Steve
McQueen helped finance and appeared in the Oscar-nominated On Any Sunday, which remains the preeminent motorcycle documentary
to this day. He had something similar in mind for Le Mans. However, the rest of the cast and crew thought they were
making a dramatic narrative. Those are what are generally termed creative
differences. There were quite a few going on behind-the-scenes of the 1971
film. The difficult production process as well as the eternally cool actor’s
passion for the sport are chronicled in John McKenna & Gabriel Clarke’ Steve McQueen: the Man and Le Mans (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York.
Le
Mans is the oldest endurance contest in car racing—twenty-four hours circling
the picturesque French village. As McQueen envisioned it, Le Mans would give viewers a vivid, tactile sense of what it was
like to drive the course at speeds over 200 miles per hour. Like Paul Newman
(who finished second at Le Mans in 1979), McQueen was a legit racer in his own
right, but for insurance reasons, he was not allowed to compete in the actual
race. However, much of what driver Jonathan Williams’ camera car recorded
during that year’s Le Mans was incorporated into the film. They had the
authenticity nailed down, but they lacked a script.
It
quickly becomes apparent from the rediscovered “making of” footage and
interviews with the surviving participants, Le
Mans could be considered something like McQueen’s Apocalypse Now. It ballooned way over budget and severed several of
McQueen’s professional relationships. During the chaotic shoot, McQueen’s
marriage to cabaret-musical theater performer Neile Adams also collapsed.
However, causal fans might be most surprised to learn McQueen was already under
stress following revelations the Manson Family had specifically targeted him. In
fact, he was expected to join his friend Jason Sebring at Sharon Tate’s home on
that horrific night.
For
a film about the need for speed, Man and
Le Mans is surprisingly calm and contemplative, even with McQueen’s son
Chad doing his best to liven things up with attitude and enthusiasm. Still, McKenna
& Clarke include plenty of ironic anecdotes and fully capture a holistic sense
of the actor, the race, and the challenging film. They even score a pretty
significant scoop, vouched for by McQueen’s former personal assistant Mario
Iscovich (a great interview) and Louise Edlind, the sort of lead actress, who
would later be elected to Sweden’s parliament.
