(^120) ANATOMY OF A CONTENDER
(^9) AWARDS
SEASON
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 84 NOVEMBER 13, 2019
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Don Sylvester paid a man in Ohio far less than
the cost of a vintage car to let him record the
thunderous engine growls of his hand-built
GT40. Production designer François Audouy
would pull to the side of the 405 freeway in
Los Angeles to collect tire scraps for accident
scenes. Says Audouy: “We didn’t have time to
give someone a knife and shred steel-belted
tires. It’s a messy, ugly job. So I would pull over
and walk up and down the shoulder with a
five-gallon bucket and collect whatever.”
Mangold and his crew filmed around
California. The Willow Springs International
Raceway in Rosamond, about 70 miles
north of L.A, is the setting of an early race
in the film, and a hangar at the Ontario
International Airport became Shelby’s auto-
mobile headquarters (which, in real life, was
near LAX). Other key locations during the
85-day shoot were in Georgia, including a lush
racetrack in Savannah that served as a stand-
in for much of the Le Mans course. Michael
McCusker and Andrew Buckland started
editing while second-unit production was still
underway. “We were getting so much car foot-
age early on, we knew it would take us a lot of
time,” McCusker says.
With Ford v Ferrari’s release at last just
days away, a beaming Bale and Damon — aka
Batman and Bourne — have become a famil-
iar duo on the awards circuit. But they may
face off in a superhero-like showdown at the
Oscars — the studio is pushing both men for
best actor. Damon isn’t too preoccupied with
shiny ornaments, though — unless they’re on
the hood of a car. “At this stage in our careers,
we just wanted to have fun,” he says. “What
we want now more than anything is for
people to see it.”
at a racing school in Arizona. Bale — a natural
speed freak whose motorcycle-racing hobby
ended seven or so years ago after a string of
accidents — spent hours every day behind
the wheel. “More than teaching Christian to
drive,” Nagle says, “it was about him really
understanding what a racer goes through and
what the mental and physical challenges are.
It’s far more taxing than people realize.”
Despite the hands-on training, Bale is not
actually piloting the car during most of the
race scenes. Phedon Papamichael, Mangold’s
go-to cinematographer, and second-unit
director Darrin Prescott — also an accom-
plished stunt driver — would rig Bale’s “hero”
car with a pod on the roof or in the trunk area.
There, one of more than 20 stunt drivers hired
for Ford v Ferrari would strap in and actually
maneuver the car. That way, Bale would still
be experiencing the speed without controlling
the vehicle. There were also cameras mounted
on various parts of the car to capture Bale’s
very real expressions.
Another key component to filming the race
scenes was what Mangold’s crew nicknamed
the “Frankenstein car.” The vehicle, loaded
down with cameras and driven by a stunt
driver, would weave in and out of the other
race cars on the track and capture the action.
(Papamichael himself would sit in the pas-
senger seat for some scenes.) “James wanted
to maintain a more vintage aesthetic to the
film,” says Prescott. He didn’t want “big,
swoopy shots” that audiences of the Fast &
Furious series have come to expect. It’s a testa-
ment to the stunt drivers’ professionalism
that only one major mishap occurred on the
shoot — when the Frankenstein smashed into
another car. The stunt drivers were tossed
around, but no one was hurt.
As for the vehicles, production design-
ers borrowed current versions of the GT40s,
Cobras and other muscle cars depicted in the
film and retrofitted them into cars of that
era, which could cost upward of $100,000 per
vehicle — a relative bargain considering that
an original Carroll Shelby GT40 or Cobra costs
anywhere from $25 million to $45 million.
To ensure that the details were right, the
production team got creative. Sound editor
1 Damon’s character in
the film, Carroll Shelby,
designed the Cobra. Here
the actor is in a replica of
the original car.
2 Bale in a GT40 while a
stunt driver maneuvers
the race car from a pod
rigged on the trunk.
The second car, fondly
referred to on set as the
“Frankenstein,” shoots
the action on the course.
3 “Christian is a pure
actor,” says Mangold. “He
loves the art form. I
don’t think he was ever
interested in being a
movie star.”
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