By: Jeremy Hart and Kim
Kastrup Translated by Steen Ulrich
London [Ekstra Bladet]
"As Rocky I've had MUHAMMAD
ALI and JOE FRAZIER as sparring partners, and that
went well. But to race against a legend like MICHAEL SCHUMACHER,
that can't be fun," says SYLVESTER STALLONE.
In his new movie "Driven",
he plays the tough race driver Joe Tanto in the special
American kind of racing called Cart series. A race that looks
like formula one, except that it's often faster and driven in
the so-called champ cars on specially built tracks all over
the world.
SLY toyed with death as the hard hitting boxer Rocky
Balboa and as the Viet Nam veteran John Rambo. And
as Joe Tanto he flirts with death in the fast champ cars,
that can drive as fast as 400 km/h, and where even the smallest
mistake, can mean the difference between life and death.
"I practiced at the Derek
Daly Academy racetrack in Las Vegas - I started out in smaller
cars. It was really crazy. The fastest I've driven in a champ
car, was 325 km/h," SLY proudly said during the
interview in London. "I was very nervous. And the heat
is almost unbearable in a champ car from shear concentration
and fear. But then your inner speed demon gets the better of
you, and you push the car, as much as you can. I've probably
raced off the track 50 times during practice and while shooting.
But luckily I never got hurt," says SLY, who during
filming made his insurance people bite their nails furiously.
Death Race
"You can't escape the fear,
but you can learn how to use it, before it eats you up. Unlike
other sports, you can meet other cart racers at breakfast, and
then only hope you see them again at lunch," said STALLONE,
who is the writer, producer and the star of "Driven"
which opens in Danish theaters on July 13th
.
The movie is about the young race driver Jimmy Bly [KIP
PARDUE]. His ambitious brother De Mille [ROBERT
SEAB LEONARD] has pushed him so hard the results are starting
to fail. Jimmy's boss, Carl Henry [BURT REYNOLDS]
hires ex-cart star Joe Tanto [STALLONE] to get
Jimmy's tactics back in order. Tanto was once
on top, but a terrible accident put a stop to his career, and
now Tanto has to once and for all make up with all the
demons from his past, to help Jimmy. Of course there's
also a love story between Joe Tanto and journalist Lucretia
[STACY EDWARDS].
"Driven" was filmed over
a period of eight months during nine real races in five different
countries. The plot and the characters blend in perfectly with
the real intensity on the tracks, and hundreds of thousands
of real cart fans serve as very realistic extras. In the movie
there are also real race drivers like Dario Franchitty
and Juan Pablo Montoya.
No to Formula One
SYLVESTER STALLONE, who
has been a huge fan of racing for many years, originally set
out to do a movie based on Formula One. And he spent two years
studying various races and negotiating with Formula One king
Bernie Ecclestone. "Bernie was actually interested,
but he demanded these unrealistic amounts of money for the rights,
even though I told him, that in Hollywood, you usually only
pay 1 million dollars for the rights to for example a best seller
book."
He doesn't regret though, that it ended up
being champ car races, because on the screen it works much better.
In a 180 minute champ car race the lead can change 124 times
between 10 different drivers, whereas in Formula One it's usually
much less. STALLONE says he hasn't made a super realistic
race movie. There are some very realistic scenes, but of course
I've also taken some liberties to intensify the action. Just
as it's interesting to see King Kong running around New York,
we also took two champ cars to Chicago, where they end up racing
in the streets, explains STALLONE.
He thinks that there are three elements that
add to the fascination of extreme racing: "First of all
the driver is almost on his back while driving, only a few centimeters
off the ground, while he's doing almost 400 kilometers per hour.
Then there's the intense sound and the fact that you have 900
horsepower behind your back. And last, when you accelerate,
and your vision is reduced to blurry shadows, your adrenalin
kicks in and makes the drivers one with their cars."
- Craig Zablo
