Motorsports Movie Marketing has changed...
But I’m still that 14 year-old on the right!
And I would have bought the cap too except… not available for shipping to the US? I get that F1 is a snooty Eurotrash series but F1 The Movie is a Hollywood blockbuster! Good! I just saved $49 plus shipping.
That aside, I enjoyed the movie in all its resplendent IMAX glory the other day and I couldn’t help but compare the effort to a Formula One movie from my youth.
I’m not much of a cinema buff. Amazon Prime and other online tripe doesn’t count, usually combining Lifetime Originals-quality writing, direction and acting with boobies and F-bombs. So when I pay $21 with tax and fees for an actual, in-theatre show the subject matter always follows a theme. For proof, here are the previous three flicks of any sort that I’ve seen in a movie theatre:
Along with Steve McQueen’s 1970 Le Mans, this latest racing movie shares with John Frankenheimer’s 1966 Grand Prix the important ingredient of having been shot on location throughout the season it depicts, during actual race weekends. The historical recreations of other productions impress with their enthusiasm and attention to detail but over the years I’ve come to appreciate the “Easter Eggs” in contemporaneous depictions of Les 24 Heures during Porsche’s first period of overall dominance and Formula One in its pre-corporate – and often deadly – 1960s. In this scene, shot on location at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps during the Belgian Grand Prix, virtually everyone in the room apart from the actors was an actual driver, at least two of whom wouldn’t live much longer in real life:
By the time my parents took my younger brother and me to see this epic in Cinerama, I’d already been a Formula One fan since the age of nine when I bought my first Road & Track magazine at the Palace Spa in Brighton Center, Massachusetts… the one that depicted Richie Ginther in the shark-nose Ferrari at Monaco on the cover:
The venue was a golden era, studio-owned movie house in Boston’s theatre district, possibly the Paramount. In the lobby sat an open-wheel formula car of some sort. We were handed full-color, large format 24-page programs (top left, still in my possession, selling for upwards of $75 USD on eBay) as we were guided to our reserved, reclining seats. As indulgent as all that seemed it wasn’t until the opening titles exploded in my face that the full impact of Cinerama seared itself into my impressionable memory.
The title sequence was designed and created by Saul Bass, visual consultant and title designer for the film who, along with his wife Elaine Bass, crafted the iconic opening sequence, known for its innovative use of split-screen and montage techniques to capture the intensity of Formula 1 racing. In 1986, at age twenty-four, I was meandering along Sunset Boulevard during a visit to a transplanted St. Sebastian’s friend when I stopped in my tracks at the sight of the Saul Bass Associates office. Damn, why didn’t I have my resume and portfolio with me! It wasn’t only racing drivers who dominated my pantheon of heroes back then! Fun fact: among other Hollywood contributions by Saul Bass, he storyboarded the shower scene in Psycho.
Here’s where comparisons between the 1966 and 2025 blockbusters intensify. My impressions of the IMAX racing footage centered around resolution, composition and the ability of the purpose-built cameras to pivot and shoot the actors through their rarely-worn clear visors as they drove at speed, and the result was superb! However, the technique largely followed the template set by the Cinerama classic (click image):
So the challenge for me to was remember how “immersed” I felt in my theater seat as an adolescent compared to how I felt on Monday at a more jaundiced age. Here, the win goes to Grand Prix. While the IMAX screen is large and curved it doesn’t envelop the viewer. The Cinerama version, on the other hand, featured three 35 mm synchronized projectors and a towering screen that wrapped completely around the viewer’s peripheral vision. The booming sound felt comparable but visually there’s simply no comparison between the two. The only other movie I saw at the same Cinerama theatre was 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, to similar stunning effect. While the technology was popular for some time, the equipment for filming and presenting the movie format was complex, trouble prone and expensive, so there are only four surviving Cinerama theaters in use today: Seattle, LA, Rotterdam and Bradford, UK. Here are some links I found fascinating if you’d like to learn more about Cinerama:
As to the marketing of F1 The Movie, the Apple-backed production was the top grossing movie this past weekend so I guess the efforts worked. I knew Apple was involved but here are details of that role (click image):
I learned about Frankenheimer’s upcoming film in the black & white pages of Car and Driver and Road & Track in the the early/mid-sixties (color appeared on the magazines’ covers only back then) and small black & white ads in the movie sections of the Boston Globe and Herald-American. Contrast that with my portrait at the top right of this article, generated when I bought my reserved ticket online and uploaded my selfie. Instant APX GP team member! Simultaneously, Radio Paradise – my favorite online station, and one of the oldest – began playing Chris Stapleton’s song from the movie’s soundtrack (Do I actually have to say “click image?” I’m not taking any chances; there may be old timers like me reading this! So, click image! 🤣):
Then there was the pre-release hype online. It’s all about activation, folks, and both the basement bloggers and “serious” motor racing journos certainly took the bait. Hey, why not? Here’s a random sampling of official and unofficial, pre- and post-premiere videos:
I particularly like this one because I was at the Rolex 24 when filming for the Daytona segment of the movie was underway:
On a related note, I took my new Kia K4 for its first extended highway drive, 86 miles round trip to the Tampa IMAX and back, averaging 38 mpg at 80+ mph, enjoying its chassis dynamics by BMW M! 🤣
Rush is excellent, Ford vs Ferrari is good, and Ferrari not so much.
That picture of Tim Cook makes me not want to see the movie.