Every racing movie I've ever seen featured cars and drivers that were contemporary at the time. None that I can recall ever featured the early days of racing. To do so now entails a great deal of risk since the modern fan usually has no concept of race cars circling the track at less than half today's speeds. For that reason I'm publicly congratulating a gentleman named Justin Escue. He's planning to shoot a film about the very first Indianapolis 500 and the people who made it happen.
Done properly, such a film could stir the emotions of any race fan as they discover just how terrifying those early cars could be. Skinny tires, unsophisticated suspensions and primitive brakes meant that a driver needed to be very skilled and very brave. Forget roll bars and seat belts and crash helmets: they had none of those safety devices. The cars sat high off the ground, which meant they were easily susceptible to flipping on their sides, and worse. Oh, and don't forget the riding mechanics. Because the cars weren't very reliable over 500 miles, those poor souls could only hang on and hope their man didn't make any deadly mistakes.
With the advantages of modern cinematography, aided by computer graphics, such racing has the potential to be hugely exciting on-screen. And no doubt the difficulties faced by the men who hoped to build a 2.5 mile oval in Indiana (not exactly the population center of America) just to promote a 500-mile race, must have been enormous. Surely it will make for fine drama.
The question in my mind, though, is… where will the producer find early race cars whose owners are willing to risk them for movie making? Or will he build a number of expensive replicas? Filming is due to begin in October but depends on real estate deals that will form the Prairie Hills Motorsport Club near Lake Village, Indiana. The club, a $170 million private race track, would be built on 970 acres, including 10 miles of track, private garages, condominiums, a hotel and a water park. Very few details are available (I got these from a Hemmings blog). Apparently the project isn't going to be a documentary, though that might work. The producers say it will be a feature-length movie.
But please, Mr. Escue, whatever you do, computer-edit any vintage race scenes to real time. Let's see them as they actually appeared to drivers and spectators, not the over-cranked frames that make early racing appear almost comedic. That's how you sell historic auto racing to modern fans.
1911 – 2011 – 100 years. Great idea, but who is going to build a 2.5 mile brick track to use one time? I am afraid it would be too expensive even for the movies.
August 5, 2010 @ 6:56 pm