We all wear jackets of red, white and blue, there's one for me and there's one for you,
How do they do it? How do they do, 'cause to me they all look completely cuckoo.
Oh how did they start, how did they begin? Hesketh Racing are going to win!
Our driver we keep in clothing and meals, as long as he goes on turning his wheels.
His name is James Hunt, known as The Shunt, what he likes best is a nice glass of milk.Six weeks. That's how long it took me to finally drag myself to the cinema and see Rush. A combination of being preoccupied with a host of other projects (
such as this) and having very little cash to throw around saw to that, and I thought the chance to see it in the cinema had gone. Finding myself at a loose end last night instead of watching Twilight Of The Gods in Manchester (I'll go to the Smoke on Tuesday instead and make it half a business trip...) I looked up the listings for my local screens and saw it was still playing at 10:25 last night.
It was an excellent way to spend two hours watching other people drive, that would otherwise have seen me driving back along the M6 and A50.
I am not particularly well versed in F1 before 1981 - that's when the Duke season reviews start, which I've watched several times each, some more than others (and of those I saw at the time, the 2002 review has only been played once), and I don't have the season highlights DVDs of 1970-80. I could usually say who won the championship each season, I could pick out the drivers who had died or had had major crashes, but that's about it. So my review will be skewed that way. Had it been a film set in the 1990s - say, about the rise of Michael Schumacher - then it's more likely I'd have noticed any discrepancies.
Other than this, I'd say I'm broadly in line with what dr-baker said.
So, I wasn't distracted by "hang on, that isn't the right circuit!" like the rest of you were; seeing Hunt driving round the Karussel, or at least that's what I think it was supposed to be, I thought that
was the Karussel and not, say, Druids with some German forests CGIed into the background. I also put off listening to the latest podcast until after I'd seen the film and Enoch's criticism that there are no long, sweeping
left-handers at Monza also completely passed me by. Instead, I spotted strange details that nobody else in their right mind would have picked out; such as, the numberplate on Hunt's Mini, and at least one other British-registered road car in the film, used the narrow Charles Wright font that didn't exist until 2001. Why on earth would I spot that?
This should explain why and how I can go into such minute detail over something so seemingly irrelevant. It's something I do, and I have no idea why.
My main distraction, probably due to knowing less about 1970s F1, was constantly trying to work out what year it was in the run-up to the 1976 season. The blue and white car that crashed into a barrier and presumably killed its driver - I'd have had to look that up, and with no access to Wikipedia in the cinema I couldn't. Even the caption that said it was Watkins Glen didn't give me a clue. Now that I find out that the car was a Tyrrell and the unfortunate driver was François Cevert, it makes sense. But wait... I'm now trying to remember if that scene was put in before or after Lauda started his career at BRM, where I was also trying to figure out the year. That was 1973 as well, which I only know now. And what wasn't mentioned at all in the cut from F3 in 1970 to Lauda's BRM drive was that he'd started in F1 in 1971 with a one-off drive in Austria (makes sense) and then had a nightmare 1972 with March with his
first bank loan and then had to take out a second to secure the BRM drive. I suppose 1972 wasn't particularly relevant to the plot, so it was left out, but it added to my sense of "Where am I? What year is this? WHO'S THE PRESIDENT?" Equally, I'd convinced myself that the point where Hesketh Racing unveiled their new car was 1974 - only to find, now that I look at Hunt's pictures on Forix, that this was the 1975 livery. Hence, within the next few scenes, Lauda was the champ, and I was trying to remind myself that the title went to Emerson Fittipaldi in 1974...
If I had to pick out a moment where (had I not been in a cinema) I'd have shouted "spot on!" at the screen it's where the Hunts are wondering what to do at the end of the 1975 season, James is racing his Scalextric car, Peter tells him that Lotus think he's still far too crash-prone and he sends the car splattering into a barrier.
As for the characters, I'd repeat everything that's been said about Daniel Brühl - I could so easily have believed that
was a young Niki Lauda who'd been taken through a time machine 40 years into the future to star in a film involving himself. He's got the voice absolutely nailed. I could equally believe that his burnt face wasn't make-up, and the intense pain from putting on his helmet again after only six weeks of recovery was genuine. A good word must also go in for Christian McKay, who nailed Alexander Hesketh just as well, from the real footage I've seen of him from several James Hunt documentaries and/or tributes, and - brief though it was, the leering Enzo Ferrari at the side of the track during Lauda's Ferrari test, looking ready to put a horse's head in The Rat's bed if he wasn't up to scratch. Good to see I wasn't the only one who noticed Simon Taylor - I recognised the voice from the post-Hunt BBC F1 years and some of the season reviews, but from those times he appeared on-screen I'd convinced myself he wasn't
that old in the mid-1970s! I'm equally convinced that it was Dickie Davies giving the introduction to the Japanese Grand Prix at the end, as it had been in reality when ITV took the contract to show it (and used a crazily Oriental-stereotyped font in their presentation). Maybe that was the actual soundtrack from the programme dubbed in - does anyone know?
I've had a look on Amazon and I find the DVD & Blu-Ray release date is the 27th of January. There I was thinking a repeat performance might have been my festive viewing. Still, I suppose I can get it on pre-order when the extended part one of The Hobbit is released - either way, it'll make an excellent addition to my film collection, which isn't exactly huge, but I'm very selective in what I want to watch. The release date can't come soon enough.
And so I'd say, overall a round of rapturous applause is deserved.
One final, reject-tastic point. Others went looking for the multitude of reject cars that scored 1976 third place in the "Annus Horribilis" award on this site; I investigated the last years of BRM after finding out Lauda drove for them in 1973, but found it was before the blue and white livery. In turn I discovered one of the best looking cars of the 1970s - the 1977 Stanley-BRM P207 - which had an unfortunately foul racing record of one appearance, 12 seconds off the pace in qualifying, one racing lap, six failures to make the grid (despite being far closer to pole time that when the car made the grid). It's a pity it wasn't a more competitive car in a decade which was so painfully short on aesthetics.
Thank you!
but he lost.