Misguided Love and Guilty Pleasures

I'm rather curious to see the number of folks who end up at this blog based on the rather dubious title I have given today's posting. Before I plunge into today's posting, a little aside for those of you who have been keeping score. My dad will be going home today to continue his recovery at home! Yaaay!

Now then, on to today's random topic. I was going through my DVD collection the other night when I ran across the Stallone movie, "Driven". This is where the guilty pleasure part of my title comes from. "Driven" is probably one of the most poorly reviewed movies in recent memory. For those unfamiliar with the story, it start Sylvester Stallone as an aging and semi-retired CART driver who is brought back to his old team to help a young and promising rookie become a better driver. The story had true potential but once one actually sits down and watches this film, it becomes apparent very quickly that there isn't much more to this film than meets the eye. Stilll, it's one of the films that I will sit down and watch on occasion, either to grumble and groan about the utter silliness of the film or to marvel at the fact that people funded this film and wanted to see it made.

Before I plunge deeper, a little background on this film and me. As you may come to realize, Formula One racing is one of my passions and it is a passion shared by many around the world, even those in Hollywood. Folks like Nicholas Cage, George Lucas and Sylvester Stallone have been known to frequent the races and hobknob with the greats of yesterday and today. That being said, it is not surprising that someone, in this case, Sylvester Stallone, would decide to make a film on this sport. Now believe you me, Stallone is a fanatic about the sport. In the time leading up to his writing the script, he was a veritable fixture at the tracks in Europe. He researched and studied and studied and studied.

His passion drove him to seek permission from Formula One boss Bernie Eccelstone to approve the movie on the sport and allow them unprecedented access. That was about the time that I heard about the film. I got very much excited and my hopes were high that this would finally be a movie worth watching on racing. Hearing about how Stallone was going for true authenticity in filming the race scenes, I began having flashbacks to the documentary I had seen on "Le Mans" and Steve McQueen's passion for racing. I had high hopes.

Then one day, the tune changed. It was announced that the film would no longer be focussing on Formula One but rather the American off-shoot, CART. Now there is a bit of a difference between the two but I won't get into technical details about it. Suffice it to say that the story more or less remained intact and there was hope that perhaps the story would still serve to advance the cause of racing.

Alas it was not to be. Now here is where the 'misguided love' of the title comes in. In watching the film, there are instances where I can see that Stallone was very much going to show what life is like for a racer. You can see flashes of it in scenes like in the opening moments of the film, the press conferences, the drivers preparing for the final race. All these moments gave a bit of insight into the life. Then, there are the Hollywood moments that invariably made their way into the script. The love triangle, the jealous ex-wife, the sibling rivalries, and so much more. Cars flying through the air, crashes happening on every other lap, cars halting in a race to reverse direction and race back to the scene of an accident to help a friend.

These elements, if peppered into the script in bits would have been okay. It could have been a compromise with the studio to help sell them on the idea. But it almost seems that somewhere along the way, Hollywood bumped Stallone out of the cockpit and took over the controls themselves. Why else would we see a race through Chicago, at night, at over 200 miles per hour. Sure, if this were "The Fast and the Furious" I would say, 'bring it on!' but this was supposed to be a movie about the life of a driver. Instead we get the Hollywood version!

I am hopeful that someday we get movies like the old "Grand Prix" which showed us, a bit more realistically, what the life of drivers in motorsports is like. It's very true that the life we fans imagine will be somewhat fantastical, but still, I don't have visions of driving a Formula One car through the streets of DC (well..... maybe on occasion! ;-) ).

And before I end today.... just wanted to give a shout out...er... type out to two of my regular visitors, Heather and Darren T (g'day Australia!). Thanks for visiting and reading along!