Ouups...haven't quite got the hang of this yet!!

No problem. I've been around since the start and I still goof from time to time.

Thanks Chuck for your adice...I found my VHS of Le Mans & watched half of it this evening b4 I went out...I grabbed it off French TV a few years ago....there's not too much dialogue so the dubbed version is OK...just wondering if the price of brown 911s on Belgian plates is going to go stratospheric...there isn't much else in the movie that hasn't already gone that way ;-)

McQueen's 911 looked a little more "Forest Green" to me, but I've always liked that era 911 (before they were Turbo-Charged and rightly gained the "Supercar" label).

I haven't checked out the movie on the internet but I think McQueen was an enrant in '73, or around then, & had cameras on the car during the race...If I rember correctly the "camera car" had,amazingly enough, a very respectable finish position. It's a long time since I've seen the movie...it's in the VHS machine now so probably won't write much more 'cos I want to see the rest of it :-)

Actually, believe it or not, McQueen was an entrant in 1970, the year the movie was filmed. McQueen owned a 917 and planned on racing it in the race, but the financial backers of the film told him that they'd pull their financial support for the film if he raced, especially after Mario Andretti commented to the press that he considered LeMans the most dangerious race in the world because of the vast differences in capabilities of the cars on the circuit.

McQueen tried to compromise by driving the Solar Productions 908 camera car that he and Peter Revson very nearly won Sebring 1970...

McQueen and Revson entered the 908 to tune up for a run at LeMans later in the year. When nearly all of the 512's and 917's were knocked out of the race due to accidents and attrition McQueen and Revson found themselves in the lead with less than an hour to go. Only the insertion of (you guessed it) Mario Andretti into a still racing Ferrari 312 prevented the Mc-Queen-Revson from scoring an overall win with a clearly obsolete car. It should be mentioned that McQueen drove with a cast on his left leg due to a accident while motorcycle racing!

But, the backers didn't want McQueen driving during the race. So they told him "Drive during the race and lose the movie or Skip the race, and drive all summer in the movie". McQueen chose to drive all summer.

Incidently, the Solar 908 does make a short appearance in the movie towards the end of the race. It made a respectable showing (winning it's class if I remember correctly) despite having to make numerious and lengthy pit stops to change motion picture film! During the filming of the movie, the 908 (which was still race legal in 1970) was shelved for a Ford GT-40 (which had been banned by racing rules after 1969) because it could literally pace any car the production team had on hand to film. A testiment to the prowess of the nearly 5 year old Ford design.

Also Incidentally, McQueen was involved in a Formula One movie project in the same epoch as "Grand Prix" tentatively titled "Day of the Champion", which was slated to use many of the same pioneering filming techniques as seen in both LeMans and Grand Prix. However, the financial backers of that project feared the competition of the large budget MGM project and much to McQueen's disappointment, the project collapsed. This too probably effected McQueen's thoughts about racing in 1970.

I don't know if McQueen entered LeMans prior to or after 1970. However, a quick search at the Internet Movie DataBase shows that McQueen only made seven films after LeMans. Some pretty significant projects (Junior Bonner, The Getaway, Papillon, and the Towering Inferno), there was a gap of four years until his next film appearance. So it's certainly possible he entered in 1973 after filming wrapped on some of these other projects.

As for racing car movies I would rate Frankenheimer's "Grand Prix" as my favourie..I've got in on LaserDisc...ouups we all make mistakes!

As for what I think/feel about various racing movies I expressed over at TZ's Omega Forum a couple of months back... The poster Georges query is quoted below:

What do you think of films like vanishing point, bullit, le mans,fast and furious and 7000 rpm with paul newman.

My thoughts:

vanishing point: Remember watching it as a teenager, enjoyed it, been a long time since I've seen it.

bullitt: The standard which all other chase scenes are measured against. There have been a number of films who have matched it (some would say some have bettered... I've never ranked them)... If your film's chase scene isn't savaged by comparision to Bullitt it's a good chase scene.

le mans: The best film about auto racing ever made. As close to a documentary as one can get without being a documentary. Anyone who wants to do a racing film and do the sport justice should watch this.

fast and furious: I missed it in the theatre's, have it on DVD haven't viewed it yet. Hear it's good.

7000 rpm: Unfamiliar with it.

paul newman: Excellent actor, pretty good driver.

You missed a couple:

Grand Prix: Action sequences are cinematicly as good or better than any racing film ever including LeMans. Get's bogged down in multiple sub-plots that are delved into much greater depth than is necessary. The title of the movie is Grand Prix, not "The soap opera behind the Grand Prix"...

James Garner: Excellent (if sometime underappreciated) actor, notably good driver.

Day's of Thunder: Interesting movie, has it's fun moments, but it's relationship to actual Nascar racing is a bit strained at best.

Driven: The less said about this movie, the better... Burt Reynold's track record of serious movie roles is scant since the early 1970's and his track record on movies dealing with cars/racing is, well, embarrising... Anyone actually see "Stroker Ace"? Sylvester Stallone should probably stick with the Rocky/Rambo type big budget thriller's.

Gone in 60 Seconds: The remake (2000) is a lot of fun, an enjoyable movie with great chase sequences. I have the original (1974) on DVD as well but haven't watched it yet. I hear it's every bit as good (taking in account the state of the art of special effects in 1974), and they supposedly ruin a hidious number of cars in a 30 minute chase scene that was Hollywood's most destructive until the beloved (at least by me) "Blues Brothers"...

Steve McQueen: James Garner and Paul Newman are actors who drive/drove... Steve McQueen was a Race Car Driver who acted (well)... Note that there is a distinction there... For what it's worth Sly Stallone and Tom Cruise are actors that appeared in movies about racing.

Steve McQueen was a Professional Race Car Driver at heart and could drive/run with the best of them, and did. He very nearly won Sebring in 1970 (the same year LeMans was filmed) against factory sponsored Ferarri 512's/Porsche 917's, in a two-year old Porsche 908 film car with a broken foot in a plaster cast! As good as Neuman/Garner and the rest are or might have been, McQueen was the real deal who's carreer simply took a different path. If he had choose to he could have driven in the top eschelon and been competitive professionally, as he was competitive when he did drive in those circles.

Cheers,

Adrian

Thanks for your thoughts. It's fun talking about this, even if I do ramble on!

-- Chuck