Bruce McLaren Movie

[Chris Ardern]

They just anounced a big budget movie about Bruce McLaren

The Bruce McLaren Movie Official Website

That's really going to be something.

Chris
Historic Race Car Replicas

[Dick Bear]

Chris,

I'm looking forward to seeing that too. I hope they do the story justice and the film with class. All the necessary ingrediences are there for a great race film classic!

Dick Bear

[Russ Noble]

Ah, I agree with you both. I’m looking forward to that movie!

Those were the halcyon days of NZ motoracing. A country of (then) two and a half million people with three drivers competing successfully at the highest level. Also of course there was that controversial staged Le Mans finish with the huge publicity in which all three of them featured in the 1-2-3 and the Mk11 GT40 which was finally deemed to be the winner McLaren/Amon painted in NZ colours. Wonderful times!

Bruce McLaren is, I think, the only driver/constructor/designer to have engineered cars that have won or has driven himself to wins in F1, F5000, F2, Can Am, Le Mans, Indy 500 and the Tasman Series.

We were lucky being young and growing up in NZ in the 60’s and 70’s. A truly special era....

Cheers

[FRPGUY]

Wow! I hope they do it right. The movie makes should tell it like it was and not make a "make believe" story. I met Bruce and Tyler Alexander when I was seventeen years old, and it was these two guys that inspired me to get into race cars and racing. I even got to do some fiberglass work on one of Bruce's cars. Not many people know that Tyler lived in Hingham, Massachusetts USA and the McLaren Team used to come to Tyler's parents home as a base of operations and some good ol' New England clam bakes. You knew when the Team was there, when you drove by Tyler's parents house and see the cars parked by the garage behind the house. For a seventeen year old driving by in my MGA, it was exciting stuff!
I first met Bruce at a party where I embarassed my self in front of Bruce by backing out of the drive-way and tore the door off my MGA catching the door in a snow bank. Bruce helped me tie the door back on the car so I could go home. I'm sure ther is a lot of people with a ton of Bruce McLaren stories.
I hope the movie shows a lot of CAN AM racing, that was just amazing!

[Mike Dozier]

I wish them all the best....unfortunately motorsports stories don't seem to translate well on the big screen. They either pay a big name to star (Elvis, Tom Cruise, Sly Stallone) which immediately takes focus away from the story.
Or the story is so poorly written that nobody cares (Bobby Dangerfield, etc).

I hope they cast a bunch of unknowns, and hire the best screenwriters
possible to tell the true human story of Bruce and not get lost in the race/crash sequences.

The Worlds Fastest Indian is a good example how to do it right.
A really good movie.

MikeD

[Jac Mac]

Info to date would suggest that they have learned a lot from the success of the Burt Munro/Fastest Indian Movie. Not sure if Bruce was as colourful a character as Burt though, in fact I hope he was not. Both very talented guy's who achieved a lot with very little. While many of you guys will probably relate to his later exploits, I hope that they include a lot of his early NZ stuff in the old specials, Mini Coopers etc as well. The sight of those first racing Minis in action is still fixed in my mental picture dept, some 45 years on.

Jac Mac

[charlie]

A little know fact was his team was home based in Hingham Mass for a number of years.

Charlie

[FRPGUY]

I wonder, who are they considering for the part of Bruce? Teddy Meyer? Tyler Alexander? Chris Amon? and all the race car drivers. I hope they don't too far away from what the real people were like. I remember Bruce as a quiet guy. Mark Donohue was a quiet guy too. Mark had the nick-name of "Capt. Nice"!
I hope they show how Bruce won the trip to England to race. I don't know too much about that. It seems there was something call "driver to Europe". I don't know if I have the name right. Anyone know or remember?