One of the best damn car movies made...awesome running footage and great driving. I watched and old interview with Frankenheimer and mention that the movie could never be done today because of cost and insurance restraints. If you have never seen it...get it or rent it AWESOME
I first saw this movie in True cinemascope and the wraparound sound. Remember, this sound business was new in the sixties and I had never heard sound surrounding me as I watched a movie. Movies used to be like watching a small black and white TV today. When this came out and you heard those engines starting and then at full song, it was a combined religious and sexual experience, indeed. Corny plot but that is irrelevant. The sound, and the camera mounted on a Ford GT 40 that literally puts you in the action. If at all possible play the DVD with a full surround sound and turn the volume up. No Viagra needed, just popcorn.
Ha, Ha, Ha... I was going to post this last week... I watched the movie on TCM last week. I still like Thunder Road better but it was one of my Favorites. And it is my all time favorite RACE movie so far. Isn't there a race movie with Steve McQueen that was pretty good too?
I bought it two weeks ago on DVD and still havent gotten around to watching it.........I think today is the day.
Ha ha ha, Brushy, I can just see you all wholed up in your studio with about 5 cigarettes burnin' going, "yeah baby, yeah"!! Am I close?!
Not just Jim Clark, but Grahm Hill as well. Bob Bondurant trained most of the "actors" to drive for the movie, and then went on to start his driving school. This is a great movie, and a true enthusiast will see that they were using F1, and F3 cars for most of the scenes. Great movie. , and yeah, I saw it at the store (Best Buy) last week as well.
My dad took my mom & I too see the movie when it came out in '66,,,,,I was nine. It was at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.The music,scenery,& the story of life in general is awesome.....way ahead of its time and a must see flick.
Awesome movie. I have a big poster that is a photo of James Garner behind the wheel, that was sent to me in a promo for a stock photography agency. I flipped when I got it!
One of my favorites! I read an article discussing how another reason they could never make a 'modern version' that captured the feel of the original was that with all the modern safety equipment used now you'd never be able to see all of the emotions on the driver's faces.
Hells yeah! I remember seeing that flick in the theater when I was a little kid, complete with panoramic screen and sensurround. Mind warping experience.
They said that James Garner was so talented with the racing in this movie that he could have been a very successful formula 1 driver. Personally, I would have chosen the racing gig over the acting. Chris
Aw shit, man. None of the stock companies ever send me any cool stuff like that. Punchstock just gave me a pen and a box of jellybeans. Brush, I watched Grand Prix last week. Awesome movie. My father took me to see Le Mans when it was first run in theatres... 1969? '70? I think I was 5.
It seems like they say that about every actor in every racing movie... Although I must say that Tom Cruise would make one hell of a NASCAR driver as half of that shit is acting anyway.
Seems to me he did a lot of his own stunts, driving included, on The Rockford Files. He did do some racing later on, too, but it was those celebrity racing kind of deals for the most part. Every time they run this movie on TCM and I flip it on I end up watching most, if not all of it. Probably as close as I'm going to get to that kind of action, except for my dad's old 8mm movies from the Glen - I was 8 years from being born when the movie came out.
I found it at Target http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/sr=8-1/qid=1153854117/ref=sr_8_1/601-0397369-9057737?%5Fencoding=UTF8&asin=B000FFJYCU Two DVD set for $13.27, hard to beat! Don't go to the store though, they told me it was only online. I guess all of their music and DVDs go thru Amazon. Small small world getting smaller everyday.
It's a great movie with lots of great stories behind it. Some of the shots where there is a closeup of the drivers face while driving was done with a rig called the chariot. It was a mockup of a race car mounted on a trailer towed behind the GT40 camera car. Well Antonio Sabato who plays Barlini was being an ass to some of the crewand drivers so when it came time for him to ride the chariot for some shots, the GT40 driver, a top New Zealander named Chris Amon, really hung it out and scared the shit out of Sabato. And it was on film for everyone to laugh at. If you get the DVD ($14.99 at Target!) watch the extras, great stuff. Cheers, Kurt
You can teach almost anybody to drive the correct racing lines. That doesn't make them Racers. That takes passion and a need to win. So who were real Racers and Actors? McQueen, Newman, Belmondo...Did I mis anybody?
Yeah, Paul Newman had a very succesful racing career following that movie (I got to see him race in Portland), and, of course, he's still involved in a major way. What's kinda cool, though, is his "sleeper": A brown Volvo 240 wagon with a supercharged 5.0 H.O. V8 that he uses to tear up the country roads back home in Conn.! I think Letterman has one, too.
During the filming, Garner, (and some of the other actors) were being trained by Bondurant. Garner did take to the racing so well, that he picked up a ride from Ford. I am sure Bondurant had something to do with that (being a factory backed driver at the time), but he still competed as a factory driver for a couple of seasons. He drove a 427 Cobra at Riverside, and Watkins Glenn, where he placed on the podium. His best finishes. Great movie. Lots of history.
Garner was also heavily envolved with offroad racing. Competing in the Baja 1000 in several different varieties of Cars and Trucks.
The Jalopy Journal
