At the Movies

In this month’s issue, you’ll find a very revealing interview with Robert Daley, who—in addition to being a renowned photographer and author (The Cruel Sport) also has spent time as a screenwriter working on such projects as “The Racers.” As a bookend to his insights into the making of that movie (and those of the book’s author, Hans Reusch, VRJ Jan. ’05), we’ve also unearthed a unique feature for you in the form of a test drive of one of the original Ferrari “Burano” racecars used in the making of the movie! With all this recent content devoted to the history of racing movies such as “The Racers” and “Grand Prix,” I found myself ruminating on one, final, burning question: “Why the hell can’t anyone make a decent racing movie!?!?!?”

It may have just been coincidence, but at the same time I was getting wrapped up in all this nostalgia for “The Racers,” the 2005 Academy Award nominations were being announced. Now, you may be scratching your head wondering where the connection is, but for me it came like an epiphany—boxing. Clint Eastwood’s critically acclaimed boxing movie “Million Dollar Baby” was nominated this year for about 452 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and even Best Key Grip (what is a key grip anyway?). After reading about the nominations, the connections started coming to me like the 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon. If you look at the sport of boxing, you have a fairly illustrious list of award-winning and/or critically acclaimed movies such as “Million Dollar Baby,” “Raging Bull,” and even the first “Rocky.” I know “Rocky’s 2–15” start to erode my premise, but work with me here. So, how is it that great boxing movies can be made (or baseball or football, for that matter), but no one can seem to be able to make a critically acclaimed movie based around auto racing?