Had to laugh when Hans Zimmer was talking about how Tony Scott kept saying make it weirder. "Don't say that to me twice; I'll give you weird." Suddenly, in my head, I'm picturing Tom Cruise driving through the wreckage on the track, and the score in the background going DESI DESI BASARA BASARA!
My favorite film as a kid until 2001 when Apocalypse Now Redux came out. This film had so many great things going for it with a amazing director in Tony Scott who could make a dog taking a shit look beautiful in his prime before he got sick R.I.P. The first time Hans Zimmers actually had a good score, not to mention legendary writer Robert Towne who was script doctor on The Godfather, Bonnie & Clyde and so many others.
They left out the mountains of cocaine that was consumed while filming this movie. The producer Don Simpson had 2 assistants in charge to keep the powder supply flowing
I just realized why I love this movie, because Han Zimmer did the score….. look at all the movies he’s been apart of and you realize his music is a major part of getting the audience emotionally invested in it
I remember watching this movie with my father when I was about 4 years old. It developed my interest in cars and motorsports which I still have today. Anytime this move pops up on, I am sure to watch it. Great memories.
The whole nascar world didn’t “open their doors to us” Guys like Dale Earnhardt and Darrell Walt rip were pretty 😤 at the time having these movie camera cars out on the race track getting in the way or the paparazzi in the garage area. They were not amused at all😉
They were lucky they took interest in NASCAR during one of it’s primes, maybe THE prime. Early 90’s the sport was huge, a real spectacle. And it was gritty, but with some of that early 90’s “almost modern” vibe.
To this day there’s still only two motor sports movies that hold their own and stand the test of time. Steve McQueen “Le Mans” and Days of Thunder. No Rocky, your movie doesn’t make the cut lol.
My GF at the the time and I are in the helicopter scene at DIS, along with a bunch of others. We were extras for the filming. My 15 minutes lol. Good times. Since we were also at the 500, I guess we're in the crowd scenes as well.
We're all so damn old now....god this is depressing! JB looks embalmed. Simpson was PEAK Simpson on this show. The 'fringe' budget must have been in the millions alone. This was a moment in Hollywood excess that's long gone. The movie was terrible which everyone knew it was going to be from day one...Towne phoned it in and they were hiring so many writers that the days pages would arrive on set. But it's all about that moment. I was a senior in college in Michigan and went to a film pitching workshop that had 3-4 young executives in from LA and one was a guy named Matt Tabek who was a development exec at Simpson/Bruckheimer, and DOT was going to be their big summer movie and I remember another exec (Dan Halsted then of Hollywood Pictures and who went on to run Oliver Stone's company Ixtlan) was giving him such grief about this movie, about 'cars going around in circles'. Years later I'm a fledging producer with a TV movie in development, and who's now a screenwriter and coming in to pitch me their take on the project? Matt Tabek. If anyone actually reads this apologies, this just triggered some memory lane stuff, and reminded me how crazy and fast life is. PS whenever you hear 'making of' things like this from Hollywood just know 90% of it is made up. You have no idea if anything they're telling you is true or just made up PR stuff. I doubt Cruise was the genesis for this movie, for one thing....
