[rescue] replacing an Ultra2

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Sun, 29 Apr 2007 @ 11:15 -0400, K. Arun said:

> On 4/28/07, Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com> wrote:
> 
> > Almost all racing movies are blindly stupid, and have little to do with
> > racing. If you made a movie truly about racing, it would probably get
> > cancelled or limited showing. A good example is the 60s racing movie,
> > Formula One I think. It bombed because the audience was bored with a
> > racing movie that actually showed racing and the people involved.
> 
> You're probably thinking of Grand Prix made in 1966 by John
> Frankenheimer. Great movie. It has some rather rare footage of people
> like Juan-Manuel Fangio, Graham Hill and Jim Clark in and out of their
> cars.

It's also rare in that they really raced in the movie.  Some scenes at
low speed even were incredibly dangerous.

At Monza, they put the actors in trailers towed by F2 cars, at as much
as 80mph. The trailers had a cockpit that rotated to give the illusion
that they were driving. They didn't have the technology back then to
fake the speed and motion, so they had to find ways to do it for real.

Other shots are real cars and drivers, although a lot of them are shot
with F2 cars to keep the speed down for the camera.

I watched a special on Speedvision about the making of the movie, and
the guy said they were barely able to get insurance back then, and that
it would be much harder today.

I thought the shots of Spa, the *real* Spa, were especially wonderful.

I had a chance to meet Fangio, and didn't go.  He died a few months
later.  

Jimmy Clark was one of my heroes growing up.  He died 4 days after I was
born, but I saw a lot of him on TV in the 70s and in the books I read.

This got me in trouble in school, because I read a lot of racing books,
and I was supposed to be reading mindless drivel for students who
couldn't read.




-- 
shannon           |    Tara is grass, and behold how Troy lieth 
                  |    low--And even the English, perchance their 
                  |    hour will come!