Steve McQueen: The Man and Le Mans

Synopsis

The film focuses on the time when film star Steve McQueen tried to take control of his career. After the success of Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair, McQueen sought to pursue his dream of creating a film about his passion: race-car driving. The result, Le Mans, was a box-office flop.

McQueen, who did a lot of his own motorcycle and car driving stunts, drove a Porsche with a broken clutch-foot to finish second at Sebring. Based on previously unseen footage, the documentary interweaves the newly discovered material and McQueen's private recordings with interviews with many of the surviving production team to reveal the true story of how the film was made. The documentary depicts how McQueen set up his own production company called Solar Productions and, with the collaboration of a new Hollywood company named Cinema Center Films, would film the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in the summer of 1970. Cinema Center Films invested $6 million ($37 million today) in the movie, the largest budget ever for a McQueen film. John Sturges would direct the picture; he had worked with Steve in The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape. Additionally Alan Trustman, McQueen's most trusted writer, was initially chosen to write the script.

In the film, Hal Hamilton exclaims, "We had the star, we had the drivers. We had an incredible array of technical support, we had everything. Except a script." Haig Altounian, Steve's chief mechanic, said, 'We were winging it." Cinema Center Films (which had not previously been involved in the filming process) took over the production after a few months and suspended production for two weeks (even giving Robert Redford a call to see if he would replace McQueen). Cinema Center Films considered shutting down the film completely, but eventually struck a deal with McQueen, in which he gave up his salary, his percentage of any profits and his control of the film, in order to get it finished. John Sturges walked out, saying, "I am too old and too rich to put up with this shit." McQueen fell out with Trustman and fired him; Trustman barely worked in Hollywood again. McQueen's producer Robert Relyea fell out with McQueen and television director Lee H. Katzin took over.

During filming several accidents occurred. Derek Bell was one of the drivers involved in a near fatal accident. The Ferrari 512 he was driving suddenly caught fire whilst getting into position for a take. He managed to get out of the car just before it was engulfed in flames and suffered minor burns. David Piper was the second driver involved in a major incident. He had to have his leg amputated as a result. It is revealed in the documentary that after the accident David and Steve never saw each other again. Off screen, Steve crashed a personal car in a major accident, injuring Mario Iscovich, his personal assistant, and the film's female lead, starlet Louise Edlind. In order to avoid a scandal, Mario took the blame for the accident and soon left the set without a job. Steve was extremely paranoid that Louise would reveal the truth and ruin his film whilst filming.

During this time, Steve McQueen became increasingly paranoid as a result of finding out he was on Charles Manson's kill list. It led him to pursue a license to get a gun to protect himself. His marriage to Neile Adams McQueen was falling apart as well. Clarke says, "after years of quietly tolerating Steve's innumerable indiscretions, Neile revealed that she had had an affair of her own".

The documentary suggests that the disasters on set and the financial problems that plagued the film had more of an effect on McQueen than anyone thought at the time, leading to the collapse of his business empire and marriage. Chrissy Iley explains how McQueen imagined building a movie empire and taking control of his career as a film maker. His first step would be Le Mans, the definitive racing movie. Le Mans was a creative and box-office disappointment upon its release the following year, although it retains a reputation, particularly among auto sports fans, for the documentary-like authenticity with which it catches the racing ethos and experience. Steve McQueen didn't even bother going to the premiere and he never raced in a car again.

Found Footage

Before making "Le Mans", McQueen had been beaten to the screen in making his first attempt at a racing project, "The Day of the Champion," by Grand Prix, which starred James Garner. For Steve, it became essential to now make a film free from special effects or artifice. The camera team built camera rigs on the car in order to capture McQueen's vision of racing. That meant filming real cars and real professional drivers, racing at real speeds, in real time, with a budget of $6m (around $37m today). Whilst filming, it was rumoured that over a million feet of film was shot during the making of Le Mans. Many of those on the production, including Steve's son Chad, claimed the material had been incinerated and nobody knew where it was. This footage was therefore nicknamed 'the holy grail' during pre-production of Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans .

In an interview for the Independent, director Gabriel Clarke recalls, "We spoke to family, to people who had worked on this project. As far as they were concerned, this film didn’t exist." There was “a vague lead” to a disused warehouse in New Jersey. Clarke and McKenna had a late-night call to an editor in Los Angeles the day before the shooting of the documentary began. An e-mail came back saying, "Beneath a soundstage covered in dust, we found between 400 and 600 boxes of film, each with ‘Le Mans’ along its spine, They don’t smell of vinegar, and so may have survived intact”. The rushes came without sound, but the filmmakers made sure during post-production that every last growl of an engine was authentic. Whether it was McQueen in a Porsche 917 or another driver in a Ferrari 512, the sound the car makes is exactly as it should be.

Researchers located a Swiss “making-of” documentary, filmed while McQueen was on set. "Some of our footage came from private family collections," Clarke says. A behind the scenes 'making of' documentary by John Klawitter existed and had never been released. Other sources surfaced such as the hours of super 8mm home movie footage shot by one of the drivers, Paul Blancpain, during the race.

Cast

The cast of the documentary included many people who were involved in race car driving and/or the production of the original film, or who were part of McQueen's life, including Neile Adams (McQueen's wife at the time), Chad McQueen (McQueen and Adams' son), Derek Bell (a future five-time winner at Le Mans, who was injured in a serious incident while driving for the film), Jonathan Williams (professional racing-driver who drove McQueen's own Porsche 908 during Le Mans's racing scenes), David Piper (professional racing driver who lost a leg due to a serious incident while driving for the film), Siegfried Rauch (actor cast as McQueen's nemesis), Louise Edlind Friberg (lead actress in the film, injured in a serious incident while McQueen was driving home from dinner near LeMans), Alan Trustman (former scriptwriter whose writing career ended with Le Mans), Peter Samuelson (whose teenage introduction to the film business was as a 'gofer' on the set of Le Mans), and Craig Relyea (son of McQueen's business partner Robert Relyea).