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Racing Movies
About this episode
The hosts dive into a lively discussion about racing movies, sharing their favorites and least favorites. They critique films like 'Driven' as the worst racing movie, praise classics like 'Days of Thunder' and 'Grand Prix' for their authentic racing portrayal, and discuss newer films such as 'Rush' and 'Ford v Ferrari.' The conversation also touches on the emotional impact of 'Art of Racing in the Rain' and the challenges of capturing racing realism on screen. Alongside movie talk, the hosts share personal anecdotes and humorous banter, making for an engaging and entertaining chat.
Topics:
racing movies
movie reviews
driven movie critique
days of thunder
grand prix movie
rush movie
ford v ferrari
art of racing in the rain
racing realism in film
personal anecdotes
Cars:
Ford GT40
Hinch has no love for Driven, but the guys do agree on a few of their favorite racing movies. Rossi loves Days of Thunder, Hinch loves Grand Prix (Big F1 Guy). Nobody cared much for Ferrari or Gran Turismo, but they love Rush and Ford vs Ferrari. Did we miss any? Let us know so we can cover them on another Tuesday Episode.
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Ford GT40
"Yeah. But see, I like how that look, if you're a racing fan, you know about Le Mans and you, if you're a historian at all, you probably know about the Ford story, you know, the GT 40 and, and at least some of the history behind that. But what I liked about that was it took a well-known racing story, but maybe a lesser known kind of pop culture story and, and told it well."
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This is, is off track.
Yeah. Very good. Very early morning everyone.
Well, I mean, Tim, Good morning everybody.
Good morning. How are we doing?
We're, we're great because it's like a very rare episode of Tuesday's off track with Hich and Rossi.
Everybody's here today, which is exciting for the fans.
For you two.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well we were trying to figure out a time to do this one.
Alex was being gracious and trying to like, not have Tim have to get up super early, but it was literally the only time I could do so. Sorry bud.
I actually don't really mind getting up and doing it like 6:00 AM You're, you're welcome Mark, specifically for you, um, Hazel and I are both sick though, so that, that did throw a wrench in the Is Hazel missing school today? Is she that sick?
I don't know.
She, she wakes up at 6:30 so I was gonna take her temperature then and see where we stand.
Such a good dad.
So here's the thing. I was, I was asking Tim
before you got on, um, 'cause he's obviously not feeling well either.
I was like, so admittedly, would you prefer her to go to school so you could like nap and take care of yourself today?
And he was like, honestly, no.
Like I'd much prefer if she was feeling that Ill to stay home, but that's gonna be a hard sell 'cause she wants to go to school so bad. So like,
She does not like to miss school.
What an amazing father daughter dynamic you guys have created.
You guys are, you're both backwards.
You're both backwards. Yeah. Yeah.
You should want to get rid of the kid and the kid should want to stay home.
Instead you're like, no, stay home with me.
Let's be sick together. The kid's like,
no dad, I wanna go to school. Ew. Yeah.
I don't know. I mean, you guys gotta remember sick
days when you were kids when you just got to sit around and watch Jerry Springer all day.
That's not what I chose to watch, but Was just our family.
Yeah. Um, yeah, gonna put a movie on and hang out.
Yeah. Sounds great. And also like, what is she missing?
What is she missing in like grade five, six, whatever. What grade is she in?
She's in fifth. She's in fifth. Yeah.
Well tonight, see tonight is the Christmas concert.
So she very much doesn't wanna miss today.
Right, right. And is she performing in said concert?
Yeah. Yeah. She's in the choir.
Tell us all about it. Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
That's it. That's the all about it. Okay.
That was it. That was the whole thing.
The whole, alright.
Uh, well, yeah, you don't, you don't wanna miss that.
That would be, that would be bad.
Um, all right.
This, this has a roundabout way to come around to, um, to Christmas concerts.
Do you guys, have I told you the ongoing joke Marco and I have about a bottle of tequila?
No.
No.
Do you remember Marco's not known for ongoing jokes that lasts entirely too long.
Do you guys remember years ago when he had the, uh, he, he had that deal with whatever the tequila company was and he would get like the etched bottles of tequila with people's name?
Yeah. With his friend's names. Yeah. Yeah.
I've been asking him where mine's been for years. Right. Because I
<crosstalk> Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So I've been asking
and just texting me being like, hey man.
Um, my bottle still hadn't shown up.
And just every time it's been, you know, it's in the mail.
And uh, I was just thinking about this 'cause Christmas concerts, everybody remembers Home Alone 2 when Kevin has a solo and Buzz, like plays drums on his head with the candlesticks.
So Marco sent me a cameo from the actor who played Buzz in Home Alone and Home Alone 2 with Buzz explaining that my tequila bottles in the mail.
Now again, this has been a joke we've had going for five years.
So that's incredible.
So can we, can we talk about how, I mean, it's Marco Andretti, right?
Like a pretty big name.
I love the fact that he's the one that orders cameos. Like,
He doesn't do cameos for people.
He pays money to random people to get cameos done.
Yeah. Well this is not the first time Marco
and I have sent each other cameos.
We usually use Fred Stoller.
But speaking of backwards, it's crazy.
It's pretty solid.
I like how between you and Marco, you guys have like bought Fred Stoller a new apartment with all your cameos.
Like it's just, he just, why don't you guys just exchange numbers at this point?
So you could all just get on like FaceTime together?
Well, no, like you can pay 'em but then cut out the fees of Cameo.
Cut out the middleman.
Like save everyone money. Yeah.
Just be like, every time we're in New York, we'll come take you to dinner.
But here's the deal. We get to just FaceTime you at random times.
I wouldn't take that deal.
No, that would Knowing how often Tim FaceTimes people at random times.
That's, uh, it's not a deal I'd wanna be a part of.
It's usually for good reasons.
No, It's almost, it's almost never.
For me, it's for good reasons for me.
Then, not really .
It's, it's tough man. It's tough.
I gotta , the problem you run into Tim is you run the risk of, of boy who cries Wolf syndrome.
Where like, now we just stop answering This actually just came up right before you came on.
Oh really?
Yeah. Tim and I were just talking about this. Yeah.
So we're just gonna stop answering because we, nine times outta 10, you just James, it's a numbers game.
Yeah. You're like, it's a numbers game.
A numbers game.
You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take.
Right? Oh man.
I just, I feel like if Alex calls, if I see the phone ringing, it's Alex, I'd be like, oh, I should answer this.
It's probably important. If Tim calls, it's like,
he's probably telling me that he went to, to Tao Fun Dum for lunch or something.
And that's the extent of the message.
It's Din Tai Fun first of all, whatever, but, um, whatever. Yeah, whatever. Yeah.
I might go, I might go there for lunch today that does sound good.
That's not what sick people do.
I Yeah. But I can order it in. Soup
Dumplings sound amazing.
That actually does sound pretty good.
I can totally go for some soup dumplings right now.
Um, okay. All right.
Well let's, uh, let's, let's stick on the movie theme.
We've been, uh, trying to come up with different What were we talking about that was movie related?
Yeah.
Home Alone 2.
Reach.
That's a reach. Okay.
Okay. To be, to be fair, he did send through the cameo.
That's Buzz today.
That's a, that's Buzz.
That guy drops every possible reference to Home Alone and Home Alone 2 into that cameo.
Does he? Hey, it was a two and a half minute cameo.
He, he, uh, he earned his money now.
You got your money's worth. Yeah.
And, uh, I think I can see where the tequila went based on his performance.
Okay. So you're talking Buzz got one
and you didn't. Wow. Man. That's brutal.
Cool.
Um, okay.
So Chris, our, our SiriusXM guy has been saying for years, we should do something about racing movies on Tuesday podcasts.
Yeah. And, um, because you guys respect Chris
and don't respect me, we decided we're gonna do that today.
Never have. Never will.
Yeah. So let's, uh, let's go over, do you guys have,
and we, we probably should have talked about this beforehand to make sure it's not the same one. Do you guys have that would be your favorite?
A favorite racing movie?
Yes.
No.
That's very on brand for us.
If I'm, if I'm forced to choose one, like I have one that I prefer over the others.
Okay.
Do you have any that you, you feel like you, you need to see?
Like, anything you missed? No. No. Okay. All right. So then,
I mean, I feel like we're pretty good about seeing anything There's not that many of them.
There are more than you would think.
Like there's some old ones.
We're, we're gonna start this off with the worst racing movie of all time.
'cause we're just gonna get this out of the way and it's gonna be divisive and there's gonna be people that fight back.
But again, you're wrong. Driven is the worst
racing movie of all time. It is.
Okay. You think it's worse than Fast and Furious 11?
Do we call those racing movies?
I don't call those racing movies. No.
The first one kind of is.
The first one was.
It's a street racing movie that's like a, it's an illegal thing that's not even like, it's not even a drag racing movie.
Fair.
Okay. Um, so yes.
I I agree. Driven is the worst. It's just horrific.
Yeah. The storyline's garbage.
And what's terrifying is it's the exact same storyline as the new F1 movie that's coming out.
So hold this position just in case they managed to outdo Driven.
But instead of picking up quarters, he's picking up pound coins.
One.
50 P coins.
Isn't that isn't the quarter scene in Toronto?
Yeah. Yeah. It sure was.
So why don't picking up Loonies and Toonies?
Well, I don't think Toonies were around back then.
That's, that's the one thing you're questioning of the accuracy of the movie?
Yes. Everything else about that movie is perfect.
Now that we've established that It's awful, the only good thing that they did was like, use like, shots of real drivers and stuff and like, kind of make it look like they actually filmed it on real race weekends.
And the idea concept was good.
Just execution was horrifically poor.
Uh, Alex, I'm very curious what your favorite racing movie is.
Focus.
Again, are we calling that a racing movie because it has an IndyCar in it?
I mean, it's just, 'cause Margot Robbie's in it, bro. Will Smith.
That's a hundred percent.
Um, no, that is not my favorite racing movie.
My favorite racing movie, uh, if I, if I'm forced to choose, right, which I am for the sake of this podcast, uh, For at least the next 10 minutes. Yes.
Right. Days of Thunder. Okay.
That's a great one.
The reason for that is, I, I feel like self-explanatory, but the cast is elite, right?
Um, I, I'm a much bigger fan than I think most people my age group of Nicole Kidman, I think she's awesome.
Obviously, you got, you got Tom Cruise, uh, who is the guy, the kind of older Duvall?
Robert Duvall. Yeah. Um,
John C Riley's in that, I mean, I it's another inadvertently spawned Talladega Knight.
Sure. It's another like, um, the same guy
that did Top Gun did that movie, right?
Tony? Tony Scott. Yeah. It's Tony Scott.
So it's got that same kind of, it's not quite to the magnitude of Top Gun, but it's got that similar kind of feel to it of an action emotion.
You have the emotional connection to it.
Uh, it it, the phrase rubbing is racing came out of it, right?
Still used today.
Still used today.
In like a non-ironic way, right?
Like, people still say shake and bake, but like, that's not in a, not a, not in a real way.
People actually say rubbing is racing because it is.
Right.
It is insane how stacked of a cast that movie is.
Exactly.
Um, and I just think that that movie, much like Top Gun, right?
It's not, you're not annoyed by when you watch Top Gun, you're not annoyed that like, oh, that's not perfectly representing the US Navy, right?
Like, when they shift to 15th Gear, you're like, yeah, it's all right.
No, but you And decide to go full throttle. Yeah.
You're excited , you don't mind.
'cause you're, you're entrenched in a movie that isn't supposed to be about the realism of the movie.
It's not trying to be a perfect representation of racing.
Right. Whereas it's just supposed to be a fun movie.
And racing is the centerpiece of it.
Just like Top Gun, the navy's the centerpiece of it.
So that's why none of the, the fakeness of it bothers me.
And it's just an entertaining movie with a great cast and a good director and a cool soundtrack like Han Zimmer's the soundtrack, right?
Like, so it's just, it's a movie you can watch Go into the score. Well done.
It's a, it's a movie. You can watch it any at any point.
Whereas like, I'm gonna tell you a movie, Also a shout out to Robert Towne who wrote it. A phenomenal screenwriter.
I'm gonna tell you a movie that I hated for the very reasons that I just explained I liked Days of Thunder was the Gran Turismo movie, because that was, that was based loosely on a true story, right?
Mm-hmm . Of a guy who got found via the
Gran Turismo video game.
And Nissan did this like Gran Turismo Academy, where it was kind like the Red Bull driver search, where they, they found guys that were super good on the video game, gave 'em a chance at like a shootout.
And then the winner of that got supported by Nissan to go sports car racing.
Right? And Jan ended up being like an
actually pretty legit driver.
And, and so the storyline was correct, but all of the, the on-track car scenes were so dumb and they filmed everything at a single track.
Now people wouldn't know that, but me, knowing where the Hungaroring is right, and what that track looks like, every single scene, whether they were at La Ma or at the beginning of the, of the, of the storyline, it was at that place just cut from different corners.
So like that really bothered me.
And like the onboard stuff, you know, they used the Gran Turismo video game.
So like, they were trying to represent it as like real world racing, but it was the graphics from the video games that, that bothered me, even though the story was good.
And, and it was a cool representation of, of something that did happen.
I hated the movie. So that's why in summary,
Days of Thunder, I love it 'cause it's not trying to be a racing movie, it's just trying to be a good action movie.
And it succeeds at that.
Yeah. So, Tim, I I, I have to,
I stand corrected when you asked.
Is there anything we haven't seen?
I actually haven't seen that movie because it looked so bad.
I decided to not even watch it.
Yeah, I saw that. I saw that with Alex
and I don't know anything about racing.
And even I was just like, yeah, this isn't good.
Not for me, not for me.
Uh, okay. So yeah, that was
your, the one you hated the most.
One you liked the most. So you already know my most Hated is
Driven, uh, the one I liked the most, I'm not sure how many people have seen it, but it's called Grand Prix.
Yeah. Okay.
That, that movie to me was still the best racing movie ever made because it was like the least Hollywood in so many ways, right?
Like, I totally agree with what you say about Days of Thunder, that it kind of had that, you know, that cinematic feel.
And it kind of had some of the things that may be like inaccuracies, but for the sake of the story, it made sense and it wasn't too egregious.
So it was tolerable, whatever. This had,
it didn't even have any of that.
You're talking about the 1966 one with James Garner, right?
Yeah. James Garner.
Goes to work like 14 F1 races over the past two years.
And all of a sudden Grand Prix is his favorite movie.
It's, Hey dude, I'm on record saying this years ago.
This movie is incredible.
Because again, it's like, it is, it's about the, like there's so much good racing action, right?
There's so many good scenes, uh, of On Track.
They did it a lot more realistically than like most racing movies today do it.
And dude, you gotta remember, like when they filmed this, they filmed this in the mid sixties.
They literally had to strap cameramen with like 80 pound cameras on the front of Formula Cars.
Yeah. And you say, all right, go rip 'em. Yeah.
And like that's awesome. Yeah. That is awesome.
And there are like long, long parts with no, uh, no dialogue.
And there's like, there's no score at some points.
It's just the engines and the cars and the racing and acting while driving.
'cause it's open face helmet, so you can actually see stuff.
You don't have to like unrealistically have a clear visor so that you can see a driver's eyes and making all these face facial expressions whenever.
Yeah. And it captures the, the, it captures the like,
risk and the danger and what it's like for the partners of drivers.
And it's just a, it's just a really, really well done movie.
So where do you guys put, like, some of the newer stuff like Rush or, or those?
So where do you put those on the, I wanted to get Alex's opinion on, so what's interesting to me about Rush is Rush is, is a, is a, it's a people movie, right?
The story's about the people in that one.
It's not really about the racing.
They all are, right?
Yeah. They, yeah.
Days of Thunder is about getting over the, the trauma of that accident.
So Rush I I like a lot.
Um, I would put Ford Versus Ferrari ahead of Rush.
That's what I was gonna ask.
I was gonna ask your opinion on that one because that one I thought was a really, really good movie.
Yeah, me too.
Statcast, great story. Yes.
I think they didn't they take a little bit of the, the page out of Gran Prix's book?
Weren't they strapping cameras to cars to get some of the side by side stuff Or what they did, what they did was really cool was they put a car on a trailer and drove the trailer around the track.
So the guys doing the corners and it's like the real scenery in the background, but you don't have to have the like, actual actor driving, if that makes sense.
Right. Okay.
So like, that part was kind of clever, but yeah, so they, it wasn't all CGI, this is the thing about Rush, like any on track scene in Rush was just really bad CGI.
So a weird, a weird thing about Rush was they originally intended that movie to not have any racing scenes.
The idea was that they, it was written to be a lower budget film, and so it was going to be like the racing was all going to happen offscreen.
And then as the budget kind of expanded and it got became a bigger movie, they decided to incorporate the onscreen action.
But yeah, it was more of an afterthought, which like Ford versus Ferrari, it was very forward with it.
Yeah. But see, I like how that look,
if you're a racing fan, you know about Le Mans and you, if you're a historian at all, you probably know about the Ford story, you know, the GT 40 and, and at least some of the history behind that.
But what I liked about that was it took a well-known racing story, but maybe a lesser known kind of pop culture story and, and told it well.
And I think made casual racing fans aware of it and made them enjoy it.
And it's like a really cool part of racing history.
One of, of the biggest races in the world.
Put a spotlight on that till again, there's a lot of new race fans these days.
I thought that part was really great.
Um, unlike if we're gonna keep bouncing back and forth between movies that did it well and movies that did not.
Ferrari. Oh yeah. That was a tragically disappointing film.
Very bad You have one of the coolest characters in the history of Motorsport, maybe in the history of sport in Enzo Ferrari.
And you think that the story is gonna be really about him and how he did what he did.
And it was like 10% of that.
And then 90% was focused on a rally race, road race, the mil that is really not that big outside of Italy anymore.
It was maybe at a time, but it's not really a thing.
And to focus on that, it's not where Ferrari, it's not where Ferrari like I maybe where they made their name in the sense that's kind of what got them started.
But like Formula One is what people associate that with and more stories of his life.
And the car company would've been welcome.
But focusing on a race that doesn't have a lot of relevance today and doesn't really have as much significant, uh, like hi historical significance as say Le Mans does, I thought was just way At least the wreck was super realistic.
The wreck may have been unrealistic, but at least all the Italian accents were horrible.
The, the other one that, so that's bad.
Here's a good, um, and I had forgotten about it until just now.
Did you ever see Art of Racing in the Rain?
Oh my God. Uh, okay.
I have a complaint about this one though.
O okay, well first of all, I'm gonna tell you the reasons why I like it.
Number one, I, I read the book first, uh, because a buddy of mine, sister cousin, family member was the wife of the guy who wrote it, Gar Stein.
Um, so I kind of got given the book way early on and connected with it.
'cause I'm a dog person.
And a racing person.
And a racing person.
Dog, dog, big big dog guy. Dog person.
Um, and I love the idea of, and I think more movies should be told this way, it's a movie told through the story of the dog's eyes, right?
Right. It's a different perspective about his owner
who is trying to be a racing driver.
And you have that human connection to a golden retriever, right?
And so if you haven't seen it, it's an amazing movie.
You don't watch it for any sort of realism of racing.
That's not the point. The point is, you're watching a movie
as explained, narrated by Golden Retriever about his dad, who's trying to be a race car driver either in F1, or IMSA or anything and the ups and downs of that.
And it's, so, it's really amazing, My complaint on it.
Fantastic movie.
I went into that movie watching it, not really knowing anything about it.
I, I was, I was at a friend's house, I'd just flown to, to a friend's place and I was jet lagged, so they all went to bed, and I was like, oh, I'm just gonna check out this movie now.
I mentally prepare going into a movie about a dog for the dog to die, right?
I was not mentally prepared for that movie.
I was openly sobbing at them.
I'm not gonna say why, but I was open.
Like, if you have not seen it and you're gonna go watch it, it's great.
It's a, it's a fantastic movie.
So yeah, again, had read the book, knew the story, knew what was coming, watched it on a flight we were doing, Becky and I, I think we're flying to our honeymoon and so long flight.
Becky was asleep on the plane.
So I was like, all right, I'm gonna, I wanna watch this movie.
So I watched the movie and I am absolutely bawling on the plane.
Movie ends, right?
As the movie ends, Becky starts stirring, she wakes up, she's like, what've you've been doing, I was like, oh, I just watching Art of Racing in the Rain.
Whatever you do, do not, do not watch that movie right now.
This is not the time. You don't wanna watch it.
And so, of course, eight minutes later, I look over, she's starting Art of Racing in the Rain And so now that I know, like all the key moments, I keep like looking over, like knowing when a moment's coming, I'll be like, and she's just bawling.
At one point, the, the flight attendant came by and was like, oh my God, Mrs.
Is everything okay? And she's like, I just need more wine.
Please. It was so funny.
But no incredible movie. Incredible movie.
And, uh, great performance from our buddy Milo.
So it's about 6:30, which means I gotta go wake Hazel up and get her checking check on everything for school.
But if, if you guys out there listening have racing movies you feel like we missed and didn't discuss, we still got some off season left.
We're taking next week off for Christmas.
But send us some suggestions.
I will make these guys watch 'em and we can, we can turn this into like a movie review podcast.
There's no way that they're gonna suggest something we haven't seen.
Well just Le Mans, we didn't talk about Le Mans, which I'm sure will come up, right?
Which is, we could talk about that one next time.
Um, I'm trying to think of other ones that we didn't touch on.
There's Cars. Well, yeah, I mean, fair.
That's actually And Cars 3. Cars 2 is randomly a spy movie.
Is that true?
Yeah.
Oh, I don't think I saw that one.
There's Turbo.
Secretariat is a great racing movie.
Okay, that's, well, whatever you guys say in the comments, we'll go from there.
In the meantime, I hope you feel better, Tim.
More importantly, hope Hazel feel feels better.
Good Lord. Bye guys.
This has been off track with Hinch and Rossi.
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