"If I ever happen to have an accident that eventually costs me my life, I hope it is in one go. I would not like to be in a wheelchair. I would not like to be in a hospital suffering from whatever injury it was. If I’m going to live, I want to live fully, very intensely, because I am an intense person. It would ruin my life if I had to live partially."
- Ayrton Senna
There are some sports that make the transition from the field of play to the big screen with consummate ease. Oddly enough, Formula One is not one of them. Strange, because the sport has all the elements required for a big budget, adrenaline-fuelled extravaganza. At least that's what director John Frankenheimer thought in 1966, when he directed Grand Prix. With James Garner and Eva Marie Saint as his leads, the film had the budget to match the sport itself. Yet Frankenheimer made one cardinal error, he chose to focus on the goings-on off the track rather than on it. The film was universally panned and flopped at the box office. A film on F1, on that scale, would never be made again… until now?
Early this year it was reported that Steven Spielberg had teamed up with director Paul Greengrass to make a film on the epic rivalry between Austrian driver Niki Lauda and his British nemesis James Hunt. The rivalry had all the ingredients for a film: a British playboy with a penchant for the good life; a hard-working driver eager to prove he was the best; and a tragedy that would scar one driver physically, but fail to fetter his spirit. Greengrass has now moved on and been replaced by Ron Howard. A solid film here could resurrect F1's chances of making the big screen regularly, but a failure could spell doom for the sport in a leading role.
But where F1 fails with scripts and actors, it soars in authenticity, captured by the documentarian's lens. Senna, Asif Kapadia's documentary on the life of the tragic Ayrton Senna is brilliant, not only because its protagonist was such a divisive genius, but because the accident that took his life changed the sport and those working in it forever.
The documentary has always been F1's friend in as much as it has been for football and cricket, simply because quite often its stars have been far more interesting than the sport itself. Take the 2000s for instance, when Michael Schumacher ruled the proverbial roost and F1 viewership plummeted. A film made about one man winning every race would have bored audiences into a coma, and therein has been the sport's problem (a malaise born of the late 90s is now threatening to take over the sport again).
Unfortunately, a sport that courts tragedy makes for good box office pickings. That's why Senna became such a hit (sure it's brilliantly made, but if Senna hadn't died, would it have still been so potent?) and that's why Spielberg probably chose the Hunt-Lauda rivalry; it too ended in a ball of flame.
These days, rivalries are stage-managed, and those who don't toe a very fine line (read Hamilton) are subjected to trial by PR.
F1 is a great sport that requires talent, precision and innovation from all those who participate in it. Maybe, one day, someone will make a film about pit crews, or even better, one about Bernie Ecclestone! Now that's sure to be an extravaganza. Al Pacino to play Bernie? Any takers?