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Gearhead Cinema Reprise

 December 27, 2019 at 8:55 PM PST

Speaker 1: 00:00:00 Fasten your seatbelts, maximum trip cinema. Speaker 2: 00:00:08 He is racing off to a holiday break and replaying an archive favorite this week. I'm Beth Armando and I'll be co-hosting a year long film series at San Diego's digital gym cinema in 2020 called gearhead cinema. So in honor of running 12 classic car movies, I'm replaying my podcast with stunt drivers, Steve leper. He came down to San Diego to check out the bullet car at the San Diego and space museum. He'll be coming back down to San Diego to introduce some of the films in our gearheads cinema program. So keep your engines running while we take a quick break. Speaker 3: 00:00:50 [inaudible] Speaker 1: 00:00:50 welcome back to another edition of listener supported KPBS cinema junkie podcast. I'm Beth OCHA, Mondo Speaker 3: 00:01:10 [inaudible]. Speaker 1: 00:01:10 Earlier this month I had the thrill of standing next to a piece of cinematic history when the San Diego air and space museum displayed the Ford Mustang. Steve McQueen drove 50 years ago in bullet and that inspired me finally sit down with my friend who happens to be a stunt driver to talk about car movies. But first, here's a quick chat I had with Sean Kiernan. The current owner of the bullet car. I'm here at the speed exhibit. And what better thing to have here than the 50th anniversary of bullet and to have the bullet car here in San Diego. I am here with the owner of that car, Sean Kiernan and Sean, this car was considered like missing an action and lost for a number of years, but he was sitting in your family garage? Speaker 4: 00:01:53 Yeah, absolutely. It's been in our family for 44 years and uh, yeah, my whole life. I don't know my garage without it. Uh, so having it here in its first museum, it's kind of bittersweet. It's amazing to have it here. This is obviously an amazing place to be. Uh, especially with the ties with Ford and everything. So for me it's, it kinda ties in with everything and just makes it that much easier. Speaker 1: 00:02:15 Yeah. Your parents actually drove this car around? Speaker 4: 00:02:18 Absolutely. Yeah. So this is a, their daily driver. This is our family car. There wasn't a a like this and something else. So yeah, this was my mom's daily driver through the week. And, uh, my dad kinda did the non mom driving on the weekends, so he, uh, he, he kinda used it for what it was for on the weekend and mom did her daily driving and to, uh, to school. She's, uh, she's retired now, but she's a third grade school teacher. Speaker 1: 00:02:44 So you didn't reveal to the rest of the world that this was the bullet car until earlier this year. Speaker 4: 00:02:49 Yeah, absolutely. No one knew people in my family and close relatives and that's it. And then two years ago being inspired through quite a few people that are, to me, I built it and we collectively kind of focused towards January 14th of this year, which actually happened to be her, uh, she was 50 years old and six days. So she was in San Jose, uh, January 8th, 1968 and absolutely no one knew. And somehow, uh, we were able to keep it secret to the day of, I talked to you about the engine in this car. So this is mostly the original engine still. Yeah. So car front to back. Uh, the only thing that is replaced because it had to be replaced and just for safety reasons. So my goal, and honestly it was my father's goal too, but my goal when I started this whole thing was to make sure that she looks at the same original, didn't disrupt history. Speaker 4: 00:03:41 She would start, stop not catch on fire. That was the focus of this. And, uh, I tried to do that, you know, it justice as far as I could because who am I to disrupt history and uh, yeah, I just, it's a timeline of my life and I never wanted to disrupt that. I always wanted to make it look, feel, smell, just like it was when I was a kid and that's all I had to just, that's that, that was my goal. And I, I feel like I've done that. And with everybody's reception of it and respect, uh, I feel like they're extremely happy that I did that. So just to finish up, why do you think this car chase in bullet was so iconic and has stayed in people's memories so long? Oh, it's just like the car. So the car itself, if you see it, it's one of a kind and the chase was one of a kind and it's raw and it's real and that's exactly what this car is all about. And that's the way it'll always be. Speaker 3: 00:04:35 [inaudible] Speaker 1: 00:04:35 that was Sean Kiernan who grew up with the Ford Mustang from the 1968 film bullet sitting in the family garage. I'm waving the yellow flag while we take one last break and I'll be back with my interview with stunt drivers, Steve leper, now to talk to Steve leper, who's been a professional test driver and stunt driver for 30 years. His first job in the industry was as a historian. He was the assistant research librarian at road and track magazine. So it was his job to fact check every story that came his way and that's when he started to find fun connections between history and movies. And then stunt driving. For today's podcast, we're going to talk about car movies and Steve wants to differentiate between films that are about cars or in which cars are almost like a character. And then the films which have great car chases. So since I had just seen the bullet car, we started our discussion talking about the place that film holds in the history of car movie Speaker 3: 00:05:34 [inaudible]. Speaker 5: 00:05:35 When you talk to pretty much any movie fan, any car person, it is the iconic car. Everyone knows the Guyland green Mustang that Steve McQueen drove and the movie bullet, green Mustang, black charger, the whole thing. Everybody knows that there's people you can talk to who can tell you every street they went here, then they went there. They there. It's, I without a doubt, it is still, as much as there's been some other amazing ones. It's still the iconic chase scene in [inaudible]. Speaker 6: 00:06:06 Yeah. In all of Hollywood. Now you are a stunt driver. What makes that scene still so memorable? We have had a lot of car chases since then, but for some reason that one still holds up and people still remember it so vividly. Speaker 5: 00:06:21 It was really one of the first real groundbreaking realistic chases. There's so many films that you saw in the 60s where things were sped up. You know, they would, they would film the chase at 20 miles an hour and then they'd double or triple a film speed to make the car look a lot faster. Speaker 7: 00:06:46 [inaudible] in bullet Speaker 8: 00:06:49 driving at genuinely high speeds there. There's, there's places where they're doing 70, 80 miles an hour on city streets and, and as you see up and down the Hills and all of this stuff and they are literally jumping the cars and doing all of these things for real. And that was, I think the thing for its day that was so shocking is so many other movies. Things were sped up, things were faked. Uh, and this was the real deal. And it was really good. Speaker 5: 00:07:20 Kind of the first one that really took that extra step of realism and to be real. I mean, there's, there were some other great ones before it. Uh, it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world has some really fun, really great stunts in it. Um, Speaker 8: 00:07:39 but this one, really the action in the, this is to me really that one of the first really, really choreographed, uh, chases start to finish where they really went out of their way to tell a story through the chase and the different things that happen throughout it. And, um, it really grabbed people. And I'm a, I S I was a little kid when I first saw it and I was like, you know, I was like, Oh my God, you know, just watching this was was amazing. And then for me, I think it was probably around 1980 or so, it happened to me to Speaker 5: 00:08:18 be a, I met Carrie Lofton, who was the stunt coordinator for the movie and total random situation. I w w worked in a garage and I worked on his car. He had a really hot rod, I think 71 Mustang. Um, and I remember not knowing who he was at the time, but then it's like, Oh, I'm gonna drive you home and then bring the car back. So he took me on a ride across Newport beach and his Mustang, which was, is thrilling as you can imagine, a stunt driver driving you across town and his personal hot ride. Uh, it was great fun and that kind of always stuck with me. That's kind of how I wanted to get into this business to begin with. I'd always been around cars and racing, but riding in the car and getting to talk to him and then I kind of figured out who he was. So when, when it came time to bring the car back, I was full of questions asked, Oh, what about this? What about that? What was this like? What was that like? But you had to go back. The movie is Speaker 8: 00:09:19 the movies very much, um, really, really is iconic and it really grabbed people. And that's to this day, to this day, it's still a standard. There are a lot of people compare it to Speaker 9: 00:09:31 and is part of what made it memorable to the fact that Steve McQueen himself loved to drive. So you had someone, an actor who was involved in this scene that was going to be also conscious of what it looked like and how it Speaker 8: 00:09:45 yes, very much. Steve was very much a driver and a car and motorcycle enthusiast, you know, he's a car guy as we call it. And so he wanted this to look real. And so I really think that that's a big part of it, but everybody has to be on that page or director, everybody, your producers, because you've got a big, you've got a budget, you can wreck some cars, you gotta so everybody's gotta be on board to do at that point. And so that, that's, that's a big deal. Speaker 7: 00:10:30 [inaudible] Speaker 9: 00:10:30 so we're going to talk about the best car movies and the best car chases, which are two slightly different things. But before we get to your list, I just want to go back a little ways to the silent movies. I've just had a chance to see a couple of Buster Keaton films and I am so floored by his stunts and there are car stunts in there. And how are those stunts looked at? And what kind of place do they have in, in history for stunt driving? Speaker 5: 00:10:58 Well, Buster Keaton is really, that is Genesis for Carstensen and for a lot of the stunt world in general, things he did that we use the term now organic to mean it's an all natural style. There's no CG, there's no anything like that. Of course in that time period, everything they did was organic. Everything they did was, Oh, we're just, you know, step out of this car and we're going to hit it with a train, you know, or stand here and we're going to drop a building around you. Those sorts of things. There was a lot of math and a lot of math and science and calculations. I'm sure that went on. You can't just walk up and, Oh, we're going to hit this car with a train, you know? So there's a lot of thought and planning that has to go into it. But still everything they did was 100% real, you know, whether it was, and that's the one, I think there's, there's one more I think of where he, he jumps between a car and a train and some things like that where yes, it could go horribly wrong, you know, and over the years, as a lot of people that got hurt, it did. Speaker 5: 00:12:04 But just the things like that that they did were, were amazing. And that's really where, where it started. There's guys still today that you've talked to in Hollywood that we'll talk about Buster Keaton and things that he did. So it's still, that really is Genesis. That's where it started. Speaker 6: 00:12:24 All right. So hopefully this will inspire some people to go back and watch some Buster Keaton films and learn some math. So we're going to talk about car movies separate from car chases, like the bullet chase. So what to you defines a car movie? What does a film have to have to kind of meet your criteria of being a car movie? Speaker 5: 00:12:47 You're right, we do have car chases in movies, but to me a car movie is where the cars are, the central character or a central character. They're a pivotal part of the movie. That's if they didn't exist, you know, there's some movies you could cut the car chase out and the movie would still hold up a true car movie. The car is a central character or central player in the film. So that, that's kind of how I differentiate between the car chase and the car movie itself. Speaker 6: 00:13:23 And so what do you have at the top of this car movie list? Speaker 5: 00:13:28 Okay. I'm, there's a few, uh, that may be a little controversial here. Still the very top, the very top of my list is still grumbling. Speaker 7: 00:14:06 [inaudible] Speaker 10: 00:14:08 Metro Goldwyn Mayer takes you to the glamour capitols of a world and sweeps you into a drama of speed and spectacle. Brought to the screen with an all star international cast, James Garner as Pete Aaron, the American Speaker 7: 00:14:27 [inaudible]. Speaker 5: 00:14:27 That is still, when you talk about a car film and it's scent, you know, it's race cars. It's formula one, it's sent, you know, it is a critical part of the film, but John Frankenheimer and the things they did in that movie, imagine doing this today. Uh, you go to the Monaco grand Prix and you say, okay, we're gonna, we're going to shut down during race weekend. We're going to take 30 minutes out and we're going to go do, we're going to go do some filming during the middle of the race weekend. The formula one, people today would just, would just have a kitten. They just absolutely would not. There's no way that could happen. The cooperation that Franklin hammer had with, uh, with Ferrari and with some of the different racing teams, uh, with the organization, the cooperation he had, it would be nearly impossible to pull anything like that off today. Speaker 5: 00:15:20 Uh, so when you see the race cars on the Monaco grand Prix circuit with the crowds in the background, those are the actual crowds there on race day. So it's the actual, they did a really good job of capturing the energy of race day. Also the photography, this is another one of those things where the cinematography and the things they did were groundbreaking for, for their day. You see things with the car. They built, you know, camera cars and things like that, and there'd been camera cars built, but these were actual cars that could drive at racing speed along with the race cars. Uh, there was, they'd used a Ford, they took a Ford GT 40 and took the body off and Hungary, big camera mounts. You know, these are the big old school. These aren't little reds like we have today. These are great big Panavision, you know, huge cameras mounted on the front and back of the cars and they're running around at racing speeds on these race tracks. Speaker 5: 00:16:22 Just to see that imagery. And again, it's another movie I saw as a kid and was just blown away. It's like this. Absolutely it is for the day. It was absolutely as real as you could get. We didn't have in the 60s when that came out, we didn't have the onboard cameras like you have today if you watch a modern, uh, modern racing event. Uh, like a formula one is a good example. Since we're talking about grumpy cars, if you watch that, there's cameras everywhere. There's cameras over the driver's head on the front wing here. They're everywhere. And you get all these amazing shots. Well their cameras the size of, you know, a little lipstick tube, they're really small. We didn't have that stuff back then. They were doing this with great big heavy duty equipment. What about the sound in these movies? This is one of the things, the opening scene of grand Prix starts with the exhaust pipe of the car and the one that, you know, the one, the four that is as it expands, but the sound and the sound effects and the beginning of the movie is all. That's what it is. It's the sounds and that draws you. Speaker 7: 00:17:29 Yeah. [inaudible] Speaker 5: 00:17:44 and I'll bring another movie I'll bring up at the moment here is Lamar. Uh, you know, it was Steve McQueen's production where you could close your eyes and you can just in your mind, you can, a car goes, you hear the car, you don't see it, the car goes by and go, that's a Ferrari. And then the next car goes by, that's a Porsche. And you can hear the sounds and you can tell them apart in the realism is so is so good. You know, nowadays we have so many places where the sounds are dubbed over and they're not right. The sound. And going back to grand Prix, cause that's another one that sound the sound was, was, was a great part of it. Speaker 7: 00:18:40 [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 5: 00:18:53 and in another, it's another one of the things that pulls you in the realism and the photography and in the, the action and the sound going with that. That's another thing that just immerses you in the experience and makes it that much more real for you. And this film was also done with split-screen and so seeing it on a huge screen is really recommended for this particular fellow. Absolutely. Absolutely grumpy one. That was the Academy awards. At one were all for technical merit. So yeah, definitely is very technically groundbreaking film. What else besides grand Prix is on this list of best car movies? Okay, well we brought up Lamar a little bit ago. That is, and that's one of those things, you know when there isn't any dialogue for the first 15 minutes of the movie, it's just car sounds and racing action. Okay. This is definitely a carp. This is definitely a car movie. You know, this is, this is was probably not a good idea to bring a date to this movie. Speaker 10: 00:19:58 Ladies and gentlemen, I'm the same as mutha races run for 24 hours each. Yeah man at [inaudible] speed, 55 and 110 drivers representing countries from all over the world. They were drive by a night Busan and right beneath his racing shoe, each drive out my underwear capable of withstanding 2,400 degrees. The temperature of learning Anthony both yellow bags and yellow light indicates the presence of an accident. Yellow [inaudible] Speaker 7: 00:21:06 [inaudible] Speaker 5: 00:21:07 and of course this brings up Steve McQueen again. Who loves cars. Yes, exactly. This was very much his baby Speaker 7: 00:21:15 up to a hundred miles an hour. A pressure of winning or losing is tough enough. Blending into someone else makes it even tougher. This isn't just a thousand to one chair. This is a professional bloodsport and it can happen to you that it can happen to you. Yeah. What is so important about driving faster than anyone else? A lot of people go through life doing things badly. Racing's important to me to do it well racing, like anything that happened before or after just waiting the machines, the motion picture. Steve McQueen stars. No one else could. Speaker 5: 00:22:04 An interesting side note, he had actually started working on Lamar or it had a different title back then. He'd started working on his racing film around the same time that grand Prix was being made and then through some delays also, Steve was a bit of a perfectionist I would say. Um, and so there's the, his, his program got drawn out, uh, much longer. And um, and I'm sure you know, just other, you know, bullet was filmed during that time in between and all of that. So things got drawn out. Lamar didn't come out until 1971 I believe it was. No, not all car movies have to be serious. So you've got some on your list that are humorous films that also deal with cars. Very true to at the very top of my list. Uh, the first one is the great race, Tony Curtis, Jack lemon. To me it's still, I love that movie. I can watch that every year Speaker 7: 00:23:08 they lead to a marriage chase on land under the sea and in the air. You'll never stop laughing once you've started the great race. The TV Speaker 5: 00:23:26 stations in LA used to put that on every year. Uh, I believe was around the same time as the Indy 500, so like late may around Memorial day and would watch that every single year. And I still, every time I find it on I stopped and watch it. Just, I love that movie. It's just, it's fun, it's lighthearted, it does have some great car stuff in it. It's got some really fun things. It's got some fun. Gags. The phrase, push the button. Max is part of my sort of everyday, every everyday culture. Speaker 11: 00:23:58 Yes. Never been anything. Brady's creation. Genius work of genius. The fight or flight from the greatest automobiles in the world that Hannibal twin A's and when it comes to the blizzards and the snow storms, we will continue on justice. Push the button max. When the rains come in, when the snow melts, we show King. You are [inaudible] Speaker 7: 00:24:38 [inaudible] Speaker 11: 00:24:41 try not to chase us. We were beat out. I ended up bringing up thieves. Cutthroats of all nations. Bay outdoor spots. We are ready for that. We will blast under kingdom come. We got mass. We can rise above. We are invent. Take us down. Push the button. Max. Speaker 7: 00:25:05 [inaudible] Speaker 5: 00:25:05 so that's one. Another one is the movie cars. Now we're on kind of opposite ends of the spectrum here. And this is the Disney Disney animated. Speaker 12: 00:25:14 Yes. Your radiators praying. They cute as little townie Garber writers can Hubbard bud some organic fuel car watch. Hippie. Look, I'm laying him in Queens, the famous race car. I'm a precision instrument for speed and aerodynamics. You hurt your wallet. I know his time, race, car, I don't mean to be rude here, but you probably go zero to 60 in like what, 3.5 years? Oh, when is the last time you cared about something except for yourself hot rod, don't you? Big city race cars. I would just take it dry. Great Speaker 5: 00:25:56 story. And you know, it's a fun, kids love it. It's a fun story that way. But if you're a, if you're a carnet and you watch that film and you watch closely for details, there's really a lot of amazingly neat little details in it that if you're a car person, you watch and appreciate and, and see and you'll pick these things up, the average person would never notice. So what kind of things can you give us a one like what are these little Easter egg kind of thing? There are so many little details. Um, the cars themselves for one thing, the cars themselves, there's little details and it's like doc Hudson, you can tell he's a certain year car because of the trim on it and things like that. And a lot of, like with doc Hudson, there's a lot of vintage scenes. There's a scene in his and they show, you know old like NASCAR memorabilia and things like that. Speaker 5: 00:26:49 Even as silly as it sounds, the tread on the tires and different cars, you know you can, when you look at it, you know, this is, this is one thing, this is another, the cars in some of the, in the again sound effects, things like that where they tie all this stuff together. It's just really kind of fun. It's very lighthearted, but it's, it's just, it's, it's a fun thing. It's another, you know, we sat down and I used to sit down with my son and that was, we'd watch that constantly and it's another one that kinda doesn't get old. You can watch it over and over again. And where do you think these details come from? Is it from the animators wanting to kind of add that nuance to it or from the director himself? I really, this, this comes from, from the directors comes from John Lasseter on down. Speaker 5: 00:27:34 I know they did work with a lot of auto industry people on that film. If you look, there's a, in the credits there's a list of consultants, uh, and there's some, there's race drivers and auto designers and in lots of different people like that that had input into the movie and they really wanted it to, they wanted to bring a lot of these details in. So yeah, it's a very conscious decision. So these are two kind of lighthearted films. One category we haven't quite hit upon yet, but I think this is on your list is kind of the B-movie the genre show them and you've got one of these gone in 60 seconds, not the recent one, but the old one from the 1970s and this is kind of your classic B movie example of very much, very much so. The original Toby Malicky version from 1974 Speaker 13: 00:28:24 this is main Dorian pace number one, coffee for the America. He'll steal anything anytime as long as it's insured. My horoscope this morning, it's front insurance investigation is business stealing cards and now he's got to fill the biggest contract. Yeah, they deliver over 40 cars. A doc's by Saturday, sorry, she has a list. You can lock it car. But if he wants it, it's gone in 60 seconds. Fasten your seat though. For what cost craft magazine caused the most hair-raising chasing ever film Hollywood reporter says it's a thrill a minute. You owe it to you the car to see gun in 60 seconds. It's grand theft entertainment gone in 60 seconds rated PG. Speaker 5: 00:29:19 It is a miracle that that car survived the things that they did. They essentially did that whole, that whole chase scene with, with one car and there's places where there's a place where he wipes out a light pole and literally looks like he's gonna split the car in half and I'm sure they had to bolt some things back together afterwards, but you know, comes out and it's still run. And that car had been around, it made the, you know, the car show circuit and things like that as he was promoting the movie that cars around. It's probably still around somewhere. But yeah, that is just basically if you just want to watch basically a movie long car chase, that's pretty much what that, that's what that one is, you know. But there's, there's others like smokey and the bandits, another one like that. That's basically you're just watching a big long car chase smoking the band. Speaker 5: 00:30:08 It's a lot more sort of, again, sort of lighthearted, I mean the gone in 60 seconds was, you know, here's a guy who's legitimately trying to get away. But yes, they sensationalize all the stunts and, and things like that. Also, if you're an LA local, it was filmed all around the South Bay and if you're from the Torrance, Gardena, Redondo beach area, if you lived around there anytime, you'll recognize a lot of the background from the 70s fact, one of the scenes where they're running off road and chasing around what used to be an old dump is now the Porsche experience center. It was a golf course and it's now the, the Porsche test track out here on the West coast. But a section of the movie was filmed there in, you know, in the 70s when they first filmed it. And you mentioned smoking the bandit and Burt Reynolds also made Hooper, which kind of glorified the stunt driver. The stunt man. Absolutely. Speaker 12: 00:30:58 Burt Reynolds is Hooper and Hooper is a real hero. He can take more crashes, more fire, gorgeous, more love, more hits. He can take more risks and have more fun than anyone can imagine. This is Cooper, the story of the greatest stunt man of a mall. Hooper's in a dangerous business, but his reward and excitement adventure and if he lives to collect it, Burt Reynolds is Cooper greatest stunt man, a lie. Hoover but newest movie from a team that brought you smokey in the bamboo. Speaker 5: 00:31:45 They had a lot more stunts in it than just car staff. Yes. Uh, that had a lot more in it. But yes, all of the very much the devil may care, kind of, you know, wild Veseli, wild West kind of stunt man, which, you know, the, the whole driving backwards and throwing each other's beers, you know, from one car to another is frowned upon in modern society. You don't get to do those sorts of things. So yeah, it's for its day. Uh, and it played up on a lot of old stories from the 70s. And um, you know, there's a lot of the guys infects a couple of the guys that are in that movie, in that era involved with that I know through, through my stunt work. And it's really fun to talk about some of these stories because it's all loosely based on truths and things that of course get embellished over the years and the stories get bigger and crazier and, and all of that. Speaker 5: 00:32:37 But that's kind of where it all starts. Yes. And how Needham was a stunt man before he turned to directing, correct? Yeah, absolutely. And that's where Hooper, uh, the smokey and the bandit films, eh, how lead them really was a stunt man first. And that was his thing. He wanted, his movies were all big action. That's what it's about because that's a lot of, you know, people want it, people want to go see that stuff. They want to go see cars fly through the air and crash and slide around and, and you know, guys jump off buildings and all these, all these crazy stunts. It's escapism. You know, the average person, it's like this is, this is a two hour escape from reality. We'd, uh, believe me, we all, all of us in LA would like to, we'd like to be able to drive like that across the four Oh five sometimes. So it is, it's a great, it's a great escape. And they were all, they had some serious moments, but all of them were very lighthearted, fun movies. Speaker 6: 00:33:35 And we talked a little bit about Steve McQueen and being an actor who loved driving himself. Paul Newman is another actor. He was one of the voices in cars, but he also made a kind of passion project for him that was about racing, which was winning. Paul Newman Speaker 5: 00:33:52 was actually an amazingly talented driver. Had he not been such a talented, successful actor and he also started kind of late in life as a racer. Had he concentrated on being a race race, he would have been quite successful. He's very serious about about driving and took it very seriously and worked, worked very hard at it. It was interesting. I'd gotten to meet him at the race track a number of times over the, over the years, and he's a very different person there. It's Holly, he's not Hollywood, he's not an actor. He's a racer and he, he takes that very seriously. In fact, if you see his race cars when he was driving his race, cars didn't have, did not say Paul Newman on them anywhere. They just had P L N or his initials. He's very much trying to separate the two characters, the racer and the actor, Speaker 11: 00:34:49 Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward. They know what it's all about. They live what it's all about. Speaker 7: 00:34:57 They make pictures like that way too. [inaudible] you're a winner. What else? [inaudible] in this kind of game where winning is everything on that big 500 old in Indianapolis, you can die any second [inaudible] [inaudible] live nursing like an uptight Speaker 14: 00:35:38 guitar. The vibration was here. Everybody. The film winning was Paul Newman's Speaker 5: 00:35:44 real first exposure into racing. I think he, he'd been a fan, but he hadn't really done a lot of training and driving until that movie happened and he trained specifically for that movie and that's kind of where he got the bug from then on. He did take it very seriously. I mean he's won. He's won a lot of races. He's, he's won championships. He's had an addition and in later life he was a successful car owner once he gave up driving, but he was, he was winning races. I want to say he was close to, I'd have to check the fact on this one. I want to say he was close to 80 when he won, when he won his final race. The guy he was, he was quite a, quite a, he was quite a talented driver. Speaker 6: 00:36:26 One film that we discussed before the podcast where you talked about a car being a real character in the film and this was the blues brothers where they had a chase, they was a road movie. They destroyed, I don't know how many, like 124 cars or something, but that blues mobile, the blue XMMobile becomes, becomes a character. Speaker 5: 00:36:48 You're in the movie. It is. You know, granted there is music there. There's a lot more story to the movie, but the blues will be old. Becomes becomes a character, is part of the part of the team. It's really three of them. It's Jake and Elwood and the car. Speaker 12: 00:37:07 What's this one? This car. Stupid car. Where's the Cadillac? The caddy. Where's the candy? The what? Cadillac. We used to have the blues Movil I traded it. The blues won't be for this. No, we're on microphone. A microphone. Okay. I can see that. What the hell is this? This was a bargain. I picked it up at the Mount prospect city police auction last spring. It's an old Mount prospect police car. They were practically giving them away. Thank you. Now the day I get out of prison, my own brother picks me up when a police car, Speaker 7: 00:38:00 uh, you don't like it? Speaker 12: 00:38:10 No, I don't like Speaker 5: 00:38:14 blasting their way through Chicago in the car becomes a pivotal, you know, co-conspirator as part of that, you know, it starts out, you know, they're, they're sitting by the side of the road and it's our lady of [inaudible] acceleration, don't fail me now and boom, it's on. And for the next, you know, for the next hour they're getting chased off and on throughout the movie. You know, it's not the movies, not one big car chase. There's lots of car chases in it. But yes. And then the car gets there and gets to the end and the car just expires and gives up, you know, and it's like, Oh, I made it, you know, Speaker 6: 00:38:51 and a more evil kind of car persona would be found in John carpenter's Christine, which is, this is a car possessed repossessed perhaps. He knows. Speaker 8: 00:39:04 Yes, we, we never, I don't think we ever get the exact story of how it happens. Just that from the very day the car is being built on the assembly line, you'd kill somebody. And just, and just continues. And I, I've in, in my, I've worked on some cars like that, that I consider a possessed, um, where they just, they do things that just shouldn't be able to happen. And yeah, Christine is very much, very much, again, it's a personality, you know, it's, it is a character. She is a character in the, in the movie, you know, it just happens to have four wheels as opposed to, you know, two legs. But NHL his character. Yeah, very much so. Very much. So. If your radio starts playing by itself and bad to the bone, get out of the car. Speaker 12: 00:39:57 Do you ever owned a car before and just got my license? Her name is Christine. I like that Speaker 6: 00:40:17 that film goes a little bit towards this relationship of like teenage boys in their cars as well. I mean, that plays off of that. Speaker 5: 00:40:24 Yes, very much so. It's, it's sort of the, it's the dark version of that where a movie like American graffiti is kind of the light version of that, you know, and again, a boy in his car and, and uh, all of that that was, and there's several different, you know, stories in that one. But that's a good example. Uh, the John Milner and the, and the yellow third and the yellow Ford, that's his kind of the anti hero hero of the film. Speaker 6: 00:40:54 So while we're talking about evil cars, let's talk about Steven Spielberg's duel. Yes. This is a film where if you want to talk about a car that kind of becomes a character. We never actually see the driver in this car, this big truck that is terrorizing Dennis Weaver on the road. And this is definitely a car that is a character. Speaker 5: 00:41:16 Yes. The, the, the, the unknown truck driver, uh, is the, the truck is the creature in this case and the truck is, the truck is evil. And actually if you bring, if we tie that back again, we were talking about bullet things that Carrie Lofton was, was also a part of, um, was also part of duel going back for a moment, tying duel back to a bullet. Uh, Carrie Lofton was the truck driver, the faceless truck driver. Again it's in the truck obviously has no speaking roles or anything like that, but it has a personality. You can see when it's angry, when it's quiet and sneaking up when it's all of these sorts of things. You know, Dennis Weaver is the, he's the driver you see on the freeway every day who cut somebody off unknowingly and has no idea that he just did something. And you know, in the road rage starts and yeah in this case it just gets a little carried away. Speaker 11: 00:42:15 And what's your name sir? David man. How do you spell that? M a N and it's 2:00 AM [inaudible]. I like to run toward the truck driver that's been endangering another group. Speaker 6: 00:42:29 The films that you like in these car movie category and this is a group of films that I really love too. Are the mad max films, which have gone over a number of decades, uh, through a number of different incarnations. But George Miller directed these, and I don't know what it is about him, but he always seems to know where to put the camera to make it feel the most intense when you're having these cars racing around. Speaker 5: 00:42:58 Absolutely. Absolutely. And you see from the original, from the original mad max, I kind of the original mad max and then fury road, I kind of look at the two, the two book ins here in this case, you know, there's both, there's very dark elements in, in the films as well, but a lot of it is just, it's action that pulls you in and end fury road in particular has got really very intense action scenes where you're like, is this guy gonna make it, you know, we're, we're, uh, and some of the stunts and again, that's another movie where a lot of the stunts are very real. There's not a lot of CG and things like that going on. Uh, they're very organic, very real Stotts. And to know that and watch what some of these guys are doing. Uh, you know, just that was one of those movies that I literally was just, it was a wild ride. You know, I'm sitting on the edge of my seat the whole time just cause it's so intense and that's, and that is one of the things that he was really good at. Even back in the original mad max is grabbing you and pulling you in and, and it's the, uh, the action, the intensity, the action is what does that, Speaker 6: 00:44:09 and he just, like I said, he just seems to know where to be when these cars are either crashing or racing. It always feels to have like more velocity to the shot or, or something. But you know, I've seen, I see a lot of movies and I see films where, you know, the, this, the car chases are well done, but I don't feel nearly the intensity of emotion or the kind of, the speed of the cars that I do in these mad max films. And I don't know what it is about how he shoots, but it's the best. Speaker 5: 00:44:43 Well there is, there is one thing in a lot of the, the mad max films that's I think pretty consistent is that they are genuinely going at high speeds when they do these things. And there are certain times that, and again, we talked about this earlier about speeding up film and some of those things to really honestly show speed. It's really hard to fake it. And so if they're genuinely driving fast, the dynamics of the car are different. All of that. And you can see that in, it's not this fake sped up film. You know, like we were talking about with some of the older movies, uh, they're really going by the camera at 80, 90 miles an hour and the speed and the, the, the shockwave, when the car goes by and the dust and everything else, you can, you sense, you see that, you see that and they're really going fast. And some of the, the situations where they, some of the crashes and things that happen, they're moving at a pretty good clip when they wreck the cars and that's, there's so much more energy in that. That's what, that's what you see. Speaker 6: 00:45:51 I guess it helps being out in the Australian Outback where you have a lot of open space. Maybe it's handy, Speaker 5: 00:45:57 be in the middle of nowhere. Yes. Speaker 6: 00:46:00 Are there any other car movies that you want to make sure we mentioned before we move on to car chases? Speaker 5: 00:46:05 There's a couple of others. Yeah, the love, the original love bug was another one that's a great car film. The car is a character. You know the car is, is the pivotal character in the movie, but it's another one. It's great. It's, it's much more fun and lighthearted and things like that, but there's actually some really fun racing scenes and some fun history and things like that. If you see the cars in the background and things that are going on around it, it's fun to go back and watch it now. I watched it when I was a little kid to go back and watch it now and look at some of the history that's going on in that movie now. Things that we took for granted back then because, Oh well, you know, they're racing at Riverside Raceway. Oh, well that was there then. It's been gone 20 some years now. Vanishing point was another. Talk about a car movie where the car becomes a bit of an extension of the personality Speaker 7: 00:46:55 name. Occupation driver transporting a supercharged Dodge challenger from Denver to San Francisco. Background medal of honor in Vietnam. Former stock and bike racer. Former cop dishonorably discharged. No, he uses speed to get himself up to get himself gone. It's the maximum trip at maximum speed finishing points. Speaker 5: 00:47:27 Basically it's a movie. It's a whole movie. Long car chase doesn't necessarily end well. Uh, but um, you know, and I was always a little upset about that, but you know, he should have found a way around him or something. There's another fun little, there's another fun little bit of trivia all throw in there between American and graffiti and two lane blacktop. Bob Falvey's car in American graffiti, the black 55 Chevy is the same car in two lane blacktop. They reused it between the two movies as a stunt. Trevor, what kind of scent work is really the most difficult to do? I mean, what as a viewer, what we tend to get dazzled by is cars flying through the air or a big crash or something. But first on, Trevor, what actually is kind of the, the tough thing to do? The difficult task? You know, there's a lot of, and yes, the sensational stuff is, uh, like for example, the fast and furious movies, throwing cars out of airplanes and things like that. Speaker 5: 00:48:24 And it's great. It's great. Escapist fun. It absolutely is. It's great fun. It's not re you have to set reality outside the door and physics and physics when you walk into those things, but they are, they are great fun. Yeah. The, the, the, the one, the one movie where the, the runway is about 23 miles long, you know, and they're constantly, you know, they're, they're chasing that plane for 15 minutes. Yeah. Okay. You got to suspend reality a little bit, but they are fine and there's some great stuff. To me personally, the, the, the challenge and what I really like to see is a really well done, complete 100% organic style. There's no CG, there's no, there's no cannons flipping a car. There's none of that stuff and really well done driving skills. That to me, that's, that's the challenge. I like to do things and I'm not a big, you know, fly cars through the air, set them on fire pipe, ramp them over. That's not, that's not my thing. And, and I'm, I'm old and fragile, so I really don't like to do those things. Uh, nowadays I'm much more about you. The threading, the needle shots, Speaker 8: 00:49:30 the really precise, you know, we're gonna, we're going to spin a car and we're gonna, we're going to spin a car between these two other cars and we're going to land it on that Mark within an inch. That to me, that's what I enjoy. And speaking of that, things like some of the scenes, baby driver had some great stuff in there. There was a really fun one where he spins the car in the opening sequence. I believe it was Ray spins the car down the alleyway and our stuff on both sides and get spin in one way and the other and he's three 60 this way and back around and stuff. And I had that. That was great. I'm like that was so cool to watch because I know how hard that is to do and how to get that done and do that cleanly. Uh, and so yeah, those sorts I love. That's the kind of stuff I love to see. I love to see really well done. High-speed, precise and completely organic. There's no, there's no CG. Speaker 5: 00:50:17 We're not going to fix this in post. You do it Speaker 8: 00:50:20 and you do it. You do it. Spot on. Well I guess baby driver might be a good segue to go from the car movie to the car chase film. Cause Speaker 9: 00:50:28 this is a recent film. Edgar Wright directed it and it is really all about kind of this young kids connection with cars and with speed and he ends up being a driver for some rather unscrupulous people, but he's a nice kid anyway, so we mentioned some of that precision driving, but baby driver does seem to be very much a film all about the car and about speed. Speaker 8: 00:50:56 It was, it was really, it was a fun ride. It really was. As guy enjoyed. It was fun to watch. I came away from that and it was like, it, it, it's one of those infamy. It's like, okay, I want to go do that. Yeah. Speaker 5: 00:51:10 That's how I kind of, when I walk out it's like, that was really cool. Speaker 3: 00:51:12 Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen right now I've got to tell you about the fabulous wait, hold on. Speaker 8: 00:51:29 Really neat things about that movie that I really thought was, was fun. That isn't really done very often was that this timing of the stunts to the music was really, really was neat and it really, it gave the movie a rhythm, you know because and it just, there was a lot of timing, coordination of the beats of the music in the beats in the action and where they would actually have to time the action. A lot of times you do a stock and it's like go here then here, then here, then here and they wouldn't have to think about the dull, the musical timing of hitting those marks on a certain beat. And so it was really, it was really neat to watch and I know it took a lot of thought to make that happen. They had to be aware of the music when they're doing the star as well cause the timing then all has to match up. Speaker 9: 00:52:24 Yeah. I was lucky enough to talk to one of the editors that worked on that film and he said he, he was literally on the set with kind of a portable editing rig and he would be editing stuff on the fly so that they could make sure that those stunts and those car chases and everything mapped out the music the way they wanted it to. Speaker 8: 00:52:43 Absolutely. I'm sure they had to cause that's quite, it was quite a feat to put that together. So we already have talked about [inaudible] Speaker 5: 00:52:51 one of the pivotal car chase movies. What else is a memorable car chase for you? Well there, there's a couple others we can, since we bring up bullet, uh, and one of my all time favorite stunt guys baddies is bill Hickman and we'll tie him into, he was also, uh, one of the bad guys in the seven ups with Roy Scheider and he drove, he drove the big blue Pontiac sedan or Roy Scheider's chasing him all up, chasing him all across New York. Um, another place that bill Hickman comes up is French connection. Speaker 8: 00:53:33 Yeah. Now, the really interesting thing about that, which we could never do today because we have way too many lawyers, uh, is that chase scene under the, where he's chasing the train and that is bill Hickman driving the car. So that's where he ties in. That chase under the train was done in live traffic. They didn't stop traffic. They didn't have really any police or anything like that. They just put the camera cameraman, director in the car and said, go for it. And they ran through city traffic and yeah, there's just no way in the world you can do that today. There's so many, so many things could have gone wrong in that case and there's so many safety issues and things that would come up today that just will never happen again. And there was more than one stunt driver at work during the course of that chase. Speaker 8: 00:54:24 Yes, there are some scenes, uh, the baby carriage getting pushed out was a stage scene. There's a couple of near misses with cars that were stunt men who, those weren't actual just citizens driving through traffic. Well, some of them were, but, uh, some of the really close calls were S were stunt men who were staged in traffic, who would pull out and drive through. And there's one case where he, uh, where he crashes into one of the cars. It's a stunt man that, that I think got maybe a little stalled and was a little late on his Mark. And so he got hit. Um, and they kept it in the movie. They kept it in. Speaker 9: 00:54:59 And that scene again is one that, because for me, a car chase, just seeing two cars chasing each other quickly doesn't do much. But there's, they build in this emotion to the car chase because you've got a cop driving, chasing a criminal. The cop doesn't want to hurt anyone. So there's things at stake while he's driving that make it, that build, that kind of emotional ties you have and kind of the intensity of what's going on because you know, he wants to catch this guy more than anything, but he's not willing to kill someone to do an innocent bystander. Speaker 8: 00:55:34 Right. You certainly in in those situations you don't want, you don't want to hurt somebody, you don't want to, you don't want to have an accident. Uh, you don't want to injure anybody. But first and foremost in his first, his driving, uh, his, his driving him emotion right there is I got to catch this guy. So that's what he's totally focused on and really is kind of tunnel visioning on that. And so that's, they're just ripping through, ripping through traffic, you know, actual live traffic when they do it, they're just ripping through traffic cause he's got to catch that. He's got to catch that train. You can't let that guy get away Speaker 9: 00:56:11 because it's a chasing like that catches you up in a very different way than something like to live and die in LA where you've got two people chasing each other, which is intense. But the fact that neither one of cares about anybody else besides themselves involves you in a very different way because you know that they're just going to plow through everything. Yeah. Speaker 5: 00:56:33 Yeah. Regardless to live and die in LA is a good one to bring up. There's an interesting point that a lot of people won't catch until maybe now that you hear it and you watch the movie, they drive on the wrong side of the road during that chase where they're flying down the freeway. If you look in it's extra disorienting, they have reversed traffic and traffic is on the opposite side of the road. Uh, and so that it adds an extra element of disorientation when you're watching it because it just doesn't look right. Interesting. And Speaker 9: 00:57:04 another film that has a lot of car chases going on in it is Ronan. Yes. Speaker 12: 00:57:13 [inaudible] Speaker 8: 00:57:23 Ronan is again, we're going to go back to John Frankenheimer and another interesting bit of trivia. If you watch the credits for Ronan, you will see that his stunt drivers in that film are a bunch of old retired formula one and racing drivers. Uh, and so when you watch the credits at the end, you'll see, you'll see these greats, you know, for me, the one drivers who were, who were listed under stunts in, he was able to call in some of his old friend connections, I guess you would say at that point. It is great driving. And again, it's another very realistic, very realistic chase. They are genuinely driving those cars hard and driving those cars fast. Now granted you do have the cannon shot where they blow the car up and flip it over and you know, so there's a little bit, there's a little bit of over the top Hollywood and that. Speaker 8: 00:58:13 Um, but the, the scenes where, um, the scenes where they're, they're the big, the big Audi in the big 6.9 Mercedes are blasting down the mountain and they're chasing, they're chasing the guys. Um, that's all, that's all very, that's, it's all really intense and they're going, I see. They're genuinely going fast. And that's, again, you can't fake speed. So seeing them and seeing them do that. And there's, there's a scene where, um, there's a scene where the Audi comes flying through and I forget exactly where it is, uh, where the Audi comes flying through in this beautiful, just all four wheels spinning, just drifting, kind of through an intersection earlier on in the movie and just flying through. And it's like, it's just beautiful, you know? And it's fun to watch that, you know, a car being a car being driven well is a great thing to watch. Speaker 9: 00:59:06 And if I remember right, there were some chases that take place in Europe on these very small streets. And so in addition to just speed, you also have these conditions where it's kind of like Hong Kong movies where they would have fights in tiny rooms. It's like you have to a stunt Speaker 6: 00:59:22 in this confined space that makes it even more difficult to pull off. And I just seem to remember there were a few of these scenes on these tiny streets and you're just like the, your tension about whether or not they're going to make it through is amped up. Speaker 5: 00:59:35 Well, and it's very true. And they're driving a couple of really big cars. They're driving the biggest, the biggest Audi sedan that they made and a great big Mercedes sedan. And yes, they're squeezing them down. These little tiny, you know, little tiny passageways that were probably built in the 15 hundreds, you know, I, I don't know exactly, but, uh, you know, we're built for little, you know, wagons in wagons and, and essentially little cobblestone paths and yeah, they're flying these cars through places that were never intended to have big cars like that. And actually related to that, this, this isn't on our list by the way, but related to that, I'm going to throw in another one called rendezvous, which was a short, it's about Oh 1214 minute film, Claude Lellouche and it's racing across Paris. The setup is, he gets in the car early in the morning, it's a camera low on the front of a car and he races across parents ostensibly to meet his, his rendezvous with his girlfriend. Uh, but it's wee hours of the morning and it's supposed to be a, I believe two 75 Ferrari is the sound effect they use of him blasting across Paris and running red lights and turning corners in, nearly wiping out a pedestrian and all of this. And it's great. If you just want to watch a just car chase scene [inaudible] but it's similar. You talk about big cars and little spaces. It was done, it was another giant Mercedes sedan with the camera mounted on the front and then they dubbed the Ferrari sound effects over it. Speaker 6: 01:01:01 Well they also talking about cars that, I mean like car manufacturers that kind of want to showcase their cars. Clive Owen did that series of films for, I think it was called higher. Speaker 5: 01:01:14 Yes, the BMW film series. Speaker 6: 01:01:15 Yeah. So where he got to do these kind of play, this character that is always driving these cars in dangerous situations. Speaker 5: 01:01:25 All right. I still, and the the, the guy Ritchie film with Madonna called star is one of my all time favorites. That is just such silly fun. And anybody who's in that era of BMW M five amps, we, one of my favorite cars, and I can't tell you how difficult it is to, I've had opportunities to drive those several times and we're testing cars and doing things like that. And when that movie came out, I, there's times I would sit in the car and think of those scenes. And it's really hard to resist just wanting to do that. Speaker 6: 01:02:00 Well. And, and this particular one, it's a obnoxious diva, ESC celebrity getting in the car that he has to drive, who's treating him like crap and he takes a little revenge by taking those turns to touch harder than maybe he needs. Speaker 5: 01:02:16 Yes. It's, it is the, again, just the brilliance of the, the music and the setting and then, and they came up with some neat camera angles and that was kind of, there was a couple of new things that they did, um, with the kind of early, some of the, the CG stuff where the camera was on a remote pole and then they'd CG the pole out. Uh, but that's how you get that great tracking shot of essentially hovering up over the side of the car as it goes, flying around the corner. Um, and I've always, I've always really liked Clive Owen. Yeah. Uh, as an actor. And I just thought he was the perfect person to play, especially that character. Cause he got to let a little bit of his comedic side out, um, in playing that. Um, you know, the other films in the BMW film series were a little kind of a little more serious. Right. Um, but that one was just, that was just a great fun ride. That's another one that I'll sit in and it'll come up somewhere and, or I'll run across it on the internet. I will always stop and watch that. And I'm entertained every time. Speaker 6: 01:03:22 And those were really fun series. They, they hired totally legit directors to make these short films to promote their car. Speaker 5: 01:03:29 I would love to see more of that happen. I thought that was a great thing. It was great promotion. Uh, speaking is car industry person. I'm not sure that BMW, I think they really got it back. And then nowadays they're more of a active lifestyle brand. I, I just don't, you know, I, they may have lost their way a little bit. Uh, but that was just at that point in time and, and I would love to see another manufacturer come up with something like that and do something like that. It was a great series. Speaker 6: 01:04:04 Now, uh, a franchise that you wanted to highlight that does car chase as well is the Bourne film. Speaker 5: 01:04:11 Yes, those are always great. And again, it's another one of those cases where, where this, this keeps coming up. You really can't fake speed. I mean they do some of the, some of the crashes, some of the hits, uh, I think at the scene with the police cars through New York, um, you know, there are some genuinely hard hits and they're moving really fast and you just, you can't fake that stuff. Uh, and a lot of the scenes and how they're shot, I think of one of the earlier film, um, where they're flying across, you know, across town in the Mini-Cooper and again, just there's so much action in, in things happening in, it's such a rapid fire pace, but it's also the way it's shot in addition to the stunts and the way it's driven in the way and the way that they do the action. It's, it's all of those things together. Speaker 6: 01:05:09 Well, I've really enjoyed talking to about car films and I want to go out and watch some of these films again. But, um, you do work as a stunt driver. I just want to talk a little bit about that in the sense, again, we talked about how stunt drivers, we recognize what they do when we see a car chase or when we see cars flipping. But kind of day to day work you have to do, I mean, you're also involved in things where it might just be having to stop in front of an actor who's crossing a street or something where it's not the flashy effects flashers done. There's lots of Speaker 5: 01:05:45 stunt driving is not always glamorous a lot of times and a lot of what you see on a TV commercial and things like that. Uh, one of the, one of the fun little rule, uh, rules that the screen actors Guild has is actors cannot drive. If you are acting, you can not drive. And so there's times you'll see an actor in a car and it's just going down the street and it looks like he's driving. And there's a stunt man on the roof with a remote, uh, with a remote seat and pedals and steering wheel and everything on the roof of the car driving so that they can shoot the car, the interior shot of the car going down the road. And he may be just driving totally normally, but the actor isn't screen actors. Guild rules actor is not allowed to drive an act at the same time. Speaker 5: 01:06:31 So you have a stunt man on the roof with his remote setup driving the car. Uh, there's some other, anytime a car is a stunt drivers required anytime a car is going to break traction and also if it's going to even just skid into a parking space a little bit, even just slide a little bit or do any, any kind of, um, there's a number of rules like that where it's any kind of extreme thing, but it might be very, very simple. And you come in and boom, you go a to B and, and, and that's it. I had one where literally it was, I, my entire stump was to come down a street turn and pull them, pull a parking brake in the car and turn it 90 degrees and stop it and stop it on a Mark. And the act, the, because it was sliding the car, even though it was only five feet, a stunt man is required and in, so sometimes our, a lot of the days are very simple. It's again, it's not all, you know, jumping guards out of airplanes and, and setting things on fire. A lot of our stuff is just very a day here, a day here. Speaker 6: 01:07:36 And can you talk at all about what your most recent or current projects? Speaker 5: 01:07:40 Um, not a whole lot, but I'm hoping that next year, uh, we can add the new James mangled film to maybe the list of car films. You know, there's a Ford versus Ferrari film that's coming out. Uh, I've had a little bit of involvement with that and a lot of my friends are working on it. So we know things that were of course not allowed to talk about, but it's really pretty neat and at that much I can say, uh, it's really neat. All of us are big car fans and that's why we wanted to be involved with this picture and it's great fun. We have really high hopes for it. There's Speaker 8: 01:08:16 a lot there. Again with a lot of James Mangolds films, realism is very important and I think so. I think people are going to be really happy with that. All right, well I want to thank you very much for talking about cars and car chases. Awesome. It's been great to be here. Thank you. Speaker 3: 01:08:38 [inaudible] Speaker 1: 01:08:38 that was done. Drivers Steve leper talking about his favorite car movies, cinema junkie. We'll be taking a few weeks off for the holidays and in the interim we'll be reposting the most popular podcasts from the archives, but I'll be back with all new episodes in late January. 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Fasten your seatbelts! Cinema Junkie is racing off on a vacation break and playing a favorite archive episode this week. I'll be back with new episodes in January. Since I will be co-hosting a yearlong Gearhead Cinema program at San Diego's Digital Gym Cinema in 2020 I am digging into the archives for my interview with stunt driver Steve Lepper who talks about the best car movies and car chases of all time. Lepper came to San Diego in late 2018 to see the Bullitt car at the San Diego Air and Space Museum. He will return to San Diego to introduce some of the classic car films in the Gearhead Cinema program.

Stunt driver Steve Lepper picks his favorite car movies as well as the best car chases ever put on film.

Movies love cars, whether it's the speed around a track, a chase, or just a teenage boy's love for a hot rod. Stunt driver Steve Lepper picks his favorite car movies as well as the best car chases ever put on film.

Here in San Diego, we just had the original Ford Mustang driven by Steve McQueen 50 years ago in "Bullitt" stop by the Air and Space Museum. So that got me thinking about the best car chases on film and that led me to ask my friend Steve Lepper, who happens to be a stunt driver and gearhead, about his favorite car chases.

But Lepper pointed out that there are also some great car movies such as "Grand Prix" and "Le Mans" where there are no chases and films such as "The Great Race" and "Christine" where cars are more like characters. So for this podcast we focus on everything from Buster Keaton's silent movie stunts to the realism of "Grand Prix" to the audacious speed of the "Mad Max" movies.

He also provides some behind the scenes trivia about what stunt drivers do besides dazzling us with intense chases and what tricks filmmakers have done to pull us into a scene.

We also discuss actors who loved racing like Steve McQueen and Paul Newman.

Here is the video story on the "Bullitt" car.

The Ford Mustang 'Bullitt' Car