can watch the video of Boris’s outburst here) – is not in jail and, in fact, will be racing in this weekend’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race in Montreal.

But he’s been in jail twice – once for real and once for fun.

In 2001, Boris showed up at Mosport for a Trans-Am race and was promptly arrested and thrown into the nearby Bowmanville jail.

It seems that Boris got into a beef over money and was sued in Ontario court. He kept skipping court dates, so a warrant was put out for his arrest. When he arrived at the race track on Friday, he found himself in handcuffs.

The jolly group that meets regularly on the hill near the second turn – Corner Two Racing, Inc. – began a campaign, complete with signs, to “Free Boris.”

Whether they had any influence or not is not known but somebody in Mosport management managed to get Boris sprung on Sunday in time for the race. He finished eighth (after starting 31st and last (he’d missed all the practice sessions and qualifying, after all) behind race winner Paul Gentilozzi.

You’d have thought he’d learned a lesson, but no.

The other time he “went to jail” was in 2003 when he was racing in NASCAR at Infineon Raceway in California. A guard at the nearby San Quentin prison invited Boris and his crew to take a tour of the maximum security facility.

While there, Boris stretched out on the injection table in the execution chamber, after which he quipped:  “The guard said, ‘I’m not supposed to let you do that – I’ve never seen anyone get up from there before.’ It was a creepy feeling.”

Kinda like lying down in a coffin, eh Boris? I wouldn't do that either . . .

By the way, this will all change later today but in first practice this morning, Ron Fellows, Marcos Ambrose, Alex Tagliani, Boris and Jacques Villeneuve were the top five fastest for the Nationwide race. Andrew Ranger is the only Canadian who appears to be struggling, mired back in 37th.

Danica Patrick, meantime, who’s the only woman entered (Jennifer Jo Cobb rented out her ride), clocked in 19th. Forty-seven cars took time. 

TV TIMES: The NASCAR Canadian Tire Series race at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve will be telecast live Saturday at 12:30 p.m. on TSN. The Nationwide race pre-race show will start at 2 p.m. with the race itself getting the green flag at 2:30, also on TSN. The NASCAR Sprint Cup race from Michigan will take place Sunday on TSN with the pre-race at noon and the green flag at 1 p.m. No IndyCar this weekend but Formula One returns next weekend and it’s about time.

GOOD NEWS: Richard Foley of Montreal, who raced on the beach at Daytona and then was the first Canadian to race in the Daytona 500 in 1959 when Bill France opened the big Speedway, will wave the green flag to start the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series race Saturday in Montreal.

It’s about time that NASCAR honoured some of the early pioneers of NASCAR stock car racing in Canada. Yes, Quebec’s Jean-Paul Cabana waved the flag for the very first Nationwide race at Circuit Gille-Villeneuve three years ago, but he wasn’t a pioneer and he never raced in the big league.

Of course, they haven’t seen fit to invite Earl Ross to Montreal, either. Ross, to this date, remains the only Canadian to win a race at what was then the Winston Cup level. That was in 1974.

NOTES: The documentary film Senna opens today (Friday) at the Varsity Theatre at the Bloor-Bay Manulife Centre. Better move fast, though, because I suspect it will only be there for the weekend. Bruce DeMara gave it a wonderful review and you can read it here. . . . D.J. Kennington, defending NASCAR Canadian Tire Series champion, will do double duty at Montreal. He’ll be in the Nationwide race as well as the Canadian Tire, joining Ranger, Fellows and J.R. Fitzpatrick driving in both races . . .

TAKE A BOW: Stanley Tools has made a guaranteed donation of $100,000 to Canadian Tire Jumpstart on behalf of Stanley and Stanley-sponsored Richard Petty Motorsports driver Marcos Ambrose, who is competing in the 2011 Nationwide Series race in Montreal.

Stanley’s involvement with the program is now in its second year, and includes participation in annual product promotions which will help support the Canadian Tire Jumpstart program. 

"Not only am I excited to race in Montreal in front of all the Canadian fans, but I am very happy to be racing for a worthy cause such as the Canadian Tire Jumpstart program where Stanley will donate $100,000 on our behalf” said Ambrose in a release. 

“If we can help kids achieve their goals in sports programs across Canada with support from great companies such as Stanley & Canadian Tire, that is a great accomplishment"

Canadian Tire Jumpstart is a community-based charitable program that helps kids aged 4 to 18 participate in organized sport and recreation activities such as hockey, soccer, dance and swimming.

ON THE FARM: When Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race got rained out at Watkins Glen , NASCAR driver Andy Lally and Grand Am Rolex Series driver Spencer Pumpelly (he drove at Mosport in the American Le Mans Series race in July) visited the nearby Farm Sanctuary, a facility for rescued animals.

Lally and Pumpelly are both vegan, which means they do not consume meat, milk, cheese, or eggs, and do not use any animal by-products, such as leather and wool. “I do it for ethical reasons,” explained Lally, in a release.

Farm Sanctuary’s shelters in New York and California provide life-long care for nearly 1,000 cows, pigs, goats, sheep, chickens and other farm animals that were destined for the dinner table. More about the New York Shelter in Watkins Glen here.