By Travis Johnson
You’re known as a racing fan and, indeed, you made a great racing movie in The World’s Fastest Indian. How did you come to be making a biographical documentary on Bruce McLaren?
Well, it’s not my project. It came to me from two young producers [Fraser Browne and Matthew Metcalfe] in New Zealand. They were talking about why not many people know that McLaren cars started out with this young kid in New Zealand who went over to the UK, so they got the idea of making a film about Bruce McLaren. And they came to me to because I had done The World’s Fastest Indian, which was a project that I built from the ground up, based on a documentary I’d done back in the ’70s. They asked me to look at this project, and they wanted to do it as a feature documentary. The idea was to get it out into theatres, so we shot it widescreen.
My interest was really human interest. It wasn’t out of my interest in cars, it was more out of my interest in this young guy who set the world on fire and what it takes to make a name for yourself. Bruce’s story also reminded me of James Dean and Buddy Holly and Marilyn Monroe, those people whose star burns brightly and then terrible tragedy overcome them. I just thought there would be an emotional arc in the story that, if I could capture it, would make it worth doing.
What kind of archival resources did you have access to, and how did that affect your approach?
Well, when I took it on I didn’t really know what there was – a lot of what we have was discovered as we went along. When I said I would do the film I didn’t know about the tapes that existed. In fact a friend of mine said that he’d heard Bruce McLaren talking about his life some time on the radio in New Zealand. So I went back through the New Zealand archives and discovered that these tapes existed. And Bruce used to make these tapes, these personal tapes that he would make in the UK with his mates and send them home to his dad, and his dad and mum would make tapes and send them back. So that dialogue existed, in Bruce’s real voice, talking intimate stuff to his parents, out of these tapes came his sense of humour, his complete obsession with these cars, his friendships with these young guys he went to the UK with, and his relationship with his dad.
One of the most fascinating stretches of the film is when we spend time in the McLaren workshop, and see how Bruce and his team built their cars.
They’re really only two that did that. One was Jack Brabham, who was sort of a mentor to Bruce. Jack Brabham was this legendary Australian race driver, he was the one who got Bruce to go to the UK from New Zealand. He was the number one racing driver in the world at that time, he drove for Coopers and he got Bruce to come out and take over the number two spot at Coopers. Then not long after, Jack Brabham set up his own racing team, Brabham Racing, and they used Repco engines out of Australia, and Bruce was then the number one driver at Coopers, but he was also, like Jack, capable of designing and building so he was like “If Jack can do it, I’m gonna do it.” And he set up the McLaren team.
That combination of athletic skill and technical acumen is a rare one.
Yes, and from that he got a real team around him. He obviously inspired these young guys who were of a similar age to him, some of whom were even younger. They were all in their early 20s, crazy about cars and would do anything for Bruce. Bruce had proved himself to be a really competent driver, but he really got thrown in the deep end and quickly proved that he was world class.
You must have enjoyed the opportunity to speak with so many of these important figures in racing.
One of the pleasures of doing this movie was to talk to some of those people. I got to interview Stirling Moss, John Surtees, Mario Andretti, Dan Gurney, Frank Williams, people like that, the real icons of the ’60s scene, and that in itself was such a thrill for me.
With The World’s Fastest Indian, everyone interested in motor sport has seen my film. So I had credibility when I got to speak to these guys, it wasn’t just Joe Blow off the street asking what it was like to be Stirling Moss. But that said, the challenge was the create a rapport with these guys, that I was interested in their story, and to give them time to tell their story. The interviews were long and rambling at times, but they were all revealing in a very telling way what it was like to be there, what it was like to be part of that scene. In the case of the mechanics who were there on the day he was killed, two of those guys have never spoken about it before to anybody, they were so traumatized by the event. Without being ghoulish about it, I had to get these guys to reveal their true feelings, to make the connection between these old guys telling these stories and these young guys you see in the [archival] films.
Ultimately, do you see Bruce’s story as a triumph or a tragedy?
Well, I think it’s both. I think unless the McLaren Car Company had gone on to bigger and better things there would be no interest in Bruce, but people don’t really know why it’s called McLaren. They don’t know why the logo is this flying Kiwi – those things gave us a reason to make it.
There’s still the question of why someone would pursue such a dangerous vocation, though.
When I went to interview [British driver] Jackie Stewart, on his property he had 56 mahogany and teak benches around the paddocks, and every one of them had the name of a race car driver on it that was killed. This was an incredibly dangerous time to be racing cars. and if you wanted to be racing cars you didn’t get into one unless you were prepared for the consequences.
McLaren is in cinemas now. Read our review here.
