Steve McQueen: The Lost Movie (2021) Movie Script
1
This is the untold story
of the greatest movie, never made.
A movie that would have been the world's
first authentic motion
picture about Formula 1,
and starring the coolest man
to ever get behind the
wheel, Steve McQueen.
As far as reality is concerned
my education was very good.
We spent half our time
keeping him out of jail.
It was Steve McQueen driving this movie
and he was a racer.
Of course,
we can't show you that film,
but by piecing together
never before seen rushes,
along with original on-set photos,
letters, scripts and interviews,
we aim to give you a sense
of what might have been,
for the audience and McQueen.
He embraced me; said
"You can have anything."
He is impossible
to take your eyes off of.
Completely magnetic.
A terrible window of death.
I think it's a very pure thing;
I'd like to learn more.
This wasn't just a race on the track.
It was a race between two
massive Hollywood studios,
determined to do whatever it took to win.
You have to have the skill to create
something people think is real.
He was determined to make
the definitive film about Formula 1.
It would have been bigger
than "Jaws".
This is the story of
"Day of the Champion".
STEVE MCQUEEN:
THE LOST MOVIE
The 1960s gave
birth to a new America.
The country hoped for a new
direction with the election
of John F. Kennedy, only to
see him shot down in Dallas.
It sought harmony through
the civil rights movement,
while protests over Vietnam
and the Cuban Missile crisis
dominated the headlines.
America's cultural impact on the world
during that decade is undeniable.
Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin,
Andy Warhol Elvis
and a movie industry in transition.
Old men who could not relate
to the explosion
of youth culture
were swiftly moved aside.
Films became brasher
and more socially aware.
The inmates were allowed
to take over the asylum,
so long as their movies made sense
and more importantly, dollars.
Hollywood in the early 60s
is essentially the wheels
are starting to come
off basically since the end
of the Second World War
the breaking apart of the studio system
is happening slowly across that period.
And by the early '60s, 1963ish,
you have the lowest domestic output
of movies ever in American history.
TV was the enemy
to Hollywood for a long time
but as they started
to syndicate their movies
into TV and realized
how profitable it was,
that barrier started to come down a bit.
And so you had actors
like Clint Eastwood
who started out in"Rawhide"
and with Steve McQueen
with"Wanted: Dead Or Alive",
it was a very popular show.
From '58 to '61 McQueen starred
in a western TV show called
"Wanted: Dead or Alive".
His detached and mysterious
acting style made this stand out
from the average western serial.
It not only made him
a household name
but helped to create
his antihero persona,
which characterized
so many of his future roles.
His big break in the movies came thanks
to another man with piercing blue eyes
when Frank Sinatra
sacked Sammy Davis Junior
from"Never So Few"
after an argument.
Sinatra and director John Sturges gave
McQueen the role of Bill Ringa,
with Sinatra insisting that McQueen
got plenty of close ups
and screen time after seeing something
special in the, then 29-year-old.
Josh!
I think everyone agrees, John Sturges,
one of his great strengths
was he could cast what he called
the gut of the picture.
Don't worry about who's starring in it,
that'll take care of itself
but cast that gut.
Intuitively, a very good actor
and exuberant about his work,
he enjoyed,
a warrior, like most good actors are.
It was kind of a Pack picture,
kind of Sinatra's Pack,
but with this one, young outsider.
Frank kind of saw to it
that Steve was at the right place
at the right time.
I'm talking about on the playing field,
turning a scene,
and off the playing field.
Frank was careful that he got
the help when he needed it,
he got the angle when he needed it
and he got the brothering,
if you will, actor's coaching
when he needed it.
Certainly not an intellectual,
he didn't read much.
He didn't know very much about
what was happening in the world,
but he enjoyed life and
we became very good friends.
McQueen would be the first
to admit he was no intellectual.
His difficult and abusive childhood
giving no clues as
to the global stardom that would follow.
Born into poverty and raised
with a great deal of insecurity,
he was abandoned by his stunt
pilot father at six months,
then sent by his alcoholic mother to live
on his uncle's farm aged just three,
he drifted through childhood
committing petty crimes
and later admitting;
'I was looking for a little love,
but there wasn't much of it around.'
I think the stepdad relationship wasn't
a good one, he used to beat on Steve.
His mother didn't really
do anything about it
and he never forgave her for that.
After several arrests for shoplifting
and stealing hub caps,
in his mid-teens McQueen
ended up in a reform school
for 'delinquent' children
just outside of Los Angeles.
Steve ended up in Boy's Republic,
Chino and Steve hated it at first
and resented his mother for it greatly,
but in later life he used to go back there
and meet the kids there
and he would take items
from his movie sets there
and I think although he maybe
didn't appreciate it
at the time, he came
to appreciate it in later life
just what it did for him.
His name was Mr Panter
and he was the superintendent,
I guess, of the place.
And Steve was getting into
all sorts of trouble at
that time and the guy eventually took
him aside after he tried to run away,
and of course they caught him,
and he said:
You better adjust
to some regimentation
or you'll just be
a very unhappy young man,
in this place anyway."
So with that,
I guess he was able to learn
that maybe a little adapting
to society would be okay.
You have a choice in life
and he made a choice that
this is not the life I want
to go down, I don't want
to end up in prison,
I don't want to be just another statistic,
I want to use this as a springboard.
Let me use my anger,
let me use my pain and my poverty
and make it into something amazing,
which the fact that
we're talking about him now,
so many years later,
is actually what he did.
In 1947, and already branded
as one of life's "Outsiders",
the 17-year-old McQueen
enlisted in the US Marines.
He served as a tank driver,
an experience that fueled his obsession
for anything with an engine.
Although there were
occasional rebellions,
he eventually embraced the rigor
and discipline of military life
and was honorably discharged in 1950.
He was on duty with the Navy
in the Aleutian Islands,
just above the Arctic Circle.
He was cold and he was
out somewhere in his jeep
and he was heating a can
of beans in the exhaust pipe
of the jeep, a McQueen manoeuvre.
And a General on inspection showed up
and Steve's standing there to attention
and the General is saying,
"What's going on soldier."
So the beans exploded
and wiped out the General!
So who but Steve McQueen
could be court martialled
for firing beans on a General, you know.
These things just happened to him."
He was clearly aware of his educational
disadvantage, but his extreme focus
and life experience allowed him
to tackle any fresh conflict
he encountered.
Well, my scholastic standards
weren't very good.
I went as far as the eighth grade but
as far as reality is concerned,
by education was very good.
And perhaps a man that
kicks around quite a bit
is a little stronger in quarters
he needs to be stronger in
as far as dignity is concerned,
and a little lenient
in quarters about
sensitivity and so forth.
I think if you've been kicked around,
you don't want to be kicked again.
With the G.I. Bill of Rights behind him,
McQueen had money to learn a trade
and settled on trying
to make it a profession
in which he would meet the most girls.
I hitchhiked to New York
and I studied there
and got a scholarship
to a dramatic school.
Then I did a couple very small parts
on television,
and then my first Broadway show,
which is a legitimate play,
and I did two of those.
Then I came West, I hitchhiked
to California, I was broke again.
Then when I got to California, I guess
they were hunting for a cowboy
because they wanted me
for a series and I did it
and it lasted for 3 years
in the United States
and fortunately for me
it was very popular.
I think McQueen starts
to get good notices with
"The Magnificent Seven"
and he does everything he can,
he pulls out all the stops
to get the audience's attention
in this ensemble piece,
where Yul Brynner is really the big star.
And stories abound
about their relationship on set
and how much he was
kind of fiddling around
in the background,
and messing with his hat.
Always doing something to
draw the audience's eye to himself.
John Sturges was a good bit older
than Steve McQueen.
He'd come up in Hollywood
in the 1930s as a jobbing Director.
Really found his niche in
the '50s with westerns,
with action-oriented westerns.
So, in 1955 he makes
"Bad Day At Black Rock"
witch is sort of a contemporary
western starring "Spencer Tracy".
McQueen really was lucky
in that Sturges was equally interested
in cars as he was,
he was kind of a man's man.
And he had McQueen's respect because
even at that point in his career,
McQueen was known for being stubborn
and sort of temperamental.
I think what John Sturges and
Steve McQueen had in common
was just an attitude of;
"Let's get on with it!"
There was a sort of workman-like
charm about both of them.
And that's not to say that
they didn't create amazing,
artistic and poetic
moments on film together.
And I think they both really appreciated
that trait in one another.
Well, Sturges also
grew up without a father
so maybe there was a link
there between them in that way.
So the
street-kid had made it.
By the age of 30,
he was earning big money
and was now a family
man with a wife, Neile,
and two children, Chad and Terry.
A lot of actors nowadays,
you know, are making it,
they are successful see?
And they're very angry.
Now what have they got
to be angry about?
If they were really broke
and they had a hassle,
But if they are successful,
they should be very happy.
I'm happy, I've got a
beautiful wife, two kids,
two houses, a couple of cars
and my own film company.
I'm not buggin' nothing!
Steve, why are you here?
To make a picture?
We are doing"The War Lover",
John Hersey's novel.
It's the story of daylight
bombing in World War Two
and the American flyers
who fought here in London.
There's only two things that mean
anything to me, flying and women.
- In that order?
- In any order, or both together.
With his fame and wealth came
the opportunity to indulge his passion
for motorcycles and cars.
So, as well as starring opposite
Robert Wagner and Shirley Anne Field,
McQueen's main motivation for spending
three months in rural Norfolk in 1962
was the film unit's proximity
to Snetterton Circuit,
at that time, the world's foremost school
for people who wanted
to learn to how to race cars.
Yeah, when McQueen first came
over here to film "The War Lover",
he was really keen to drive racing cars
and learn to drive racing cars, well,
I think Jim Russell was an American
driver who was actually pretty good
and he started this new concept
of a race driver school
based at Snetterton
and because it was the only
one of its type at the time,
it was like, 'Wow what a great thing!
We can go and sit in a racing car
and learn how to be race drivers.'
And that hadn't happened before
and I think it's quite interesting
that Steve McQueen knew about that
and was attracted by that, it says a lot.
It speaks a lot to the purity
of Steve's love of racing,
I think that he thought,
"Wow, Snetterton. Bleak, cold, rainy,
but it's the Jim Russell School
I wanna be there!"
Steve, talking about cars. You race
them and you race them very fast.
Now I don't know any other actor who
does this sort of activity the way you do.
Why do you do it?
Why are you in such a hurry?
I think perhaps a lot
of it has to do with fear.
I think that race driving is an art,
and I don't put myself in the class
of Stirling Moss or Gurney or Phil Hill or
some of the people who are driving here
in your Formula 1
or your international races,
but I remember the first time
I raced I was very frightened,
it scared me and I didn't like
the idea of being frightened
and I wanted to overcome it.
That was one element.
The other elements is
it's a very pure thing.
It's one of the few things
in life you can't fix.
You can't fix this.
You can go to somebody and say;
"I'm going to buy my way out of this."
When you are out there by yourself
you are very much by yourself.
I think it's a very pure thing,
I'd like to learn more
and I plan on doing a little racing while
I'm in your county, I like to learn.
I think your courses are very fast
and I could learn quite
a bit from your drivers
so I'd like to learn as much as I can.
The United States really only became
aware of European-style racing,
sports car racing,
Formula 1 single-seater racing
through the rich young men
in California just after the war
who started off racing
hot-rod type cars on circuits
but then found that if you
had the money to buy a Ferrari
or a Maserati from Europe,
they could then win races.
Steve McQueen, certainly,
was much more interested
in European-style racing
and he picked up on the glamor
and romanticism of Formula 1 racing.
One driver seemingly fitted the bill
as McQueen's "UK racing mentor".
A tall, slim aristocrat by
the name of John Whitmore.
His background and lifestyle
could not have been
more different from rural
Indiana or indeed Hollywood.
We grew up knowing each other
very well.
And he had a lovely house
that he had in Balfour Place
just one back from Park Lane.
He was one of Jimmy Clark's best friends
and one of my best friends.
But John, he wasn't
a gentleman racing driver.
He was a racing driver er no gentlemanly
manners or anything like that.
Of course, he was well-mannered,
of course he was so well, educated,
but he just wanted to be one of the boys.
Steve was over here making a black
and white film actually.
And he and I just happened
to meet and we got talking
and we talked for about two hours
and found that we had
a lot of common interests.
Steve was riding motorcycles,
he was a very good motorcyclist
and also was interested in cars.
And by then, Steve had
done his Jim Russell course
and John Whitmore was a massive hot
shot in Mini's and it was a perfect thing.
It says a lot about Steve
that he wanted to race Mini's.
I think that shows that
he'd thought it through
and it was exactly the right sort
of category of racing for him.
McQueen was very competitive
at that level
and there was that great
race at Brands Hatch
when Whitmore and Carlisle
and McQueen were backing together
and McQueen very nearly
beat Carlisle to the flag.
John Whitmore, I knew from early days
because in fact we both raced at Sebring
together in the same car.
But he was a great
friend of Steve McQueen's
and he was keen to race in England
and John Whitmore had already
won a saloon car championship.
So he lent Steve McQueen his Mini
to race at the beginning
of October at Brands Hatch.
The race was amazing.
There were five of us Mini's
who were continually passing
and re-passing each other.
I was told we were the three
of us together going round a corner.
Anyhow the race ended with
Vic Alford winning, me behind,
just in front of Steve McQueen.
And the commentator
had gone absolutely mad
and demanded that we, us three,
should go up onto the podium.
It was very exciting.
Oh, you can't ask him now but I don't
know what he thought about that!
But he was a good sport.
He did drive me back to London
on one occasion
and he was charming.
Chatty, talkative, wonderful blue eyes.
He behaved extremely well!
There was a Mini, a small car,
on the side of the M1
and I was going down
in my bigger car going a bit faster
and as we went passed the Mini,
there were two girls
and Steve said, "Stop."
And I said, 'You can't stop on the M1,
you know, you're not allowed to do that.'
And he said 'Oh yes,
you know, you ran out of petrol or
something like that, you can stop.'
He jumped out of my car,
took a bag with him,
and jumped into the Mini.
And he stayed in the car
with these two girls
and nobody saw him for two days.
Racing gave me a fresh identity.
I was no longer just an actor,
I was a guy who raced.
It was really important for me to have
this separate identity.
Steve McQueen
The result of racing Minis and his Jim
Russell course was the addition of
a so-called Asphalt Rider
in his future contracts.
Nothing was to get in the way
of his love for cars and bikes.
So, in 1963, with "The War Lover"
and many laps of English
racetracks behind him,
Steve McQueen once again teamed up
with director John Sturges for what was
to become one of the most iconic
movies of the 20th Century.
And with the character of Captain Hilts
in "The Great Escape",
he cemented his status as a bonafide
"Hollywood Superstar".
He looked at James Garner, who was
"The Scrounger",
looked at Charles Bronson with his pick
and he knew I'm the star of this movie
and I've got nothing here.
Sturges was big enough to give Steve an
opportunity to go away and come back
with his own ideas and that was
where the motorcycling across the Alps
and all that kind of thing,
really took off and made Steve
the huge star after that.
We spent half our time
keeping him out of jail.
Every time he'd show up at work
there'd be this collection
of police who would come in
and they'd all come over to me
and we'd have a consultation
with Steve over,
You cannot drive through
flocks of chickens
and you cannot go off into the woods
and back onto the road to
pass somebody,
Wasn't it a while ago that the studios
prohibited you doing any racing
while you were actually in production?
I see all kinds of executive-looking
people standing around
with their fingers crossed!
Well, they're being real
nice to me on this film.
Steve drove faster than made sense
and Steve's emotional outlet
when he was troubled was drive a car.
So one of the amazing things
about McQueen was really
for the first time since silent
cinema and the "Daredevils"
of silent cinema
like Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton,
he was someone who made it
very clear that he did a lot
of his own stunt work, and was
celebrated because of that.
People loved to see him
do actions scenes
because they knew it was for real.
But Steve McQueen really
started that in the modern era.
You've got to remember about Steve,
he not only loved cars
and loved everything to
do with mechanical things,
but he was also very good at it.
Steve was very good at
handling automobiles,
that's why he could race competitively.
There's another issue too
and it's absolutely true.
There is the, I don't
like the term "macho",
but he had that thing about,
I don't want people doubling me
and then I have to face my peers
saying, "Here comes candy."
The cavalier leading man might seem like
a director's worst nightmare.
Let alone the studio's
insurance company.
But it showed Sturges that
McQueen was the real deal
and his love of blurring
the lines between acting,
action and reality brought
them even closer together.
With McQueen's insistence
on doing most
of his own motorbike stunts
in "The Great Escape",
only an insurance clause kept
him from doing that jump,
which whetted his appetite
for more onscreen action.
What better subject than the machinery
with which he was so in love.
I don't like acting
when it's "Playing house"?
I believe that I try to extract out
of my life the same reality
that I am existing in if I'm working.
Anyone watching films in 2020
probably doesn't appreciate
the difference between
an actor and a movie star.
But in the 1960s and 1970s,
there was a huge difference.
It was a choice of getting
a script and turning up
and doing your job, which an actor did.
A movie star had control;
they could change scenes.
Well there were lots of actors.
Movie stars are much rarer.
As a movie star, he's impossible
to take your eyes off of.
Completely magnetic, I think
attractive to men and women
because he has
a salt of the earth energy.
He doesn't put on airs and graces.
He feels like he has
the hands of a mechanic,
he has the face of somebody
who has lived.
After "The Great Escape",
it took his movie star
capabilities to another level.
So for him it was very
important to make a film
that he was passionate about.
So we move into Warner Bros,
we have a six-picture deal.
When we had our moving in party
with all the William Morris people there,
trying to make a joke I said,
We're going to make
a picture about racing.
That'll be the end of this company
and our relationship!"
And we all had a big laugh.
Turned out not to be that funny.
What McQueen and Sturges
wanted to do
was to exploit highly charged writing,
intelligent writing about sport.
It hadn't really happened before
and a lot of it came consciously
or subconsciously
from the style of writing
that one had seen
with Hemingway's
"Death in the Afternoon".
It was dramatizing death.
It was acknowledging that it was
a central part of what was going on.
Well, it was Hemingway's
great statement about
there are only three sports; bullfighting,
mountaineering and motor racing.
All the others are just games.
So motor racing
was maybe the next logical step
and in 1963 a book by American
photojournalist Robert Daley,
shed new light onto Grand Prix racing,
exposing the sometimes,
uncomfortable truth
about the less glamorous
and often deadly nature of the sport.
"The Cruel Sport"
came out with a lot of fanfare
and being a nerd of motor racing,
I was very nervous about
"The Cruel Sport",
but we all had to be because we knew
it was gonna have things in there
that you aren't supposed
to be talking about or showing.
Well, the more I read the book,
the more I realized how different
it was from most writing
about the sport at that time.
It was unflinching.
The sport at that time
was poorly managed
and in those days, the drivers
were sitting in a fuel tank.
It was all wrapping around you.
And when you had an impact,
they usually caught fire in a big way
and they never got it out.
They never got it out.
So it was a colorful, glamorous
and exciting window,
but a terrible window of death.
Daley was facing the fact that motor
racing was so dangerous in those days.
OK he was making that
the theme of his books;
maybe he was glorifying it.
But he was writing about it
intelligently and openly.
Helen and I counted 57 people
who died who were our friends.
We traveled with them,
we holidayed with them,
we raced with them, we dined with them,
it was just one big happy family.
"The Cruel Sport"
highlighted the number of accidents
and the number of deaths
and various serious injuries
that were taking place
in motor sport to the shock,
I think, of the people
involved in motor sport.
But the Americans got
hold of that in a way
that you could touch and feel
and you could smell the blood.
And I think this was the
role of "The Cruel Sport",
it opened the doors to a Steve McQueen
to be able to go to a Warner Bros
and say: This is Formula 1,
and this is what I want
to make a movie about.
'John secured the rights
to 'The Cruel Sport'
and we started developing a script.
In Sturges' mind,
there was only one actor
who had the skills to play the lead
in a realistic film about car racing."
The ingredients were all there.
Dangerous and dramatic source material
would give the film legitimacy.
The glamor and excitement
of the swinging '60s
would provide the perfect backdrop.
Surely this would be a
guaranteed Hollywood hit?
It was to be called,
"Day of The Champion".
Somehow or other there
was a magic about the '60s.
Carnaby Street was there, sex was safe,
motor racing was dangerous,
it was glamorous,
it was colorful, it was exciting,
and everybody would come
to Monaco every year.
It was a special time
because Princess Grace was
like a magnet to Hollywood
so all the big stars would come as well.
It's just a different culture altogether
and I just feel so fortunate
that I was living in that window.
Well, Steve always had this concept
that he wanted his racing movie
that he would eventually
make to be authentic.
It had to be a film that his
racing buddies would appreciate.
So, the script of
"Day of the Champion"
certainly has more of
a traditional narrative to it.
There is a romance with a posh British
girl called Kyla Bonham.
I think she crashes her Jaguar in a field.
And that's how the romance starts.
But even when you look at the script now,
it's certainly more about the racing
than it is about the characters.
The mark of the film was
to be absolute authenticity.
No compromise when it came
to accuracy and attention to detail.
Stirling Moss, who had
retired from full-time racing
after his crash at Goodwood in 1962,
was hired by McQueen and Sturges
as a technical consultant
for the "Day of the Champion" team.
You know, there was a time
when Grand Prix drivers
were household names in America.
In the days of when there were
two races, one at Long Beach at the start
of the year and one at Watkins Glen
at the end of the year.
Used to have huge crowds
at those races
and knowledgeable crowds
who really knew who Jim Clark was
and what he had done.
And Stirling Moss, periodically,
raced in America in the late '50s
on so he was the kind of pioneer
if you like, in that respect.
And that was where
the drivers began to know,
the James Garner's and so on,
who were American US film stars
who liked racing.
Stirling Moss was way ahead of his time
as an ambassador of the sport
and as an ambassador of his own brand.
He had a great name.
'If I'd have been christened Hamish,
I wouldn't be as well-known as I was."
But he worked really hard
I mean he'd win a race
and that night he would
always make a point
of going out into the town
and meeting people
and going to the movies,
wherever he was.
And then he'd go to Hong Kong
and order a new suit.
But it was all in the newspapers.
The press loved him.
Stirling was a big name and it was
interesting that Stirling was involved
with"The Day of the Champion"because
he was a team owner by the time
that happened and one of his
drivers was Sir John Whitmore.
And Whitmore would have
said to Steve McQueen;
You've got to get Stirling Moss involved,
I know Stirling very well,
I drive for him.
And that's how that
would've all come together.
There was a benefit dinner
in Hollywood the Night before
our film was to be announced
to the trade newspapers
and by chance John Sturges
was seated next to fellow director,
John Frankenheimer who had just
directed"The Train"with Burt Lancaster
and "The Manchurian Candidate"
prior to that.
Frankenheimer was a long-time
admirer of Sturges
and he gushed to his idol about
this film he was preparing.
"It's about car racing!"
Frankenheimer claimed.
Sturges just kept picking at his meal.
"Car racing, really?"
We're calling it,Grand Prix",
Frankenheimer added.
I'm basing it on this fantastic booked
I've discovered called 'The Cruel Sport'.
Sturges just kept picking at his food.
While Sturges was making a deal
for the book with the author's agent,
Frankenheimer was making the same
deal with the author, Robert Daley.
Apparently, Daley and his agent didn't
communicate very well, or very often.
So, the day after that dinner,
both movies based on
the same book were announced
to the trade papers,
and the real race was on.
Both sides were determined
to do whatever
and spend whatever it took to win.
Frankenheimer was really from
a generation of directors
that had cut their teeth on literally
hundreds of television dramas.
He had a string of really popular films
that borrowed from the realism
and the low budget black
and white of television,
with some more highbrow influences
and progressive politics
often were involved.
So Frankenheimer belonged
more to the late '60s than
the early '60s in terms
of his subject matter.
It seemed to me at the time
that we could do two kinds of movies.
We could either do "Test Pilot" ?
Which is one driver
with his mechanic going
through the whole thing and
finally getting up to Formula 1.
Or we could do "Grand Hotel",
which is to take a group of people
and put them in one situation
and see what happens.
Which is basically what
"Grand Hotel" was.
So we chose to do
"Grand Hotel".
Steve was originally slated
to do that movie
but he couldn't get
along with Frankenheimer
and so that lasted about 30 minutes
and Steve was out and I was in.
Well, it's never really been totally clear
to me what happened.
He had this disastrous meeting
with my partner, Edward Lewis.
It's a meeting that I should've been at
and for professional reasons
I was doing something else,
so I said to my partner;
"You take the meeting with Steve."
Well, it just was a disaster
and what happened
was Steve walked out of the movie
and we were without Steve McQueen.
I still think if we'd had
Steve McQueen in that movie,
it would have been
bigger than"Jaws".
- Really?
- I mean that's my contention.
He was definitely number
one choice for "Grand Prix".
I think in hindsight,
MGM got off lightly there
because Steve would not
have been an actor
that would have just executed
a script as they wanted.
He was so passionate about
racing that he would have wanted
to have brought his own
ideas to that movie.
What they got with James Garner
would have been an actor
who was a lot easier to handle let's say,
in terms of executing
a proper movie script,
as opposed to wanting to create
the definitive racing movie.
So, when I got the part in "Grand Prix",
I called him and I said,
Steve I want to tell you
before you hear it from somebody else,
that I'm gonna do "Grand Prix".
Well, there was about a twenty-dollar
silence there on the telephone!
He didn't know what to
say and finally he said,
"Oh that's great, great,
I'm glad to hear it."
He didn't talk to me for about a year and
a half and we were next-door neighbors!
One of the things that really
disappointed McQueen
was Garner didn't have
the love for cars that he had.
It wasn't a personal obsession
with cars or racing
to Garner, it was another job.
So when you look at the script,
it does seem like McQueen
wanted to show off
a little bit some of his racing
skills with Formula 1 cars,
Formula 2 cars,
sports cars, a Mini-Cooper,
which could be a little nod back
to his years racing
with John Whitmore in a Mini.
It's definitely all about McQueen's
prowess behind the wheel.
With the arguments and egos
seemingly smoothed
and top billing for each movie
established,
Warner Bros released this
memo proudly declaring
that "Day of the Champion"
was up and running
with an all-star crew
and technical line up.
From Warner Bros Studios, Burbank,
Jack L. Warner announced today
that photography on a multi-million-dollar
picture
"Day of the Champion" will
commence in Europe this summer.
Filming will include
the"Grand Prix" of Germany
at the famed Nurburgring Circuit
on August 1st.
John Sturges will produce
and direct and Steve McQueen
will star in the Technicolor
and Panavision production
which is being financed
and distributed worldwide
by Warner Bros.
Stirling Moss, one of the legendary
figures in the world of motor racing,
is serving as production consultant
and Sir John Whitmore,
noted English sports car racer,
is acting as technical advisor.
Sturges and cinematographer
John Wilcox
will utilize four Panavision cameras
to capture the exciting action.
I'd been working with
the Director of Photography John Wilcox
for a number of years
as his First Assistant Cameraman.
John Sturges was a great name
and it sounds a great film
and Steve McQueen and motor racing.
Yes, why not?
We all expected that
a motor racing film directed
by Sturges and starring Steve McQueen
was going to be wonderful.
We didn't really have very much view
about Frankenheimer
and "Grand Prix" and James Garner.
The McQueen movie looked like
the serious one, if you like.
So the warring films were literally off
to the races as both Warner
and MGM sent recce crews to
the 1965 Monaco Grand Prix.
The first race in that year's
Formula 1 World Championship.
So '65 Monaco was an
interesting race altogether
because well for a number of reasons.
One, Jim Clark wasn't there 'cause
he was away winning the Indy 500.
Two, Graham Hill won the race having
spun early on, climbed out of his car,
got back into his car and then continued
and went on to win the race.
And three, you had the crews from MGM
and Warner Bros there in Monaco
in this tiny principality,
both receiving for the movies
they we're gonna make.
And you can only imagine what
that would have been like,
in terms of a vying for position,
there aren't many great
positions at Monaco
because the marshals had
to be standing somewhere
and there isn't a lot of space anyway.
There definitely would have
been some serious discussions
between the two groups.
You can imagine, I guess,
the impact it would have made
to have had Jim Clark winning
the Indy 500 the same weekend
and for the movie crews
at Monaco this was like 'Wow!
What a world this is.'
As well as the thrill of being in Monaco
and hanging around with his
new racing driver chums,
McQueen, along with Sturges,
Bob Relyea and their racing
consultant Stirling Moss,
had used the trip to pay a visit to an
unassuming garage in Woking, Surrey.
The Alan Mann Racing Company not
only modified and raced Ford road cars
in the British Touring Car Championship
but they had also
developed a handy sideline
in adapting cars for the Silver Screen.
Bond's DB5 Aston Martin and
"Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" being
the most iconic.
So, it was no surprise
when they were instructed
to acquire and develop cars to
use in "Day of the Champion".
My father's background in motor racing
was really it was all tied up with Ford
from the very beginning.
He met Steve McQueen through
John Whitmore who I think
was a friend of Steve's early on
in the '60s
and they'd shared Mini driving together
and been motorcycle racing in California
and all part of that
group of friends I think
that they met each other
and Steve was obviously
a big fan of racing
and so they had a bit in common.
He was asked to prepare
the cars for the film
and manage the racing scenes
of he film and also build one
of the camera cars, which
was a modified Lola T70.
The cars had been prepared
to a certain extent
and they came to review
some of the pictures
that they needed to shoot and the angles
and how they were practically
going to make the film.
And presumably make some
requests about engineering
on the cars to allow them to do so.
My dad said McQueen
was quite absorbed
by all the racing detail
and the car preparation,
and all the mechanics of the operation
and yeah was very friendly
with all the team members
and everything.
But he also was obviously
quite a colorful character
and after hours was quite good company.
But I think he was kicked
out of The Dorchester Hotel
when he decided in his suite
to cook up some chili
or beans or something and fell asleep,
naked on the bed and it
dried out and caught fire.
Ran down the corridor to try
and find a fire extinguisher
and the next morning at breakfast,
he saw all his bags in the lobby area,
all having been packed up
and asked Sturges where
they were going that day
and he said, 'Well we're
not going anywhere,
I think that's just a polite
way of kicking you out.'
He impressed me as a fellow
hwo believed in action.
He was very keen to learn everything
he could about motor racing.
He was a quick learner.
The claims of the Warner Bros memo
were, so far, proving true.
McQueen and "Day of the Champion"
seemed
to be several steps ahead
of Frankenheimer
and MGM in the battle
to the silver screen
and had everything in place to capture
the 1965 German Grand Prix
at the Nurburgring
in true technicolor glory.
What they captured that day
has never been publicly seen.
I mean the thing about
this is we never saw any footage.
We saw a little bit of black and white
Movietone News perhaps.
It was in color.
It actually happened in color!
It's amazing, very relaxed.
Great footage though.
And there's Stirl in the camera car.
You had a 400-foot roll of film, so you
had about our minutes in each go
and then you had to reload because this
was obviously decades
before there was digital,
so we were on 35 millimeter
Eastman Color.
Samuelson Film Service
was run by four brothers,
three of whom were my uncles,
and one was my dad and David
was the technical partner
and he was responsible for all manner
of extraordinary bits of brand new,
never-been-thought-of-before technology
and a number of his things are still used.
He built some of it for
"Day of the Champion".
There is a racing car flat out
and all you can see around it is green.
Nothing else.
The Carousel.
I mean it was a wonderful racetrack,
it was a terrific racetrack, but crazy.
You know, 14.7 miles,
187 corners per lap.
You know, it was a great
race in so many ways.
This is the race in which Jim Clark
clinched the '65 World Championship.
It's just amazing footage to have seen it
after all this time.
There's Jimmy after the race and
the mechanics running, that's real film.
It's just amazing.
And what a trio on the podium.
Jim Clark in the middle,
Dan Guerney, Graham Hill,
doesn't get much better than that
in terms of the drivers you had to beat.
And then for Jim Clark at
that moment he's driving off
in the Merc and he's just won
his second World Championship,
in the same year he's won the Indy 500.
No driver will ever do that.
One of the guy's around us
I knew, and he was a driver,
he used to drive camera cars
and he said,
"Well, I brought some American
guys up."
Oh, yeah? Where are they?
"In the Ferrari pit."
I said, "Oh that's interesting."
So, I said to John Sturges,
You've got some Americans
in the Ferrari pit.
It probably might be the director.
And I remember Sturges being
very, very upset about it.
There was obviously a bit of animosity
going on between the two.
We very explicitly used Panavision,
not just any old Panavision,
but we shot it in a 2.35 ratio
meaning the screen,
the shape of the frame is 2.35
times as wide as it is tall.
It's called Panavision Anamorphic
and that gives you the shape you want
for a motor racing film
because you are certainly wider than
a regular 1.85 television
kind of shape of frame.
It's interesting to remember
that they then stayed at the Nurburgring
and filmed the week after that race,
ostensibly to test the camera
mounts they were gonna put
on the cars
and that's where Alan Mann came
in as obviously camera mounts were
gonna be part of his brief.
And this has to be seen against
the '62 accident at the Nurburgring.
In practice, Graham Hill
had a camera on the BRM
and it came off and he had
a big shunt, very big shunt.
Very lucky to get away with
his life in that accident.
So here we are, long before on board
cameras even became a phrase,
we have Warner Bros with Alan Mann,
with John Whitmore and Stirling
Moss hiring the Nurburgring,
the 14-mile circuit.
Some of the footage
we see is an indication of
how good that was and how
good it would have been.
When you start to deal with cameras
on cars at very high speed,
you have a number of built-in problems.
If the track is wet,
there is water flying around the lenses.
There has to be design
the cameras so they become
as aerodynamic as the car is
to avoid getting water all over them.
It requires mounts that do
not disturb the aerodynamics
of the car too much and can be balanced
in some other way so the car can
still handle at competitive speeds.
This requires some trial and error,
it requires the drivers to take
the cars out and see
when camera's in certain position,
how the car stills handles so
they can adjust accordingly.
It requires the cars that
are around them to sense
what problems that driver has
and about 10 or 12 of our drivers
have been in this same situation,
including Steve, to deal with a car
that has a new set up
aerodynamically because of camera
or cameras placed on it.
So we had to build mounts
that were able
to cope with that, not fall off.
So not only did the mount
have to not fall off,
but the consequences of it
falling off would have been dire
for whoever was in the car
behind and got a 40-pound piece
of filming equipment into their head.
That wouldn't have been good.
So it was all done very very carefully.
You have to have the skill
to create something people think is real.
Now we were in a good area to do that.
Steve is a race driver and
he looks like a race driver
and he understands race drivers,
he knows them all.
He can drive a car.
We had the real cars,
we had the real circuit.
So that part was alright.
MGM claimed they had the shooting
rights with all the "Grand Prix" circuits.
The Nurburgring was under question
because Warner Bros claim they had it
and there was going to be a court case
and they'd be looking for
evidence to sue each other.
I was also told that there was
a 16 millimeter crew filming us filming.
We never saw anybody,
it may have been true,
it may not have been true,
but we also slipped into
some film cans with the dummy labels
and put sand in them.
If somebody's going to steal our rushes,
they might steal the wrong rushes
and they'd find they'd
got a can full of sand.
Stirling always remembered that day
and made the point of saying
that when he drove at the Nurburgring,
doing some filming for
"Day of the Champion",
he just said, 'That day boy I just
felt like I had when I won there in '61.'
"Day of the Champion"
was off to a flying start.
Truly breathtaking footage was just what
McQueen and Sturges had hoped for
and put them substantially ahead
of Frankenheimer and MGM.
Warner Bros even cheekily released
this poster to further
rub salt into the wounds,
knowing full well that Frankenheimer
and Garner would not be up
and running with principal photography
for another nine months at
the start of the '66 F1 season.
And I think it's also
interesting to think about
why Jim Clark and
Jackie Stewart originally signed
with Steve McQueen and not with
Frankenheimer and"Grand Prix".
In my opinion it's because
it was Steve McQueen driving
this movie and he was a racer,
as well as he was an actor and a star.
Whereas "Grand Prix"
was driven by a movie director
like Frankenheimer, and in
the minds of Jimmy and Jackie,
probably more Jimmy than Jackie,
"Grand Prix" was going
to be all about crashes
and spectacular this and lots of things
that weren't true to life.
Whereas Steve McQueen,
with this closely knit group,
could produce a film
that was gonna be more
about racing drivers and
who racing drivers are
and the craft that they create.
I think Jimmy and I thought
that everybody was going
with Frankenheimer,
why don't we go with McQueen?
And Steve McQueen,
in those days was bigger
than Frankenheimer.
Well, who wants to get married?
And I think that was one of the things.
And he was making great movies.
Steve McQueen
works by instinct, reflex,
unconsciously concealed know-how.
Above all is his
reverence to authenticity.
And Jimmy and I didn't
talk an awful lot about it.
We just decided it was a good idea.
Everybody else
was going to "Grand Prix"
and we decided to go with Steve.
In a memo from
September 1965 John Sturges,
states that principal filming with McQueen
will start the following spring
after he has finished directing
"Ice Station Zebra",
ironically for MGM, and McQueen
has completed his next film,
"The Sand Pebbles".
He took on "The Sand Pebbles"
knowing that the book had been a hit.
The book was about
the Chinese Civil War in the 1920s.
He of course
respected Robert Wise greatly,
who'd directed "West Side Story",
"The Sound of Music",
so I think he saw a lot of
potential in that movie.
Back in Europe,
John Frankenheimer,
realizing he would have
a big task on his hands
to get his racing epic
released ahead of Warner's,
had stayed with the traveling F1 circus
throughout 1965.
Embedding himself in the lifestyle
and the culture of "The Cruel Sport".
In the meantime, I had been going
to all the races and they all knew me
as somebody who
was going to make a movie.
And they knew nothing about movies,
I mean they knew nothing about
the movies I'd ever made,
I don't think they'd
ever seen most of them.
Those cameras, turn them on as
soon as you get up to speed here.
But they did know that I was
really very very interested in cars
and they did know that
I raced on an amateur basis,
so at least I knew something
about what they did.
Come on!
Get somebody to push here!
Push!
And I became friendly with some of them,
like Graham Hill and Phil
Hill and Richie Ginther.
Everyone was very, very sceptical of
another film being made about racing.
In fact to the point where Ferrari said
they didn't want anything to do with it.
He just said "You go make your movie,
it has nothing to do with what we do
and you can't use the word
Ferrari in this picture
or have any of my cars
or anything like that.'
They get you like-
Oh my God get out!
Oh Jesus look, give his
guy hell this driver.
- He's coming out.
- Get out of here!
Come on get out!
So, we were lucky enough,
not lucky enough,
if you'll forgive me, smart enough
to go to Carrol Shelby
who had great credentials.
And Carrol Shelby kind of embraced us
and he kind of opened up a lot of doors,
including arranging to have the replicas
of all the cars made.
And he took charge of that.
And through Carrol Shelby, I got
to Dan Gurney who was a great friend
of Shelby's and also to Phil Hill.
Yeah, but this doesn't work.
And I signed these guys up.
And I actually I paid them money,
which also helped, convince them
that maybe this was a good idea!
And for 2 years exclusivity
to movies, to me.
Cut!
Cut!
Get everybody in here again.
For John Frankenheimer,
Phil Hill was manor from heaven
because he still was very,
very quick but he was kind of available,
and he was American,
and he was intelligent,
and he loved photography.
This was the perfect man to drive
that side of things for"Grand Prix".
I've just seen the most terrible
skid there.
What happened to Yves Montand?
Well, that's what he was supposed to do!
He wasn't supposed
to go all over the pavement?
Oh yeah! Up all over the kerb and
swing around backwards!
Wasn't that a beautiful job though?
He's like a stunt driver!
- Are you serious?
- No.
Well, he was a wonderful guy.
He was a great driver,
but also the most delightful guy,
the most delightful bloke.
Very, very dry sense of humor, one
of the funniest people I've ever met.
And also, probably as intelligent
as anybody who ever drove a racing car.
He must have been enormously
helpful to Frankenheimer.
Just because he was such a bright man.
Daley had written extensively, of course,
about Phil Hill because he
was America's first World Champion.
With Frankenheimer buying friends up
and down the grid, he was now starting
to close the gap
to "Day of the Champion".
Garner and the other stars were learning
what Grand Prix racing was all about,
but McQueen was still in Taiwan
and "The Sand Pebbles"
was starting to spiral out of control.
Whatever sins I commited
in a previous life,
they got paid back double
on "The Sand Pebbles".
The plan was to go and shoot
"The Sand Pebbles"
and ideally they'd be back to shoot
"Day of the Champion"
in '66 at the end of
"The Sand Pebbles".
The shoot in some ways is as memorable
as the film because it was
supposed to be a nine-week shoot
and it ended up taking
something like seven months.
The conditions over there
in Taiwan were horrendous.
Everyone got ill, Steve included.
We knew that the first team
to get their picture shot,
edited, scored and into
theaters before the other guy
would be the winner.
Neither side wanted to be the second
racing picture out that year.
Sturges and his crew
could still continue
to capture stunning race footage
while they waited for McQueen
to return from the Far East.
They regrouped and in late April '66
headed to Oulton Park
in Cheshire to shoot a round
of the British GT Championship,
which would double for
a sports car race described
in the loose
"Day of the Champion" script.
There was The Steering Wheel Club
in the south of Park Lane
where all the motor racing
enthusiasts used to go.
And Stirling had started The Stirling
Moss Automobile Racing and so I drove his Elan which was his car
and then I entered my own
cars under his name.
There was agreement that
this car should be repainted
in the colors that Steve McQueen
planned to have
in his film, so it was
repainted to a green
and I drove the car in this race
and was filmed.
Well, we had the name "PEARCE"
on the car
because that was the name
that Steve McQueen
was being given in the film.
Of course, what you have to remember
is that in the '50s
and '60s, a top driver wouldn't
just drive Formula 1
as happens today,
they would drive sports cars,
he would do the Le Mans 24 hours,
he would probably race
in touring cars as well
and that's why it was completely
appropriate
that McQueen's character
in the film drives single-seaters,
but also drives sports cars.
That's how it was in those days.
Bloody hell was I in the front row?
Six, well, I just fucked up the start.
Part of the deal was that
I should wear a helmet
which was approved by Steve McQueen
and then the production
team sent me the photograph
with the words which said;
If this is what Dunlop overalls achieve,
then I think we'll go with Firestone.
So, I was in fact Steve McQueen's
double.
The pieces of the puzzle were falling
into place for "Day of the Champion".
But with the start of
the 1966 Formula 1 season
in Monaco just a month away
they needed their Hollywood icon
back from Taiwan and ready to race.
Frankenheimer and MGM
were about to descend
on the principality to get their
movie underway with a bang!
Late May 1966.
Steve McQueen is in Taiwan, behind
schedule on "The Sand Pebbles"
and desperate to get back to Europe to
star in his dream Formula 1 movie project
"Day of the Champion".
In Monaco, MGM and John
Frankenheimer are underway
with their rival picture, "Grand Prix".
Nine months behind
"Day of the Champion"
but now shooting real race scenes,
with real actors, in real race cars.
These are the Cinerama cameras
of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
about to attempt one
of the most challenging feats
in motion picture history
with these exciting,
international stars from America,
James Garner;
the celebrated French star,
Yves Montand;
Italy's sensational young talent,
Antonio Sabato;
and England's Brian Bedford.
For Frankenheimer, for any film maker,
this is a monumental challenge.
Less than an hour before the actual race,
he is staging his own start.
Well, what we hope to be able to do is
to show them what a real race
is really like from the driver's viewpoint
The crowds are real,
so is the excitement.
And for Frankenheimer,
the suspense is very real.
This is not a studio;
these are not stuntmen.
In just seconds, Phil Hill in the camera
car will lead Garner,
Montand and the others
around the Monaco circuit
at actual speeds of over
125 miles an hour.
In Monte Carlo,
they began to see we
knew what we were doing.
We were very well organized,
we went out there and we
were doing real stuff.
And that began to get their attention.
1966 Monaco, I mean you can't
even get your head around it
in terms of today's
standards of operation.
Princess Grace was just
the beginning of it.
She was there obviously.
It was Jackie Stewart's
second Grand Prix win but
while all this was going on,
Frankenheimer in his mind
was creating another Monaco Grand Prix,
which was the
"Grand Prix","Grand Prix".
And to think about that happening today
and to have the camera cars
there in the way they did,
and the changing liveries of the cars
and of the driver's helmet.
You know, one of the few
people who wasn't involved
in either movie was John Surtees.
He got absolutely fed up
to the teeth with it,
he had it up to here.
"Bloody film people
I wish they'd push off!"
But of course typical John,
he just said, 'But well, you
know, there's always a way
around these things and
the Hollywood people stuff
their mouths with money
and stop them talking.'
It didn't worry me at all.
It didn't, Francoise Hardy
occasionally would upset me.
She was a very pretty looking
girl walking down the pits.
It really didn't matter.
I can't say at any time
was it an intrusion
into my preparation
for a race or in the race at all.
It didn't bother me at all.
But, generally, the chaos
would have been incredible
and whilst Jackie was accepting
the trophy from Princess Grace,
just a little bit further down the road,
there was Sarti, Yves Montand,
accepting the trophy for
the "Grand Prix" Grand Prix.
Their own winner
will need a victor's cup
but they plan to use
the excitement at the end of the race
to slip a cuckoo into the nest to film
the man who won the celluloid race,
wearing an open wreath and
looking modest, as well he might.
The actual winner today
is Jackie Stewart.
As his car comes home,
Yves Montand, face glistening
with instant sweat,
prepares for his moment
of hollow victory.
I was not aware of it,
I was perfectly naive.
And you know, when you win a
Grand Prix, in Monaco in those days,
the Grand Prix was 100 laps.
Something like 8,600 gear
changes, all by hand,
and you were fairly tired
when it was finished.
When you're in a car,
particularly a Formula car,
but any car, you cannot
think of anything else.
I mean if you don't think of going
from one point to another,
from your braking point
to your gearing down
to make your turn into a corner,
if you stray from that,
and you worry about where that camera
is or anything like that,
then you're off the course.
So, we strictly do not worry about it,
we'll do our acting in the pits.
Another member of the
"Day of the Champion"team
was also in Monaco that weekend.
Stirling Moss was keeping a close eye
on Frankenheimer's team
and sent a telegram back
to the Alan Mann garage
after seeing how the cars
on "Grand Prix" were
slowing down the filming.
'Dear Alan,
Having just returned
from Monte Carlo and seeing how
the other lot are operating,
I feel we need to make some adjustments
to our cars so we don't have to
stop and start with such regularity.
Please can you start to
adjust the compression rates,
dampers and engine idle
before we get to Germany.
Kind regards, Stirling Moss."
Panic was also setting
in amongst the Warners' management.
Panic about McQueen's
physical condition
but also about the unrealistic schedule
of 'Day of the Champion',
given their A-list star
was still in Taiwan,
where 'The Sand Pebbles'
was seriously over-running.
By June 1966,
John Sturges was already in London
to work on pre-production
for the remaining
'Day of the Champion' shoots,
when he received
an extraordinary telegram.
Dear John,
It is needless to tell you
that I am very worried
because of the possibility
of "Grand Prix" coming out in Cinerama
or any other format ahead of our picture.
I would not put it by these
boys to release their picture
on 35 millimeter at the same time
that it's released in Cinerama.
Isn't there some way you can
start your pre-production sooner
and also have McQueen
get over to England sooner,
or something of this order?
I would hate like hell to be
given the bird and huge laugh
by all concerned with GRAND PRIX.
I don't want to say I would
not have gone into this
if I had known of the unfortunate
delay that has been caused
by "The Sand Pebbles".
What about phoning Bob Wise to see
if he can release McQueen earlier?
Again, in closing, see if
you can't beat GRAND PRIX
after you leave the starting gate.
Jack Warner."
That's your job.
That's your job to make it really look
like, where's Beady Eyes?
With production moving at a frantic
pace for "Grand Prix" in Monaco,
an unscripted halt is
brought to proceedings
when local shop keepers protest
about street closures harming their trade.
Tempers flare, proving
that even Hollywood's
most consummate leading men
can still lose their cool.
I am freezing my ass off,
now get your butt out of here or I'm
gonna throw you in the fucking water!
Just get out or I'm gonna bust you,
I'm gonna put in there
and I'm gonna hold you
under now get out!
What is your problem?
I am freezing to death out here
for a half hour while you talk!
If you want to talk,
I'll talk to you later.
How much money do you want?
I speak English, Mr Garner.
Well then you get the hell out of
that shot or I'm gonna put you out!
Yes sir.
I tell you!
You better count to 60
and get your ass out of here!
After Monte Carlo was over,
I put together a quick 30 minutes
of stuff I shot at Monte Carlo,
called Ferrari and asked
him if he would look at it.
He said 'well I don't have
any projection equipment,
I don't have anything like that. I said,
"Just tell me you'll look at it."
So he said "Yes I will."
So I shut the movie down,
chartered a plane,
brought the movie, a projectionist,
projectors and everything
else to Maranello,
to his office, set it up
and ran him the 30 minutes.
When it was over the lights came up,
he embraced me, he said,
You can have anything.
And he said, "I don't even
want to talk to you about money"
"because I don't want any money
from you,"
"because when Ferrari gives you
something,"
"he gives it to you."
So he never charged us a penny.
He gave us the Ferrari team,
he gave us the factory,
he gave us everything!
Well, of course, once we
got that kind of acceptance
from Ferrari, I mean that was that.
We were less than a week away
from filming principal
photography in Germany
in July of 1966 and Steve McQueen was
still busy filming "The Sand Pebbles".
At midnight one evening,
Jack Warner called my office
at Pinewood Studios.
"How are ya, Bob?"
Well, I'm cramming
to get everything in order
before I leave for Germany,
how are you, Jack?
I'm great, great thanks.
Right Bob, listen, about
that racing picture:
close it down.
"Excuse me?"
"Listen," Bob said,
"Bob Wise won't release McQueen."
That means "Grand Prix"
will be first to the theaters,
and am not gonna to be
second so shut it down.
But, we've already got loads of footage,
I've got an entire crew
in Germany ready to go,
you've already committed
a ton of money.
Bob, listen to me.
Send everybody home and
shut it down now, it's over.
McQueen went mad on the set of
"The Sand Pebbles".
Sturges tried to get him to
leave as soon as possible,
but Robert Wise wouldn't let
McQueen go. He needed him.
His wife said to him: You can't get that
angry because you turned down this role,
but that didn't really stop him.
He was determined to
make the definitive film
about Formula 1, about
motor racing and yeah,
he'd been beaten to the punch.
The trucks were in Dover already about
to depart for the Rheims Grand Prix
when a telegram came in
from Warner Bros
to say stop all transport and the whole
thing's canceled and go back to base.
The next morning,
I called Sturges to give him the news.
He was completely void of any emotion.
"Well that's that", he said.
I said, Sorry John,
we would've made a great film,
I'm sure of it.
Well, I think I'll take a few
weeks vacation, John mused.
"Maybe I'll go to Europe."
Before departing for the continent,
Sturges, ever the gentleman,
sent a telegram to Alan Mann
conveying his deep regret
over the collapse of
"Day of the Champion."
Dear Alan, As all of us are depressed
and unhappy over
the collapse of the project.
I think we would have achieved
some marvellous results
and it's a shame to miss the fun and
excitement we'd have had getting them.
You must know I'm very grateful
for the enthusiasm
and efficient help you gave us
and I'm truly sorry for any disruption
there has been to your plans.
I look forward to when we
meet again and once more,
my thanks for Le Mans.
With all the best, John.
He had quite a good
relationship with Sturges
and they were obviously
both disappointed
that it didn't come to any
fruition but they obviously had
some mutual respect for each other.
I had a letter from
Brookwood Productions,
Pinewood Studios, 'Regret,
here's a cheque for two weeks money.
Steve McQueen is ill and
he cannot make this shoot.
With Frankenheimer
seemingly victorious,
his Cinerama circus moved
onto other locations around Europe.
Filming in Clermont
Ferrand, Spa-Francorchamps,
Brands Hatch and Monza.
Not content with the drivers
he had already signed to exclusive deals,
he also wanted the two
remaining big F1 stars
who had signed to Warner.
My understanding is that
the insurance company,
that was what we were told,
that the insurance company
wouldn't allow Steve
to do a full-blown motor racing series
that we was directly involved in.
So, when that fell through,
Frankenheimer already had
the program going and in fact,
I don't know how long after we were told
that the movie wasn't going to happen,
Frankenheimer offered me another
amount of money to do some stuff
because one of the featured
drivers in his movie
was wearing my helmet colors.
And so I got paid twice really!
And so did Jimmy.
We got these guys to drive
for us at $200 dollars a day.
So you put it in today's dollars
that's $2000 dollars a day.
The picture in 1966 all-in
with accelerated post-production
cost about nine and a half million.
Put that in the context of
today's Formula 1 and imagine
what it would be like
having a Hollywood crew
in the pit lane at a
proper Formula 1 race,
it would never happen in a million years.
But Frankenheimer was able
to do that and to his credit,
and I think to the credit
of the actors involved,
it all worked.
Probably it was the Francoise Hardy
accept of it all!
The drivers found her
very friendly to the eye,
I think, but no in general I think
they did a very good job
of understanding what it was all about
and they became part of the fabric
of Formula 1 throughout that '66 season.
Making a picture is a strange thing
because everybody hates
you when you are making it.
It's when the picture comes
out that they say, 'Oh boy,
you know, it's really pretty good.'
Or visa versa, everybody loves
you when you are making it
and the picture comes out and
you never work again you know.
It can work that way too!
August 1966 and Steve McQueen
is finally back in California after
wrapping on"The Sand Pebbles".
Six months behind schedule
and his dream Formula 1
movie project in tatters.
Steve was exhausted after
"The Sand Pebbles",
probably he did his best acting
of his career possibly
with the exception of"Papillon"
and he'd put so much
of himself and his energy into
"The Sand Pebbles"
that he needed a rest.
There was no way he could go and
make "Day of the Champion" after that.
He and Bob Relyea,
his great producer friend,
they felt they'd got their butts kicked
when "Day of the Champion"
didn't get made.
But by early '67, McQueen was
back riding the crest of a wave.
"The Sand Pebbles" was a
critical and box office hit.
The only thing that McQueen seemed
to really focus on when he got back
to America was the Oscars campaign
for "The Sand Pebbles".
He was determined that he
deserved a Best Actor nominee
and he did in fact get it.
A little bit of brokenness,
I think, comes to that role,
aided and abetted by the fact
that he actually quite ill
through a lot of the filming
so he does actually look kind
of dissipated or off-kilter
in some of the scenes and that
was a way to throw himself
into something which,
was not colored by the disappointment
of not being able to make
this passion project.
McQueen must have been gutted
to think that he got his
first Oscar nomination
for a film that actually stopped
him making the film he had
always dreamt of making.
"Sand Pebbles"and
"Grand Prix" were released
the same week in December '66.
"Grand Prix" was a huge success.
It was up against
"The Sand Pebbles" at the Oscars
in several categories
and it won three Oscars
so that really added probably insult
to injury, in some ways, for McQueen.
At that time, there was,
you could get little hand
grenade-looking things made
of compressed paper with
a small French banger inside.
James Garner's and Steve
McQueen's houses were adjacent
to each other in Hollywood
and Steve's was a little uphill
from Garner's and so he used
to throw his grenades down into the yard
of Garner's house and
illicit a big police reaction
and everything and wait for all that
to dissipate and lob another one over
and generally wind him up.
Finally his son, Chad,
made him go and take
him to see "Grand Prix"
and from that time on
we were talking again.
But Steve was a wild kid,
he was a wild kid.
He didn't know where he wanted to be
or what he wanted to do.
Tell him exactly where
Garner's going to pass him.
Jimmy Garner!
Where is the exact place you pass him?
Just before the overpass,
he's gone that way.
Just before the overpass,
alright we gotta go.
Which side?
Which side?
I pass him on the left!
Okay!
When I first saw "Grand Prix"
sitting at a cinema,
the impact was tremendous
because you were seeing
Formula 1 cars racing
on a big screen, in color,
close-ups on the drivers.
There was a whole depth there
which we never had on television.
Television coverage in the 1960s
was extremely primitive
and for people who'd never
been to a motor race,
which is where a lot of the audience
would have come from,
they would have seen this on television,
but the impact of seeing it
on a proper cinema screen.
Enormous.
Frankenheimer did hire me
as a consultant when he was thinking
about doing a "Grand Prix 2".
I'm talking early '80s now.
But then of course like
everybody at that time,
he was completely shocked
at how much Formula 1 i.e.
Bernie Ecclestone wanted
in order to have the same
sort of access that he'd back in '66
and at that point it became a non-starter,
like a lot of other movies
that people have tried
to make about Formula 1.
I will always be grateful
that "Grand Prix" exists
because apart from anything else,
it amounts to such, in effect,
a record of how Formula 1
was in the '60s.
During the second half
of the 1960s,
Steve McQueen's Hollywood
career went stratospheric.
The outsider had made it inside,
becoming the highest
paid actor in the world.
His disappointment over the failure of
"Day of the Champion" only
served to fuel his obsession
with cars in the movies.
In 1968, "Bullit"' was
the result of his efforts.
Again, he insisted on doing the majority
of the stunt work involved
and this is widely considered
to be the greatest car chase of all time.
Those mid '60s years
were the hottest years of his career.
He had five hits one after the other,
starting with "The Cincinnati Kid",
and "Nevada Smith",
"The Sand Pebbles",
"The Thomas Crown Affair",
and"Bullitt".
Now if we'd have seen
"Day of the Champion"
in the middle of that,
we might never have seen"The
Thomas Crown Affair"and"Bullitt".
But he was still obsessed with his
dream of a motor racing film
and now had a great deal
of star power, the juice as he called it.
He did, of course,
finally make that movie.
"Le Mans" was released in 1971.
With"Bullitt","Thomas Crown" being
such massive hits, essentially,
he's allowed to do
whatever he wants to do.
That's when "Le Mans"
comes back into the mix
and he thinks I am gonna make
the ultimate racing car movie.
By the time he got to "Le Mans",
he was feeling so much pressure that
this film had to succeed
that it definitely affected
his personal relationships,
with his wife, with his
friend Robert Relyea,
with his director friend from
over a decade, John Sturges.
I think he was dead set that
this movie had to be a success.
I think, at
least from my standpoint,
in an action film,
it gives you an opportunity
to put people under pressure.
And when they're under
pressure, they're emotions,
good or bad, come out.
What you're really looking for is emotion.
A fight is no more meaningful than
how much care somebody wins.
Two unknown people could
beat each other to death,
balanced on a girder,
40 stories in the air,
you wouldn't care unless you were
pulling for one or the other.
I think the thing that
fascinated most people
about "Bullitt" was that sensational
car chase in San Francisco.
Are you going to try for
anything like that in this film?
Well, we hope
to do as well of course.
It won't be a chase in any sense
and they will be cars
driven under control as they
are here in the circuit,
as opposed to a kind of flat-out stunt.
It's similar in that there
are cars and there is speed,
but totally different otherwise.
When something is a passion project,
logic goes out of the window.
For McQueen, it stopped
being about creating
an amazing piece of cinema and
it became about fulfilling a dream
and those two are never going to marry,
even more so when Sturges left
the project.
Steve, who's production company
was making the film,
really didn't know how you make a film,
how you string a script together,
how you block a scene,
and I think it must have
been awful for John Sturges.
Steve was very, very famous
and also I think in many ways,
out of control.
I think "Le Mans"
is a cult classic because it,
yes, largely appeals to people
that are really interested
and passionate about cars and racing,
but that film kind of speaks
to a particular style of filmmaking
which is unique to its moment
and had this kind of existentialism to it,
this kind of minimalism,
this story which was
completely self-contained
which didn't need the various
complications of traditional,
classical Hollywood cinema.
I felt very strongly that racing would
be a great background to a story.
I believe that Steve felt
racing would be a great film
with some story around it.
It may be oversimplifying but
even if it is that simple,
that's a big difference.
Well, I'll go with you that
we concentrate on the race,
yes, whether anything else
is kept to a minimum or not,
I don't know.
I don't think Steve really cared
about the story
and the love interest and so forth.
He just wanted to film the definitive,
really documentary of cars going fast
and the fiction side of it
was I think a bit shrug.
I don't know if anybody's ever
discovered the beginnings of a plot.
I don't think I ever detected one!
Steve has from the beginning,
pushed and insisted upon a
reality approach to the picture.
The real cars that were
really in the race,
driving at real speed.
Not trick photography,
not rear projection,
not on a location that looks like
"Le Mans"for a certain time,
but racing conditions
with the actual machinery.
If you look at the script
for "Day of the Champion",
it's actually quite similar to
"Grand Prix" in certain ways.
Much more of a traditional narrative
than "Le Mans" ended up being.
And like "Grand Prix", it follows
several drivers over a whole season.
There are elements that
were retained for "Le Mans".
He's called Mike Pearce
in the original script,
Mike Delaney, of course,
in"Le Mans".
But there are still a couple of lines
in the "Day of the Champion" script
that end up in the finished
version of "Le Mans".
McQueen says in "Le Mans" that...
Racing's important
to men who do it well.
Racing, it's life.
Anything that happens before
or after, it's just waiting.
That's actually originally
from "Day of the Champion".
Do you remember
a man called Karl Wallenda,
the greatest of the high wire walkers?
After he fell and was broken,
when he went back, he said,
To be on the wire is life.
The rest is waiting.
This was a wise man, do you know that?
I hope so...
Only those of
us who have been on the wire,
who have held the wheel, only us.
No one else, the others,
they cannot know
and it is foolish to try and tell them.
Never try and tell anybody.
They know or they can never know.
"Day of the Champion"remains one
of Hollywood's great"What If's"
Fragments of rushes and an
impoverished script are all that remain
of the dream project of one of the
great movie stars of the 20th century.
A contemporary F1 movie has
not been achieved since 1966,
while the sport grew exponentially
over the next 50 years.
After "Le Mans",
McQueen never did hit
the highs of the 60s again.
He divorced and remarried.
Then, divorced and remarried.
His relationships with Sturges
and Relyea remained strained
for the next decade.
I think the best movie stars work
on variations on a theme,
in a way, or variations on a persona
that's always existed.
And so McQueen feels like Americana,
I think, to us now and, you know,
a more old-fashioned, traditionalism
that people kind of yearn for.
Steve McQueen, away from the camera,
was a very complex person
with lots of moods,
lots of swings of those moods,
one of the most loyal
people I've ever known.
Very street smart.
But more important to Steve
than anything in the world
would be to be remembered
as being a good human
being, not a good actor,
and most of all was
respected by his peers.
That the other race drivers,
whether they thought
he was an actor or not,
thought he could cut it on an even field
and I think the idea of getting
respect from other people,
which probably goes all the
way back to Boys Republic,
was probably what he would
want more than anything else.
You see the problem here, man,
is you gotta be happy.
If you're not happy, you might as well
chuck the whole business.
This is the untold story
of the greatest movie, never made.
A movie that would have been the world's
first authentic motion
picture about Formula 1,
and starring the coolest man
to ever get behind the
wheel, Steve McQueen.
As far as reality is concerned
my education was very good.
We spent half our time
keeping him out of jail.
It was Steve McQueen driving this movie
and he was a racer.
Of course,
we can't show you that film,
but by piecing together
never before seen rushes,
along with original on-set photos,
letters, scripts and interviews,
we aim to give you a sense
of what might have been,
for the audience and McQueen.
He embraced me; said
"You can have anything."
He is impossible
to take your eyes off of.
Completely magnetic.
A terrible window of death.
I think it's a very pure thing;
I'd like to learn more.
This wasn't just a race on the track.
It was a race between two
massive Hollywood studios,
determined to do whatever it took to win.
You have to have the skill to create
something people think is real.
He was determined to make
the definitive film about Formula 1.
It would have been bigger
than "Jaws".
This is the story of
"Day of the Champion".
STEVE MCQUEEN:
THE LOST MOVIE
The 1960s gave
birth to a new America.
The country hoped for a new
direction with the election
of John F. Kennedy, only to
see him shot down in Dallas.
It sought harmony through
the civil rights movement,
while protests over Vietnam
and the Cuban Missile crisis
dominated the headlines.
America's cultural impact on the world
during that decade is undeniable.
Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin,
Andy Warhol Elvis
and a movie industry in transition.
Old men who could not relate
to the explosion
of youth culture
were swiftly moved aside.
Films became brasher
and more socially aware.
The inmates were allowed
to take over the asylum,
so long as their movies made sense
and more importantly, dollars.
Hollywood in the early 60s
is essentially the wheels
are starting to come
off basically since the end
of the Second World War
the breaking apart of the studio system
is happening slowly across that period.
And by the early '60s, 1963ish,
you have the lowest domestic output
of movies ever in American history.
TV was the enemy
to Hollywood for a long time
but as they started
to syndicate their movies
into TV and realized
how profitable it was,
that barrier started to come down a bit.
And so you had actors
like Clint Eastwood
who started out in"Rawhide"
and with Steve McQueen
with"Wanted: Dead Or Alive",
it was a very popular show.
From '58 to '61 McQueen starred
in a western TV show called
"Wanted: Dead or Alive".
His detached and mysterious
acting style made this stand out
from the average western serial.
It not only made him
a household name
but helped to create
his antihero persona,
which characterized
so many of his future roles.
His big break in the movies came thanks
to another man with piercing blue eyes
when Frank Sinatra
sacked Sammy Davis Junior
from"Never So Few"
after an argument.
Sinatra and director John Sturges gave
McQueen the role of Bill Ringa,
with Sinatra insisting that McQueen
got plenty of close ups
and screen time after seeing something
special in the, then 29-year-old.
Josh!
I think everyone agrees, John Sturges,
one of his great strengths
was he could cast what he called
the gut of the picture.
Don't worry about who's starring in it,
that'll take care of itself
but cast that gut.
Intuitively, a very good actor
and exuberant about his work,
he enjoyed,
a warrior, like most good actors are.
It was kind of a Pack picture,
kind of Sinatra's Pack,
but with this one, young outsider.
Frank kind of saw to it
that Steve was at the right place
at the right time.
I'm talking about on the playing field,
turning a scene,
and off the playing field.
Frank was careful that he got
the help when he needed it,
he got the angle when he needed it
and he got the brothering,
if you will, actor's coaching
when he needed it.
Certainly not an intellectual,
he didn't read much.
He didn't know very much about
what was happening in the world,
but he enjoyed life and
we became very good friends.
McQueen would be the first
to admit he was no intellectual.
His difficult and abusive childhood
giving no clues as
to the global stardom that would follow.
Born into poverty and raised
with a great deal of insecurity,
he was abandoned by his stunt
pilot father at six months,
then sent by his alcoholic mother to live
on his uncle's farm aged just three,
he drifted through childhood
committing petty crimes
and later admitting;
'I was looking for a little love,
but there wasn't much of it around.'
I think the stepdad relationship wasn't
a good one, he used to beat on Steve.
His mother didn't really
do anything about it
and he never forgave her for that.
After several arrests for shoplifting
and stealing hub caps,
in his mid-teens McQueen
ended up in a reform school
for 'delinquent' children
just outside of Los Angeles.
Steve ended up in Boy's Republic,
Chino and Steve hated it at first
and resented his mother for it greatly,
but in later life he used to go back there
and meet the kids there
and he would take items
from his movie sets there
and I think although he maybe
didn't appreciate it
at the time, he came
to appreciate it in later life
just what it did for him.
His name was Mr Panter
and he was the superintendent,
I guess, of the place.
And Steve was getting into
all sorts of trouble at
that time and the guy eventually took
him aside after he tried to run away,
and of course they caught him,
and he said:
You better adjust
to some regimentation
or you'll just be
a very unhappy young man,
in this place anyway."
So with that,
I guess he was able to learn
that maybe a little adapting
to society would be okay.
You have a choice in life
and he made a choice that
this is not the life I want
to go down, I don't want
to end up in prison,
I don't want to be just another statistic,
I want to use this as a springboard.
Let me use my anger,
let me use my pain and my poverty
and make it into something amazing,
which the fact that
we're talking about him now,
so many years later,
is actually what he did.
In 1947, and already branded
as one of life's "Outsiders",
the 17-year-old McQueen
enlisted in the US Marines.
He served as a tank driver,
an experience that fueled his obsession
for anything with an engine.
Although there were
occasional rebellions,
he eventually embraced the rigor
and discipline of military life
and was honorably discharged in 1950.
He was on duty with the Navy
in the Aleutian Islands,
just above the Arctic Circle.
He was cold and he was
out somewhere in his jeep
and he was heating a can
of beans in the exhaust pipe
of the jeep, a McQueen manoeuvre.
And a General on inspection showed up
and Steve's standing there to attention
and the General is saying,
"What's going on soldier."
So the beans exploded
and wiped out the General!
So who but Steve McQueen
could be court martialled
for firing beans on a General, you know.
These things just happened to him."
He was clearly aware of his educational
disadvantage, but his extreme focus
and life experience allowed him
to tackle any fresh conflict
he encountered.
Well, my scholastic standards
weren't very good.
I went as far as the eighth grade but
as far as reality is concerned,
by education was very good.
And perhaps a man that
kicks around quite a bit
is a little stronger in quarters
he needs to be stronger in
as far as dignity is concerned,
and a little lenient
in quarters about
sensitivity and so forth.
I think if you've been kicked around,
you don't want to be kicked again.
With the G.I. Bill of Rights behind him,
McQueen had money to learn a trade
and settled on trying
to make it a profession
in which he would meet the most girls.
I hitchhiked to New York
and I studied there
and got a scholarship
to a dramatic school.
Then I did a couple very small parts
on television,
and then my first Broadway show,
which is a legitimate play,
and I did two of those.
Then I came West, I hitchhiked
to California, I was broke again.
Then when I got to California, I guess
they were hunting for a cowboy
because they wanted me
for a series and I did it
and it lasted for 3 years
in the United States
and fortunately for me
it was very popular.
I think McQueen starts
to get good notices with
"The Magnificent Seven"
and he does everything he can,
he pulls out all the stops
to get the audience's attention
in this ensemble piece,
where Yul Brynner is really the big star.
And stories abound
about their relationship on set
and how much he was
kind of fiddling around
in the background,
and messing with his hat.
Always doing something to
draw the audience's eye to himself.
John Sturges was a good bit older
than Steve McQueen.
He'd come up in Hollywood
in the 1930s as a jobbing Director.
Really found his niche in
the '50s with westerns,
with action-oriented westerns.
So, in 1955 he makes
"Bad Day At Black Rock"
witch is sort of a contemporary
western starring "Spencer Tracy".
McQueen really was lucky
in that Sturges was equally interested
in cars as he was,
he was kind of a man's man.
And he had McQueen's respect because
even at that point in his career,
McQueen was known for being stubborn
and sort of temperamental.
I think what John Sturges and
Steve McQueen had in common
was just an attitude of;
"Let's get on with it!"
There was a sort of workman-like
charm about both of them.
And that's not to say that
they didn't create amazing,
artistic and poetic
moments on film together.
And I think they both really appreciated
that trait in one another.
Well, Sturges also
grew up without a father
so maybe there was a link
there between them in that way.
So the
street-kid had made it.
By the age of 30,
he was earning big money
and was now a family
man with a wife, Neile,
and two children, Chad and Terry.
A lot of actors nowadays,
you know, are making it,
they are successful see?
And they're very angry.
Now what have they got
to be angry about?
If they were really broke
and they had a hassle,
But if they are successful,
they should be very happy.
I'm happy, I've got a
beautiful wife, two kids,
two houses, a couple of cars
and my own film company.
I'm not buggin' nothing!
Steve, why are you here?
To make a picture?
We are doing"The War Lover",
John Hersey's novel.
It's the story of daylight
bombing in World War Two
and the American flyers
who fought here in London.
There's only two things that mean
anything to me, flying and women.
- In that order?
- In any order, or both together.
With his fame and wealth came
the opportunity to indulge his passion
for motorcycles and cars.
So, as well as starring opposite
Robert Wagner and Shirley Anne Field,
McQueen's main motivation for spending
three months in rural Norfolk in 1962
was the film unit's proximity
to Snetterton Circuit,
at that time, the world's foremost school
for people who wanted
to learn to how to race cars.
Yeah, when McQueen first came
over here to film "The War Lover",
he was really keen to drive racing cars
and learn to drive racing cars, well,
I think Jim Russell was an American
driver who was actually pretty good
and he started this new concept
of a race driver school
based at Snetterton
and because it was the only
one of its type at the time,
it was like, 'Wow what a great thing!
We can go and sit in a racing car
and learn how to be race drivers.'
And that hadn't happened before
and I think it's quite interesting
that Steve McQueen knew about that
and was attracted by that, it says a lot.
It speaks a lot to the purity
of Steve's love of racing,
I think that he thought,
"Wow, Snetterton. Bleak, cold, rainy,
but it's the Jim Russell School
I wanna be there!"
Steve, talking about cars. You race
them and you race them very fast.
Now I don't know any other actor who
does this sort of activity the way you do.
Why do you do it?
Why are you in such a hurry?
I think perhaps a lot
of it has to do with fear.
I think that race driving is an art,
and I don't put myself in the class
of Stirling Moss or Gurney or Phil Hill or
some of the people who are driving here
in your Formula 1
or your international races,
but I remember the first time
I raced I was very frightened,
it scared me and I didn't like
the idea of being frightened
and I wanted to overcome it.
That was one element.
The other elements is
it's a very pure thing.
It's one of the few things
in life you can't fix.
You can't fix this.
You can go to somebody and say;
"I'm going to buy my way out of this."
When you are out there by yourself
you are very much by yourself.
I think it's a very pure thing,
I'd like to learn more
and I plan on doing a little racing while
I'm in your county, I like to learn.
I think your courses are very fast
and I could learn quite
a bit from your drivers
so I'd like to learn as much as I can.
The United States really only became
aware of European-style racing,
sports car racing,
Formula 1 single-seater racing
through the rich young men
in California just after the war
who started off racing
hot-rod type cars on circuits
but then found that if you
had the money to buy a Ferrari
or a Maserati from Europe,
they could then win races.
Steve McQueen, certainly,
was much more interested
in European-style racing
and he picked up on the glamor
and romanticism of Formula 1 racing.
One driver seemingly fitted the bill
as McQueen's "UK racing mentor".
A tall, slim aristocrat by
the name of John Whitmore.
His background and lifestyle
could not have been
more different from rural
Indiana or indeed Hollywood.
We grew up knowing each other
very well.
And he had a lovely house
that he had in Balfour Place
just one back from Park Lane.
He was one of Jimmy Clark's best friends
and one of my best friends.
But John, he wasn't
a gentleman racing driver.
He was a racing driver er no gentlemanly
manners or anything like that.
Of course, he was well-mannered,
of course he was so well, educated,
but he just wanted to be one of the boys.
Steve was over here making a black
and white film actually.
And he and I just happened
to meet and we got talking
and we talked for about two hours
and found that we had
a lot of common interests.
Steve was riding motorcycles,
he was a very good motorcyclist
and also was interested in cars.
And by then, Steve had
done his Jim Russell course
and John Whitmore was a massive hot
shot in Mini's and it was a perfect thing.
It says a lot about Steve
that he wanted to race Mini's.
I think that shows that
he'd thought it through
and it was exactly the right sort
of category of racing for him.
McQueen was very competitive
at that level
and there was that great
race at Brands Hatch
when Whitmore and Carlisle
and McQueen were backing together
and McQueen very nearly
beat Carlisle to the flag.
John Whitmore, I knew from early days
because in fact we both raced at Sebring
together in the same car.
But he was a great
friend of Steve McQueen's
and he was keen to race in England
and John Whitmore had already
won a saloon car championship.
So he lent Steve McQueen his Mini
to race at the beginning
of October at Brands Hatch.
The race was amazing.
There were five of us Mini's
who were continually passing
and re-passing each other.
I was told we were the three
of us together going round a corner.
Anyhow the race ended with
Vic Alford winning, me behind,
just in front of Steve McQueen.
And the commentator
had gone absolutely mad
and demanded that we, us three,
should go up onto the podium.
It was very exciting.
Oh, you can't ask him now but I don't
know what he thought about that!
But he was a good sport.
He did drive me back to London
on one occasion
and he was charming.
Chatty, talkative, wonderful blue eyes.
He behaved extremely well!
There was a Mini, a small car,
on the side of the M1
and I was going down
in my bigger car going a bit faster
and as we went passed the Mini,
there were two girls
and Steve said, "Stop."
And I said, 'You can't stop on the M1,
you know, you're not allowed to do that.'
And he said 'Oh yes,
you know, you ran out of petrol or
something like that, you can stop.'
He jumped out of my car,
took a bag with him,
and jumped into the Mini.
And he stayed in the car
with these two girls
and nobody saw him for two days.
Racing gave me a fresh identity.
I was no longer just an actor,
I was a guy who raced.
It was really important for me to have
this separate identity.
Steve McQueen
The result of racing Minis and his Jim
Russell course was the addition of
a so-called Asphalt Rider
in his future contracts.
Nothing was to get in the way
of his love for cars and bikes.
So, in 1963, with "The War Lover"
and many laps of English
racetracks behind him,
Steve McQueen once again teamed up
with director John Sturges for what was
to become one of the most iconic
movies of the 20th Century.
And with the character of Captain Hilts
in "The Great Escape",
he cemented his status as a bonafide
"Hollywood Superstar".
He looked at James Garner, who was
"The Scrounger",
looked at Charles Bronson with his pick
and he knew I'm the star of this movie
and I've got nothing here.
Sturges was big enough to give Steve an
opportunity to go away and come back
with his own ideas and that was
where the motorcycling across the Alps
and all that kind of thing,
really took off and made Steve
the huge star after that.
We spent half our time
keeping him out of jail.
Every time he'd show up at work
there'd be this collection
of police who would come in
and they'd all come over to me
and we'd have a consultation
with Steve over,
You cannot drive through
flocks of chickens
and you cannot go off into the woods
and back onto the road to
pass somebody,
Wasn't it a while ago that the studios
prohibited you doing any racing
while you were actually in production?
I see all kinds of executive-looking
people standing around
with their fingers crossed!
Well, they're being real
nice to me on this film.
Steve drove faster than made sense
and Steve's emotional outlet
when he was troubled was drive a car.
So one of the amazing things
about McQueen was really
for the first time since silent
cinema and the "Daredevils"
of silent cinema
like Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton,
he was someone who made it
very clear that he did a lot
of his own stunt work, and was
celebrated because of that.
People loved to see him
do actions scenes
because they knew it was for real.
But Steve McQueen really
started that in the modern era.
You've got to remember about Steve,
he not only loved cars
and loved everything to
do with mechanical things,
but he was also very good at it.
Steve was very good at
handling automobiles,
that's why he could race competitively.
There's another issue too
and it's absolutely true.
There is the, I don't
like the term "macho",
but he had that thing about,
I don't want people doubling me
and then I have to face my peers
saying, "Here comes candy."
The cavalier leading man might seem like
a director's worst nightmare.
Let alone the studio's
insurance company.
But it showed Sturges that
McQueen was the real deal
and his love of blurring
the lines between acting,
action and reality brought
them even closer together.
With McQueen's insistence
on doing most
of his own motorbike stunts
in "The Great Escape",
only an insurance clause kept
him from doing that jump,
which whetted his appetite
for more onscreen action.
What better subject than the machinery
with which he was so in love.
I don't like acting
when it's "Playing house"?
I believe that I try to extract out
of my life the same reality
that I am existing in if I'm working.
Anyone watching films in 2020
probably doesn't appreciate
the difference between
an actor and a movie star.
But in the 1960s and 1970s,
there was a huge difference.
It was a choice of getting
a script and turning up
and doing your job, which an actor did.
A movie star had control;
they could change scenes.
Well there were lots of actors.
Movie stars are much rarer.
As a movie star, he's impossible
to take your eyes off of.
Completely magnetic, I think
attractive to men and women
because he has
a salt of the earth energy.
He doesn't put on airs and graces.
He feels like he has
the hands of a mechanic,
he has the face of somebody
who has lived.
After "The Great Escape",
it took his movie star
capabilities to another level.
So for him it was very
important to make a film
that he was passionate about.
So we move into Warner Bros,
we have a six-picture deal.
When we had our moving in party
with all the William Morris people there,
trying to make a joke I said,
We're going to make
a picture about racing.
That'll be the end of this company
and our relationship!"
And we all had a big laugh.
Turned out not to be that funny.
What McQueen and Sturges
wanted to do
was to exploit highly charged writing,
intelligent writing about sport.
It hadn't really happened before
and a lot of it came consciously
or subconsciously
from the style of writing
that one had seen
with Hemingway's
"Death in the Afternoon".
It was dramatizing death.
It was acknowledging that it was
a central part of what was going on.
Well, it was Hemingway's
great statement about
there are only three sports; bullfighting,
mountaineering and motor racing.
All the others are just games.
So motor racing
was maybe the next logical step
and in 1963 a book by American
photojournalist Robert Daley,
shed new light onto Grand Prix racing,
exposing the sometimes,
uncomfortable truth
about the less glamorous
and often deadly nature of the sport.
"The Cruel Sport"
came out with a lot of fanfare
and being a nerd of motor racing,
I was very nervous about
"The Cruel Sport",
but we all had to be because we knew
it was gonna have things in there
that you aren't supposed
to be talking about or showing.
Well, the more I read the book,
the more I realized how different
it was from most writing
about the sport at that time.
It was unflinching.
The sport at that time
was poorly managed
and in those days, the drivers
were sitting in a fuel tank.
It was all wrapping around you.
And when you had an impact,
they usually caught fire in a big way
and they never got it out.
They never got it out.
So it was a colorful, glamorous
and exciting window,
but a terrible window of death.
Daley was facing the fact that motor
racing was so dangerous in those days.
OK he was making that
the theme of his books;
maybe he was glorifying it.
But he was writing about it
intelligently and openly.
Helen and I counted 57 people
who died who were our friends.
We traveled with them,
we holidayed with them,
we raced with them, we dined with them,
it was just one big happy family.
"The Cruel Sport"
highlighted the number of accidents
and the number of deaths
and various serious injuries
that were taking place
in motor sport to the shock,
I think, of the people
involved in motor sport.
But the Americans got
hold of that in a way
that you could touch and feel
and you could smell the blood.
And I think this was the
role of "The Cruel Sport",
it opened the doors to a Steve McQueen
to be able to go to a Warner Bros
and say: This is Formula 1,
and this is what I want
to make a movie about.
'John secured the rights
to 'The Cruel Sport'
and we started developing a script.
In Sturges' mind,
there was only one actor
who had the skills to play the lead
in a realistic film about car racing."
The ingredients were all there.
Dangerous and dramatic source material
would give the film legitimacy.
The glamor and excitement
of the swinging '60s
would provide the perfect backdrop.
Surely this would be a
guaranteed Hollywood hit?
It was to be called,
"Day of The Champion".
Somehow or other there
was a magic about the '60s.
Carnaby Street was there, sex was safe,
motor racing was dangerous,
it was glamorous,
it was colorful, it was exciting,
and everybody would come
to Monaco every year.
It was a special time
because Princess Grace was
like a magnet to Hollywood
so all the big stars would come as well.
It's just a different culture altogether
and I just feel so fortunate
that I was living in that window.
Well, Steve always had this concept
that he wanted his racing movie
that he would eventually
make to be authentic.
It had to be a film that his
racing buddies would appreciate.
So, the script of
"Day of the Champion"
certainly has more of
a traditional narrative to it.
There is a romance with a posh British
girl called Kyla Bonham.
I think she crashes her Jaguar in a field.
And that's how the romance starts.
But even when you look at the script now,
it's certainly more about the racing
than it is about the characters.
The mark of the film was
to be absolute authenticity.
No compromise when it came
to accuracy and attention to detail.
Stirling Moss, who had
retired from full-time racing
after his crash at Goodwood in 1962,
was hired by McQueen and Sturges
as a technical consultant
for the "Day of the Champion" team.
You know, there was a time
when Grand Prix drivers
were household names in America.
In the days of when there were
two races, one at Long Beach at the start
of the year and one at Watkins Glen
at the end of the year.
Used to have huge crowds
at those races
and knowledgeable crowds
who really knew who Jim Clark was
and what he had done.
And Stirling Moss, periodically,
raced in America in the late '50s
on so he was the kind of pioneer
if you like, in that respect.
And that was where
the drivers began to know,
the James Garner's and so on,
who were American US film stars
who liked racing.
Stirling Moss was way ahead of his time
as an ambassador of the sport
and as an ambassador of his own brand.
He had a great name.
'If I'd have been christened Hamish,
I wouldn't be as well-known as I was."
But he worked really hard
I mean he'd win a race
and that night he would
always make a point
of going out into the town
and meeting people
and going to the movies,
wherever he was.
And then he'd go to Hong Kong
and order a new suit.
But it was all in the newspapers.
The press loved him.
Stirling was a big name and it was
interesting that Stirling was involved
with"The Day of the Champion"because
he was a team owner by the time
that happened and one of his
drivers was Sir John Whitmore.
And Whitmore would have
said to Steve McQueen;
You've got to get Stirling Moss involved,
I know Stirling very well,
I drive for him.
And that's how that
would've all come together.
There was a benefit dinner
in Hollywood the Night before
our film was to be announced
to the trade newspapers
and by chance John Sturges
was seated next to fellow director,
John Frankenheimer who had just
directed"The Train"with Burt Lancaster
and "The Manchurian Candidate"
prior to that.
Frankenheimer was a long-time
admirer of Sturges
and he gushed to his idol about
this film he was preparing.
"It's about car racing!"
Frankenheimer claimed.
Sturges just kept picking at his meal.
"Car racing, really?"
We're calling it,Grand Prix",
Frankenheimer added.
I'm basing it on this fantastic booked
I've discovered called 'The Cruel Sport'.
Sturges just kept picking at his food.
While Sturges was making a deal
for the book with the author's agent,
Frankenheimer was making the same
deal with the author, Robert Daley.
Apparently, Daley and his agent didn't
communicate very well, or very often.
So, the day after that dinner,
both movies based on
the same book were announced
to the trade papers,
and the real race was on.
Both sides were determined
to do whatever
and spend whatever it took to win.
Frankenheimer was really from
a generation of directors
that had cut their teeth on literally
hundreds of television dramas.
He had a string of really popular films
that borrowed from the realism
and the low budget black
and white of television,
with some more highbrow influences
and progressive politics
often were involved.
So Frankenheimer belonged
more to the late '60s than
the early '60s in terms
of his subject matter.
It seemed to me at the time
that we could do two kinds of movies.
We could either do "Test Pilot" ?
Which is one driver
with his mechanic going
through the whole thing and
finally getting up to Formula 1.
Or we could do "Grand Hotel",
which is to take a group of people
and put them in one situation
and see what happens.
Which is basically what
"Grand Hotel" was.
So we chose to do
"Grand Hotel".
Steve was originally slated
to do that movie
but he couldn't get
along with Frankenheimer
and so that lasted about 30 minutes
and Steve was out and I was in.
Well, it's never really been totally clear
to me what happened.
He had this disastrous meeting
with my partner, Edward Lewis.
It's a meeting that I should've been at
and for professional reasons
I was doing something else,
so I said to my partner;
"You take the meeting with Steve."
Well, it just was a disaster
and what happened
was Steve walked out of the movie
and we were without Steve McQueen.
I still think if we'd had
Steve McQueen in that movie,
it would have been
bigger than"Jaws".
- Really?
- I mean that's my contention.
He was definitely number
one choice for "Grand Prix".
I think in hindsight,
MGM got off lightly there
because Steve would not
have been an actor
that would have just executed
a script as they wanted.
He was so passionate about
racing that he would have wanted
to have brought his own
ideas to that movie.
What they got with James Garner
would have been an actor
who was a lot easier to handle let's say,
in terms of executing
a proper movie script,
as opposed to wanting to create
the definitive racing movie.
So, when I got the part in "Grand Prix",
I called him and I said,
Steve I want to tell you
before you hear it from somebody else,
that I'm gonna do "Grand Prix".
Well, there was about a twenty-dollar
silence there on the telephone!
He didn't know what to
say and finally he said,
"Oh that's great, great,
I'm glad to hear it."
He didn't talk to me for about a year and
a half and we were next-door neighbors!
One of the things that really
disappointed McQueen
was Garner didn't have
the love for cars that he had.
It wasn't a personal obsession
with cars or racing
to Garner, it was another job.
So when you look at the script,
it does seem like McQueen
wanted to show off
a little bit some of his racing
skills with Formula 1 cars,
Formula 2 cars,
sports cars, a Mini-Cooper,
which could be a little nod back
to his years racing
with John Whitmore in a Mini.
It's definitely all about McQueen's
prowess behind the wheel.
With the arguments and egos
seemingly smoothed
and top billing for each movie
established,
Warner Bros released this
memo proudly declaring
that "Day of the Champion"
was up and running
with an all-star crew
and technical line up.
From Warner Bros Studios, Burbank,
Jack L. Warner announced today
that photography on a multi-million-dollar
picture
"Day of the Champion" will
commence in Europe this summer.
Filming will include
the"Grand Prix" of Germany
at the famed Nurburgring Circuit
on August 1st.
John Sturges will produce
and direct and Steve McQueen
will star in the Technicolor
and Panavision production
which is being financed
and distributed worldwide
by Warner Bros.
Stirling Moss, one of the legendary
figures in the world of motor racing,
is serving as production consultant
and Sir John Whitmore,
noted English sports car racer,
is acting as technical advisor.
Sturges and cinematographer
John Wilcox
will utilize four Panavision cameras
to capture the exciting action.
I'd been working with
the Director of Photography John Wilcox
for a number of years
as his First Assistant Cameraman.
John Sturges was a great name
and it sounds a great film
and Steve McQueen and motor racing.
Yes, why not?
We all expected that
a motor racing film directed
by Sturges and starring Steve McQueen
was going to be wonderful.
We didn't really have very much view
about Frankenheimer
and "Grand Prix" and James Garner.
The McQueen movie looked like
the serious one, if you like.
So the warring films were literally off
to the races as both Warner
and MGM sent recce crews to
the 1965 Monaco Grand Prix.
The first race in that year's
Formula 1 World Championship.
So '65 Monaco was an
interesting race altogether
because well for a number of reasons.
One, Jim Clark wasn't there 'cause
he was away winning the Indy 500.
Two, Graham Hill won the race having
spun early on, climbed out of his car,
got back into his car and then continued
and went on to win the race.
And three, you had the crews from MGM
and Warner Bros there in Monaco
in this tiny principality,
both receiving for the movies
they we're gonna make.
And you can only imagine what
that would have been like,
in terms of a vying for position,
there aren't many great
positions at Monaco
because the marshals had
to be standing somewhere
and there isn't a lot of space anyway.
There definitely would have
been some serious discussions
between the two groups.
You can imagine, I guess,
the impact it would have made
to have had Jim Clark winning
the Indy 500 the same weekend
and for the movie crews
at Monaco this was like 'Wow!
What a world this is.'
As well as the thrill of being in Monaco
and hanging around with his
new racing driver chums,
McQueen, along with Sturges,
Bob Relyea and their racing
consultant Stirling Moss,
had used the trip to pay a visit to an
unassuming garage in Woking, Surrey.
The Alan Mann Racing Company not
only modified and raced Ford road cars
in the British Touring Car Championship
but they had also
developed a handy sideline
in adapting cars for the Silver Screen.
Bond's DB5 Aston Martin and
"Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" being
the most iconic.
So, it was no surprise
when they were instructed
to acquire and develop cars to
use in "Day of the Champion".
My father's background in motor racing
was really it was all tied up with Ford
from the very beginning.
He met Steve McQueen through
John Whitmore who I think
was a friend of Steve's early on
in the '60s
and they'd shared Mini driving together
and been motorcycle racing in California
and all part of that
group of friends I think
that they met each other
and Steve was obviously
a big fan of racing
and so they had a bit in common.
He was asked to prepare
the cars for the film
and manage the racing scenes
of he film and also build one
of the camera cars, which
was a modified Lola T70.
The cars had been prepared
to a certain extent
and they came to review
some of the pictures
that they needed to shoot and the angles
and how they were practically
going to make the film.
And presumably make some
requests about engineering
on the cars to allow them to do so.
My dad said McQueen
was quite absorbed
by all the racing detail
and the car preparation,
and all the mechanics of the operation
and yeah was very friendly
with all the team members
and everything.
But he also was obviously
quite a colorful character
and after hours was quite good company.
But I think he was kicked
out of The Dorchester Hotel
when he decided in his suite
to cook up some chili
or beans or something and fell asleep,
naked on the bed and it
dried out and caught fire.
Ran down the corridor to try
and find a fire extinguisher
and the next morning at breakfast,
he saw all his bags in the lobby area,
all having been packed up
and asked Sturges where
they were going that day
and he said, 'Well we're
not going anywhere,
I think that's just a polite
way of kicking you out.'
He impressed me as a fellow
hwo believed in action.
He was very keen to learn everything
he could about motor racing.
He was a quick learner.
The claims of the Warner Bros memo
were, so far, proving true.
McQueen and "Day of the Champion"
seemed
to be several steps ahead
of Frankenheimer
and MGM in the battle
to the silver screen
and had everything in place to capture
the 1965 German Grand Prix
at the Nurburgring
in true technicolor glory.
What they captured that day
has never been publicly seen.
I mean the thing about
this is we never saw any footage.
We saw a little bit of black and white
Movietone News perhaps.
It was in color.
It actually happened in color!
It's amazing, very relaxed.
Great footage though.
And there's Stirl in the camera car.
You had a 400-foot roll of film, so you
had about our minutes in each go
and then you had to reload because this
was obviously decades
before there was digital,
so we were on 35 millimeter
Eastman Color.
Samuelson Film Service
was run by four brothers,
three of whom were my uncles,
and one was my dad and David
was the technical partner
and he was responsible for all manner
of extraordinary bits of brand new,
never-been-thought-of-before technology
and a number of his things are still used.
He built some of it for
"Day of the Champion".
There is a racing car flat out
and all you can see around it is green.
Nothing else.
The Carousel.
I mean it was a wonderful racetrack,
it was a terrific racetrack, but crazy.
You know, 14.7 miles,
187 corners per lap.
You know, it was a great
race in so many ways.
This is the race in which Jim Clark
clinched the '65 World Championship.
It's just amazing footage to have seen it
after all this time.
There's Jimmy after the race and
the mechanics running, that's real film.
It's just amazing.
And what a trio on the podium.
Jim Clark in the middle,
Dan Guerney, Graham Hill,
doesn't get much better than that
in terms of the drivers you had to beat.
And then for Jim Clark at
that moment he's driving off
in the Merc and he's just won
his second World Championship,
in the same year he's won the Indy 500.
No driver will ever do that.
One of the guy's around us
I knew, and he was a driver,
he used to drive camera cars
and he said,
"Well, I brought some American
guys up."
Oh, yeah? Where are they?
"In the Ferrari pit."
I said, "Oh that's interesting."
So, I said to John Sturges,
You've got some Americans
in the Ferrari pit.
It probably might be the director.
And I remember Sturges being
very, very upset about it.
There was obviously a bit of animosity
going on between the two.
We very explicitly used Panavision,
not just any old Panavision,
but we shot it in a 2.35 ratio
meaning the screen,
the shape of the frame is 2.35
times as wide as it is tall.
It's called Panavision Anamorphic
and that gives you the shape you want
for a motor racing film
because you are certainly wider than
a regular 1.85 television
kind of shape of frame.
It's interesting to remember
that they then stayed at the Nurburgring
and filmed the week after that race,
ostensibly to test the camera
mounts they were gonna put
on the cars
and that's where Alan Mann came
in as obviously camera mounts were
gonna be part of his brief.
And this has to be seen against
the '62 accident at the Nurburgring.
In practice, Graham Hill
had a camera on the BRM
and it came off and he had
a big shunt, very big shunt.
Very lucky to get away with
his life in that accident.
So here we are, long before on board
cameras even became a phrase,
we have Warner Bros with Alan Mann,
with John Whitmore and Stirling
Moss hiring the Nurburgring,
the 14-mile circuit.
Some of the footage
we see is an indication of
how good that was and how
good it would have been.
When you start to deal with cameras
on cars at very high speed,
you have a number of built-in problems.
If the track is wet,
there is water flying around the lenses.
There has to be design
the cameras so they become
as aerodynamic as the car is
to avoid getting water all over them.
It requires mounts that do
not disturb the aerodynamics
of the car too much and can be balanced
in some other way so the car can
still handle at competitive speeds.
This requires some trial and error,
it requires the drivers to take
the cars out and see
when camera's in certain position,
how the car stills handles so
they can adjust accordingly.
It requires the cars that
are around them to sense
what problems that driver has
and about 10 or 12 of our drivers
have been in this same situation,
including Steve, to deal with a car
that has a new set up
aerodynamically because of camera
or cameras placed on it.
So we had to build mounts
that were able
to cope with that, not fall off.
So not only did the mount
have to not fall off,
but the consequences of it
falling off would have been dire
for whoever was in the car
behind and got a 40-pound piece
of filming equipment into their head.
That wouldn't have been good.
So it was all done very very carefully.
You have to have the skill
to create something people think is real.
Now we were in a good area to do that.
Steve is a race driver and
he looks like a race driver
and he understands race drivers,
he knows them all.
He can drive a car.
We had the real cars,
we had the real circuit.
So that part was alright.
MGM claimed they had the shooting
rights with all the "Grand Prix" circuits.
The Nurburgring was under question
because Warner Bros claim they had it
and there was going to be a court case
and they'd be looking for
evidence to sue each other.
I was also told that there was
a 16 millimeter crew filming us filming.
We never saw anybody,
it may have been true,
it may not have been true,
but we also slipped into
some film cans with the dummy labels
and put sand in them.
If somebody's going to steal our rushes,
they might steal the wrong rushes
and they'd find they'd
got a can full of sand.
Stirling always remembered that day
and made the point of saying
that when he drove at the Nurburgring,
doing some filming for
"Day of the Champion",
he just said, 'That day boy I just
felt like I had when I won there in '61.'
"Day of the Champion"
was off to a flying start.
Truly breathtaking footage was just what
McQueen and Sturges had hoped for
and put them substantially ahead
of Frankenheimer and MGM.
Warner Bros even cheekily released
this poster to further
rub salt into the wounds,
knowing full well that Frankenheimer
and Garner would not be up
and running with principal photography
for another nine months at
the start of the '66 F1 season.
And I think it's also
interesting to think about
why Jim Clark and
Jackie Stewart originally signed
with Steve McQueen and not with
Frankenheimer and"Grand Prix".
In my opinion it's because
it was Steve McQueen driving
this movie and he was a racer,
as well as he was an actor and a star.
Whereas "Grand Prix"
was driven by a movie director
like Frankenheimer, and in
the minds of Jimmy and Jackie,
probably more Jimmy than Jackie,
"Grand Prix" was going
to be all about crashes
and spectacular this and lots of things
that weren't true to life.
Whereas Steve McQueen,
with this closely knit group,
could produce a film
that was gonna be more
about racing drivers and
who racing drivers are
and the craft that they create.
I think Jimmy and I thought
that everybody was going
with Frankenheimer,
why don't we go with McQueen?
And Steve McQueen,
in those days was bigger
than Frankenheimer.
Well, who wants to get married?
And I think that was one of the things.
And he was making great movies.
Steve McQueen
works by instinct, reflex,
unconsciously concealed know-how.
Above all is his
reverence to authenticity.
And Jimmy and I didn't
talk an awful lot about it.
We just decided it was a good idea.
Everybody else
was going to "Grand Prix"
and we decided to go with Steve.
In a memo from
September 1965 John Sturges,
states that principal filming with McQueen
will start the following spring
after he has finished directing
"Ice Station Zebra",
ironically for MGM, and McQueen
has completed his next film,
"The Sand Pebbles".
He took on "The Sand Pebbles"
knowing that the book had been a hit.
The book was about
the Chinese Civil War in the 1920s.
He of course
respected Robert Wise greatly,
who'd directed "West Side Story",
"The Sound of Music",
so I think he saw a lot of
potential in that movie.
Back in Europe,
John Frankenheimer,
realizing he would have
a big task on his hands
to get his racing epic
released ahead of Warner's,
had stayed with the traveling F1 circus
throughout 1965.
Embedding himself in the lifestyle
and the culture of "The Cruel Sport".
In the meantime, I had been going
to all the races and they all knew me
as somebody who
was going to make a movie.
And they knew nothing about movies,
I mean they knew nothing about
the movies I'd ever made,
I don't think they'd
ever seen most of them.
Those cameras, turn them on as
soon as you get up to speed here.
But they did know that I was
really very very interested in cars
and they did know that
I raced on an amateur basis,
so at least I knew something
about what they did.
Come on!
Get somebody to push here!
Push!
And I became friendly with some of them,
like Graham Hill and Phil
Hill and Richie Ginther.
Everyone was very, very sceptical of
another film being made about racing.
In fact to the point where Ferrari said
they didn't want anything to do with it.
He just said "You go make your movie,
it has nothing to do with what we do
and you can't use the word
Ferrari in this picture
or have any of my cars
or anything like that.'
They get you like-
Oh my God get out!
Oh Jesus look, give his
guy hell this driver.
- He's coming out.
- Get out of here!
Come on get out!
So, we were lucky enough,
not lucky enough,
if you'll forgive me, smart enough
to go to Carrol Shelby
who had great credentials.
And Carrol Shelby kind of embraced us
and he kind of opened up a lot of doors,
including arranging to have the replicas
of all the cars made.
And he took charge of that.
And through Carrol Shelby, I got
to Dan Gurney who was a great friend
of Shelby's and also to Phil Hill.
Yeah, but this doesn't work.
And I signed these guys up.
And I actually I paid them money,
which also helped, convince them
that maybe this was a good idea!
And for 2 years exclusivity
to movies, to me.
Cut!
Cut!
Get everybody in here again.
For John Frankenheimer,
Phil Hill was manor from heaven
because he still was very,
very quick but he was kind of available,
and he was American,
and he was intelligent,
and he loved photography.
This was the perfect man to drive
that side of things for"Grand Prix".
I've just seen the most terrible
skid there.
What happened to Yves Montand?
Well, that's what he was supposed to do!
He wasn't supposed
to go all over the pavement?
Oh yeah! Up all over the kerb and
swing around backwards!
Wasn't that a beautiful job though?
He's like a stunt driver!
- Are you serious?
- No.
Well, he was a wonderful guy.
He was a great driver,
but also the most delightful guy,
the most delightful bloke.
Very, very dry sense of humor, one
of the funniest people I've ever met.
And also, probably as intelligent
as anybody who ever drove a racing car.
He must have been enormously
helpful to Frankenheimer.
Just because he was such a bright man.
Daley had written extensively, of course,
about Phil Hill because he
was America's first World Champion.
With Frankenheimer buying friends up
and down the grid, he was now starting
to close the gap
to "Day of the Champion".
Garner and the other stars were learning
what Grand Prix racing was all about,
but McQueen was still in Taiwan
and "The Sand Pebbles"
was starting to spiral out of control.
Whatever sins I commited
in a previous life,
they got paid back double
on "The Sand Pebbles".
The plan was to go and shoot
"The Sand Pebbles"
and ideally they'd be back to shoot
"Day of the Champion"
in '66 at the end of
"The Sand Pebbles".
The shoot in some ways is as memorable
as the film because it was
supposed to be a nine-week shoot
and it ended up taking
something like seven months.
The conditions over there
in Taiwan were horrendous.
Everyone got ill, Steve included.
We knew that the first team
to get their picture shot,
edited, scored and into
theaters before the other guy
would be the winner.
Neither side wanted to be the second
racing picture out that year.
Sturges and his crew
could still continue
to capture stunning race footage
while they waited for McQueen
to return from the Far East.
They regrouped and in late April '66
headed to Oulton Park
in Cheshire to shoot a round
of the British GT Championship,
which would double for
a sports car race described
in the loose
"Day of the Champion" script.
There was The Steering Wheel Club
in the south of Park Lane
where all the motor racing
enthusiasts used to go.
And Stirling had started The Stirling
Moss Automobile Racing and so I drove his Elan which was his car
and then I entered my own
cars under his name.
There was agreement that
this car should be repainted
in the colors that Steve McQueen
planned to have
in his film, so it was
repainted to a green
and I drove the car in this race
and was filmed.
Well, we had the name "PEARCE"
on the car
because that was the name
that Steve McQueen
was being given in the film.
Of course, what you have to remember
is that in the '50s
and '60s, a top driver wouldn't
just drive Formula 1
as happens today,
they would drive sports cars,
he would do the Le Mans 24 hours,
he would probably race
in touring cars as well
and that's why it was completely
appropriate
that McQueen's character
in the film drives single-seaters,
but also drives sports cars.
That's how it was in those days.
Bloody hell was I in the front row?
Six, well, I just fucked up the start.
Part of the deal was that
I should wear a helmet
which was approved by Steve McQueen
and then the production
team sent me the photograph
with the words which said;
If this is what Dunlop overalls achieve,
then I think we'll go with Firestone.
So, I was in fact Steve McQueen's
double.
The pieces of the puzzle were falling
into place for "Day of the Champion".
But with the start of
the 1966 Formula 1 season
in Monaco just a month away
they needed their Hollywood icon
back from Taiwan and ready to race.
Frankenheimer and MGM
were about to descend
on the principality to get their
movie underway with a bang!
Late May 1966.
Steve McQueen is in Taiwan, behind
schedule on "The Sand Pebbles"
and desperate to get back to Europe to
star in his dream Formula 1 movie project
"Day of the Champion".
In Monaco, MGM and John
Frankenheimer are underway
with their rival picture, "Grand Prix".
Nine months behind
"Day of the Champion"
but now shooting real race scenes,
with real actors, in real race cars.
These are the Cinerama cameras
of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
about to attempt one
of the most challenging feats
in motion picture history
with these exciting,
international stars from America,
James Garner;
the celebrated French star,
Yves Montand;
Italy's sensational young talent,
Antonio Sabato;
and England's Brian Bedford.
For Frankenheimer, for any film maker,
this is a monumental challenge.
Less than an hour before the actual race,
he is staging his own start.
Well, what we hope to be able to do is
to show them what a real race
is really like from the driver's viewpoint
The crowds are real,
so is the excitement.
And for Frankenheimer,
the suspense is very real.
This is not a studio;
these are not stuntmen.
In just seconds, Phil Hill in the camera
car will lead Garner,
Montand and the others
around the Monaco circuit
at actual speeds of over
125 miles an hour.
In Monte Carlo,
they began to see we
knew what we were doing.
We were very well organized,
we went out there and we
were doing real stuff.
And that began to get their attention.
1966 Monaco, I mean you can't
even get your head around it
in terms of today's
standards of operation.
Princess Grace was just
the beginning of it.
She was there obviously.
It was Jackie Stewart's
second Grand Prix win but
while all this was going on,
Frankenheimer in his mind
was creating another Monaco Grand Prix,
which was the
"Grand Prix","Grand Prix".
And to think about that happening today
and to have the camera cars
there in the way they did,
and the changing liveries of the cars
and of the driver's helmet.
You know, one of the few
people who wasn't involved
in either movie was John Surtees.
He got absolutely fed up
to the teeth with it,
he had it up to here.
"Bloody film people
I wish they'd push off!"
But of course typical John,
he just said, 'But well, you
know, there's always a way
around these things and
the Hollywood people stuff
their mouths with money
and stop them talking.'
It didn't worry me at all.
It didn't, Francoise Hardy
occasionally would upset me.
She was a very pretty looking
girl walking down the pits.
It really didn't matter.
I can't say at any time
was it an intrusion
into my preparation
for a race or in the race at all.
It didn't bother me at all.
But, generally, the chaos
would have been incredible
and whilst Jackie was accepting
the trophy from Princess Grace,
just a little bit further down the road,
there was Sarti, Yves Montand,
accepting the trophy for
the "Grand Prix" Grand Prix.
Their own winner
will need a victor's cup
but they plan to use
the excitement at the end of the race
to slip a cuckoo into the nest to film
the man who won the celluloid race,
wearing an open wreath and
looking modest, as well he might.
The actual winner today
is Jackie Stewart.
As his car comes home,
Yves Montand, face glistening
with instant sweat,
prepares for his moment
of hollow victory.
I was not aware of it,
I was perfectly naive.
And you know, when you win a
Grand Prix, in Monaco in those days,
the Grand Prix was 100 laps.
Something like 8,600 gear
changes, all by hand,
and you were fairly tired
when it was finished.
When you're in a car,
particularly a Formula car,
but any car, you cannot
think of anything else.
I mean if you don't think of going
from one point to another,
from your braking point
to your gearing down
to make your turn into a corner,
if you stray from that,
and you worry about where that camera
is or anything like that,
then you're off the course.
So, we strictly do not worry about it,
we'll do our acting in the pits.
Another member of the
"Day of the Champion"team
was also in Monaco that weekend.
Stirling Moss was keeping a close eye
on Frankenheimer's team
and sent a telegram back
to the Alan Mann garage
after seeing how the cars
on "Grand Prix" were
slowing down the filming.
'Dear Alan,
Having just returned
from Monte Carlo and seeing how
the other lot are operating,
I feel we need to make some adjustments
to our cars so we don't have to
stop and start with such regularity.
Please can you start to
adjust the compression rates,
dampers and engine idle
before we get to Germany.
Kind regards, Stirling Moss."
Panic was also setting
in amongst the Warners' management.
Panic about McQueen's
physical condition
but also about the unrealistic schedule
of 'Day of the Champion',
given their A-list star
was still in Taiwan,
where 'The Sand Pebbles'
was seriously over-running.
By June 1966,
John Sturges was already in London
to work on pre-production
for the remaining
'Day of the Champion' shoots,
when he received
an extraordinary telegram.
Dear John,
It is needless to tell you
that I am very worried
because of the possibility
of "Grand Prix" coming out in Cinerama
or any other format ahead of our picture.
I would not put it by these
boys to release their picture
on 35 millimeter at the same time
that it's released in Cinerama.
Isn't there some way you can
start your pre-production sooner
and also have McQueen
get over to England sooner,
or something of this order?
I would hate like hell to be
given the bird and huge laugh
by all concerned with GRAND PRIX.
I don't want to say I would
not have gone into this
if I had known of the unfortunate
delay that has been caused
by "The Sand Pebbles".
What about phoning Bob Wise to see
if he can release McQueen earlier?
Again, in closing, see if
you can't beat GRAND PRIX
after you leave the starting gate.
Jack Warner."
That's your job.
That's your job to make it really look
like, where's Beady Eyes?
With production moving at a frantic
pace for "Grand Prix" in Monaco,
an unscripted halt is
brought to proceedings
when local shop keepers protest
about street closures harming their trade.
Tempers flare, proving
that even Hollywood's
most consummate leading men
can still lose their cool.
I am freezing my ass off,
now get your butt out of here or I'm
gonna throw you in the fucking water!
Just get out or I'm gonna bust you,
I'm gonna put in there
and I'm gonna hold you
under now get out!
What is your problem?
I am freezing to death out here
for a half hour while you talk!
If you want to talk,
I'll talk to you later.
How much money do you want?
I speak English, Mr Garner.
Well then you get the hell out of
that shot or I'm gonna put you out!
Yes sir.
I tell you!
You better count to 60
and get your ass out of here!
After Monte Carlo was over,
I put together a quick 30 minutes
of stuff I shot at Monte Carlo,
called Ferrari and asked
him if he would look at it.
He said 'well I don't have
any projection equipment,
I don't have anything like that. I said,
"Just tell me you'll look at it."
So he said "Yes I will."
So I shut the movie down,
chartered a plane,
brought the movie, a projectionist,
projectors and everything
else to Maranello,
to his office, set it up
and ran him the 30 minutes.
When it was over the lights came up,
he embraced me, he said,
You can have anything.
And he said, "I don't even
want to talk to you about money"
"because I don't want any money
from you,"
"because when Ferrari gives you
something,"
"he gives it to you."
So he never charged us a penny.
He gave us the Ferrari team,
he gave us the factory,
he gave us everything!
Well, of course, once we
got that kind of acceptance
from Ferrari, I mean that was that.
We were less than a week away
from filming principal
photography in Germany
in July of 1966 and Steve McQueen was
still busy filming "The Sand Pebbles".
At midnight one evening,
Jack Warner called my office
at Pinewood Studios.
"How are ya, Bob?"
Well, I'm cramming
to get everything in order
before I leave for Germany,
how are you, Jack?
I'm great, great thanks.
Right Bob, listen, about
that racing picture:
close it down.
"Excuse me?"
"Listen," Bob said,
"Bob Wise won't release McQueen."
That means "Grand Prix"
will be first to the theaters,
and am not gonna to be
second so shut it down.
But, we've already got loads of footage,
I've got an entire crew
in Germany ready to go,
you've already committed
a ton of money.
Bob, listen to me.
Send everybody home and
shut it down now, it's over.
McQueen went mad on the set of
"The Sand Pebbles".
Sturges tried to get him to
leave as soon as possible,
but Robert Wise wouldn't let
McQueen go. He needed him.
His wife said to him: You can't get that
angry because you turned down this role,
but that didn't really stop him.
He was determined to
make the definitive film
about Formula 1, about
motor racing and yeah,
he'd been beaten to the punch.
The trucks were in Dover already about
to depart for the Rheims Grand Prix
when a telegram came in
from Warner Bros
to say stop all transport and the whole
thing's canceled and go back to base.
The next morning,
I called Sturges to give him the news.
He was completely void of any emotion.
"Well that's that", he said.
I said, Sorry John,
we would've made a great film,
I'm sure of it.
Well, I think I'll take a few
weeks vacation, John mused.
"Maybe I'll go to Europe."
Before departing for the continent,
Sturges, ever the gentleman,
sent a telegram to Alan Mann
conveying his deep regret
over the collapse of
"Day of the Champion."
Dear Alan, As all of us are depressed
and unhappy over
the collapse of the project.
I think we would have achieved
some marvellous results
and it's a shame to miss the fun and
excitement we'd have had getting them.
You must know I'm very grateful
for the enthusiasm
and efficient help you gave us
and I'm truly sorry for any disruption
there has been to your plans.
I look forward to when we
meet again and once more,
my thanks for Le Mans.
With all the best, John.
He had quite a good
relationship with Sturges
and they were obviously
both disappointed
that it didn't come to any
fruition but they obviously had
some mutual respect for each other.
I had a letter from
Brookwood Productions,
Pinewood Studios, 'Regret,
here's a cheque for two weeks money.
Steve McQueen is ill and
he cannot make this shoot.
With Frankenheimer
seemingly victorious,
his Cinerama circus moved
onto other locations around Europe.
Filming in Clermont
Ferrand, Spa-Francorchamps,
Brands Hatch and Monza.
Not content with the drivers
he had already signed to exclusive deals,
he also wanted the two
remaining big F1 stars
who had signed to Warner.
My understanding is that
the insurance company,
that was what we were told,
that the insurance company
wouldn't allow Steve
to do a full-blown motor racing series
that we was directly involved in.
So, when that fell through,
Frankenheimer already had
the program going and in fact,
I don't know how long after we were told
that the movie wasn't going to happen,
Frankenheimer offered me another
amount of money to do some stuff
because one of the featured
drivers in his movie
was wearing my helmet colors.
And so I got paid twice really!
And so did Jimmy.
We got these guys to drive
for us at $200 dollars a day.
So you put it in today's dollars
that's $2000 dollars a day.
The picture in 1966 all-in
with accelerated post-production
cost about nine and a half million.
Put that in the context of
today's Formula 1 and imagine
what it would be like
having a Hollywood crew
in the pit lane at a
proper Formula 1 race,
it would never happen in a million years.
But Frankenheimer was able
to do that and to his credit,
and I think to the credit
of the actors involved,
it all worked.
Probably it was the Francoise Hardy
accept of it all!
The drivers found her
very friendly to the eye,
I think, but no in general I think
they did a very good job
of understanding what it was all about
and they became part of the fabric
of Formula 1 throughout that '66 season.
Making a picture is a strange thing
because everybody hates
you when you are making it.
It's when the picture comes
out that they say, 'Oh boy,
you know, it's really pretty good.'
Or visa versa, everybody loves
you when you are making it
and the picture comes out and
you never work again you know.
It can work that way too!
August 1966 and Steve McQueen
is finally back in California after
wrapping on"The Sand Pebbles".
Six months behind schedule
and his dream Formula 1
movie project in tatters.
Steve was exhausted after
"The Sand Pebbles",
probably he did his best acting
of his career possibly
with the exception of"Papillon"
and he'd put so much
of himself and his energy into
"The Sand Pebbles"
that he needed a rest.
There was no way he could go and
make "Day of the Champion" after that.
He and Bob Relyea,
his great producer friend,
they felt they'd got their butts kicked
when "Day of the Champion"
didn't get made.
But by early '67, McQueen was
back riding the crest of a wave.
"The Sand Pebbles" was a
critical and box office hit.
The only thing that McQueen seemed
to really focus on when he got back
to America was the Oscars campaign
for "The Sand Pebbles".
He was determined that he
deserved a Best Actor nominee
and he did in fact get it.
A little bit of brokenness,
I think, comes to that role,
aided and abetted by the fact
that he actually quite ill
through a lot of the filming
so he does actually look kind
of dissipated or off-kilter
in some of the scenes and that
was a way to throw himself
into something which,
was not colored by the disappointment
of not being able to make
this passion project.
McQueen must have been gutted
to think that he got his
first Oscar nomination
for a film that actually stopped
him making the film he had
always dreamt of making.
"Sand Pebbles"and
"Grand Prix" were released
the same week in December '66.
"Grand Prix" was a huge success.
It was up against
"The Sand Pebbles" at the Oscars
in several categories
and it won three Oscars
so that really added probably insult
to injury, in some ways, for McQueen.
At that time, there was,
you could get little hand
grenade-looking things made
of compressed paper with
a small French banger inside.
James Garner's and Steve
McQueen's houses were adjacent
to each other in Hollywood
and Steve's was a little uphill
from Garner's and so he used
to throw his grenades down into the yard
of Garner's house and
illicit a big police reaction
and everything and wait for all that
to dissipate and lob another one over
and generally wind him up.
Finally his son, Chad,
made him go and take
him to see "Grand Prix"
and from that time on
we were talking again.
But Steve was a wild kid,
he was a wild kid.
He didn't know where he wanted to be
or what he wanted to do.
Tell him exactly where
Garner's going to pass him.
Jimmy Garner!
Where is the exact place you pass him?
Just before the overpass,
he's gone that way.
Just before the overpass,
alright we gotta go.
Which side?
Which side?
I pass him on the left!
Okay!
When I first saw "Grand Prix"
sitting at a cinema,
the impact was tremendous
because you were seeing
Formula 1 cars racing
on a big screen, in color,
close-ups on the drivers.
There was a whole depth there
which we never had on television.
Television coverage in the 1960s
was extremely primitive
and for people who'd never
been to a motor race,
which is where a lot of the audience
would have come from,
they would have seen this on television,
but the impact of seeing it
on a proper cinema screen.
Enormous.
Frankenheimer did hire me
as a consultant when he was thinking
about doing a "Grand Prix 2".
I'm talking early '80s now.
But then of course like
everybody at that time,
he was completely shocked
at how much Formula 1 i.e.
Bernie Ecclestone wanted
in order to have the same
sort of access that he'd back in '66
and at that point it became a non-starter,
like a lot of other movies
that people have tried
to make about Formula 1.
I will always be grateful
that "Grand Prix" exists
because apart from anything else,
it amounts to such, in effect,
a record of how Formula 1
was in the '60s.
During the second half
of the 1960s,
Steve McQueen's Hollywood
career went stratospheric.
The outsider had made it inside,
becoming the highest
paid actor in the world.
His disappointment over the failure of
"Day of the Champion" only
served to fuel his obsession
with cars in the movies.
In 1968, "Bullit"' was
the result of his efforts.
Again, he insisted on doing the majority
of the stunt work involved
and this is widely considered
to be the greatest car chase of all time.
Those mid '60s years
were the hottest years of his career.
He had five hits one after the other,
starting with "The Cincinnati Kid",
and "Nevada Smith",
"The Sand Pebbles",
"The Thomas Crown Affair",
and"Bullitt".
Now if we'd have seen
"Day of the Champion"
in the middle of that,
we might never have seen"The
Thomas Crown Affair"and"Bullitt".
But he was still obsessed with his
dream of a motor racing film
and now had a great deal
of star power, the juice as he called it.
He did, of course,
finally make that movie.
"Le Mans" was released in 1971.
With"Bullitt","Thomas Crown" being
such massive hits, essentially,
he's allowed to do
whatever he wants to do.
That's when "Le Mans"
comes back into the mix
and he thinks I am gonna make
the ultimate racing car movie.
By the time he got to "Le Mans",
he was feeling so much pressure that
this film had to succeed
that it definitely affected
his personal relationships,
with his wife, with his
friend Robert Relyea,
with his director friend from
over a decade, John Sturges.
I think he was dead set that
this movie had to be a success.
I think, at
least from my standpoint,
in an action film,
it gives you an opportunity
to put people under pressure.
And when they're under
pressure, they're emotions,
good or bad, come out.
What you're really looking for is emotion.
A fight is no more meaningful than
how much care somebody wins.
Two unknown people could
beat each other to death,
balanced on a girder,
40 stories in the air,
you wouldn't care unless you were
pulling for one or the other.
I think the thing that
fascinated most people
about "Bullitt" was that sensational
car chase in San Francisco.
Are you going to try for
anything like that in this film?
Well, we hope
to do as well of course.
It won't be a chase in any sense
and they will be cars
driven under control as they
are here in the circuit,
as opposed to a kind of flat-out stunt.
It's similar in that there
are cars and there is speed,
but totally different otherwise.
When something is a passion project,
logic goes out of the window.
For McQueen, it stopped
being about creating
an amazing piece of cinema and
it became about fulfilling a dream
and those two are never going to marry,
even more so when Sturges left
the project.
Steve, who's production company
was making the film,
really didn't know how you make a film,
how you string a script together,
how you block a scene,
and I think it must have
been awful for John Sturges.
Steve was very, very famous
and also I think in many ways,
out of control.
I think "Le Mans"
is a cult classic because it,
yes, largely appeals to people
that are really interested
and passionate about cars and racing,
but that film kind of speaks
to a particular style of filmmaking
which is unique to its moment
and had this kind of existentialism to it,
this kind of minimalism,
this story which was
completely self-contained
which didn't need the various
complications of traditional,
classical Hollywood cinema.
I felt very strongly that racing would
be a great background to a story.
I believe that Steve felt
racing would be a great film
with some story around it.
It may be oversimplifying but
even if it is that simple,
that's a big difference.
Well, I'll go with you that
we concentrate on the race,
yes, whether anything else
is kept to a minimum or not,
I don't know.
I don't think Steve really cared
about the story
and the love interest and so forth.
He just wanted to film the definitive,
really documentary of cars going fast
and the fiction side of it
was I think a bit shrug.
I don't know if anybody's ever
discovered the beginnings of a plot.
I don't think I ever detected one!
Steve has from the beginning,
pushed and insisted upon a
reality approach to the picture.
The real cars that were
really in the race,
driving at real speed.
Not trick photography,
not rear projection,
not on a location that looks like
"Le Mans"for a certain time,
but racing conditions
with the actual machinery.
If you look at the script
for "Day of the Champion",
it's actually quite similar to
"Grand Prix" in certain ways.
Much more of a traditional narrative
than "Le Mans" ended up being.
And like "Grand Prix", it follows
several drivers over a whole season.
There are elements that
were retained for "Le Mans".
He's called Mike Pearce
in the original script,
Mike Delaney, of course,
in"Le Mans".
But there are still a couple of lines
in the "Day of the Champion" script
that end up in the finished
version of "Le Mans".
McQueen says in "Le Mans" that...
Racing's important
to men who do it well.
Racing, it's life.
Anything that happens before
or after, it's just waiting.
That's actually originally
from "Day of the Champion".
Do you remember
a man called Karl Wallenda,
the greatest of the high wire walkers?
After he fell and was broken,
when he went back, he said,
To be on the wire is life.
The rest is waiting.
This was a wise man, do you know that?
I hope so...
Only those of
us who have been on the wire,
who have held the wheel, only us.
No one else, the others,
they cannot know
and it is foolish to try and tell them.
Never try and tell anybody.
They know or they can never know.
"Day of the Champion"remains one
of Hollywood's great"What If's"
Fragments of rushes and an
impoverished script are all that remain
of the dream project of one of the
great movie stars of the 20th century.
A contemporary F1 movie has
not been achieved since 1966,
while the sport grew exponentially
over the next 50 years.
After "Le Mans",
McQueen never did hit
the highs of the 60s again.
He divorced and remarried.
Then, divorced and remarried.
His relationships with Sturges
and Relyea remained strained
for the next decade.
I think the best movie stars work
on variations on a theme,
in a way, or variations on a persona
that's always existed.
And so McQueen feels like Americana,
I think, to us now and, you know,
a more old-fashioned, traditionalism
that people kind of yearn for.
Steve McQueen, away from the camera,
was a very complex person
with lots of moods,
lots of swings of those moods,
one of the most loyal
people I've ever known.
Very street smart.
But more important to Steve
than anything in the world
would be to be remembered
as being a good human
being, not a good actor,
and most of all was
respected by his peers.
That the other race drivers,
whether they thought
he was an actor or not,
thought he could cut it on an even field
and I think the idea of getting
respect from other people,
which probably goes all the
way back to Boys Republic,
was probably what he would
want more than anything else.
You see the problem here, man,
is you gotta be happy.
If you're not happy, you might as well
chuck the whole business.