1st time seeing "Grand Prix" the movie.Wow!

Frankenheimer said a movie like this could never be done again because of all the actors who actually got behind the wheel and tracked the cars. In todays world the studios and insurance companies would never allow it.
A very cool film indeed. Cinamatography for the times was fantastic.

 

It took forever for that film to come out on DVD. It looks great. Worth the wait!

 

From what was said, Frankenheimer sort of put the rest of the big movie industry on hold. He rounded up all but, I think three, Panaflex cameras in the world, for the filming of Grand Prix. Some were even rented under other names, from what I remember.

Also, try and enlist that much co-operation from the FIA and their insurers, I think it would now be impossible.

There are some aspects of the movie, that seem/feel dated, but it is a GREAT movie. The only other racing movie that comes even close is LeMans.

Franco, What took you so long?

Regards,
Bill

 

Lemans is good but it doesn't have the great in car shots as Grand Prix, its also great seeing some of the cameos of drivers in the day, some who passed in accidents just a few years after the movie was made.

John also got Enzos approval after showing him some of the scenes from the movie, this allowed him the famous in the factory scene, of course the only way Enzo would allow the Garner/Honda character to win was the withdrawl of the Ferrari team from the race after Sartis death, also if you look at the Ferraris in the first race at Monaco they had brown paint where the SF Shields should have been, clearly before Enzo allowed the use of his Company name.

 

Fantastic movie for sure and I loved seeing Graham and Phil Hill and a couple others play a cameo role. The cars were superb to see and hear and I loved seeing all the mechanical parts move throughout the movie.

I must say Stoddard's wife and the blonde girlfriend of the young Italian Ferrari driver were really hot!

The only thing that bugged me was the movie music theme. It sounds great in the first few minutes but when they keep repeating the same music on and on it was getting really annoying to me. They could have skipped the music totally and it would have been a huge improvement.

 

James Garner said Lloyds of London cancelled his insurance after the fire scene, so he did the rest of the movie with no insurance. He was quite the driver according to many people.

 

James Garner was not just acting like a race driver. He raced and won the Baja 1000 several times.

 

Garner is an incredible man.

About two years ago Speedvision aired a movie Garner did on his own F/5000 team he owned and operated in 1969, Scooter Patrick was the driver.
I have never seen it before or since, but it was like a 1.5 hour home movie, I'll have to see if I can remember the name of it. I taped it, and then my G/D VCR ate the G/D tape - same tape I had two hours of 'Lap of the Gods' on.
I cried...

In the movie, he talked alot about his budget to run his team: if I recall he said it was getting to be like $60,000, and it was just getting too expensive to sustain it.........



Anyway,

Five years ago (?) Stallone wanted to do a movie about F1, but could not get anyone to cooperate, so the movie he did was based largely on Indy cars, and we saw the results......... ick.

 

Wining was also a great movie of that period with Newman and Wagner,about Indy racing.

 

Forget the movie just watch the Rockford Files.

 

When I read all the discussion as to whether Michael Schumacher's retirement had been forced on him, I couldn't help remembering this exchange between Manetta and Sarti in the Monza pits in the movie:

Agostini Manetta: I have been thinking seriously of your retirement, Sarti.
Jean-Pierre Sarti: [Angrily] Then retire me now!
[Manetta pulls Sarti away from bystanders]
Agostini Manetta: [Quietly] Kindly lower your voice! Of course I will not retire you now. Tomorrow there is a race to be run, and I also well know that you want to drive it. After tomorrow, who knows, Jean-Pierre?
Jean-Pierre Sarti: After tomorrow, Sr. Manetta, *I* will decide to retire or not.
Agostini Manetta: Sarti, you're further gone than I'd thought. A pity, a great pity. I always considered you to be the best.
Jean-Pierre Sarti: I'm *still* the best!

 

This is exactly what John referenced as Michael was announcing his retirement immediately following the race last weekend as I told him I believe this was a "forced retirement" all along. Afterall, Enzo handpicked Luca.

Carol

 

I do watch the Rockford File reruns, but that's another story.

I found the movie I was tlaking about, it's called 'The Racing Scene', but there is no information about it that I found, just that it exists.

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0180946/

Has anyone seen 'Once upon a wheel' ?

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0413072/

 

I'm pretty sure that scene was intended to portray the way that Enzo could "inspire" his drivers to give 110%.

Implied in that scene was "so go prove you're still the best".

I once read an interview with a race driver who, after running the best race of his life for Enzo, turned down a seat with Ferrari for the rest of the season. He knew that Enzo would convince him to push too hard. He had run the best race of his career, but had scared himself silly with how far beyond his limits he was running.

Remember that Enzo was once charged with manslaughter after one of his drivers crashed into a crowd at the '57 MM.

Having Sarti killed in a fluke accident in the race after that exchange may have been a subtle reference to that history.


It was great to see what some of the classic tracks used to look like: the changes to Monaco, that severe banking at Monza. And that description of Monza as a combination of road course and oval banking made me think of Indy.


I think another reason that "Grand Prix" couldn't be remade today is that Hollyweird has gotten like lawyers: never ask a question if you don't already have the answer.

Any modern racing film couldn't ask drivers "why do you do it?" without the producers trying to supply their own opinion as an answer.

 

Hello,
I though that it was also interesting that many of the helmets were of drivers everyone knows(knew). You would see Stewart's, Clark's, Amon's, the Hill's, and others. Nice touch.

We also can see why we have not seen many f1 drvers go into film .

MDred85

 

Franco,
Of course, you don't need to apologize to me. I was just surprised that you hadn't, I thought it was a pre-requesite for registration on F-Chat

Has anybody else seen the BBC series "Driving Ambition"? About a housewife that gets the racing "bug" and campaigns a mucho hot-rodded Mini for a season. As I remember it was a really well done show, in spite of being serialized. I would probably buy a copy if they were offering it on DVD.

Regards,
Bill

 

Driven.

It was truly terrible.

 

Yep, I saw it on Speed a year or two back, still waiting to re-aire it so I can tivo it. Nothing like seeing Wilt Chaimberlin squeezing into a 914/6 for a celebrity race, haha.

Back to the Grand Prix topic...I loved seeing the old Monza setup with the high banking, always wondered how it was setup.

 

It was intentional that the fictitious movie drivers would wear similar helmet designs to real drivers, so that the movie footage could be spliced with the real race footage.

That's why Sarti's helmet changes in mid-movie; after John Surtees left Ferrari, Sarti adopted Mike Parkes' helmet design.

I think it's why the names of the movie characters also resemble the names of real drivers on the same teams:
Sarti is similar to Surtees
Barlini is similar to Bandini
Aron is similar to Amon
Stoddard is similar to Stewart.

 

I think it's why the names of the movie characters also resemble the names of real drivers on the same teams:
Sarti is similar to Surtees
Barlini is similar to Bandini
Aron is similar to Amon
Stoddard is similar to Stewart.[/QUOTE]

I have never thought about that. Very astute!

 

LMAO

I hate to admit it, but the first time I saw Grand Prix, was in a big theatre on a real Panavision W I D E S C R E E N !!! It was amazing. Of course I was just an impressionable toddler, with sparkling eyes and short pants, yeah right.

 

Yup, me too.........and now I'm a nostalgic old f*rt!

If the mods allow, here is a link to another place where, among all the fluff (guilty as charged, yer honour) there are some out-take pictures and serious discussion:

http://forums.atlasf1.com/showthread.php?threadid=26190&perpage=40&display=&pagenumber=1

Paul M